<DOC>
[107th Congress House Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:80940.wais]
MANAGING RADIO FREQUENCY SPECTRUM: MILITARY READINESS AND NATIONAL
SECURITY
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY,
VETERANS AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
APRIL 23, 2002
__________
Serial No. 107-84
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
http://www.house.gov/reform
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___________________________________________________________________________
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland TOM LANTOS, California
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
STEPHEN HORN, California PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii
JOHN L. MICA, Florida CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana DC
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
BOB BARR, Georgia DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
DAN MILLER, Florida ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
DOUG OSE, California DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
RON LEWIS, Kentucky JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia JIM TURNER, Texas
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine
DAVE WELDON, Florida JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
CHRIS CANNON, Utah WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida DIANE E. WATSON, California
C.L. ``BUTCH'' OTTER, Idaho STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia ------
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
------ ------ (Independent)
Kevin Binger, Staff Director
Daniel R. Moll, Deputy Staff Director
James C. Wilson, Chief Counsel
Robert A. Briggs, Chief Clerk
Phil Schiliro, Minority Staff Director
Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs and International
Relations
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut, Chairman
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York TOM LANTOS, California
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
RON LEWIS, Kentucky JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
DAVE WELDON, Florida DIANE E. WATSON, California
C.L. ``BUTCH'' OTTER, Idaho STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia
Ex Officio
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
Lawrence J. Halloran, Staff Director and Counsel
Thomas Costa, Professional Staff Member
Jason Chung, Clerk
David Rapallo, Minority Counsel
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on April 23, 2002................................... 1
Statement of:
Gallagher, Michael, Deputy Assistant Secretary for
Communication and Information, National Telecommunications
and Information Administration, Department of Commerce;
Major General James D. Bryan, Deputy Director, Defense
Information Systems Agency [DISA]; and Julius Knapp, Deputy
Chief, Office of Engineering and Technology, Federal
Communications Commission.................................. 110
Price, Steven, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Spectrum and C3
Policy, Office of the Secretary of Defense; Lieutenant
General Joseph Kellogg, Army, Director of Command, Control,
Communications and Computers, C4, Joint Chiefs of Staff;
Vice Admiral Richard Mayo, Director of Space, Information
Warfare, Command and Control, Chief of Naval Operation;
Lieutenant General John Woodward, Director of Headquarters
Communications and Information, U.S. Air Force; Major
General Stephen W. Boutelle, Director, Information
Operations, Networks and Space, U.S. Army; and Brigadier
General Robert M. Shea, Director of Command, Control,
Communications, and Computers, C4, U.S. Marine Corps....... 9
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Boutelle, Major General Stephen W., Director, Information
Operations, Networks and Space, U.S. Army, prepared
statement of............................................... 68
Bryan, Major General James D., Deputy Director, Defense
Information Systems Agency [DISA], prepared statement of... 120
Burton, Hon. Dan, a Representative in Congress from the State
of Indiana, prepared statement of.......................... 6
Gallagher, Michael, Deputy Assistant Secretary for
Communication and Information, National Telecommunications
and Information Administration, Department of Commerce,
prepared statement of...................................... 114
Gross, David, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for
International Communications and Information Policy,
prepared statement of...................................... 144
Kellogg, Lieutenant General Joseph, Army, Director of
Command, Control, Communications and Computers, C4, Joint
Chiefs of Staff, prepared statement of..................... 31
Knapp, Julius, Deputy Chief, Office of Engineering and
Technology, Federal Communications Commission, prepared
statement of............................................... 132
Mayo, Vice Admiral Richard, Director of Space, Information
Warfare, Command and Control, Chief of Naval Operation,
prepared statement of...................................... 42
Price, Steven, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Spectrum and C3
Policy, Office of the Secretary of Defense, prepared
statement of............................................... 12
Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from
the State of Connecticut, prepared statement of............ 3
Shea, Brigadier General Robert M., Director of Command,
Control, Communications, and Computers, C4, U.S. Marine
Corps, prepared statement of............................... 79
Woodward, Lieutenant General John, Director of Headquarters
Communications and Information, U.S. Air Force, prepared
statement of............................................... 56
MANAGING RADIO FREQUENCY SPECTRUM: MILITARY READINESS AND NATIONAL
SECURITY
----------
TUESDAY, APRIL 23, 2002
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs
and International Relations,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher
Shays (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Shays and Gilman.
Staff present: Lawrence J. Halloran, staff director and
counsel; Thomas Costa, professional staff member; Sherrill
Gardner, detailee-fellow; Jason M. Chung, clerk; Grace
Washbourne, professional staff member (full committee); David
Rapallo, minority counsel; and Earley Green and Jean Gosa,
minority assistant clerks.
Mr. Shays. I would like to open this hearing, and we
apologize for being a little late. Especially with the military
I like to be on time because you are always on time.
The Marine Corps facility at Camp Pendleton contains 17
miles of California coastline. Last May, the General
responsible for providing realistic training to amphibious
units testified only 2.5 miles of that beachfront were
intermittently available to expeditionary forces preparing for
coastal combat contingencies throughout the world. Lack of
beach access means units can't train as they'll be asked to
fight. Readiness is degraded.
Military access to another form of beachfront property is
also at risk. Prime bands of the electromagnetic spectrum used
by the Department of Defense [DOD], to carry essential radio
and satellite transmissions are being targeted for development
by commercial telecommunications firms here and abroad.
Growing civilian demand for wireless services confronts
growing DOD requirements for network combat systems on the
already crowded finite shoreland of the radio frequency
spectrum.
So today we ask, are national security needs for critical
radio frequency bands reflected in DOD planning and national
spectrum allocation policies?
Each major deployment since the Gulf war has brought new
generations of spectrum dependent tools to the battlefield.
Advanced radios, radar, sensors and data systems give U.S.
forces overall information superiority, detailed situational
awareness and the ability to coordinate air, ground, naval and
satellite components in real-time. Digital technologies allow
front-line units in Bosnia and Kosovo to reach back to the
American mainland for data and analysis.
In Afghanistan, the use of precision guided munitions
limits collateral casualties, outflanking the human shield of
civilians behind which terrorists cower. The use of unmanned
aerial vehicles [UAVs], allows a more timely application of
close air support for ground forces, providing tactical
flexibility and avoiding casualties.
To use these systems effectively in combat, U.S. soldiers,
sailors, air crews and Marines need to train under realistic
conditions, but that is not always possible. Powerful radars
can disrupt civilian communications. Encroachment in or near
DOD frequencies by competing uses causes interference that can
weaken or break uplink signals to satellites, munitions or
UAVs.
At the same time, DOD has not always used available
frequencies as efficiently as possible. System development and
acquisition processes lasting 10 years or more cannot keep pace
with far more rapid dynamics of national and international
frequency regulation and allocation. The lack of a truly joint
approach to spectrum use means separate military services have
designed major systems, using the same frequency bands, which
will interfere with each other on the joint battlefield.
DOD demand for spectrum will only grow. Technology offers
some prospect frequencies can be shared, or more data moved
more quickly using less bandwidth, but the beach front of
technologically useful spectrum will continue to attract more
users than the unalterable physics of electromagnetism will
accommodate.
The challenge: Allocating the finite supply of spectrum
among potentially infinite demands for wireless capabilities.
We asked our witnesses this morning to describe how the
Department of Defense assesses spectrum requirements and how
national security needs are represented in interagency and
international forums. We look forward to their testimony and
welcome each and every one of them.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:]
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Mr. Shays. At this time I would like to recognize the
gentleman from New York, the most distinguished gentleman, Mr.
Gilman.
Mr. Gilman. Thank you, Chairman Shays, and I want to extend
our thanks to you for holding this morning's hearing to examine
an emerging problem for our Nation's military, shrinking
bandwidth availability in our radio frequency spectrum.
The last 10 years have seen an enormous increase in the use
of radio frequency spectrum and wireless communications in our
military operations. A large component of today's defense
reconnaissance operations consist of the use of satellite
imaging and unmanned aerial vehicles to locate, monitor and
track movement of enemy forces. Moreover, wireless
communications allows our military commanders to communicate
with forces in the field, following events on the battlefield
in real-time fashion, and to direct close air support missions
against enemy forces through consultation with our ground
forces in the theater.
This expanded use of wireless technology does come with a
price, however, the rapidly expanding use of radio frequency
bandwidth. Just one of the new Global Hawk unmanned aerial
vehicles uses five times the total bandwidth consumed by the
entire military during the Gulf war.
In essence, future operations will continue to see
bandwidth use increase while the number of forces deployed in a
given operation continues to grow smaller. The military had
planned to meet future contingencies in that area through the
use of commercial satellite technology. However, that industry
has recently fallen on hard times, leading to a shortage of the
hardware needed to meet the wireless communications needs of
the military.
A Wall Street Journal article on April 10, 2002, stated
that the military was counting on over 1,000 new satellites
being available by the year 2005 for their use in future
operations. However, of the 675 launches expected between 1998
and 2002, only 275 actually made it into space.
So I look forward to the testimony from our witnesses today
as we look for ways to meet and address this challenge.
Thank you once again, Congressman Shays, for holding this
important hearing.
Mr. Shays. Thank you very much, Mr. Gilman.
Let me just get some committee business out of the way and
ask unanimous consent that all members of the subcommittee be
permitted to place an opening statement in the record, that the
record remain open for 3 days for that purpose.
Without objection so ordered.
I ask further unanimous consent that all witnesses be
permitted to include their written statements in the record.
Without objection, so ordered.
And I further ask unanimous consent that Chairman Dan
Burton's opening statement be inserted into the record at this
point. Without objection, so ordered.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Dan Burton follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Chairman Burton has also submitted some
additional questions to be answered for the record. Some of
them we may ask you today. But we would like the witnesses--the
chairman has requested that written responses to his questions
be submitted in writing to the subcommittee by May 23rd, so
basically a month.
We have a very distinguished panel, two panels, and I would
apologize that we have the six of you all at one table. My
preference is basically to have no more than four, but for the
synergy, and I think it will be helpful to have all of you
interact, and I think you all understand that.
We have before us today Mr. Steven Price, Deputy Assistant
Secretary for Spectrum and C3 Policy, Office of the Secretary
of Defense.
We have Lieutenant General Joseph Kellogg, Army, Director
of Command, Control, Communications and Computers, Joint Chiefs
of Staff.
We have Vice Admiral Richard Mayo, Director of Space,
Information Warfare, Command and Control, Chief of Naval
Operations.
We have Lieutenant General John Woodward, Director of
Headquarters Communications and Information, U.S. Air Force.
Major General Stephen W. Boutelle, Director, Information
Operations, Networks and Space, U.S. Army.
And Brigadier General Robert M. Shea, Director of Command,
Control, Communications, and Computers, C4, U.S. Marine Corps.
As you may know, we swear in all of our witnesses. I will
say in my many years now of being chairman the only time I
didn't swear someone in was when it was Senator Byrd. I
chickened out, and I regret it to this day.
But if I could ask you all to stand. I just also have to
disclose that not everyone has always done it.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Shays. Note for the record that all of the panel
responded in the affirmative.
It is an honor truly to have all of you here today. This is
a very important issue. It is not the kind of issue that the
press knocks down the doors to cover, but it is an
extraordinarily important issue, and I know that you all have a
lot to provide us.
And so if we could, I think we will just go in the order in
which I called you. And is that the order that I see them? So
if we could, we will start with you, Mr. Price.
STATEMENTS OF STEVEN PRICE, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR
SPECTRUM AND C3 POLICY, OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE;
LIEUTENANT GENERAL JOSEPH KELLOGG, ARMY, DIRECTOR OF COMMAND,
CONTROL, COMMUNICATIONS AND COMPUTERS, C4, JOINT CHIEFS OF
STAFF; VICE ADMIRAL RICHARD MAYO, DIRECTOR OF SPACE,
INFORMATION WARFARE, COMMAND AND CONTROL, CHIEF OF NAVAL
OPERATION; LIEUTENANT GENERAL JOHN WOODWARD, DIRECTOR OF
HEADQUARTERS COMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION, U.S. AIR FORCE;
MAJOR GENERAL STEPHEN W. BOUTELLE, DIRECTOR, INFORMATION
OPERATIONS, NETWORKS AND SPACE, U.S. ARMY; AND BRIGADIER
GENERAL ROBERT M. SHEA, DIRECTOR OF COMMAND, CONTROL,
COMMUNICATIONS, AND COMPUTERS, C4, U.S. MARINE CORPS
Mr. Price. Thank you. Good morning. Mr. Chairman, Mr.
Gilman, I would like to thank you for holding this hearing. It
is an honor to be here before you. I would also like to thank
your staffs for their hard work in preparing for this hearing.
The Department of Defense appreciates that your committee
is looking at spectrum management in general and military use
of spectrum in particular. Spectrum is the lifeblood of our
military. Every ship at sea, every airplane conducting
missions, every forward deployed young man or woman, especially
in hard to reach locations, depends on radios and spectrum to
conduct their missions and to return home safely.
A Special Forces team leader operating in Afghanistan
recently reported on his experience during Operation Enduring
Freedom: ``we could go in there naked with flip-flops, and as
long as we have good radios, we could do our job.''
Information is clearly one of our most important weapons,
and spectrum is the resource that allows this information to
flow from commanders to mobile combat troops wherever they are
deployed in the world. And this will be even more true in the
future.
A Department of Defense spectrum requirements analysis
completed prior to September 11th, and therefore likely to be
an underestimate, predicted DOD spectrum usage growth of more
than 90 percent by 2005. This is due, in part, to our ongoing
transformation to a network centric military as well as to new
operational concepts, including items that you noted in your
opening statement, such as extensive use of UAVs, unmanned
aerial vehicles, and evolving strategies that require joint
dispersed forces to have greater connectivity in the last
tactical mile.
In addition, there will be new demands in the arena of
homeland defense. These will likely include new spectrum-
related missions such as protection of critical infrastructure,
emergency response, and support for major events, as was the
case during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
In short, our spectrum needs are growing rapidly, and the
Department does not believe that the future needs of our
transformed network centric military can be met without access
to additional spectrum allocations.
The Department's spectrum policy is guided by five core
principles, and I will briefly address each one.
First, spectrum is a vital national resource. We understand
that defense needs must be balanced with other national needs.
That balance, however, must recognize that in allocating
spectrum, the essential defense needs must have top priority.
Second, spectrum is critical to the Department of Defense.
It is a core enabler of what we do. Therefore, we should not
allow the lack of sufficient spectrum to be a constraint on our
warfighter. The distinguished Generals and Admiral to my left
will discuss these issues in detail.
Third, DOD recognizes that we must be a good and
responsible spectrum user. In fact, we strive to be as
efficient a spectrum user as we can be. It is important to
understand that DOD's spectrum use is very different from that
of commercial enterprises. The commercial sector seeks low-cost
high-revenue solutions, and therefore busy signals are
acceptable. I understand and accept that. In fact, when I ran a
publicly traded wireless communications company, I did exactly
that. But such cannot be the case for the military, because our
calls must get through, whether they be a call guiding a
precision guided munition or alerting the soldier of harm.
Where lives are at stake, there can be no allowance for a busy
signal and no margin for error.
A fourth core Department of Defense principle is that we
are committed to continue investing in research and development
for new spectrum efficient technologies. DOD has been a major
contributor to the birth of CDMA, software defined radio, and
other technologies, and we are reaching out to collaborate with
my former colleagues in the private sector to expedite such
efforts.
Fifth, DOD commits to actively supporting U.S. policies and
interests in international spectrum bodies. To do this,
however, we must ensure that the national process allows for
planning and setting of overall national priorities and have a
process that affords the incumbent user a high degree of
predictability and certainty, and we firmly believe that there
should be no intrusion into Federal spectrum without executive
branch concurrence.
Despite how critical spectrum is to DOD's mission, its
access to it is under attack. Losing needed spectrum is like
losing any other vital resource. It costs both in current
capability and future opportunity, both directly and through
reallocation of dollars to mitigate the damage.
Each time we are forced to adjust training in the United
States away from operational norms to accommodate domestic
frequency restraints, our training realism and effectiveness
suffers. The uncertainty caused by relocation attacks pose
serious issues for our long-term planning. Will we be required
to move? Will we get the money to move? Will we need to
retrain? Will we retrain in time to be prepared to deploy in an
emergency?
Will we need to change concepts of operations to account
for degraded capabilities? Will we be able to get host nation
approvals to use systems in the new frequency band in all parts
of the world we might need to do so? Will our allies who bought
interoperable systems now also be required to modify their
equipment? And if so, who pays their bill? Will the new
spectrum be free of interference, and on and on?
The Department of Defense bears the risk of overcoming
these and any technical challenges and, most importantly, we
bear the risk of the failure of our equipment due to hasty
relocation decisions.
In the Department of Defense, we have a duty to the young
men and women who defend our country. We have a duty to ensure
that they have the tools, including spectrum, that they need to
do their job. We owe them policies to ensure that lack of
access to spectrum is not a constraint on their warfighting
capability.
Thank you for your time today. I look forward to working
with you and all of the other witnesses on these important
issues, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Price follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Thank you, Mr. Price.
Lieutenant General Kellogg. What we are doing is we are
doing the 5-minute clock. Then we roll it over, give you
another 5 minutes, but would obviously want you to stop before
the second one. Nothing terrible happens if you don't.
General Kellogg. Yes, sir.
Chairman Shays, Congressman Gilman, I have submitted my
written statement for the record and I thank you for the
opportunity to speak on the importance of radio frequency
spectrum to our Nation's military forces and to the security of
our Nation.
Radio frequency spectrum is an important limited national
resource and is in great demand by both commercial and
governmental stakeholders. Under the leadership of General
Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we in the
military are transforming to a more network centric
organization.
Wireless technology has allowed us to integrate arms like
never before to decrease our casualties and impose the maximum
amount of violence on our enemies. Our fighting personnel
engaged in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan are
dependent upon the use of adequate radio frequency now in the
fighting in Afghanistan.
The troops on the ground are, even as we speak, in
communication with aircraft flying far overhead. They are
passing precise coordinates to allied flyers in order to move
more accurately placed Global Positioning System guided
munitions onto enemy positions. We are finding that military
spectrum requirement growth parallels that of our commercial
industry, much like Mr. Gilman said earlier today.
The nature of modern warfare depends greatly upon the
availability of spectrum. The ongoing transformation of our
forces into a leaner, more agile and more technically dependent
force requires greater spectrum access. Adequate spectrum
access was critical to U.S. forces' success in Desert Storm and
Allied Force, and will continue to be crucial to the
Department's ability to meet the security challenges of
Enduring Freedom and beyond.
The use of wireless technology is the only way to
effectively connect mobile, tactical ground, air, sea and space
forces.
The Federal Government band between 1755 and 1855 megahertz
is one of the bands being considered for implementing third
generation mobile service, or 3G. The Department of Defense
uses this band for satellite control, battlefield radio relay,
air crew combat training, precision weapons guidance and for
more than 120 systems requiring crucial communications
functions. The relocation challenges are many, but center
primarily around acquiring technically comparable spectrum,
providing adequate and timely financial compensation, and
providing adequate time to complete the transition without
losing operational capabilities.
The constant readiness of forces depends on the spectrum
access to train and maintain our proficiency. The success of
our operations occurs because we can pass time-critical
communications, navigation, and reconnaissance information over
satellites, fly well-trained combat air crews, launch precision
guided munitions and deploy our tactical radio relay network.
In an era of transformation to a lighter, more mobile force
structure and increased operational requirements, these
spectrum dependent weapons serve to significantly enhance the
operational capabilities of U.S. forces.
Enhanced situational awareness and precision engagement
provides combatant commanders with capabilities essential for
the prosecution of their mission. Any loss or degradation of
this capability will potentially have severe consequences on
national security. A loss would likely result in mission
failure and increased casualties in future operations and loss
of vital, timely intelligence information to the President and
senior leaders. I am not talking about dropped calls. I am
talking about the potential of dropped lives.
The critical issue of spectrum relocation requires a
balancing of economic and national security needs. The United
States has global security responsibilities requiring spectrums
for military systems that are far greater than any other
nation's. This is part of the benefits and the burdens that
accrue to our Nation given our worldwide leadership in the 21st
century. We will continue to work in the spirit of cooperation
and openness with the other executive branch departments, the
FCC and other interested parties in order to reach the best
decision for our Nation on this important issue.
I will be happy to answer any of your questions.
[The prepared statement of General Kellogg follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Thank you very much, General.
Admiral.
Admiral Mayo. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman,
representative Gilman. I am Vice Admiral Dick Mayo, Director of
Space, Information Warfare, Command and Control for the Chief
of Naval Operations.
Thank you for this opportunity today to discuss the
importance of radio frequency management and Navy spectrum use
and the relationship to training, military readiness and
national security. I would like to take the next couple of
minutes to highlight some important issues.
Use of the radio frequency spectrum is critical to the U.S.
Navy. Every deployed battle group and amphibious ready group
and every Navy shore facility around the world is dependent on
access to a wide range of spectrum to successfully train and
sustain operational readiness in support of warfighting CINCs.
To illustrate this, I would like to call your attention to
the story board in front of you, and I also hope that you have
a viewgraph presentation. What this represents, Mr. Chairman,
is the deployment of the USS Theodore Roosevelt Battle Group
and the USS Bataan Amphibious Ready Group.
It illustrates their workup back in the United States, the
training at ranges, the training off the East Coast, their
deployment overseas to the theater of operation in Operation
Enduring Freedom. All kinds of ships, all kinds of aircraft.
And what I seek to impart to you with this story board is that
the realistic training done back in the United States with the
specific use of spectrum is the same spectrum that they then
operated with over in the theater of war.
And the only differences that I would call your attention
to are the additional frequency and spectrum that we require to
interoperate with our allied and coalition partners. But that
heavy use of realistic spectrum and workup translates into
success while deployed. And it enabled the Teddy Roosevelt
Battle Group and the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group to
contribute to the combined task force and contribute over 6,500
sorties and 4.3 million pounds of ordnance dropped on target.
As we continue our transformation toward network centric
warfare force, spectrum continues to be key to the transfer of
vital information, be it voice, video, imagery, targeting or
intel. It is a critical force multiplier, warfighting enabler.
Assured access to spectrum is an absolute imperative for the
Navy and therefore the national security. But our training and
readiness, like for the rest of DOD, has been impacted by the
cumulative effect of a variety of spectrum related issues such
as spectrum reallocations from government to private sector
uses in the past few years and increasing spectrum scarcity,
and these spectrum related constraints have contributed to
reduced training realism, range scheduling constraints and
complexity, and increased fuel and logistic support costs
because units must travel further to more distant ranges.
Training is the foundation of the Navy's combat capability.
There is a direct correlation between realistic training and
successful performance in combat and military operational
readiness. This operational readiness preserves the peace and,
when necessary, wins the war.
In summary, Mr. Chairman, the USS Theodore Roosevelt Battle
Group and the USS Bataan Amphibious Ready Group are examples of
successful deployments and operations that were due in large
part to access to spectrum that they could use, the same
spectrum that they could use while deployed.
These kinds of evolutions that are referred to, as far as
workups and training on ranges on the East Coast and West
Coast, are done three to four times a year by successive battle
groups and successive amphibious ready groups. So this is
constantly ongoing. Further loss of access to spectrum to
include the 1755 to 1770 megahertz band without comparable
alternate spectrum, adequate and timely compensation, and the
flexibility to transition our incumbent uses somewhere else
will severely impact the fleet operations and readiness
training.
I thank you and the committee members for this opportunity
to be here, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Mayo follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Thank you, General. This committee had the
opportunity to spend a night on the Roosevelt before it
embarked on its latest engagement, and obviously it was very
impressive. But it blew my mind to think that the average age
was 19. They were so efficient, so capable and 19 years old.
Admiral Mayo. Yes, sir. Our sailors are so impressive, and
they are dynamite.
Mr. Shays. Now, we can't get carried away here. Our entire
military is awesome. It is very impressive the caliber of our
people. It is a credit to all of you that is the case.
General Woodward.
General Woodward. Yes, sir. Thank you very much, Mr.
Chairman and the whole members of the subcommittee, and a
special thanks I think is due to Ms. Grace Washbourne and all
of her activities, because I honestly believe you have a
history-making hearing in this regard, and the opportunity to
speak to you on behalf of the Air Force and my responsibilities
as the senior communicator for the Air Force. I can't say
enough for you in terms of the importance of this spectrum to
the Air Force and certainly our DOD and the Nation and the
national security issues.
I think it starts with your comment as well; that is, we
are really talking about a finite usable RF spectrum. We need
to understand that as we go through this debate and this
discussion with your hearing. It also points out the
importance, I think, as the IT, information technology,
revolution is taking place and our dependence on moving our
ones and zeros in this digital age that we have going. It just
draws even that much more importance. Combine that with
September 11th and a lot of things have changed in the way we
view spectrum and the success of the United States and success
inside of the world, as the case may be.
Could we ever have imagined that airborne warning and
control system [AWACS], was watching the skies over New York
City, or that our F-16s were flying combat air patrol over our
Nation's Capitol. I think things have changed dramatically.
If you use an example, and I wish you would put the story
board up for just a second if you are in control of that. You
also have a paper copy of this I believe as well. You should
have.
The importance of this is just to show you one single
platform, one weapons system, 50 antennas, a lot of them are
multiple antennas. It shows you the complexity of what we are
really talking about, from the 3 megahertz to the 9 gigahertz
range, just for this platform that does air traffic control. It
does air to air, it does air to ground, it does multi-megawatt,
surveillance radars with anti-jam, it has Satcom capabilities
for beyond line of sight, command and control and navigational
aids, electronic warfare, datalinking associated with it,
global Positioning System that is associated with it, all of
which is interoperable on that platform but it is interoperable
with the forces for the other services and the other agencies
that have responsibilities for it.
The complexity is absolutely phenomenal. That I think is
what we are really talking about. Now, this is following around
the United States. For our structure--you can take that down if
it is all right. For our structure, come September 11, when we
changed our focus and we looked a lot internally for the
surveillance and the protection that was necessary for our
critical assets as a result of this, the services put together
a 24 by 7 operation so that we can in fact work spectrum
requirements in a hurry. And I am very, very proud of our
relationship with the NTIA and our ability to do these between
the services.
We put both the software and the spectrum terminal, we call
it Spectrum 21. We actually installed it down at NTIA so that
we could process some requirements. I will give you a couple of
examples. Clearing AWACS over metropolitan areas. And now
consider all of those antennas and all of that spectrum on that
plane where you don't want to have interference.
Consider helicopters and what they need on board for search
and rescue operations and their capabilities. Consider the
datalinking that actually goes on so you can talk weapons
platform to weapons platform, and in fact you talk to the Aegis
ships that were out in the harbor as well and shared that, by
the way, with the FAA activities to do the deconfliction.
Cleared ultra wideband spectrum. That is in the thousand
megahertz range. That was done in about 90 minutes. I think
that is a record, by the way.
Mr. Shays. What was done in 90 minutes?
General Woodward. Actually cleared the use of a spectrum
for ultra wideband, for the use of that spectrum both in New
York City and in the Pentagon, because it was used to look for
individuals and things of that nature because of its ability to
do what it can do.
Mr. Shays. Was that a temporary clearing?
General Woodward. Yes, sir.
So immediately following that, we have all of these
dedicated managers that are very much involved in how to make
and do creative methods to make the right things happen on
behalf of this Nation, all of it I believe around national
security responsibilities, so the focus is tremendous.
The truth is, our need for spectrum is just as critical
every day of the year, not just for these particular events,
and I would second Admiral Mayo's comment with regards to the
range structure and the training that is necessary. It is the
same training that you are going to do, perform day-to-day as
you are going to perform in war. You have got to have access to
the right levels of spectrum. Whether that is on the range or
any other activity, that is going on as the case may be.
If you talk a scenario, and let's go to for a minute, if we
will, go to Operation Enduring Freedom in the Afghanistan area.
You have got air traffic control taking place, you have got the
AWACS platform that I showed you that is flying, you have got
satellites that are flying, you have got Global Position
System, you have got the tankers that are up that are doing the
refueling for the assets, you have got the airlifters that are
up there moving the cargo, as well as dropping foodstuffs at
the same rate--in fact more so than the bombs are dropping.
You have got the fighters up. You have got unmanned aerial
vehicles that are flying. You have got air space deconfliction
taking place. You have got electronic warfare taking place. You
have got the air superiority. You have got to have spectrum
superiority in order to do all of these kind of things. Search
and rescue that is up there, the command and control weapons
guidance that is going on as well as the radars for situation
awareness, predicted battle space awareness. And all of that
has got to be done together.
So you have to have assured access to the spectrum and the
necessity of the bandwidth that is available. In times when you
look at moving systems to new frequency bands as the services
have been asked to do over the last few years, aside from being
very expensive, it also results in unintended consequences. For
example, one of the bands threatened under the third generation
wireless commercial development efforts would require moving
precious guided munitions control higher in the spectrum band.
What is the significance of that? If you look at the
physical characteristics of that transmission at that higher
frequency range, it would force pilots to actually fly closer
to the target base to release weapons. So you have put them in
harm's way placing them just that much closer to the enemy
forces.
I am not sure how you quantify that kind of risk as we go
through the debate. I think certainly the legislation that has
been done for the 1999 and 2000 defense authorization bills and
the kinds of legislation that has taken place because of it is
superb.
The precedence for auctioning spectrum is certainly well
established and the need for close attention to spectrum
access, spectrum processes and decision mechanisms for defense
users will actually be a fact of life for the foreseeable
future. The potential revenue from spectrum auctions cannot
overshadow the very real national security risks that may
result.
There is the misperception that the Department of Defense
controls large amounts of spectrum, can readily afford to
relinquish some of it. The truth is, the entire Federal
Government has exclusive rights to less than 8 percent of the
frequencies below 30 gigahertz, and 14 percent below 3
gigahertz, which is really considered the sweet spot in the
spectrum, in the frequency spectrum range.
We must have a spectrum management strategy that strikes a
balance between the competing requirements of the commercial
world and the Federal Government so that we can do the kinds of
jobs that this Nation has asked us to do in the Armed Forces.
The current processes aren't necessarily on a level playing
field. Federal users have to submit 5-year reviews of spectrum
licenses justifying all of the spectrum needs. It is not quite
the same. Once the industry gains control over a band there is
really no review. Federal users on a second point also must
provide early notification of future spectrum dependent
systems. Commercial users do not have the same strict
notification approval process.
And then a third item, the Federal users most also follow
stringent technical standards for receivers guaranteeing that
their systems do not interfere with the others. And again,
commercial users don't necessarily have to follow the same
guidelines.
A national spectrum strategy that encompasses all of the
Nation's needs must be pursued in order to guarantee this scare
resource is allocated certainly for the common good.
The Air Force issues are in the World Radio Conference
agenda. There is about 53 items that I am aware of. Over half
are space-related. The Air Force is most concerned here, but we
feel very confident that we in the U.S. Air Force are part of
the process, whether that is through the DOD process, that is
the NTIA and the FCC and all of the work groups that are
associated with it, and we are very fortunate for that.
I think a special thanks is due to the NTIA and the FCC
that did what was referred to as the Spectrum Summit on April
4th and 5th. Those kinds of things also need to occur
frequently.
And I would finish up with, I believe the necessity to
emphasize the national spectrum strategy, that is really
demanded at this time.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and committee.
[The prepared statement of General Woodward follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Thank you very much. Reference was made to Ms.
Washbourne and the full committee's work. We are--the
subcommittee has oversight over national security issues. The
full committee has oversight over anything it wants. We have
been working together on encroachment, not just radio
frequencies, but our air bases, our places to train, and we
think this is an extraordinarily important issue, and I have
appreciated the work of the full committee in this effort.
General Boutelle.
General Boutelle. Mr. Chairman, and distinguished members
of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to report to
you on the importance of our Army's access to the radio
frequency spectrum and its vital role in Army transformation.
Let me draw your attention to the story board and what
General Woodward has referred to as the sweet spot. If you look
from the left to the right of this spectrum, you start at the
very low frequencies and you move across to the very extremely
high frequencies and 30 gigahertz. The band that is under study
is the sweet spot. This shows you the congestion in that
particular band and some of the devices that operate across the
spectrum, such as television, cellular phones, microwaves. In
fact, the attributes you see listed below each part of that
spectrum show you why that is particularly desirable for the
military as well as the commercial sector.
That small piece of spectrum from 17 to 1770 has extremely
good foliage penetration, smaller antennas, requires less
power, but is extremely heavy used. It is truly the sweet spot
for the Armed Forces. And the study shows that we use that as
it is for unmanned aerial vehicles, Land Warrior, satellite
linkage and terrestrial radio communications.
Transformation involves fundamental changes in the way we
accomplish our mission. One of those changes is the melding of
information technologies with the radio frequency spectrum
referred to as network centric warfare. It is really about
creating synergy by connecting capabilities in a way that
amplifies combat power. Achieving information superiority will
allow us to outmaneuver our opponent and gain the technical
edge needed for victory.
The radio frequency spectrum is the medium by which
information is conveyed in the battlefield. It is the glue that
ties information technology-based capabilities together.
Over the last 10 years a series of decisions by the Federal
Government shifted over 247 megahertz of spectrum to the
private sector. Today we are engaged in the study of
transferring even more spectrum from government use to the
private sector.
Achieving high payoff interim and objective force
organizational goals will require several novel applications of
spectrum. We will see significant improvements in strategic
deployability by reducing the weight of our armored combat
platforms from 70 tons in the case of the Abrams to around 20
tons, a significantly improved, highly integrated and fully
interconnected C4I systems, also known as network centric
warfare.
The synergistic effect of network battle command of
information systems sensors, weapons platforms and spectrum
make this possible. We intend to maximize warfighter forward
presence while reducing the presence of support personnel. This
is accomplished by either leaving selected support personnel in
the Continental United States or positioning them in a
protected sanctuary outside of the area of operations.
We employ satellite communications to virtually bring
support personnel and forward deployed units together. Typical
applications are the provisioning of information resources such
as imagery, logisticians and intelligence analysts.
I was recently in Afghanistan, and I can report from first-
hand observation how much our Armed Forces rely on this
capability right now in our war against terror. With the
satellite links, a ground commander can get immediate access to
information that can save lives and diminish the knowledge edge
of our al Qaeda adversaries. In a place where seconds count and
lives are at stake, the wireless tether is indeed a vital tool.
Closer to home, spectrum transfers also affect our Army's
ability to provide support to civil authorities in response to
natural disasters. In the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew, which
devastated south Florida during the summer of 1992, the
Department of Defense deployed troops and wireless
communications systems such as the Army's mobile subscriber
equipment, which operates in the band under study, 1710 to
1770, to support recovery operations.
Army wireless communication systems were also used again
when Hurricane Iniki hit the Island of Kauai in September 1992.
As in Florida, wireless systems employed in Kauai provided
emergency telephone services in support of fire, police and
hospital operations. The cumulative effect of spectrum
transfers is becoming increasingly detrimental to military
training and system development. Training is a particularly
essential activity and access to spectrum is vital in conduct
of realistic training.
It is tough, realistic training that ensures our soldiers
have the skills and experience necessary to exceed in the war
on terrorism and to help civil authorities respond to
catastrophic events such as Andrew and Iniki. Our Nation relies
on a prepared Army that is able to employ multi-faceted
capabilities worldwide on short notice.
Spectrum has been and will continue to be absolutely vital
to maintain that high level of preparedness. The Army's global
mission and spectrum allocation rules dictate the bands of
spectrum which military systems operate. As our Armed Forces'
access to spectrum has eroded through auctions and transfers,
we have improved the efficiency at which we use what remains.
However, in the absence of a national spectrum policy,
continued piecemeal transfers of spectrum will destabilize the
development of military wireless and information systems.
The military's access to spectrum must be assured during
the development and operational life of equipment in order to
ensure the Army maintains it's training and technological edge.
We cannot send our soldiers into combat without the best that
America has to offer in training, tools and technology.
Our Army is transforming to meet the changing threats
across the entire range of modern warfare. Achieving
information superiority is a fundamental aspect of
transformation, and the radio frequency spectrum is the
ultimate enabler. A tactical manifestation of transformation
embraces the tenets of network centric warfare to create a
synergy between essential warfighting capabilities.
As any great endeavor, transformation cannot and is not
accomplished alone. As a Nation we must find ways to strike a
balance between the commercial need for spectrum and the
fundamental requirement to defend our global interest. Domestic
prosperity and national security must receive the same level of
consideration in developing a national spectrum policy.
We are thankful for the congressional support we have
received and the foresight of our leaders in recognizing the
need to change. Without your support, we would be living in a
20th century Army trying to fight a 21st century world.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of General Boutelle follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Thank you. I am just going to say to you, there
is nothing this committee won't do to try to make sure that
whatever we need to straighten out we straighten out, and I am
going to be curious to know what interaction you have had with
other committees, particularly Commerce, if any, on this issue?
General Shea.
General Shea. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, distinguished
members of the committee. I am pleased to have this opportunity
to discuss the way the Marine Corps is managing the radio
frequency spectrum and its importance to the military
readiness.
Mr. Shays. General, I am amazed. You are the first person
that speaks away from the mic and can still be heard. Yet we
are hearing you loud and clear.
General Shea. Sir, that is the Marines.
Mr. Shays. That was a set-up question.
General Shea. The terrorist attack on September 11th again
reinforced the requirement for our Armed Forces to be ready to
answer our country's call to duty. Operational readiness is
only achieved through realistic training. Marine Corps training
within the United States and abroad is becoming more difficult
to coordinate and conduct and in some cases is prohibited due
to spectrum restrictions.
As our opportunities for training overseas continue to
decrease, the Marine Corps increasingly relies on invaluable
training opportunities that take place within our borders.
Today I would like to provide you an overview of some of
the current and projected spectrum challenges for the U.S.
Marine Corps.
Spectrum encroachment is one of the most significant
military training and operational challenges we face today.
Over time our available spectrum has decreased while the
requirements for spectrum have increased.
I will highlight some of the general trends we face today
with representative examples. Frequency encroachment is having
a negative impact on integrated electronic attack training
conducted in support of our aviation units. Electronic attack
is the intentional jamming of radio frequencies and is a vital
warfighting capability. Among other things we jam radio
frequencies to defeat enemy targeting of our aircraft by
surface to air missiles.
The EA-6B Prowler is our primary airborne electronic attack
platform. It is in heavy demand and Prowlers routinely
accompany airborne strike packages, ensuring their safety by
jamming enemy radar. The requirements to conduct electronic
attack training is absolutely vital to our Marine Corps air
crews and their mission success.
However, obtaining electronic attack authorization is
becoming very difficult. Often the authorization is so
restrictive that realistic training cannot be achieved, such as
the case in the Camp Pendleton in the Miramar area in
California. For the vast majority of our electronic attack
training, we are forced to conduct it in offshore ranges or on
what I will refer to as a last frontier for electronic attack,
at selected DOD bases and ranges located in the Mojave Desert.
The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 established,
among other things, 16 protected areas throughout the United
States where the Department of Defense can retain sole use of
the 1710 to 1755 megahertz band. This frequency band in the 16
protected sites are essential for Marines Corps aviation
training.
I would like to draw your attention to the map of the
United States and point out that the 16 particular areas
represent a very small portion of the area within the country.
Though small in area, they are extremely vital to our
operational readiness.
In the international mobile telecommunications [IMT], 2000
frequency band of 1755 to 1850 megahertz is of major importance
to the Marines Corps. The Marines Corps has over 400 radio
vehicle-mounted multichannel radio systems that operate in this
band.
In addition to use by our aviation and combat service
support units, these radios currently provide our only reliable
transmission means for robust data connectivity from the
division headquarters down to the regiment and the battalions
of our ground units.
As a result of the 1993 Reallocation Act, we lost nearly
one-third of the Mark 142s available frequencies. Any further
reallocation of the spectrum within this bank will essentially
eliminate the use of these communications backbone systems
within the United States.
Congested frequency bands pose serious problems in other
areas as well. The Pioneer unmanned aerial vehicle, for
example, shares the same frequency band as our Track 170 radio
system. 50 megahertz of this band was reallocated in the 1993
legislation. The Pioneer provides a number of capabilities,
including the delivery of real-time video to Marine maneuver
units operating ground-based terminals.
It has proven to be a very valuable capability in recent
operations, providing timely reconnaissance, targeting, and
other critical information without endangering our air crews.
Track 170's are the Marine Corps' largest wideband
terrestrial multichannel radios. They are used in almost every
major Marine Corps training exercise throughout the United
States and abroad. They are capable of passing large volumes of
data that can be used for a combination of voice, video and
datalink applications.
The Army and the Air Force also use these radios. The
challenge is that the Marine Corps operations require a
simultaneous employment the Track 170's and the UAVs even
though the UAV is extremely prone to radio frequency
interference from the Track 170. It is important to have the
ability to manage frequency assignments around this
interference problem.
While not owned by the Marine Corps, we rely heavily on
various other Department of Defense systems and joint systems
that are operated by our sister services and agencies. Systems
such as the Global Positioning System, various satellite and
intelligence systems, and aircraft platforms such as the Air
Force's AWACS, JSTARS, and Rivet Joint are all invaluable to
the Marine Corps operating forces. These systems are also
heavily dependent on spectrum for operations and training.
Any future spectrum reallocations or restrictions imposed
on the use of these joint assets will have potential to cause
serious degradation to integrated training and to war-fighting
capabilities.
In the Marine Corps, we've taken steps to deal more
effectively with spectrum management problems we face today and
in the future. In the past 2 years, we have more than doubled
the number of frequency managers that we have. We have placed
these new billets at all major subordinate commands. That's the
division, the wing and the combat force service support group,
as well as with our marine expeditionary units that are forward
deployed with the amphibious ready groups around the world that
Admiral Mayo mentioned earlier.
Additionally, we are implementing a new military occupation
specialty for warrant officers effective in January 2003. These
spectrum manager warrant officer billets will be positioned
strategically throughout the Marine Corps senior commands to
respond to today's and tomorrow's ever-increasing spectrum
challenges.
We train as we expect to fight. Access to spectrum for
realistic war-fighting training is essential to ensure our
country's future wars are won with a minimum loss of life and
that we can effectively integrate our war-fighting
capabilities. That access is especially critical in the United
States for the training of our Marines. We must be ready for
military operations today and tomorrow. As the Nation deals
with the ever-increasing demand for RF spectrum, the
requirements for maintaining a well-trained and ready military
force must be part of the equation.
Sir, thank you very much for the opportunity to address the
committee on this important topic.
Mr. Shays. Thank you, General.
[The prepared statement of General Shea follows:]
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Mr. Shays. I thank all of you.
What I'd like to do is ask a few general questions. I'm
going to expose my ignorance, but I learn a lot faster that
way.
Let me say to you that I think the one thing that you don't
need to convince this committee of is the incredible need for
the ability to communicate--have all our weapons systems
communicate, all our personnel. I think the hearing established
that quite well, but it's been established with this committee
by all the places that we visited and so on, all the technology
we've seen, all the people we've spoken to and so on. So I
think we can spend, you know, not as--we don't need to
emphasize that again.
I have religion on the fact that I've learned in my nearly
16 years here that my job is to make sure it's not a fair
fight, and to make sure we have superiority, and the one area
we have superiority in a number of areas but obviously our
ability with technology and communication is pretty
extraordinary.
What I'm unclear about is actually what is the state of
affairs today? I know--I can visualize it physically in terms
of the fact that we're fearing the encroachment. I need to know
if we just made sure there was no further encroachment, would
we be just fine, or do we need to clear out some spectrums and
certain radio frequencies and do a whole readjustment? I need
you all to share that with me.
Mr. Price, we'll start with you, but I don't know if we
need to jump--you know, go down the line. Do you get a sense of
the request I'm asking? I want to know the state of affairs
today.
Mr. Price. Yeah. Thank you. That's a great question, and we
appreciate it.
There are a couple of different ways to look at it. The
national spectrum process, as people have talked about--and I
commend NTIA and FCC for both having started processes to look
at how spectrum is managed in the United States, because
currently it's a bifurcated system, where government spectrum
is looked at separately from commercial spectrum. So,
therefore, you end up having a government plan or strategy and
a commercial strategy, not one overall national strategy, and
therefore it doesn't allow the United States to set overall
priorities. And if we did set overall priorities--I'm going to
use your words--that we should make sure it's not a fair fight.
I'll put that at the top of my list for how to set priorities.
But, therefore, the problem becomes that there's constant
uncertainty. You never know if you're going to be able to stay
in the spectrum you have. You have to, every 5 years, as the
General mentioned, go and justify that the systems work and
that they're still using the assignments. That's fine.
But whenever there's a hint that this group may be looking
at this spectrum, this new technology needs new spectrum, even
before it becomes to a full out and out either rulemaking by
the FCC or NTIA, because the lead time for the Department of
Defense for our acquisition and our procurement cycles are so
long and these issues are so important, we spend a lot of time
just sort of--when there are rumors out there that people may
be eyeing pieces of our spectrum or you get various inquires
that--the way I look at it, it doesn't give the Department of
Defense predictability and certainty that we'll be able to use
the system for its full life cycle.
Mr. Shays. So, Mr. Price, I gather that the big concern is
how you protect what you have?
Mr. Price. That's one of the concerns. And that's--that
now, given the fact that there's a viability study for certain
of our spectrum, as some of the view graphs showed, that is a
concern.
Mr. Shays. But----
Mr. Price. But there's a--I'm sorry.
Mr. Shays. No, go ahead.
Mr. Price. So, clearly, protecting what we have, in your
words, is very important, but as the Department moves to a
network-centric world where--the analogy is the commercial
world is going to broadband Internet access. Everyone wants
high bandwidth, high data rates, Internet access, wireless
scenarios across the country. The military is doing the same
thing. So the forward-deployed young men and women are
reliant----
On a ship, you're using wireless communications. On an
airplane, you're using wireless communications in hard-to-reach
locations. So as we move to a transformed military, even
without September 11th, we have more and more spectrum needs;
and 2 years ago the Department of Defense concluded a spectrum
requirements analysis which showed that, by 2005, our spectrum
usage would grow by 90 percent.
Mr. Shays. OK. Let me--I'm going to turn to Mr. Gilman
soon, but I'm going to try to get--I'm asking very general
questions so they seem to require--I guess they do require long
answers, but I want to make sure I'm having other people jump
in here.
Could any of you just respond to that first question, maybe
add some detail?
General Kellogg. Sir, if I may, today while we may not have
any immediate spectrum needs, we are finding that----
Mr. Shays. I just need to know when you say ``we,'' we the
Defense----
General Kellogg. We in the military immediate today. But we
have found post September 11th and also before that----
Mr. Shays. So you're speaking for all the military
branches?
General Kellogg. Yes, sir, speaking as a member of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff.
But prior to the attack and post September 11th, we're
finding that, just like commercial interests, our need for
spectrum is in fact growing; and as we transform our forces
more into a network-centric, information-based force in all
probability it will continue to grow.
It should be reminded, sir, that we did, in fact, lose
spectrum. We lost 247 megahertz during the 1993 Omnibus Budget
Reconciliation Act and the 1997 Balanced Budget Act. We're
still able to use that spectrum.
Mr. Shays. OK. Let me just ask you this, though, because, I
mean, I'm--I know I voted for the 1997, and I think the 1993,
and I'm--I don't remember a lot of debate about the military.
Did you all--did you get much profile in this debate or--as you
recall? I don't know if you were involved in this.
General Kellogg. Sir, I was not involved with it, and I
have to take that for the record.
I'm a combat arms officer; and, until a year ago, sir,
spectrum to me was a place the Philadelphia Flyers played
hockey in. So I've gotten pretty--I was a user of it, but I--in
the last year to 18 months, we have seen an enormous need into
the future of spectrum now. But----
Mr. Shays. OK. Can anyone else jump in, though? What would
be helpful for me and to establish in the committee is whether
this was a knockdown, drag-out fight in which Members of
Congress were fully informed of the potential challenges that
we would be facing, or whether we just got into other aspects,
and the military got shoved aside. Admiral.
Admiral Mayo. Mr. Chairman, I think General Kellogg is
right. Only in recent years have we really become focused in on
the need for the spectrum we do have and probably for some new
allocations. But, as I told you, the Teddy Roosevelt and the
Bataan did succeed in their mission. You know, they had the
spectrum and the State side to train up, and then they were
able to employ same spectrum and succeed overseas.
But with the increasing use of PGMs, of video links, work
with our allies, you know, 30 navy ships over there, about 100
total ships, if we're going to link up and net with all of the
ships over there to have a significant----
Mr. Shays. You see, that part I understand. I truly do. In
other words, you're trying to say you need it, and you're
giving me an example of the need. Right?
Admiral Mayo. Yes, sir. We need it, and we probably need
even more.
Mr. Shays. So I'm just going to just accept it on face
value right now.
You know, one of the things is I would have loved to have
had this briefing--who did this briefing from my staff? What is
DCSIM? Are you meeting with the groups that--what is that? I'm
sorry?
General Kellogg. It probably came out of the Army, because
that's Army Special Operations Forces.
Mr. Shays. OK. Right. But, see, my staff is kind of like
the intelligence community. They share about 75 percent of what
they have with me. The good stuff they keep for themselves. I
have an unfair advantage, because they can't respond, but I--
they just get back at me later when they write a speech, and
the second page there's nothing on it.
What I'm sensing is that, frankly, being candid, the
military was focused on other things, DOD, and we realized
later, my God, we have this need and maybe we should have
been--Congress should have been more alert. The military should
have been more alert.
So just give me a sense--General, you want to make a
comment, and then I'll----
General Woodward. Mr. Chairman, I'd love to address that
with you, if it's all right.
I believe the processes today are much more visible than in
times that have gone by. Now, that's maybe a poor comment to
make, but I think it's a very appropriate comment. We have
nowhere as near the level of involvement like we had today--
today that we have--we did not have that same level of
involvement, I would tell you, maybe 10, 12 years ago, really.
I also think that the necessity, because of this natural
resource called spectrum today and what's really gone on with
the information technology arena, that's what has made it rise
up to this level.
There's some things that have got to be done, in my
estimation, too. There's probably smarter, better disciplined
use of technologies that have got to be explored with this
finite RF spectrum, and certainly all of us have the
responsibility to be awfully good stewards of what we do have,
as the case may be. We're always finding better ways, but I
don't think we can stand any more losses. Certainly the Air
Force will make that comment in a hurry.
You asked earlier about levels that we have done to try and
educate, inform technical exchanges on the Hill. With the
services, the Air Force did a pretty good campaign plan so that
we got to the House Armed Services Committee staffers, we got
to the Senate Armed Services Committee staffers, the House
Energy and Commerce Committee staffers. Every once in a while
principles, by the way--certainly, your own Government Reform
Committee a couple of different times, and also to the staffer
for the Speaker of the House we spent moments with over this
last period of time, all of which was to help the committees
and the people themselves understand operational necessities
within the Armed Forces, if I can say it that way, specifically
to us.
But I think we really covered across the board the
uniformed services, because we all have the same kinds of
issues and we are dependent on each other in many respects for
that interoperability. So maybe that's a slightly different
slant for you.
Mr. Shays. OK. Thank you.
General Shea. Mr. Chairman, even today----
Mr. Shays. Your mic. Sorry.
General Shea. Even today we're dealing with crowded
spectrum issues. As an example, in an amphibious operation, the
Marine Corps and the Army use a thing called EPLRS, Enhanced
Position Location Reporting System, for both data and position
location. The Air Force has a data link, the surface-to-air
data link; and then with the Navy out there--and we're talking
about joint operations now--the Navy, when they're using their
Hawkeyes out there, there's potential for that Hawkeye, because
they're operating in similar bands, to override or inject
interference into the EPLRS and the sata links.
So we, in fact, today do have this problem that we tend to
try to work through. So it certainly is emerging, but it is an
issue that we deal with on a regular basis in today's world;
and the more complex and the bigger operation that you're
dealing with, the more challenging the situation.
Mr. Shays. See, General Boutelle, you wanted to say
something first; and then I'll go to you, General Woodward.
General Boutelle. Yes, Mr. Chairman. Back to your original
question, you know, it's like land. We're not making any more,
as Will Rogers said, and we all would like more spectrum. We
understand that, and technology is helping us use what we have
more effectively. And do we need more? Yes. Do we have other
issues? We have other issues.
In our radar spectrum, we're starting to have an issue with
encroachment on our radars. That's outside this band, and we
haven't mentioned that, but there are other evolving issues
where we need to maintain that spectrum, at least what we have,
and use it more efficiently. Yes, I think universally we would
like more spectrum, but we also understand the environment
we're operating within.
General Woodward. Mr. Chairman, as maybe a good example for
what General Shea brought up and the other services here is the
fact we've gone the software-programmable radio route to get
better efficiencies and economies, by the way, for all of the
different bands, cross-banding through joint tactical radio
system, which is a real good example for all of us to use so
that we can have better efficiencies out there. There are other
things like that that are possible, no doubt.
Mr. Shays. I guess--I have two other questions, one I'm
going to have on my second round, and that's to understand
frequencies overseas, because we can say what we want to have
in the United States, but, you know, that's not where, in many
cases, the action is. So when I have my second round, I'm going
to ask you about overseas.
But I want to ask you this general question. Is it--are we
too late? I mean, have we blown it and are we going to have to
just kind of disrupt and make a lot of tough decisions to undo
what we've done? Or if we manage what we have and protect it,
we'll be OK?
Mr. Price. Sir, I don't think we're too late. This is a--
the Department of Defense is in this for the long haul, as well
as commercial sector, and working with NTIA and FCC, it's an
interactive process. When a spectrum is allocated--a portion of
the spectrum is allocated for a commercial use, whether it came
from the commercial or the government sector, and the business
venture fails, as has happened, or whether the broadcasters,
for example, want to upgrade or move up from analog to digital,
spectrum becomes available. So the real question is to form a
national consensus and a national strategy to set priorities so
that when there are these blocks of spectrum, particularly
below three gigahertz as people talked about as really the
critical spectrum that become available, we know in what order
to set the priorities to see who gets the allocations.
Mr. Shays. Let me go to Mr. Gilman. Anybody else want to
respond before I go----
General Woodward. I'll just make a comment, if I can.
I think you've got to have an extremely well-informed,
well-educated, well-prepared people that can deal with this,
and they've got to be very active all of the time. It's not a
matter of appointing somebody, you know, a couple months before
a meeting occurs. It's a matter of we really need to understand
this in toto in order for us----
I also think it's--you know, we're not losing the battle
any way, shape, form or manner. I think it's exactly what you
have inferred earlier, is that we've got to understand better
management and what that really means, not just the Department
of Defense, the whole Federal sector and the whole commercial
sector across the board for this Nation. When we go overseas,
we work close nation approvals. Each one of the services does
that. And----
Mr. Shays. We'll get to the overseas issue, because I want
to go to Mr. Gilman, but I want to say that what I don't think
I need to spend time--any more time asking in the hearing but
would love to have interaction with both the full committee
staff and my subcommittee staff and your staff--I'd love to
know what--where we are in that dialog with Congress and how
well we are involved in educating.
One of the--we don't--this committee doesn't write
legislation, we don't appropriate money, but we look at
programs to see how well they work, and then we get the other
committees to act. And we've been extraordinarily successful,
very successful in a whole host of different ways, and this is
one way that we can, you know, look--I think can be very
helpful.
Mr. Gilman, you have as much time as you want.
Mr. Gilman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We're finding that spectrum management is becoming more and
more difficult due to the lack of the availability in the radio
spectrum. How to balance competing demands is going to be
extremely difficult.
Let me ask Mr. Price. There have been a number of attempts
at reorganizing spectrum management in the past, and we
understand DOD is engaged in yet another attempt that began
with the creation of your position. How is this reorganization
effort different from prior attempts, and what's the
responsibilities of your office?
Mr. Price. Great. Thank you, sir.
The current reorganization effort at the Department of
Defense is, I think, wider in scope than in the past. I think
it's fair to say, and the chairman's comments point it out,
that for many years the Department of Defense either didn't
realize or because of technology didn't feel the need to have
spectrum and frequency issues--in fact, all information
technology issues at a senior level in the Department of
Defense as well as in the services. That's changed over the
past 5 to 10 years. The Department in 1997 acknowledged that
they wanted to raise the profile, and through Deputy Secretary
of Defense John Hamre's efforts created OSM, the Office of
Spectrum Management.
Now, as an Office of Secretary of Defense or OSD-led effort
to try to work with the services and formulate strategic
planning and provide guidance, we've taken that a step further.
The Defense Science Board, which advises the Secretary of
Defense, a year and a half ago came out with a study that
suggested spectrum management be raised to the Deputy Assistant
Secretary level, which is why I was able to come down and be
with you today from New York to join the Pentagon about 6
months ago.
When I started, one of the first things I did was look
internally at how spectrum is managed within the Department.
And working with generals and the admiral to my left and
others, we concluded that, while OSM, or Office of Spectrum
Management, was a good first step, we're intending to evolve
that into the DSO, or Defense Spectrum Office, which will
further allow for coordination and communication with the
services.
Mr. Gilman. When did you take over your responsibilities?
Mr. Price. In November, sir.
Mr. Gilman. And have you made any progress so far?
Mr. Price. I think we have. The most--I think one of the
most important things we have done is to begin the process to
establish the Defense Spectrum Office. I've signed out a
memorandum that's in coordination within the Department to
create the Defense Spectrum Office, which will take elements of
the Office of Spectrum Management and some other parts,
increase the resources and allow the Department to have much
stronger proactive as opposed to just reactive processes.
I think one of the fair criticisms of the Department over
the past 10 or 15 years is that we've tended on these issues to
be more reactive; and wanting to get ahead of the curve and be
proactive, the Defense Spectrum Office will help.
One important point to note is that DSO will have a brand
new department for new technologies, because we understand that
new technology is an important----
Mr. Gilman. So nothing has been done in a coordinating
effort until your office had been created?
Mr. Price. I don't think that's fair to say. I think a
number of steps had been taken, but I think we're taking it a
step farther and widening the scope of the reorganization.
Mr. Gilman. I understand Chairman Powell (FCC) recently
created a Spectrum Policy Task Force charged with facilitating
development of an integrated plan for spectrum allocation and
for a more market-oriented spectrum allocation policy and more
clearly defining spectrum interference and usage rights and
aggressively promoting spectral efficiency. Are you aware of
that proposal?
Mr. Price. Yes, and I've met with Dr. Kolodzy, who chairs
that task force.
Mr. Gilman. Are you integrated into that study?
Mr. Price. We are. One of the important policy objectives
of the Department of Defense is to play an active role in
national and international forums, and NTIA's spectrum summit a
few weeks ago and the task force that you mentioned of the FCC
are two primary areas where we'll be playing an active role.
Mr. Gilman. So you will have your office looking at
spectrum usage. We have Chairman Powell's office looking at it.
We have the Secretary and Department of Commerce looking at it,
more specifically the NTIA's Interdepartment Radio Advisory
Committee. Do all of you meet together to work on this, or are
you all off into different directions?
Mr. Price. That's a fair question. We do meet, and I think
it's fair to say that the spectrum system and processes in the
United States work today, but only because of the dedication
and hard work and efforts of a lot of people at NTIA, FCC and
other parts of the government. I think it's despite the system,
not because of the system, and the fact that there is a
bifurcated system with NTIA managing certain spectrum and the
FCC managing other parts of spectrum does create a situation
that is challenging for the users.
Mr. Gilman. Well, Mr. Price, how often do you meet with
these other organizations?
Mr. Price. There's a--well, there are a number of different
forums. I'm not--I don't know how often the IRAC meets, but--
every--the IRAC that you mentioned meets every 2 weeks. There's
a current study group for the 3G band, an intergovernment
agency which meets every 2 weeks. I talk at least weekly with
senior people at NTIA and FCC. So it's more informal than
formal, on a daily or weekly basis.
Mr. Gilman. What's the status of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
needs study to establish a joint spectrum management
organization that would report to you?
General Kellogg. Sir, we're still in the process of working
that, the reorganization of it.
Mr. Gilman. So, really, essentially what we're confronted
with in looking at this problem is that all of these groups are
just beginning to take a good hard look at what has to be done
and to try to work together. Am I correct in my analysis?
General Kellogg. Sir, I will tell you in my experience is
about 15 months in this, and it goes back to what Mr. Shea said
earlier. A few years ago we were asleep at the switch when it
came to spectrum. Until recently--only until recently have we
made a very focused effort to be very concerned about it.
An example, in 1997, my organization and the Joint Chiefs
of Staff had one person working spectrum issues. Today, we have
four people plus one contractor. So we've taken interest. So,
in the process, we are reorganizing, we looking to better
manage the spectrum that is out there for the joint forces.
Mr. Gilman. What about the underlying problem that we have
too few satellites up there? If we have limited spectrum
because of the limitation on satellites, what are we doing
about increasing that?
General Kellogg. Sir, if I may address that, you always
have to bound that in two areas: military satellite
communications and availability of commercial spectrum on the
commercial satellites. We understood when we set up our
military satellite system that we would always have to depend
on commercial satellite transponders to augment the spectrum
that we use in combat or training operations out there. It is
very, very heavily cost dependent, in billions of dollars, to
put up those satellite constellations. So we rely quite heavily
on the commercial satellite constellations that are currently
there.
As we stand today, the commercial augmentation allows us to
use our combat systems effectively. With the advanced wide band
systems and the commercial systems, we will see a need for more
and more growth of the satellite communications capability,
which includes the commercial. But today we have adequate
bandwidth to support our operations. Into the future, we'll
probably need more. But it will not be just military, sir. We
have depended quite heavily on the commercial satellite
industry to give us additional----
Mr. Gilman. Are you saying to me, General, that right now
there's enough satellite spectrum availability for the
military? It's just a matter of finding better use of it, is
that what you're saying?
General Kellogg. Sir, there is enough available bandwidth
when you add the commercial and the military satellite
bandwidth capability. It costs you a lot of money, though,
because we rent the transponders or the frequency from the
commercial satellite center out there. Many of those satellites
are not U.S. owned. So some of the constellations are a foreign
owned-consortium, are owned--primarily U.S. owned.
The concern we have with using commercial satellites is
we--is the concern about assured access. Are we going to have
continued access out there? But today, sir, when you use the
military bandwidth and today the available commercial
bandwidth, it is adequate for our needs today; and in the
future we're clearly going to be depending more and more on
satellite capability.
As you brought up about the use of the Global Hawk, the
only way we're able to use the Global Hawk to its full
efficiency is, in fact, to use commercial transponders on
commercial satellites.
Mr. Gilman. Is there any proposal for having a military
satellite at some future date?
General Kellogg. Sir, we do have military satellite
constellations in the--of course, in the SHF and HF range and
also in the UHF range. But again, sir, we need to augment the
military satellite constellations with the commercial satellite
constellations.
Mr. Gilman. Well, Mr. Price, are you optimistic that you're
going to be able to meet all of these problems with the
existing band?
Mr. Price. Well, on the satellites, it's less a spectrum
issue than an infrastructure issue. The actual satellites and
the hard assets, as opposed to just a spectrum issue.
But the broader question is, no, we do not believe that,
given our transformation to a network-centric military, given
all of the requirements, given potential missions in homeland
defense, that over time the Department will have enough
spectrum with current allocations.
Mr. Gilman. And are you making some plans for the future to
improve that spectrum?
Mr. Price. We are. Part of the answer is to protect what we
have so we don't lose anything. Part of it is to figure out
where we need to seek from FCC and NTIA additional spectrum.
And a big piece of the way many people feel that the spectrum
issues will be solved is through technology. The Department of
Defense spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on
research and development of the services, DARPA, and other
parts of the Department of Defense on spectrum efficient
technologies.
Mr. Gilman. One last question, Mr. Price. How often do you
meet with the panelists that are assembled before us today?
Mr. Price. That's a good question. I spent all last week
with General Kellogg in Europe talking about interoperability
issues with our allies. I probably talk to these gentlemen
weekly. We have a standing once-a-month breakfast, which
actually is this Thursday, called the Senior Communicators
Breakfast, where we talk about these issues. And, on a weekly
basis, either I or my Director of Spectrum Management, who's
sitting behind me, meets with the action officer level people
from these and other organizations within the Department to
talk about spectrum-related issues.
Mr. Gilman. Do you feel there's adequate recognition of the
importance of the military's need for spectrum availability in
our administration today?
Mr. Price. That's a fair question. Clearly, within the
Department of Defense, there is. The Secretary and the Deputy
Secretary----
Mr. Gilman. Beyond--I don't know the Department of Defense.
Mr. Price [continuing]. Are both aware of those issues.
In terms of--I think there's a broad understanding of the
importance of military spectrum in the administration, I do,
and I believe that we will be well-served and well-protected.
Mr. Gilman. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
At this time I'd just like to just pursue the issue of
overseas, and then I'd like to have our staff ask a few
questions.
The issue is simply that--again, my ignorance shows here,
but it would seem to me we have control over spectrum in our
own sphere of influence, the United States, but we can't really
control it overseas. So I'm just not sure how that's resolved,
and maybe someone can share that with me.
General Woodward. I'll take a shot at it, Mr. Chairman.
Each of the services, as we do our operations and we also
do it with the joint world, we have people, force structure,
that are educated in how to do this, and they do spectrum
requests to get allocations and permission sets. A lot of it's
referred to in the satellite world as host nation approvals, so
that you have landing rights and you can, in fact, move your
information back and forth in a particular nation. We've done
this for years and years and years.
What's interesting is you're not necessarily dealing with
another's minister of defense. You're dealing probably with
the--that governmental leadership itself, because they usually,
inside their own borders, they see ownership of----
Mr. Shays. I guess I need to expose my ignorance more, and
then you'll be able to jump in a little better. Do I make an
assumption that the same spectrum that we use in the United
States when we communicate to someplace in the Indian Ocean,
it's the same spectrum of communication, is that correct?
General Woodward. Yes, and there may be a different
application in their case as they saw fit. That's when you have
collision, because you're going to----
Mr. Shays. But--and technically in the open space of the
Indian Ocean, I mean, who are we negotiating with? Are we
negotiating with India? I mean, can----
General Woodward. Navy, you've got that one.
Mr. Shays. You don't fly over the Indian Ocean?
Admiral Mayo. He flies over the Indian Ocean.
Mr. Chairman, in international waters, we operate, you
know, in the allocated spectrum; and if we start to get into
the littoral, we would have an obligation to negotiate and work
with host nations or nations that we're interoperating with.
To harken back to a previous question that Mr. Gilman asked
about organization, we're all for it in the Navy, you know, a
sharper focus in DOD on spectrum, and we're supporting the
efforts there that Mr. Price is leading. But with the few
assets that we do have in terms of people, we want to make sure
that we continue to place our people forward with our fleets,
forward with our number of fleet commanders and forwarded CINCs
overseas, because these key people help work those host nation
approvals on an ongoing basis to allow our Navy to operate when
we're in the littoral and not in international waters and
operate with our host partners.
Mr. Shays. You know, this issue is huge, and it points out
the challenge of diplomacy. Something that the general public
may not understand is, when we take an action on something
totally unrelated, you can get a host country that basically
says, you know, that spectrum that you were trying to have
access to? Forget it. I mean, and--anyway. Yes, sir?
Mr. Price. Mr. Chairman, if I could just followup on that,
when Ms. Washbourne and I went to go visit the U.S. Central
Command, CENTCOM in Tampa, we heard a briefing from CENTCOM
about spectrum issues, and they raised the exact point that you
raise. And it goes back to protecting the spectrum at home.
There's a radio system that we use here in a certain band, and
we train and test with it here. We wanted to use it in a
country, in Central Command's region, a particular country. It
took 6 years, we were told, to get host nation approval, 6
years to be able to use that radio in that spectrum in that
country. It's there now. We have the host nation approval.
We're operating the radio in broad parts of Enduring Freedom.
Now, going back to your point, what people don't----
Mr. Shays. Now the radio is obsolete. So--no. I mean,
seriously, it used to be the big ate the small. Now it's the
fast eat the slow, and it--you've almost become irrelevant in a
world where you have to negotiate for 6 years.
Mr. Price. Yes. But the systems work, and unless we get
funding to throw away that legacy system and buy a new system,
we're still operating that system.
Now if you turn back to your question earlier, what happens
in the United States if we lose spectrum or a force for maybe
legitimate commercial reasons to move into another band, we
have to start that 6-year clock again, because----
Mr. Shays. Let me ask you this question: If we resolved all
of the challenges we had in the United States and encroachment
for the next 15, 20 years--in other words, we had a sense of
what we needed, we protected it, we devised a system that gave
you the confidence you would have--does that solve 80 percent
of the problem worldwide, or is it just, you know, 25 percent
and that we still have 75 percent to deal with overseas? See, I
don't have a sense of the implication of this in terms of the
world community.
General Shea. Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. Yes.
General Shea. If I might, I'd like to just go back and add
a little bit of clarity to your initial question.
Mr. Shays. Sure.
General Shea. Each one of the CINCs has a Joint Frequency
Management Office, and their job is to coordinate frequency
assignments within their given theatres of operation. I was the
J6 out of CINCPAC, and I had a department or a branch within
the J6 of CINCPAC. The sole responsibility was to go out there
and coordinate frequency assignments, both for the operational
forces and, in the cases of new equipment coming aboard,
working what's called the JF12 process. It's a forum that is
recognized among many of the----
Mr. Shays. OK. But when you say coordinate, do you mean
coordinate within the branches in the United States or
coordinate around the world?
General Shea. Coordinate around the world.
Mr. Shays. OK, so----
General Shea. Within the given theatre.
Mr. Shays. Right, within the given theatre. But I guess
then my question to you, you would have some expertise in
answering this, then is 80 percent of the effort overseas? Is
80 percent of our communication overseas? Is--do you get a
sense----
General Shea. I would argue, sir, that, for the most part,
when we develop capabilities, we primarily focus on what goes
on within the continental United States, recognizing that, as
an international body, there really isn't a well--what I would
call a well-formulated process to ensure that those
capabilities that we may take into a given theatre are
coordinated.
Mr. Shays. OK. I'm going to ask the question again slightly
different. If we dealt with the encroachment issue for the
foreseeable future in the United States, have we dealt with
half of the problem, 25 percent of the problem, 80 percent of
the problem? And I see General Woodward, you're kind of shaking
your head. Is it because we don't know or because----
General Woodward. No, I don't know how to quantify it, to
tell you the truth. What you need to be assured of, though,
there is a structure that works it, and it works it very hard.
It works it through the CINCs--all nine CINCs, the commanders
in chiefs themselves, with the joint staff, with the services
directly. They also work with the State Department and all the
activities overseas.
Mr. Shays. I understand we have that working, but what I'm
trying to visualize is the reality--first of all, you're going
to go against the telecommunication industry. You are in the
United States. It is a multibillion dollar--and I say this not
disparagingly. I mean, it's a big business. We make the private
sector work well, we make consumers have better ways to
communicate, all of those things. But I know the difficulty
that you have dealing with the United States. It's huge.
And, you know, some people don't vote against the defense
budget, say they want to make sure they're helping the
military, but they would vote out of ignorance in some cases
for your loss of spectrum or encroachment of an Air Force base
and so on. So you've got a huge problem.
But I'm thinking, when you deal with countries in Africa,
when you deal with countries in Europe, when you deal in the
Middle East, they have no incentive, it seems to me, to say,
well, let's make life easy for you. We're going to solve all of
your spectrum problem. I would think they would say, screw you.
General Woodward. There are actually some common practices
that go on. For instance, if we're coming up with a system
review, it includes the review for the host nations that you're
talking about, the other nations that are involved in there.
That's done through--again, through the CINCs and through all
of the agencies that we've been talking about.
We have a couple of major organizations. NATO is one. CCEB,
Combined Comm-Electronics Board, is another one of the English-
speaking nations. All of those matters are dealt with in all of
their sessions, and they meet formally on this. There's a full
committee within NATO that meets on this all the time.
Mr. Shays. Right. But isn't it fair to say that, given all
of our weapons systems and our way of communicating, that we
are way out in front of the rest of the world? I mean, I'm
seeing nodding heads, so the answer is pretty much yes. So we
have a much more vested interest in dealing with the spectrum
issue than other countries do. I'm sure China is not
cooperating with us, you know, in terms of the--I say I'm sure
and--who knows?
I guess--I'm not going to expose my ignorance any more than
I have. It's just--it is interesting that, one, we can't
quantify it, and it gives me even more sympathy for the tasks
you all have. Yet you want me to know that, where you can,
you're trying to work it out, but it's diplomacy. It tells us
the extraordinary need--it just reinforces--one of the things I
just would say for the record, that you all have to be
diplomats in the military. When I travel overseas, sometime it
is most effective diplomats and some of the most important
meetings I've had are meetings that you all have set up, you
know, people within the various branches, with military
personnel overseas, you know, whatever country, the French
military, the Turkish military. You have in some cases almost
better contacts than our own diplomats, and I can understand
why you need them. Thank goodness you have them.
General Kellogg. Sir, if I may, you asked a question
that's--instead of quantifying, the advantage of removing
encroachment of the military bands is you would give
consistency and constancy to our training requirements here.
The United States is leading the world, and if they say it's
maintaining our frequency bands for training in a very
consistent manner, they follow with us. What they don't want to
see is they don't want to see movement or irregularity or any
confusion in the way we do business; and if we can train
effectively in the United States, then we can do what we need
to do to get done overseas.
Mr. Shays. I guess it just reinforces something that I've
wondered about. I mean, even if we thought NATO was not the
same viable organization given the cold war, just to be able to
work with NATO to deal with frequency is a huge advantage.
Yes, General.
General Boutelle. Mr. Chairman, I spent the last 9 years as
the designer and developer of radio systems and satellite
systems, many of which for my sister services. In that process,
as we came up with a new requirement to design a satellite
system, I would go to my satellite--or my frequency managers;
and we colocated--the services colocated those in 1997. And I
go in and say, we need to build a radio or a satellite system
to do this. What spectrum is available not only in the United
States but look across our international agreements and find
out what is the best one for me to operate in.
There was almost none that we got automatic free lining
rights in other nations or all nations. They came back and they
would say, look, if you're going to build a new radio or a new
satellite link, here's one that you have the best opportunity
to negotiate in those nations around the world. And that was a
constant process. Our material developers worked with our not
joint spectrum office but our colocated spectrum office.
Mr. Shays. And then do we have to buy them?
General Boutelle. Say again.
Mr. Shays. Do we have to buy the spectrum space?
General Boutelle. We have to negotiate that spectrum space
in those nations through the CINCs.
Mr. Shays. And sometimes that costs money?
General Woodward. There are those who have tried to charge
us for the use of the spectrum. That is a true statement. We
don't do that.
Mr. Shays. Is there a significance--and I know I need to
get to the other panel, so I'm just going to--there are a lot
of questions I'd love to ask, but is there a significance that
Europe is going to have its own global positioning? I mean, it
seems to me if they were dependent on us for global positioning
that gives us a little bit of a leeway in saying you've got it
and we want to cooperate, but we need cooperation in spectrum
issues. Or does it make them more vulnerable, given that they
may need some cooperation from us in their own global
positioning? Anybody have a----
General Kellogg. Sir, they are talking about resurrecting a
system they call Galileo, which is their GPS system. You know,
it's going to be very, very costly for them to do so. They're
discussing it right now. They took it off the table about 6
months ago because of cost. Their concern, of course, is
because our GPS system is a military-run system. But I think as
a predictor--and I always hate to predict anything--I'm not too
sure the Europeans will, in fact, send up the Galileo
constellation.
Mr. Shays. I'm sorry. I thought they had decided to do it
the last few----
General Kellogg. As of last week, sir, they were talking
about trying to put it up, but the debate is how much money
it's going to cost them.
Mr. Shays. Yes, sir.
General Shea. May I just make a point here? When you're
talking about NATO, you are really for the most part talking
about a regional force. When you look at the United States,
we're a global force, and--which requires each country--that
spectrum is a sovereign piece. It's a natural resource within
those countries. So that adds to the challenge for us. We've
got to go across the entire globe where----
Mr. Shays. You know, this--I think it's a huge challenge
for all of you, and I--and it's one that I obviously never
focused on.
We're going to invite counsel to ask a few questions, and
then I'm going to ask the professional staff of the full
committee to ask.
Do you have any questions? OK.
Mr. Halloran. Thank you.
We've spent a great deal of time in this subcommittee
talking about homeland security, and I'm curious in terms of
Operation Noble Eagle what kinds of interoperability or
spectrum deconflicting was--what did you encounter there as
kind of a precursor of the homeland security mission that
Northern Command might come across soon and--which leads to the
question, who is doing spectrum issues for Northern Command?
General Kellogg. Sir, let me answer the second part before
the first part, because I'll defer, frankly, to the people who
are involved more closely in Noble Eagle. But Northern Command
is just being stood up right now. So we're not even sure who
the commander is yet, let alone the spectrum manager yet. So
I'd defer that one to the Joint Staff.
But because so much of this Noble Eagle is done primarily
over the air, I'll turn to General Woodward to answer on this.
General Woodward. Yeah. Needless to say, very focused on
some things that had to be changed. I gave you some examples in
the oral discussion that we had, but I think we did in the
neighborhood of 3,000--you guys help me--3,000 spectrum
requests of one nature or another to do all kinds of different
things that we normally wouldn't have done in the United
States.
All of that was worked because the services--each of us
have a dedicated organization. The organizations got together.
We set up a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week operation to process all of
these with the help of the NTIA and the FCC.
Mr. Halloran. Just for spectrum issues?
General Woodward. That's correct, just for spectrum issues.
Mr. Halloran. And you had to deal with the FAA region by
region, or was that a central point of contact?
General Woodward. Actually, we did it all directly out of
Washington right here and dealt with every one.
Now, the CINC has dedicated spectrum people for that CINC
that was in charge of that operation. We also deployed people
that were necessary to go to a couple other headquarters to
make the right things occur for them as well. So there was an
all-out effort to make a lot of things happen that weren't
normal. It was absolutely abnormal in that respect.
General Shea. Sir, we're in the process of procuring a land
mobile radio system, what we refer to as a land mobile radio
system, and one of the requirements for that system is that it
includes a communications interoperability with off-base
Federal, State and local authorities that will be involved in
our antiterrorism forces; and our antiterrorism forces will be
equipped with these same types of radios.
Mr. Halloran. And would that land in the band--I think the
World Radio Conference is going to discuss a proposal to try to
harmonize public safety bands. Is that in that range as well?
General Shea. Yes, sir.
Mr. Halloran. OK.
Admiral Mayo. Sir, if I may, there's a first responder
spectrum of 139 to 144 that's very important, of course, in
terms of homeland security; and the Navy I think, as the other
services, are involved right now with DOD in trying to work the
process so that we can see how we can best support that,
whether it's through, you know, frequency sharing or
alternative kinds of technology. But we do have high-density
areas in the Navy, such as Norfolk and San Diego, where these
kinds of radios are in abundance, and there is a lot of
interference right now with first responders. So this is
something that we are working with DOD.
Mr. Halloran. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shays. Ms. Washbourne.
Ms. Washbourne. Mr. Shays, I want to thank you for one of
the greatest privileges of my 18-year career up here. Thank you
very much for this opportunity.
Mr. Shays. Well, it's a privilege to work with you.
Ms. Washbourne. Mr. Price, you talked a little bit about
the defense spectrum organization. It sounds like that's
probably one of the hardest jobs at DOD. Can you tell me what
you see are going to be your greatest challenges? Will it be
interoperability? Will it be acquisition? Will it be having
your position represented outside DOD?
Mr. Price. Ms. Washbourne, I'm not sure I could pick one.
Organizing internally I think we've done a pretty good job of
in the last 6 months and, in fact, in the last number of years.
The service is coordinated extensively, and in part for
technical reasons, because they share--even in exclusive
Federal bands, they share with themselves; and the Joint
Spectrum Center down in Annapolis, which has hundreds of
engineers, focused on a lot of the issues that the chairman has
been talking about, helps coordinate a lot of those issues for
the services.
So internal issues is one. Clearly, preparation for the
World Radio Conference and other international forums coming
up, the World Radio Conference coming up in June 2003, is a
very timely and important issue.
Participating in the efforts by NTIA, FCC and others,
looking at a national spectrum strategy, we clearly want a
Department of Defense seat at the table and our views known,
because we want to make sure it's not a fair fight; and
ensuring that the acquisition process, the procurement process
within the Department of Defense takes into account spectrum
interoperability issues early on in the program is very
important.
There have been some new regulations, 5,000 series, in the
last year or so, which have I think tightened up and emphasized
the importance of having spectrum certification very early on
in the procurement of a major system.
Ms. Washbourne. General Kellogg, when I was down at CENTCOM
people were talking about deconfliction and interoperability
between our allies. Could you just give us some specific
examples of what those terms mean to you?
General Kellogg. The largest issue we are having on the
interoperability is the ability of our coalition nations to
work together with their nets. What we are finding with our
allies is that they depend on us to do the leading, because
they have not spent, for various and probably good reasons, the
amount of money that we have spent on information technology
systems. Because of that, it has caused some interoperable
difficulties. That means they rely on us to either provide the
expertise, provide the equipment or be able to work the systems
together to more closely align those systems.
With CENTCOM, the amount of different nations involved with
the ongoing operations is enormous, and their capabilities are
quite diverse. So the big challenge we have is, in fact,
interoperability, not only in CENTCOM.
This meeting that Mr. Price and I were at last week in
Europe with six nations that included primarily the English-
speaking nations and the French and the Germans, the biggest
issue we had there was the concern about interoperability into
the future and the concern that the United States of America is
moving so rapidly into the future that they cannot keep pace,
and it's going to--and they will not be able to spend the
requisite amount of money, and we're going to have to come up
with solutions to make sure that our allies are, in fact,
interoperable.
Again, it's just the ability for them to communicate with
us with their combat net radios or on digital traffic.
Ms. Washbourne. I want everybody to comment on the World
Radio Communications Conference that is coming up in June 2003.
I understand that one of the things that's on the table is the
consideration of the harmonization of frequencies. General
Kellogg or Mr. Price, can you tell me what DOD's position is on
that?
Mr. Price. I'll first make a general comment that the
Department of--I feel confident in saying that the Department
of Defense is farther ahead in preparing for the World Radio
Conference than we have been in a long time. There's a special
group, the international permanent working group, comprised of
all of the stakeholders within the departments and the services
and agencies within DOD that's dedicated to World Radio
Conference preparation. We've identified all of the agenda
items, classified them in order of priority and are now working
them internally and with our colleagues at State and other
departments. So I feel pretty good about where we stand with
the World Radio Conference.
That doesn't mean we don't have a lot of work to do. It
doesn't mean we want to--don't know who the Ambassador is, all
of those kinds of issues.
On the particular item you referred to, one of our major
concerns, I would say a critical item, is preventing adverse
World Radio Conference actions to identify or harmonize bands
in a way that could limit military operations, particularly
with respect to public protection and disaster relief. That's
an agenda item that we have significant concern about.
Ms. Washbourne. General Kellogg, what are the concerns of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff at that conference?
General Kellogg. I believe the concerns and the way to
approach them were well said by Mr. Price, and we will follow
their lead on that.
The concern about harmonization is I think--how we approach
that is basically country on country. And we are finding--and
primarily the concerned item is with the 3G area of what they
talk about harmonization. In fact, we are finding most of those
nations in the three regions, Regions 1, 2, and 3, are
harmonizing their 3G in a band that we are currently using, not
in the military but as a PCS band. But I think we are--the
preparation in the future, I really don't have any concerns. I
think we will be well prepared, as we were last time, and
working very closely with OSD as we go forward.
Ms. Washbourne. Admiral Mayo, General Woodward, Major
General Boutelle, General Shea, can each of you tell me what
your top concerns as a service are in front of that conference
as well and how they are being addressed? How was your input
given in this process?
Admiral Mayo. For the upcoming world conference? We are
working closely with DOD and Joint Staff and we have some
specific issues that we are going to be concerned about that we
will work through this process on radar band allocation, Earth
station vessels, probably ship self-defense.
So we think we are geared up to work it correctly with the
appropriate folks in DOD.
General Boutelle. I think, ma'am, from our perspective, I
want to be careful that the WRC's regional treaties don't
unnecessarily complicate the coordination that needs to go on
between any country in which we may be operating and our
forces. I think we have to be careful that the solution sets
that come out of this, we have got to make sure that they fit
into our requirements, because the physics of the band dictate
different frequency bands for different types of applications
or different types of uses.
And I think we have got to be careful that it doesn't--
whatever the results of the treaties are, that it doesn't cause
us undue cost to have to retrofit some of our capabilities into
capabilities that may not necessarily fit the requirement.
Ms. Washbourne. General Woodward, we talked a little
about--in some of our meetings about perhaps having the
Department of State have a more formalized process with the
military or having perhaps the Ambassador named years in
advance versus 6 months in advance.
Do you have an opinion on that?
General Woodward. I honestly believe you can't have enough
of an outreach program on the subject matter at hand, because I
believe the interest the other nations have in it, it is a
financial interest, almost 100 percent to me from what I see,
whereas ours has a different level of concern because of the
national security aspects of the life and especially now
because of the heightened awareness that we have from September
the 11th.
The Air Force really wants obviously assured access, and
would love to have assurances and not the prohibitions that
potentially are there with misguided votes or whatever the case
may be. So we are very much supportive of the process in the
DOD because I think it is very, very strong, the strongest I
have ever seen it in my career. And I have been doing this for
a good long period of time now, for about 34 years.
So I am real proud of that. But when you look at the
harmonization, that is a real interesting word as used, because
you don't know the consequences nor the impacts that may be
presented, as General Shea has said, in the different bands
that are out there. We need to understand what that really
means, and what that is on the table with whatever working
groups are doing it, in whatever part of the world they are
doing it with.
So I feel good about our involvement. I think again the big
concern besides the assured access is there are 53 items on the
agenda. Over half of those for the World Radio Conference are
space related. The Air Force certainly has its big
responsibility for the space asset now. That is a very major
concern for us. So we have devised a special group of peoples
of interested parties so that in fact we can work that and then
try to do it directly under the Under Secretary of the Air
Force level, so you have that level of visibility going on.
Then it can be worked with--the other services can be worked
with the Department, and then certainly support ASDC in their
activities that is going on as well.
General Kellogg. Ms. Washbourne, just if I may make a--
Ambassador Schottler made the comment when she left the last--
from the last WRC: The sooner you nominate and get the
Ambassador confirmed for that the better off you are, because
as the leader of the team, it helps.
And I think you asked the question about when a--when the
Ambassador is named. Ms. Schottler made that comment very
specifically about the next WRC, the one we are going to do in
Caracas.
Ms. Washbourne. Thank you.
I just have a quick clarifying question, Mr. Price. How
much spectrum does DOD use exclusively compared to the entire
band, and how much does it share?
Mr. Price. If we are looking at below 3 gigahertz, the
exclusive Federal use is just under 15 percent in this heavily
used spectrum region. About 55 percent is shared, and the rest
is exclusive commercial. Of the assignments of the--so within
that band, of all of the Federal assignments, DOD is about 40
percent. And our use is about half shared, half exclusive
government.
Ms. Washbourne. I guess could you just clarify how much
does the military use versus--exclusively versus everybody
else, including commercial users, across the entire band?
Mr. Price. Well, in that--well below 3 gigahertz, it is
about 15 percent is exclusive Federal; 55 percent is shared,
and the balance is for commercial. That is for the Federal
Government. Of the Federal Government use, DOD is about 40
percent of that.
General Woodward. I think we operate, though, in every
Federal band, right? We operate in every single Federal band.
And then I am told also that if you have--if you talk 300 GHz
from exclusive it is less than 2 percent.
Ms. Washbourne. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Shays.
Mr. Shays. Thank you. Those were very helpful questions to
have asked. Is there any question that we should have asked
that you would like to put on the record and maybe you spent
some time last night thinking of that hopefully we would had
asked? Any of you? Sometimes the question you ask yourself at
the end is the best one.
General Kellogg. Mr. Chairman, I think there is one thing
that we didn't bring out, and we are talking about the space-
based assets with Mr. Gilman. We have ongoing--under Mr.
Stenbit a study that will come to fruition in June called the
Transformational Communications Study, which each service is
identifying their bandwidth requirements and how much they need
so we can lay out effectively the satellite constellations over
the next 10 years.
That is the advanced wideband system, the Gapfiller system,
those systems. So that is coming to fruition. We have the first
drafts. We are still working on that. That will define what we
need and what frequencies we need to access those satellites.
That is just coming to fruition here over the next 90 days.
Mr. Shays. Great. I thank you all for spending your time
with us and allowing us to have such a large panel. I think it
was helpful to do this. I would request, not that you all stay,
I know you need to get on, but if there is any--at least the
one person from your staff that could listen to the next panel
in case we might want to ask you about comments that the next
panel makes--if that is possible.
And so, if you have nothing else to say----
General Woodward. We ought to thank you one more time. I
personally and professionally tell you, you are doing yeoman's
work. This is the kind of stuff that really needs to go on for
this Nation. So thank you.
Mr. Shays. Thank you for saying that. This is something the
full committee will be continuing to be involved in very
deeply. Our subcommittee, we will take it on as a mission, with
the effort to stop the encroachment and get a workable system.
And so we will be forcing others to have to deal with the
issue, which I think will be helpful to all of you. And we are
trying to work with the other committees. So, again, I am going
to just make this--to make sure that I am clear on this, that
any context--if you could bring our committee staff up to date
as to the state of affairs of communication with the other
committees and what we need to do as a committee, it would
really be helpful to us.
So with that, we will move to the next panel. Thank you.
Our next panel is Mr. Michael Gallagher, Deputy Assistant
Secretary for Communication and Information, National
Telecommunications and Information Administration, Department
of Commerce; Major General James D. Bryan, Deputy Director,
Defense Information Systems Agency [DISA]; and Mr. Julius
Knapp, Deputy Chief, Office of Engineering and Technology,
Federal Communications Commission. If you would remain
standing, I will swear you in. If there is anyone else that
would be testifying, might respond to a question, I will ask
them to stand as well so that we won't have to swear them in
later.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Shays. Note for the record that all have responded in
the affirmative. This is a fascinating issue and appreciate you
all being here.
I think we will go in the order that I called you, I guess
the order that you are seated. So, Mr. Gallagher, we will start
with you.
STATEMENTS OF MICHAEL GALLAGHER, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR
COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION, NATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND
INFORMATION ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE; MAJOR
GENERAL JAMES D. BRYAN, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, DEFENSE INFORMATION
SYSTEMS AGENCY [DISA]; AND JULIUS KNAPP, DEPUTY CHIEF, OFFICE
OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY, FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS
COMMISSION
Mr. Gallagher. Thank you. On behalf of Secretary Evans and
Deputy Secretary Sam Bodman, I appreciate the opportunity to
testify before you today, and I found the testimony on the
previous panel to be very interesting in itself.
Mr. Shays. Thank you.
Mr. Gallagher. Just a few comments about NTIA's role, the
spectrum allocation process, a quick overview of use in the
United States, and then a few comments about 3G ultrawideband
and international challenges. We will get that done in less
than 5 minutes.
NTIA's role is it serves as the President's principal
policy advisor on telecommunications, as well as to manage the
radio frequency spectrum used by Federal agencies. It performs
this task with its group that is located in Washington, DC,
which includes its Office of Spectrum Management as well as its
testing facility in Boulder, CO, which does a lot of the
technical work on interference and frequency measurements.
We work along with the FCC, the State Department, to
develop U.S. positions and advocate them abroad. NTIA's role is
unique in the sense that it looks not only at the spectrum
necessary for Federal agencies, but also at what is best for
the country relative to telecommunications policy with a focus
on efficiency and to look forward and anticipate future Federal
spectrum needs.
The spectrum allocation process administered by NTIA is run
through the IRAC, the Independent Radio Advisory Committee,
that was referred to in the earlier panel. That panel assigned
over 90,000 frequencies last year to various government users.
Over 6,700 of those occurred right around September 11th, in
the aftermath of those events.
Over 53 agencies are represented on that panel, though only
about 20 to 22 members are actually there. Other agencies rely
on their brethren to look after their interests. DOD is without
a doubt the most visible, the most technical, and the most
motivated participant in those meetings. And we have frequent
contact with DOD on the staff and technical levels, as well,
Assistant Secretary Victory and I both interact with Assistant
Secretary Stenbit and Deputy Assistant Secretary Price.
The FCC and NTIA coordinate on the shared bands of the
spectrum. The spectrum chart, which is over here, is broken up
into three categories. They are primarily the government
exclusive, the shared bands and the commercial exclusive. The
FCC has jurisdiction over the commercial exclusive and we share
jurisdiction in the shared bands.
Spectrum utilization in the United States needs to be
flexible and dynamic and adaptable. 93 percent of all spectrum
utilization occurs below 3 gigahertz, as Mr. Price commented.
That is in the first five bars of the chart from the top down.
Mr. Shays. Each bar?
Mr. Gallagher. If you take the five bars, if you were to
extend them out continuously, it is the top five bars that
would be down to 3 gigahertz. And 93 percent occurs within that
range. That is because of the technical characteristics of the
spectrum and its attractiveness for a variety of uses,
including mobile communications.
Finding spectrum below 3 gigahertz for all uses is a
challenge and uses span space exploration, satellite systems,
commercial uses, fixed wireless, mobile wireless, as well as
the defense systems, the flight safety control systems that are
utilized by the Department of Transportation. Finding spectrum
for all of these systems is indeed a challenge today. However,
we are guided by the law and there are two primary laws that we
draw to the committee's attention that focus our efforts.
First, the 1999 National Defense Authorization Act requires
reimbursement for any government user that is required to move
its systems to make room for commercial use. The President's
budget this year includes a legislative proposal that a trust
fund be established to make that be more fluid and more certain
for the agencies involved so that the cost can be reimbursed.
The second critical legislative component is the National
Defense Authorization Act of 2000, which requires for the
Department of Defense that comparable spectrum be located as a
condition of moving them out of their current spectrum that
they are within.
However, the commercial value of the spectrum can't be
underestimated. We at NTIA have a view toward management of the
spectrum for all Americans, for all of these services. And if
you look at the mobile wireless industry today, there are over
130 million customers. It has doubled over the last 5 years. In
addition, it is growing at about 20 percent a year. The growth
rates are slowing, but we only have half the country possessing
wireless devices today. Data is beginning now and is on the
cusp. And we have the rest of the world with a substantially
greater endowment of spectrum to the commercial wireless sector
than we have made in the United States.
These are the facts as presented to us that we have to deal
with, and how do we allow for the continued growth of these
services? 50 percent of the U.S. long-term economic growth has
come from technological innovation, and two-thirds of
productivity gains that we have achieved over the last decade
come from technology and telecommunications innovations. So the
role of spectrum within that is very important in making sure
that we not only have domestic security but also that we have
economic security here at home.
WRC 2000 identified the bands 1710 to 1770. Excuse me. In
response to WRC 2000, the United States has identified the
bands 1710 to 1770 and, on the FCC side, 2110 to 2170 for 3G
allocation. We are doing a viability assessment today for the
1755 to 1770, and we hope to accomplish and complete that
viability assessment by late spring.
NTIA recognizes the need for the commercial sector to be
efficient in how it uses spectrum as well and has taken public
positions in support of removal of spectrum caps and more fluid
leases of spectrum, or so-called secondary markets, so that
what is already in the hands of the commercial sector, we
support the FCC's efforts to make it be used more efficiently.
I would also add that when it comes to ultrawideband, I
think that is a great success story. It shows how the system
can work. When I arrived here last fall, the written positions
of all of the parties were very opposed. Numerous government
agencies were opposed, including the Department of Defense and
private sector entities. In a space of 4 months, by working
very closely with the leadership at the FCC, with a very
qualified technical staff at the FCC, working technically and
tenaciously and respectfully with the Department of Defense, we
were able to achieve an outcome that most said was not going to
be able to be accomplished. And we did that. By February 14th
we had that done.
Now, the docket itself spanned over 3\1/2\ years and had
over 800 comments in it. It was not an easy process, and there
wasn't a day that went by I didn't go home worried about
ultrawideband. But the fact of the matter is we were able to
bring the forces together to achieve the result, and I am
encouraged by that as I look to the future challenges that we
face in spectrum allocation.
Just a word on the involvement at the Department of
Commerce. Secretary Evans and Deputy Secretary Bodman are very
involved in these matters. They make it a point to stay very
current, and when necessary personally engaged, and if you just
look at the public positions and speeches and comments relative
to 3G, relative to ultrawideband and recently relative to our
request to delay the 700 megahertz auctions, you can see that
involvement.
And on the international front, I look forward to answering
questions on those issues. But it is a very difficult
environment. As difficult as we have it here in the United
States, it is over 140 countries that we have to work with
internationally, and they have their own processes. And our
Department of Defense, while it is a pillar of our economy and
a pillar of our society, it is not recognized in those arenas.
Its needs are often not respected. That is why DOD is a
critical player with us when we go to the World Radio
Conference, along with the State Department and the FCC, to
make sure that we get the best results for the country when it
comes to utilization of the resource.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Gallagher follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Thank you, Mr. Gallagher.
General Bryan.
General Bryan. Good morning, Mr. Chairman.
First of all, thank you and the committee for holding this
hearing on this vitally important topic.
Mr. Chairman, before I go any further, I would like to note
to the committee and offer a special thanks to the service of
Lieutenant General Jack Woodward, who served just on the
previous committee. General Woodward will be retiring at the
end of this week, the conclusion of a 37-year career in which
he has rendered great faithful service to the Nation and to the
Air Force, not only as a spectrum user and expert but as a
great friend and telecommunications colleague for many, many
years.
The committee and the Nation owes, I think, a great debt of
gratitude to General Woodward, and I would like to note that
for the record.
Mr. Shays. For the record we will note it. It is just a
disappointment that I couldn't congratulate him personally and
to thank him personally. But thank you for bringing it on the
record.
General Bryan. Mr. Chairman, the issue of spectrum
management is of prime importance to freedom's defense. It
enables much of the equipment we use abroad and in the United
States to defend our Nation.
Currently, there is virtually no unused spectrum, at least
that part of the spectrum that has military utility to mobile
command and control users. Therefore, new uses, new
technologies, new services, whether with commercial or
government application, must either replace something else or
be squeezed in between, among or on top of existing uses.
Because it is such a scarce resource, we must manage
spectrum carefully, as we do with other vital resources.
Technology can help us engineer solutions to some of our
competing spectrum demands. However, research takes time and
money.
One thing that all spectrum users and managers must do is
to ensure that we employ sound management practices for this
precious resource. Aside from our management practices, there
are some other steps we can take to ensure that we get the most
out of the available spectrum.
We must begin to look at spectrum sharing options across
the board. Sharing can be done in many ways, based on time,
geography or frequency. Our licensing regime already mandates
sharing based on geography and frequency. But many spectrum
users don't share on a time basis well enough or often enough.
Spectrum users, both government and industry, must also
increase their efficiency. In the Department of Defense, we
have made great strides in efficiency, through coding,
bandwidth management, networking, antenna design and
interference mitigation measures.
This is something we will continue to improve on and push.
However, traditional commercial measures of efficiency are not
always appropriate to measure the Department of Defense
efficiency. These traditional efficiency measures may not
always apply to military applications such as anti-jam
capabilities, to sensors or to robust system requirements.
Our ultimate objective is to optimize efficiency and
leverage technology to ensure the warfighter is able to execute
his critical mission. We may use a particular frequency only 20
percent of the time as an example, but when we need it, it
absolutely must be there. We can't afford a dropped call on the
battlefield when that call may summon medical help or fire
support.
We also employ many techniques to accomplish specific goals
that are not always efficient in a telecommunications sense.
For example, we use frequency agility and other countermeasures
to combat jamming. These don't fit into conventional measures
of efficiency. They use more spectrum than they otherwise
might, but they do so for a very important purpose that is
operationally required.
In addition to these measures, there are things that the
Department of Defense is doing to minimize our impact on the
electromagnetic environment. One such measure is using
commercial systems where appropriate and feasible. Instead of
developing internal Department of Defense systems, it makes
sense, for example, to use commercial satellites and commercial
wireless services.
I mentioned earlier that we expected a 500 percent increase
in wideband satellite spectrum requirements. Procuring
commercial satellite bandwidth excess is one way to minimize
the impact of that.
The solutions to many of the challenges related to spectrum
management lie in technology. Technological advances will yield
new methods of sharing. Some will allow different users to use
the same frequency in the same place, based on different
modulations or power outputs. They might make time sharing more
effective at the bit level as suggested earlier.
We have already seen gains in efficiency through
digitization. We can expect technology to yield further gains
in sharing and efficiencies, and we must stay receptive to
these technological gains from a wide variety of sources. We
should bear in mind, however, that technology is not a panacea.
It is simply one tool in our arsenal of options.
We should also work together to develop a national military
spectrum strategy consistent with a national spectrum strategy.
National spectrum policy is currently a rather ad hoc
collection of policies that is less than the sum of its parts.
The result is wasted resources, wasted time, effort and
opportunity. We need to find a way to bring new technologies to
bear more quickly while protecting the rights of incumbent
users.
We must find a way to put our public priorities in order
prior to a decision point, not as the decision is being made.
National military spectrum strategy can do this for the
Department of Defense, and a natural spectrum strategy can do
this for the country.
It will not be easy to craft a thoughtful, effective policy
that satisfies all of the entities competing for spectrum
access, but we must try. To do otherwise does perhaps a
disservice to the American people and violates the trust and
responsibility that they have placed on us as stewards of this
national treasure.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of General Bryan follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Thank you, General, very much.
Mr. Knapp.
Mr. Knapp. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am the Deputy Chief of the Office of Engineering and
Technology at the FCC. I want to thank you for this opportunity
to discuss the process at the FCC for setting spectrum
management priorities as well as discussing the
interrelationship between the Commission and the Department of
Commerce in balancing spectrum needs of Federal users with
those of both the public safety community and the commercial
sector.
Spectrum management is one of FCC's core responsibilities
and is becoming increasingly difficult because, simply put, the
spectrum demand is outstripping the supply. The spectrum
squeeze is being felt by everyone, from national defense and
public safety organizations to providers of commercial wireless
services, to entrepreneurs seeking access to spectrum for new
technologies.
The challenge we face in spectrum management is how to
balance competing demands for scarce spectrum so that we may
continue to meet high priority needs such as national security
and public safety, while still providing for the deployment of
new technologies and services.
The Commission has taken a number of steps to meet the
demand for spectrum. We have reallocated spectrum from existing
radio services to make way for new services such as personal
communications services and mobile satellite services. We have
promoted the introduction of new spectrum efficient
technologies such as digital data, voice and video systems,
software defined radios and ultrawideband devices. And we have
introduced market mechanisms such as auctions to ensure that
spectrum is put to its highest valued use.
While much has been done already, we know that we are going
to need to do better if we hope to meet the spectrum demands of
tomorrow.
Chairman Powell has observed that the Commission's current
command and control approach to spectrum allocations may be too
reactive for the current Internet speed market, and that often
spectrum allocation decisions do not effectively push spectrum
to its highest and most efficient use.
Indeed, the market and not the spectrum allocation process
needs to be the principal determinant in the success and
failure of new technology and services. To address these
issues, Chairman Powell recently created a Spectrum Policy Task
Force charged with facilitating the development of an
integrated plan for spectrum policy. Some of the objectives of
the task force include making recommendations for a more
market-oriented spectrum allocation policy, more clearly
defining spectrum interference and usage rights, aggressively
promoting spectrum efficiency, and reserving and protecting
efficient spectrum for public safety.
The work of the task force was only begun recently, but we
are looking forward to working with other parts of government,
industry and the public to improve our spectrum policies.
As you know, we are not the sole managers of the radio
spectrum. While the FCC has authority over significant regions
of the spectrum, a significant percentage involves bands that
are shared with both Federal and non-Federal users. In these
bands we need to coordinate with the Office of the Secretary of
the Department of Commerce, or more specifically the NTIA.
The FCC and NTIA have had a long and successful history of
working together to manage the spectrum in a way that satisfies
both the needs of the Federal Government and the private
sector, but this work is becoming ever more challenging as the
spectrum is becoming more crowded and we struggle to keep pace
with the rapid introduction of new technologies.
We are taking a fresh look at how we can better coordinate
spectrum management with NTIA. NTIA is to be congratulated for
recently hosting a spectrum management summit that included
participation from the FCC, key Federal agencies, industry, and
academia. One sign of how closely we are working together is
that all of the panels and working groups were co-chaired by
the NTIA and the FCC.
Chairman Powell and Deputy Assistant Secretary Victory plan
to meet to continue this momentum toward improving spectrum
management, planning and policies.
Last, I would like to take a minute to address the matter
of national defense and homeland security. I can assure you
that no one takes the spectrum needs of national defense and
homeland security more seriously than Chairman Powell. Last
fall Chairman Powell created the Homeland Security Policy
Council, whose mission includes evaluating and strengthening
measures for protecting and ensuring the rapid restoration of
U.S. telecommunications broadcasts and other communications
infrastructure and facilities.
The Council also will further ensure that public safety,
public health and other emergency and defense personnel have
effective communications services available to them in the
immediate aftermath of any terrorist attack within the United
States.
I would like to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the
opportunity to appear before you today. This concludes my
testimony, and I would be happy to take any questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Knapp follows:]
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Mr. Shays. Thank you. Just wait 1 second, please.
By unanimous consent, written testimony by the Department
of State will be put in the record at this point. It is just
testimony from David Gross, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State
for International Communications and Information Policy.
Evidently no one from the State Department could appear at the
time we wanted them and we weren't able to reschedule it.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Gross follows:]
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Mr. Shays. I would like to ask each of you how well you
think the current process for spectrum management works to
balance national security and commercial interests.
But before I do, General Bryan, I need to be clear what
your responsibilities are. I am trying to sort out what you do,
and then when you speak it will be more clear to me.
General Bryan. Mr. Chairman, I was surprised also when as a
uniformed officer I was invited to join the FCC and NTIA. I am
not a policy representative for DOD. I am the Vice Director of
an operational agency that provides in the spectrum arena the
technical analysis and technical advice, and in fact provides
the operational support to the combatant commanders.
Mr. Shays. Let me just tell you why we have you here. That
is to keep these other two guys honest.
Now we----
General Bryan. Noted, Mr. Chairman. I will do my best.
Mr. Shays. I think the value of you being here is to make
sure that when we--Mr. Gallagher has responsibility for all
Federal spectrum concerns of the Federal Government, all
spectrum concerns of the Federal Government?
Mr. Gallagher. That is correct.
Mr. Shays. Basically, Mr. Knapp, your basic focus is
commercial, private use of the spectrum, correct?
Mr. Knapp. Correct.
Mr. Shays. And you are the topic of the day, General, the
issue of the integration of the military. So I am going to ask
you to be very keen on those interests. OK? So you have the
technical expertise, but you are really a representative from
the military. We wanted someone from the military at this
particular panel.
General Bryan. I understand, sir.
Mr. Shays. So now let me just repeat the question. How well
do you think the current process for spectrum management works
to balance national security and commercial interests? Then
what can be done to improve the process? And who wants to
start?
Mr. Gallagher. I will be happy to start, Mr. Chairman. I
believe the process is extremely challenging. I believe that it
is strongly dependent on the personalities at the top and the
leadership that is exerted over the relative participants.
There are plenty of opportunities for challenges and for
problems, and the pressure on the process today is extreme. As
every witness has testified, you have converging interests in
the same spectrum space, both coming from a position of
legitimacies vying for an assignment or a priority or some sort
of allocation that allows their use.
The system is--while it is challenging, I do believe when
operated properly is a--it gets the job done. I point to
ultrawideband. We were able to reach that compromise across
numerous objecting agencies, private sector entities, and
different technicians. And I might add that I am the only
nonengineer at the table, and I was often that way as we were
going through that discussion. But you had different approaches
coming from people whose work is fundamentally founded on
science and on the technical aspects.
So I do think that it can yield the right result, but there
is a lot of pressure under the current system. As for
suggestions on how to improve it, there is a statutory
requirement that the FCC Chairman and the Assistant Secretary
for NTIA meet, I believe it is twice a year, to coordinate on
spectrum planning. I think that is a step in the right
direction. But at best, it is a legislative pointer as to what
needs to be done, because so much of this is so detail
oriented, it is so very technical that it requires a genuine
commitment at the very highest levels to get the job done.
So I don't think I can point to any specific legislative
solution to improve the process.
Mr. Shays. General, would you like to respond, or let me go
to Mr. Knapp next. How well do you think the current process
for spectrum management works?
Mr. Knapp. Largely, I think it has worked fairly well. Any
of the issues that the Commission deals with on the policy
front or that affect spectrum management need to be coordinated
with the NTIA and the IRAC. All of our decision documents to
the chairman and Commissioners include a paragraph that fill
them in on the state of the IRAC coordination and any impact on
national security or emergency preparedness. So at the highest
levels of the Commission this is a priority.
I would agree with Mr. Gallagher that although probably 90
percent of the issues are resolved in a very constructive way,
there are issues that have been very difficult from a technical
and policy standpoint for both of us. We have put processes in
place to try and resolve them on good, sound technical footing,
and in a fair way, and I think largely that it has worked.
Ways to improve the process? Certainly at times the process
goes slower than I think that all of us would like to do. So
this--we need to find ways when we are deadlocked to resolve
those disagreements. And I think also at times there has been
criticism that the process isn't as open or as transparent as
it needs to be. That is another area that we probably need to
work on to try to make sure that where concerns are raised by
the Federal side that they are made available to the private
sector.
Mr. Shays. Before asking the General to respond, does the
process provide for much visionary efforts? I mean, it sounds
to me like as I am hearing this system, it is really a kind of
respond to the crisis of the day. But is the system set up in a
way that is conducive to saying, let's look at what our needs
are 15 years from now?
Mr. Gallagher. Mr. Chairman, that is exactly what prompted
NTIA to host the spectrum summit on April 4th and 5th, was the
need to elevate the perspective and the process improvements
that we could make. What is the look to the future? How do we
do things better but not in a day-to-day manner, not in a
tactical-to-tactical step manner, but how do you insert vision
in? And we had over----
Mr. Shays. But that suggests congratulations for doing it,
but it also suggests that the system right now isn't doing it.
Mr. Gallagher. I would suggest that the system is very
dependent on the leadership involved. And when the crisis is as
acute as it can be with several spectrum issues, many of which
have been listed today, that drives the need to find a better
way to look farther ahead.
Mr. Shays. Is that a yes?
Mr. Gallagher. I would say it is a qualified yes.
Mr. Shays. General, do you want to respond?
General Bryan. Mr. Chairman, it is hard work every day. It
is not a perfect process. And I think that rather than get into
the individual pluses and minuses of improving this management
technique or this management process, I believe that the
baseline is what is missing that would set the foundation for
improvements, and that is the national strategy that we so
sorely need and every issue of discussion of prioritization
inevitably evolves.
DOD is quite aware of the importance of spectrum to our
national economy and our wireless spectrum users, and we are
users of that very technology ourselves. So it becomes a very
difficult issue every time in trying to strike the balance
between the military use of spectrum and commercial use of
spectrum, and inevitably the conversations always go back to
that fundamental premise: Without a national strategy in place,
no one else has a standing strategy that is based on that
foundation document.
So I believe my No. 1 recommendation I would go back to is
the need for a national strategy upon which we can develop our
agency strategies and in our case the DOD strategy.
Mr. Shays. Let me just tell you--read you what Chairman
Michael Powell of the FCC wrote. I don't know when he wrote it.
``Our Nation's approach to spectrum allocation is seriously
fractured. There have been dramatic changes in spectrum
requirements and technology and services that use spectrum
since 1934. But yet while we have made some major strides in
how we assign spectrum, principally through auctions,
allocation policy is not keeping pace with the relentless
spectrum demand. The spectrum allocation system is not
effectively moving spectrum to its highest and best valued use
in a timely manner.''
That is a pretty strong statement. And so the system,
according to Mr. Powell, isn't working as well as it needs to.
Are you--is the DOD--I am--just as I look at this panel, I
am thinking, do you have to work through the NTIA in order to
make your needs known ultimately? We are not petitioning the
FCC. You just--I mean sort this out. In other words, what I am
still not grasping, has the FCC ultimately got oversight over
the full spectrum or just its commercial side? And does the
NTIA have its spectrum and are you co-equals, or in fact is the
FCC saying if the NTIA can't justify a spectrum, we claim it?
General Bryan. Mr. Chairman, we work with the NTIA. We
obviously collaborate with the FCC. We attend a lot of
conferences and meetings with them. But NTIA manages the
Federal spectrum that we use. So we process our--the process
for our requirements and our coordination flows though the NTIA
as the Federal spectrum representative.
Mr. Shays. See, I mean, from my previous days I basically
thought of the FCC as dealing with spectrum and the NTIA didn't
show up on my radar screen. And that can just be my ignorance,
or it can be the reality that the FCC ultimately gets the right
to claim this.
So, Mr. Gallagher, give me a sense of, do you have to
justify to the FCC why you have spectrum space, or are you an
entity unto yourself?
Mr. Gallagher. The FCC is by statutory design an
independent agency. The NTIA is part of the Department of
Commerce, is very much part of the administration. So there is
a very defined line between the two, and we are tasked with co-
managing the spectrum. But as I described, the spectrum is kind
of broken up into three pieces. If you imagine two circles
laying over one another, not completely, one part of the circle
on the right is exclusive government bands. These are managed
solely by NTIA.
Mr. Shays. Right. They remain yours no matter what happens
unless the Congress and the President take away that?
Mr. Gallagher. That is correct.
Mr. Shays. So that is yours for----
Mr. Gallagher. That is correct. Then there is the
overlapping piece, which we share the need to manage that
together, because within one allocation of spectrum, one
assignment, you might have government and the private sector in
the same.
Mr. Shays. But is that overlapping in the end the most
important part? I mean is that--just because I say the volume
of two circles, it may be that this part of the circle and this
part of the circle aren't as important as this part.
Mr. Gallagher. I think, Mr. Chairman, you are onto the
very--you are astutely on the right direction. In the old days
it probably was more about what was on the edges of the two
circles and how do we move more over to the private sector and
into the commercial space. Today I think there is much more of
the focus on the shared space.
As the General mentioned in his testimony, there is a
strong recognition on both the commercial side and on the
Department of Defense side that to use the resource more
efficiently, to meet both of our goals, we need to find those
opportunities together, which again forces the FCC and NTIA to
work together and is what prompted the summit and the idea of
co-hosting every--or co-moderating every panel jointly with the
FCC and NTIA to demonstrate that we are very committed to
improving the process.
Mr. Shays. Let me ask you, General Bryan. What role do you
play in developing DOD spectrum management policies?
General Bryan. Sir, the Office of Spectrum Analysis and
Management [OSAM], is a function of our Defense Information
Systems Agency. It is one of our subordinate elements. That is
the element, along with our Joint Spectrum Center, which is our
operational arm, that we use to provide to our unified
commands. The sum of those two provide the technical analysis
and technical advice to Mr. Price as our Deputy Secretary--
Assistant Secretary of Defense for C3I for spectrum.
Now, we have recognized that is an old construct, and we
are--the work is underway. In fact the charter, we believe,
will soon be signed by the Deputy Secretary of Defense to
establish a new organization, the Defense Spectrum
Organization, which will provide an even stronger staff advice
and assistance role for Mr. Price, who is the policy arm for
DOD.
So our job is technical advice, technical assistance,
analysis, best advice on management practices and actually
executing the allocation of spectrum to operating forces.
Mr. Shays. Do you sit on any committees to coordinate
allocation and use?
General Bryan. I don't personally sit on those. The
spectrum that we allocate--let me ask for a restatement of the
question, Mr. Chairman. I am apt to launch into----
Mr. Shays. This--thank you. This is the question we are
asking. What DOD committees do you sit on that coordinate DOD
spectrum allocation and use? It may be that you personally
don't.
General Bryan. The allocation of spectrum issuing
frequencies, an old term, to operating forces, is done through
the--based on the policies and regulations in effect at the
Joint level. There are--Joint Chiefs of Staff have advisory
committees. The Military Communication and Electronic Board has
a panel. There are a number of entities in the Pentagon in
which consultation takes place.
The actual issuance and deconfliction process takes place
through the various spectrum offices of the Services and of our
Joint Spectrum Center to make sure that the spectrum--that
assignments that we are making have been fully deconflicted.
Now, we do have observer status at other panels. But
probably, to finally get around and perhaps answering your
question, Mr. Chairman, the IRAC is probably the--the most
important committee that DISA as a technical advisor serves on.
Mr. Shays. What is the significance of Mr. Price's talking
about the 5-year review? I didn't pursue it with him, but he
said that the DOD has to justify--or maybe I should ask you,
Mr. Gallagher. Is it all government agencies have to justify
every 5 years that they are not just warehousing spectrum
space?
General Bryan. Mr. Chairman, I am going to have to take
that question for the record.
Mr. Shays. Right. Let me ask Mr. Gallagher. Is this
something that you are familiar with?
Mr. Gallagher. I am familiar with it from a discussion we
had this morning. I am happy to tell you what I have today and
then supplement that and would be happy to provide that
information to the committee.
Mr. Shays. Sure.
Mr. Gallagher. That is the assignments are made and every 5
years there has to be a----
Mr. Shays. The assignments are made by whom?
Mr. Gallagher. The assignments are made by NTIA, the
frequency assignments.
Mr. Shays. So these are the frequency assignments that are
made to the various government agencies?
Mr. Gallagher. Exactly. And then on a recurring basis,
every 5 years, they have to state whether they are going to use
that frequency or not.
Mr. Shays. See, I mean--I probably should have pursued it
with Mr. Price. But there is logic to making sure that we are
not warehousing this because some day in the future we think we
may need it. It is not an efficient use of resources. But so
he--the implication from that was that there is--it takes away
this sense of certainty that they have it in the future. And I
guess if we had a national strategy that would maybe help deal
with that issue.
Let me just ask a few more questions with you, Mr. Knapp.
What is the role or the roles and agenda of the Homeland
Security Policy Council recently established by the FCC
Chairman?
Mr. Knapp. Well, a primary role of the Council is to
coordinate all of the activities within the Commission that
might relate to homeland defense and national security.
Mr. Shays. Is this like fire, police, the health
departments?
Mr. Knapp. But beyond that, to ensure that we move forward
on ultrawideband technology that can help locate people when
there is a tragedy, to make sure that we move along with the
spectrum allocation at 4.9 gigahertz for public safety, etc. So
it is a range of actions that we want to make sure that we look
at in a coordinated fashion.
Mr. Shays. So what is the status of the policy development
right now? How are we doing?
Mr. Knapp. Well, the group meets regularly, and they have
got a list of action items that they are monitoring, and many
of them, a couple that I just mentioned are moving ahead. So it
is also ensuring that we are participating in all of the
actions of other Federal agencies that have responsibilities
for homeland defense, so that we are fulfilling our
responsibilities to make sure that we are doing everything
possible.
Mr. Shays. Given that we don't yet have a national
strategy, we are not set up as well as we need to be for the
effective use of all spectrum, let me just ask--and we will
kind of close with this area. I am going to ask Mr. Gallagher,
how does the NTIA assure Federal agencies are making efficient
use of allocation spectrum? I am going to ask you, Mr. Knapp,
what policies does the FCC have to reevaluate Legacy systems to
determine whether they are put to good use for viable service?
Mr. Gallagher. Mr. Chairman, the NTIA works very closely
with the agencies involved to look at the assignments and make
sure that they are being utilized efficiently. But efficiency
as it was mentioned in the earlier panel, it is a flexible term
depending on the mission. In the private wireless market, they
will measure it one way. The market may measure it another.
And then still with the Department of Defense we have heard
the discussion about precision guided missiles, there is a
whole different notion of efficiency. With public safety
spectrum and the allocations that would be made in that space,
that is also measured differently.
But we have an ongoing process through IRAC to look at and
analyze that spectrum utilization.
Mr. Shays. Just explain that last sentence. You have an
ongoing process.
Mr. Gallagher. Well, IRAC is the focus of that activity.
That is where the issues are brought to the fore. That is where
the evaluations are queued up to be made, and where the
information flows back and forth to various spectrum----
Mr. Shays. Your point is you can't have one formula for
everyone in terms of efficiency given the different needs?
Mr. Gallagher. I am becoming more and more persuaded of
that point. When I came to my job from the private sector, I
had a very market driven approach to the value of spectrum. But
after you are exposed to the very important mission of the
Department of Defense, what the Department of Transportation
does with MLS, ILS, how radars like the ARSR-4, ARSR-9, and
TDWRs work, you become more familiar with the--and the
importance of those missions that you rely on every day when
you are sitting in an airplane reading a magazine or whether
you are sitting at home watching television and DOD is
protecting you.
Mr. Shays. Got you.
Mr. Knapp.
Mr. Knapp. There is ongoing oversight of the state of
affairs with respect to efficiency. As Mr. Gallagher pointed
out, it is not the same for every service.
In commercial services, we have applied market mechanisms
and provided flexibilities so that, for example, in the
cellular services today, there is roughly an 8 to 10-to-1
improvement over where we were when we started 15 years ago.
For some of the private mobile services, we have established a
plan, since market incentives weren't appropriate to
specifically move to more spectrum efficient technology.
For licensees, such as satellite licensees, they have
milestones for buildout and so forth to ensure that they in
fact are constructing these systems, and report back to us on
the efficiencies to which they are using the spectrum.
And last, I would just add with all of the competition for
spectrum out there and people kind of watching what everybody
else is doing, if you are not using your spectrum efficiently
it is not very long before somebody is asking us to reallocate
it.
Mr. Shays. True. And they are probably asking you to
reallocate it even when they are using it efficiently.
Mr. Knapp. That is true.
Mr. Shays. Is there any other question?
Mr. Gallagher. I just wanted to add, Mr. Chairman, that I
am very encouraged by what I see in the technological area.
That is one thing we don't touch on in our opening statements.
But when you look at--there is a DARPA program that is called
Generation X, or X Generation Spectrum. It is run--or was--had
very high level participation from Dr. Kolodzy, who was
mentioned earlier.
It is the notion that you use spectrum--if--every
assignment is like a lane on a freeway. It would allow me to
move in and around you on the freeway and you wouldn't even
know I was there. I would be in your assigned frequency, but
using it in a more efficient manner.
Some of the time references that the General mentioned in
his statement, that we could be more flexible in how we use
spectrum, that is a very encouraging technology that is on the
cusp. It is several years away, but in the public policy arena
we are not ready to address that technology.
Mr. Shays. Does it raise the question that trying to have a
plan for the next 15 years is almost foolish because technology
may make that so obsolete?
Mr. Gallagher. Mr. Chairman, I think that plans impose
discipline, and discipline is what is necessary so that you can
fulfill the mission of leadership. But we have to be mindful
that in a plan scenario all of the participants have an
allocation on this multi-colored chart today come in and
describe how they need more, and it is a fixed resource.
How do you plan in that environment? It requires judgments
being made, which is the capacity of government at your
direction.
Mr. Shays. Thank you. We have had two of our counsel and
professional staff ask questions. But someone who has done most
of the work for this hearing, Sherrill Gardner, a congressional
fellow is--I just want the record to show that she has done a
great deal of the work for this effort, and I appreciate it.
She is the congressional fellow and very helpful and valuable
in our office. I thank her.
You have a question?
Mr. Halloran. Yes. General Bryan, here is this question
while you are here.
Mr. Gallagher mentioned a legislative scenario under which
we are operating now in terms of DOD having identified
comparable spectrum for certain activities, apparently I guess
in 1755 to 1800, 1850. Is there such a thing?
Is there comparable spectrum to those uses? And if there
is, if you can identify it, how do you quantify the costs of
moving there?
General Bryan. Well, we have done the best we can in
answering other required responses. We have documented what we
believe the cost of moving the systems that we have now to
comparable spectrum would be.
It's something in the order of $4.3 billion of inventory
would have to be changed over.
On the other hand, the first part of the question is the
tougher part. The physics are the physics are the physics, and
we are not yet aware of comparable spectrum which will fulfill
the same needs of the spectrum which has been identified as
most valuable to not only precision munitions but the very
difficult world of mobile command and control. And----
Mr. Halloran. Is it correct to say that the physical
limitations, propagation, whatever, you know, power
requirements, whatever you're bumping up against in trying to
relocate, those are not issues that technology on the horizon
today offers any solution for?
General Bryan. Well, we believe that there's no technical
panacea there right now. In my oral statement, I mention the
number of things that have to be worked in combination; and
anyone who's been out there like I have on a rainy night trying
to make comm work over a mountain between mobile users knows
that the same solution doesn't always work. The situation
constantly changes. So do the solution sets.
So it's a combination of propagation, jamming mitigation,
antenna use, power settings. Sometimes you talk--I mean, you
want to talk secure in an anti-jamming mode. That costs you
power on the system. In order to get the message through,
sometimes you tradeoff the feature. It's a combination of
measures now.
But we are all very encouraged with the pace--if one was to
look back just the past 5 or 6 years, as Mr. Knapp stated, the
massive tenfold improvement in efficiencies on the commercial
side and wireless alone demonstrate, at least anecdotally, that
the technology frontier for digitization and other
possibilities--Mr. Gallagher mentioned the interweaving, mazing
thought process that's going on in DARPA right now. These are
around-the-corner technical advances that we have to be
prepared to take advantage of, because there's simply no way to
take the way we do it today and exit those bands and those
spectrums and move to something comparable and do business the
same way we do it today and achieve the same end state.
Mr. Shays. I'm going to just make another point and ask
this question, just because I'd be disappointed later if I
didn't ask. I have something like a Blackberry today, and it
makes it--it's a very efficient tool. I mean, I can be in my
bedroom at night, write someone a note, get an answer the next
day. I can, frankly, be at a hearing when all of my colleagues
are giving statements and, before we give testimony, write 20
e-mails because none of us like to hear each other speak. But I
can get a lot of work done. My productivity has increased with
this, and I'm sure for a whole group of people throughout the
United States.
Now, my question is this: I intuitively say that if the
military needs it and the police need it, the fire department
needs it, they come first. They come first before anyone else.
They come first. Case closed.
But then I begin to think in terms of the military. If some
countries don't have the burden of funding and having a
military, then they obviously don't have the benefits. But if
they don't have the burden of, you know, helping the world be a
peaceful place to live and we take on that burden, does that
ultimately mean that we're not going to be able to have certain
commercial benefits that will enable some countries to overtake
us in an economic way? In other words, I'm thinking that when I
go to--the few times I've been to Asia, there are things that
they can do with their telecommunication that makes us look
like we're almost Third World. And is that just simply that
industry isn't bringing the next model because they want us to
use that model, or is it simply that they don't have the
spectrum space to do what we're seeing happen in Asia where
they don't have the military obligations and some of the other
obligations?
It's not an answer that I expect to be perfect, Mr. Knapp,
but I'd like to just start my thinking on this.
Mr. Knapp. We do have greater demands here for spectrum use
in the United States than in other parts of the world, and it
forces us to be more clever in finding ways to pack more into
the same amount of spectrum, either through sharing or putting
the emphasis on advanced technologies.
At the same time, there's no doubt that if you've got more
spectrum to work with, it's easier to design systems, and it is
somewhat easier to implement the newer technologies.
Mr. Shays. But what I view us today is being in a--the cold
war is over. The General would know and the rest of us, the
world is a more dangerous place, ironically. The need for the
military, particularly in this life-and-death battle with
terrorism--I mean, we're in a race with terrorism to shut them
down before they use weapons of mass destruction. For me,
that's case closed. I mean, that's a big battle.
But I'm--but we're also in a battle with our allies. Coming
from the Commerce Department, you would particularly appreciate
this. We're in a race with them for technology advantages,
trade. We obviously believe that trade helps both sides, but we
want to be competitively superior.
In some ways, the challenge to meet the needs of the
military not only forces us to be innovative but in some cases
puts us at a disadvantage economically. That's really the
question. Do you want to just make a----
Mr. Gallagher. I would be pleased to, Mr. Chairman.
Economic security is critical in order to have national
security. They go together.
Mr. Shays. Exactly.
Mr. Gallagher. And so at the Department of Commerce,
Secretary Evans made it clear that's a primary focus and we
must be competitive. We must lead the world in technology,
which has brought us so much wealth as a country.
As an example, I would point to ultrawideband. The rest of
the world's spectrum charts don't look like that. They can put
this technology in in a manner that would interfere greatly
with our systems, private and government systems, and not care,
but if we define it so that this market drives the rest of the
world, then we not only--then we not only break the ground for
world-leading U.S. technology, but we also protect our critical
systems.
Mr. Shays. Right. That just provides a little balance here.
So did you want to make another comment, any of you? Any
question we should have asked that you spent all night
preparing?
General, I know that you don't spend all night preparing,
because in the military you're just real cool, but--you are
cool, all of you. Thank you. Wonderful to have you here. Very
interesting hearing, and this committee--the full committee
clearly will be involved in trying to help all of you sort it
out.
With this, the hearing is closed.
[Whereupon, at 1 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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