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FACILITY REQUIRED ON DAILY BASIS

Now as to the funding in prior years: $2 million were appropriated for this purpose which have been applied to projects of which this is a type. You hit right on the point. This is a contingency account and there is no use kidding ourselves that this is what it really is but it is one that is required on an almost daily day-to-day basis.

Senator SALTONSTALL. Now, General, I do not want to prolong the discussion because I am delaying the chairman.

Senator STENNIS. No, no.

Senator SALTONSTALL. You come to us for, say 15 percent, maybe I am high on that but I do not think too high, on reprograming figures. Then you have the contingency fund of the Secretary of Defense; you have this $15 million for minor construction, and you have the reprograming for which you can come to us. Actually there is about $3 billion of reprograming put over into the 1966 budget with no program attached to them at all. Personally I do not approve of it because I think it takes away the authority of Congress.

Now here you are asking for a comparatively small amount of $5 million in addition for-you use the word "contingency," I think a fair word is "carte blanche."

General CURTIN. Well, to some extent you are correct, sir. However, the items that were put in the authorization hearings in support of the authorization I think distinctly show that these items were things that could not have been foreseen at the time of the regular construction program cycle but had to be done before the next one. Now the minor construction can certainly take care of items that cost less than $200,000, and this we do. This fund covers items that are in excess of $200,000 and in fact some of the minor ones, but they come up on a day-to-day basis that you have to do now and if you do not do it right now really the cost, the overall cost to the Government

Senator SALTONSTALL. I agree with what you have said. All I am arguing is that it seems to me there are funds available that can, with a little ingenuity, be applied for this purpose.

General CURTIN. This may be. As you know, unfortunately in the military construction we have tried to tie the appropriation to the authorization. This was done here. We are trying to tie the specific funds to what was authorized.

Senator STENNIS. Senator Bible.

Senator BIBLE. Mr. Chairman, I would like to direct this either to General Curtin or to the colonel who was previously testifying, and this is a little aside from the point you gentlemen were making

FURTHER DISCUSSION OF SUNNYVALE, CALIF., POWERPLANT

I am a little curious about the independent electric powerplant at the cost of $1,250,000 to serve the satellite control center at Sunnyvale, Calif.

I am not going to take very long, Mr. Chairman.
Senator STENNIS. Take all the time you need.

Senator BIBLE. I assume that you have a firm power contract with Pacific Gas & Electric. I suppose that is the agency, it is one of the largest power companies in the world. Don't they have sources of power within their system so that they can absolutely guarantee you against any outages whatever? This is one of the largest integrated power systems in the world and yet you want to go out and spend another $1,250,000 to assure dependency of power. Can't P.G. & E. do that?

General CURTIN. I will try to answer that in a general way and then we might apply it to Sunnyvale which I am not familiar with. We have had considerable experience in the effect of power variations in terms of voltage, and so on. We have found that to provide the required reliability of power not only for the satellite tracking but for defense communication agencies, computers, switching centers and this type function we are almost invariably forced to produce it ourselves on the prime powerplant.

USE OF COMMERCIAL POWER

Now we do take commercial power wherever we can get it within normal tolerances and provide for automatic switching gear that will switch from the commercial circuit to our emergency or standby powerplant and if there is a fluctuation, either voltage or any one of the regulatory items to which the equipment is subjected, will switch over to operate our powerplant. So in most cases we use commercial prime power but we have our own in standby.

Senator BIBLE. I do not want to prolong it, I just want to know why you are dealing with one of the largest integrated power utilities in the entire world and yet you have to go out and spend additional money in case of failure of power.

General CURTIN. No matter how good, at times they are going to have outages or variations in quality. I have a summer place in Maine, when the power goes out, it could be out from 5 minutes to an hour sometimes when there is a storm. These things to us, sir, are a minor inconvenience but to the electronic gear even a microsecond has a big impact, or just a surge in voltage.

Senator BIBLE. I am not questioning what you are saying, all I am saying is it seems to me operationalwise you can enter into an agreement against that type of an outage because P.G. & E. has the facilities to bring another line in; they use hydroelectric power, they use geothermal power, natural gas power, atomic power-they have every type of power known to man and somehow or another in an installation of this kind you ought to be able to assure yourself by a contract that they can give you 100 percent delivery without outages.

Colonel FENLON. I think we can do it, but I think we would have to pay them to do in essence what we are doing. They will have to build a subplant there that will be operating in backup to provide this no-rate power, so to speak, in microseconds.

Senator BIBLE. I am just curious here. This is a little aside from the point that the chairman, Senator Saltonstall, and you are making. I cannot see why private utilities cannot do this in itself.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator STENNIS. Thank you, Senator.

I want to ask one question now. Did you say that at some time during the manned space flights that we lose control or what was that? Colonel STONE. Not during the manned space flights correct the record; the satellite flights.

Senator STENNIS. You are not going to be operating a manned space flight from the Sunnyvale powerplant, are you? You do not have anything like that in the book?

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COMMUNICATION CONTROL ITEM

Colonel STONE. As a communication control center, Sunnyvale does

fit into that picture; yes, sir.

Senator STENNIS. As an integral part of it?

Colonel STONE. Yes, sir.

Senator STENNIS. Of the manned space flights?

Colonel STONE. The communication control of that flight. Senator STENNIS. If I understand, that means keeping communication with the man in space and you are an integral part of that link? Colonel STONE. The telemetry data that comes back through that system.

Senator STENNIS. If you have a power failure, then you go out, of course, for the time it fails. Colonel STONE. Yes, sir.

Senator STENNIS. What could be the possible consequences of that, say, in a manned space flight?

Colonel STONE. Well, I do not think I can speak too much to the total of the manned space flight because in the manned space flight we rely on continuous redundancies.

Senator STENNIS. So you have an emergency setup there to take care of a failure on the station?

NEED FOR PROJECT

Colonel STONE. Yes, sir. The power supply we are looking at is something we have identified primarily from satellite systems where we merely lose them and this is what pointed to the problem. Now we have investigated further for the best way to solve it. The project represented here is the hard-core requirement that we would like to get into just as soon as we possibly can.

Senator STENNIS. To have a source of power of your own? Colonel STONE. To have a source of power of our own that is under our own control.

Senator STENNIS. How many will you have to have then besides Sunnyvale to carry out that plan that you made?

Colonel STONE. We are looking at the entire power picture now for both the western and the eastern test range for these kinds of things. These will be identified in time. Hopefully they will be in here as line items and programed as we can back them up and define the specific requirements.

Senator STENNIS. Did you name a number?

Colonel STONE. NO; I did not give you a number.

Senator STENNIS. You do not know now how many you will need? Colonel STONE. No. We have provided a contingency for this sort of thing, but let me say again the use of this fund is only after a real judicious look to what we have to do now because really the programing of this into the regular program is our objective from the research and development point of view. Certain things we just have to take care of as soon as we can, and we have to find the authorization and the funds to do the job.

QUESTION OF COMMITMENT TO PROGRAM

Senator STENNIS. Well, you understand what we were getting to here is what are we committing ourselves to here if we approve these? What is the committal you see; what is the program?

Colonel STONE. I would have to rely on the past history of what was used.

Senator STENNIS. Well, until you know something about that maybe we better follow some suggestions here and just let you get your money temporarily from the Department of Defense emergency fund and then when you get a package here that we can understand a little better we can go to appropriating on a line-item basis.

What do you say to that, Colonel Fenlon?

Colonel FENLON. Mr. Chairman, I cannot deny the past history of reprograming moneys toward items like this. It is a method, the reaction time has varied on it in being able to do this but—

Senator STENNIS. What I mean is, to get it out of the emergency fund, you do not have to reprogram? Under these funds here Senator Saltonstall has dug up he just goes to the Department of Defense and gets the money.

General CURTIN. This is one we will have to research, Mr. Chairman. The Senator was kind enough to send this tabulation of different funds down. As to whether these are actually applicable to construction or not we would have to check. Actually in the language that we have here, construction is not specifically cited, and this would be one of the points that we would have to look up, sir.

Senator STENNIS. As I told the Senator, we have encouraged you gentlemen to ask for the line items, too, whenever you could define it enough to get a line item on it. We asked that it be done in that way. We do not know what we are buying here when we get into this program. I notice the House in their reduction here of $5 million-was that the total amount?

General CURTIN. Yes, sir, that was the total authorization, Mr. Chairman.

Senator STENNIS. All right.

Senator BIBLE. May I ask a question at that point because I am not clear, Mr. Chairman.

Senator STENNIS. Yes.

EASTERN AND WESTERN TEST RANGES

Senator BIBLE. At page 37 you show Eastern and Western Test Ranges, $5,700,000. What is that figure related to?

General CURTIN. Actually just so this will not be taken out of context, Senator, these examples were provided to show projects that we will have to take care of in some manner before the next construction bill comes before the Congress. We were not intending to say, for example, right here now that we would spend $1,250,000 at Sunnyvale or $5,700,000 at the Eastern and Western Test Ranges. These are things that are being studied and were examples of the types of work we know will have to be done and for which we will use this money.

Senator BIBLE. Use $5 million of it if it is allowed toward that end goal with a total price tag higher?

General CURTIN. We would be limited to the $5 million.

Senator BIBLE. I understand if you start out with only $5 million you would need another $700,000 to finish.

General CURTIN. We know something has to be done. We are not saying that the price of $5,700,000 is the price on what has to be done before the next construction bill. But we know something has to be done and these are being staffed.

Senator BIBLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator STENNIS. I like the way you present it but as of now I vote with the House. If you want to present some more on this later, I think Senator Saltonstall would like to have more information and if you want to present something further on it you may. The information presented has been excellent. However, you may want to look into the matter to see if you are eligible for these funds.

General CURTIN. Yes, sir.

Senator STENNIS. I would judge you are.

General CURTIN. Yes, sir. I appreciate that opportunity, Mr. Chairman.

Senator SALTONSTALL. Under title II you are eligible I would say. That is the general emergency fund.

General CURTIN. Right.

Senator STENNIS. You may refer that in writing or come over if you want to.

General CURTIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator STENNIS. Will you go to the next item.

(The information appears in the committee files.)

AUTHORIZATION FOR MINOR CONSTRUCTION

Colonel FENLON. Page 38, reduction of $1,675,000 on our $15 million authorization for minor construction. The minor construction as we have discussed yesterday, we have a complete utilization on this. This is our only, as Senator Saltonstall mentioned a moment ago, estimate for unforseen operational requirements down at the major commands and we feel that the $15 million is a valid figure.

MINOR CONSTRUCTION FUNDS

Minor construction...

General authorization

Line item

Budget
request

House
action

Restoration
requested

$15,000,000-$1,675,000

+$1,675,000

49-369-65-68

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