occupy a particularly advantageous position because of its work under Contract NASW-410, the Administrator or Deputy Administrator may request General Electric not to participate.

c. The policy described in subparagraphs a and b shall not affect existing contracts with the General Electric Company.

d. NASA personnel will ensure that the General Electric Company receives an equal opportunity to participate in NASA procurement except where the exclusion policy described above specifically and clearly applies.

6. PROCEDURES

a. Where it appears that application of the policy stated in paragraph 5 to a particular procurement will result in the exclusion of the General Electric Company, the following action will be taken:

(1) If the procurement is to be made by a NASA prime contractor or subcontractor, such contractor will refer the matter within 24 hours to the NASA contracting officer.

(2) If the procurement is to be made by NASA or has been referred to a NASA contracting officer in accordance with subparagraph (1):

(a) The Director of the NASA field installation will make a determination as to whether the General Electric Company is to be excluded, except that if he lacks information on which to base such a determination, he will request that the determination be made by NASA Headquarters. Any such request will be signed by the Director of the NASA field installation and submitted to the Director of Manned Space Flight, NASA Headquarters. A copy of each request will be furnished to the Director, Procurement and Supply Division, NASA Headquarters.

(b) In cases where the General Electric Company is believed to possess a unique capability to perform a procurement which may fall under the exclusion policy, the Director of the NASA field installation will refer the matter to the Director of Manned Space Flight, NASA Headquarters, requesting an exception to the policy. A copy of each such request will be furnished to the Director, Procurement and Supply Division, NASA Headquarters.

b. Where a determination by the Director of the field installation will result in the exclusion of the General Electric Company, such cases will be reported to the Director, Procurement and Supply Division, NASA Headquarters, within 24 hours. These reports will contain the following:

(1) A description of the procurement, including the extent of available competition;

(2) A citation of the pertinent provisions of this Circular; and

(3) Any additional information to justify the applicability of the restriction to the particular case.

c. Action taken in accordance with this Circular should be expedited and the General Electric Company notified promptly in order to permit the company either to submit a timely proposal or to be advised of its ineligibility prior to investing in a proposal effort.

d. Contracting officers will ensure that all of their major prime contractors under the Apollo Program have copies of this NASA Circular, as this Circular supersedes previous instructions on this subject (see paragraph 7). (Local reproduction of this Circular is authorized for this purpose only.)

7. RECISION

This Circular supersedes the following:

a. The NASA Headquarters (BR) TWX on this subject sent to the Directors of all field installations on December 17, 1962; and

b The NASA Headquarters (BR) letter on this subject sent to the procurement officers of all field installations on March 1, 1963.

8. EFFECTIVE DATE

This Circular is effective April 16, 1963.

ALBERT F. SIEPERT, Director of Administration.

The committee stands adjourned.

(Whereupon, at 12:05 p.m., the subcommittee adjourned.)

1964 NASA AUTHORIZATION

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10, 1963

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND ASTRONAUTICS,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON APPLICATIONS AND

TRACKING AND DATA ACQUISITION,

Washington, D.C.

The subcommittee met at 9:30 a.m. in room 304, House Office Building, Hon. William Fitts Ryan (chairman), presiding. Mr. RYAN. The committee will come to order.

Today the subcommittee continues hearings on that part of the NASA budget request related to the NASA communications satellite program.

For fiscal year 1963, NASA has programed $43,715,000 for research and development of communications satellites. NASA is requesting $51,100,000 for the same purpose in fiscal 1964.

In order to evaluate NASA's budget request, the subcommittee snould review the total national effort in communications satellites. We have already questioned NASA about the policy questions implicit in turning over to a private profit making corporation the benefits of publicly financed research and development. We intend to pursue this matter further when the president of the Communications Satellite Corp. appears before the subcommittee.

Today we will look into the communications satellite program of the Department of Defense. We are concerned lest there be duplication of effort between the Department of Defense and NASA. Are the two programs coordinated? What relationship, if any, is there between the Department of Defense and the Communications Satellite Corp.?

I hope that the Department of Defense is going to discuss in detail with us the system which is now under development under that department.

This morning we have the pleasure of having with us John H. Rubel, Assistant Secretary of Defense, the Office of Defense Research and Engineering.

Mr. Secretary, it is a pleasure to welcome you to the subcommittee today. I understand, Mr. Rubel, you have a prepared statement. Would you like to present that to us?

Mr. RUBEL. I think it might be useful if I did, although if you would rather that I didn't, I would be happy to forego that.

Mr. PELLY. It is not very long. I don't see why he shouldn't go ahead and read the statement.

3267

STATEMENT OF JOHN H. RUBEL, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE. (DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF DEFENSE RESEARCH AND ENGINEERING)

Mr. RUBEL. Mr. Chairman, gentlemen: I am very happy to be here today to bring you up to date on activities in the defense communications satellite program. With the understanding that you wish to keep the statement and meeting from becoming too long, I shall omit the historical background information and simply suggest to the newer members of the committee that it was reviewed in considerable detail in my statement before the House Science and Astronautics Committee on August 17, 1962.

The defense communications satellite program is an R. & D. program directed at the development and demonstration of a military communications satellite system to be integrated into and to assist in meeting the communications requirements of the defense communications system (DCS). As I will explain in somewhat more detail later in my statement, we are currently endeavoring to definitize the character and scope of the program; the decision to proceed with full scale development has not been yet made. When it is and I wish to make this important point at the very beginning the defense communication satellite project will be undertaken to supplement other communication systems and capabilities, and to furnish military capabilities that cannot be acquired by any other means, or which can be supplied more efficiently and cheaply by means of a defense communication satellite system.

Today, about half of the long-line communication capacity of the Defense Department is leased from the commercial common carriers. The other half is supplied by special systems to fulfill unique military needs. The defense communication satellite system would augment military capabilities in this second category. The developments we contemplate would not alter in anyway the historic policy of the Defense Department with respect to the utilization of many other means for communication and leasing lines from private sources. These policies will continue to apply, of course, to communication capacities made available in the future by the worldwide satellite system to be created and operated by the Communication Satellite Corp.

This DOD policy toward satellite communications was set forth and widely promulgated in the statement of September 7, 1961. entitled "Industry-DOD Cooperation in Satellite Based Telecommunication." to which I have testified on earlier occasions before the Science and Astronautics Committee.

Toward the end of encouraging the rapid development and provision of commercial satellite communications facilities, the DOD is committed to the provision of technical support, advice and assistance to the efforts of private enterprise in the development of its system However, this support is, and is expected to continue, in the form of furnishing information and technology as available, as a bonus product of the efforts of the DOD in its own behalf. No significant expenditures of DOD money, resources or effort are required or contemplated to provide this support.

Were the DOD called upon to provide material support (such as boosters and launch facilities) arrangements would be made to compensate the Government.

As I have noted, and as expressed in the White House policy statement of July 24, 1961, where the need for separate systems with characteristics peculiar to their application arises, projects must be supported to meet those needs, and the objectives of the defense communications satellite program are to develop that communications satellite system required to meet requirements peculiar to military applications which cannot be met by commercial means.

Any DOD operational system must be designed to provide longhaul trunks for the DCA, and must satisfy the requirements of the military for privacy, reliability, security, ECM resistance, access to or availability from remote or dispersed areas and applicability to and between mobile units. Some of these features, such as privacy for example, are not unique to satellite-based telecommunication systems. They can and do apply equally to communication by cable, radio, or other means.

Other features, such as availability of communications in remote areas, are advantages offered only by a satellite system.

In short, a satellite system for defense needs to be assessed on two somewhat independent grounds; first, how does it compete with other ways of doing the same job; and second, what needs can it, and it alone, fulfill, and at what cost? Two examples of such unique needs are these:

1. The first priority and most essential requirement of the military is for a very few highly survivable fully controlled circuits interconnecting a number of strategically important headquarters or installations, globally deployed. These circuits must have terminals under exclusive military control, locatable with flexibility, independent of commercial economic considerations and in many cases away from commercial and target areas.

2. An important military requirement is for the wide band data and information transmission capability and other characteristics necessary to provide for noncatastrophic degradation in the face of a hostile electromagnetic environment.

These examples, and these are only two examples, illustrate some basic differences between the characteristics of a commercial communications satellite system and the military communication requirements for the critical transattack and postattack periods. The commercial system will ultimately carry the very large bulk of day-to-day Government communications. However, to be economically feasible a commercial system must rely on high capacity links, between very active terminals in or near population concentrations. The commercial system will expect to operate in a legally assigned and protected frequency environment, and will carry a programed and predictable load.

The defense communications satellite program as currently defined was established by the Secretary of Defense on May 23, 1962, to include a medium altitude random orbit system and a lightweight synchronous system. I would like to clarify that.

The lightweight synchronous experiment is the Syncom I in which we are doing the ground part and the NASA is doing the airborne part. I will come to that later.

The organization for program management is as follows:

The Defense Communications Agency is responsible for overall program direction and coordination under the Director of Defense Research and Engineering.

DCA-Defense Communications Agency- is responsible for coordinating Army and Air Force activities and for the identification, evaluation, and resolution of interface problems between their two areas and for the interface between the Com-Sat system as a communication facility and the defense communications system. The Air Force is responsible for all the space portions of military communications satellite systems, including space vehicles, payloads, boosters, and upper stages.

The Air Force is responsible for the launch, for injection into orbit, for orbital control, and for diagnostic R. & D. telemetry. The Army is responsible for the development, procurement, and management of the ground communication complex. The Navy and its satellite communications ship are under Army management in the R. & D. phase of the program, but the ship is primarily dedicated at this time to the Syncom I program. It will also be adapted later on to the intermediate altitude system.

We have turned our attention to the medium altitude, random orbit system, which we believe has the best likelihood of early achieve

ment.

The first objective of the DOD communications satellite R. & D. program is to demonstrate the feasibility of establishment and operation of such a system.

This system is intended to provide a means for conducting system research, development testing and evaluation, training and attaining of experience in the operation and utilization of a communications satellite system, and for working out in practice the concepts and designs on which the project will be started when approved for fullscale development.

Early in its establishment, even before it is operational in a conventional sense, it will have the capability to provide in large part the minimum essential intercontinental command and control circuits required for survival in emergencies. This capability is an essential element of its requirement.

In addition, the design and development criteria provide that this R. & D. system will be compatible with conventional military communications means, and it is intended that the system be capable of becoming fully operational with the least cost and delay after R. & D. feasibility is successfully demonstrated.

With a view to future economy, the ground environment to be developed for the medium altitude system will be designed to work with other satellite communications systems which may follow. Terminals to be developed will be capable of interconnection with terminals and centrals of the defense communications system. The requirements for a control center and a concept of operational control are to undergo a program definition phase study.

The contemplated system of control would utilize the many satellites and ground stations to create a stable system of links and trunks always available to a potential user, even though the satellites are continuously in motion and in a changing relationship to ground stations and to each other.