civil defense program, and as our intelligence clearly shows, a vigorous research program on ballistic missile defense. This program covers many of the areas which our SDI Program will address. By all indications, these Soviet emphases on strategic defense will continue into the future.

The SDI is needed to respond to the Soviet programs. But that, of course, is not the only, nor even the principal purpose of the strategic defense initiative. The principal purpose for the program is to determine whether we can reduce and eventually eliminate the awful threat posed by ballistic missiles, whether we can establish a more secure strategic relationship in which the role of nuclear offensive arms will continue to diminish in importance.

Now, in anticipating the possibilities for effective ballistic missile defenses, we recognize full well that there would be a transition period during which the effectiveness of defenses would materialize gradually. By properly phasing this transition to increasing defensive capabilities, we can actually enhance deterrence and can avoid creating new risks of strategic instability. Effective defenses against ballistic missiles can have the potential of complementing significant reductions in offensive forces. And to the extent that the defensive systems can reduce the effectiveness and, thus, the value of ballistic missiles, they can also increase the incentive for negotiated reductions.

Because we do not view strategic defense as a means of establishing military superiority, deployment of defensive systems, in our view, would most usefully be done in a cooperative manner, coordinated between our alliance and the Soviet Union.

But our commitment to work on such a cooperative transition should in no way be interpreted as giving the Soviets a veto over our possible future deployments of strategic defense.

Mr. Chairman, I could continue to discuss the strategic and political implications of SDI in some detail, but I think it might be more useful to you and your colleagues if I responded to your specific questions. I do not want to take up your time by repeating what you know while failing to address issues that are of concern

to you.

Let me just quickly sketch out some of the important issues. One, if and when deployment becomes feasible and should be decided upon, how it might be phased.

Two, the kind of protection that would be provided by initial deployments of defensive systems.

Three, the likely Soviet reaction to possible defensive deployments. Will the Soviet Union be motivated to cooperate with us, or to seek to negate our defenses?

Four, the dual impact of missile defenses for the security of our allies: the implications of growing Soviet missile defenses, on the one hand; the potential benefits of defenses that protect the territory of our allies, on the other hand.

Five, the impact of strategic defense on the long-term military competition between East and West.

Lastly, our choices in nuclear strategy raise broader political and moral questions. The President has addressed those eloquently on many occasions. As he put it last week, in his address to the

United Nations General Assembly, "the United States seeks to escape the prison of mutual terror.'

So let me stop at that point.

Senator WILSON. Thank you, Dr. Ikle.

We will hear from General Abrahamson, then open it up to questions.

STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. JAMES A. ABRAHAMSON, DIRECTOR, STRATEGIC DEFENSE INITIATIVE ORGANIZATION

General ABRAHAMSON. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, it is a privilege to come back and to present to you some of the key questions that many have privately asked me and seem to come out again and again about the program priority and about its progress. And so I will touch briefly on the salient points regarding the SDI. In addition to that, we do have an unclassified version of some of our system results which could be available, but I will allow you to make that judgment after I briefly read-and I apologize for reading, but I think it is most helpful if I read this short statement.

Since I last appeared, we have seen real progress in the program as well as changes. Because of cuts to our budget request, we have had to make some very difficult decisions with respect to technologies that will be more fully explored. We simply cannot afford to conduct the comprehensive, complete program of research that had been initially structured and afford that in the face of these reductions. At the same time, we have experienced significant breakthroughs in some areas which have also given reason to reorient certain of these priorities.

I would like to briefly highlight some of our program accomplishments and then discuss in a little more depth our objectives and our priorities.

Over the past year we have seen a program initiated with the myriad of problems associated with startup, combined with the tribulations attendant to a program of great magnitude and rapid growth. Some felt that it would not be possible to execute such a program, that the funding ramps were too great, that it was not feasible to absorb increases as budgeted. Comparisons with other programs of national priority belie these assertions. Growth in the SDI, even at the requested levels, let alone the authorized levels, is certainly no greater than at most points, and in most points less than growth in some of these like programs.

I have included in the testimony a comparative funding chart that goes back to the Manhattan project that showed in the first 3 years of that program there was an overall growth of over 345 percent, a very dramatic increase. In the Apollo Program, in the first 4 years of that, I indicate the yearly steps of 570 percent. And our requested growth, by comparison, was 250 percent. At the authorization level it is substantially less.

Now, in order to be more specific rather than merely comparative, I go on to address the business activities that we have proceeded within the first year. We maintain an obligation rate for the SDI that exceeded other defense agencies throughout the year. Ninety-five percent of our program was obligated by the end of the fiscal year. This is a particularly noteworthy accomplishment that was underscored by the General Accounting Office's complimentary review and findings for Congress that validated this performance earlier in the year.

Obligations are not the whole story, however. Expenditure rates compared favorably with other research agencies, and I would like to underscore that research expenditure rates are different from large, ongoing programs that go from year to year, and other activities within the Department of Defense. For the year ending September 30, expenditures for the SDI as they were allocated and combined and collected at the top level in DOD were approximately 43 percent. We expect rates for activities similarly oriented toward research such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Air Force Strategic R&D Account to be slightly less than that of the SDI.

But even at that, we feel that our performance by this measure is better than the figures would indicate. Whereas obligations occur when contracts are executed or projects accepted, expenditures basically occur after consumption and sometimes years later. This is

due to possible delays in billing, either by subcontractors to primes or to the Government directly, or delays in the accounting systems, delays in the payments process, and/or delays in our final data summaries at the top level. Because of this, we feel that the traditional measures, although important, are inadequate to reflect the effective use of our resources.

And if I could depart from the script, we saw that in the spring, and we began to take some special action with our various agents throughout the field, and to examine our accounting structure and our accounting systems to make sure that we did truly understand the right measures and that we could understand what our status truly was. Consequently, we are looking toward the use of a financial parameter that is much more closely related to performance for this kind of program. We call this measure noncancellable commitments. They are defined as costs incurred during a given period representing liabilities for goods and services received, other assets acquired, and performance accepted, whether or not payment has been made because, of course, at some point they must be made and they must be made against that fiscal year's appropriation.

We have applied this standard over the second half of this past fiscal year, and then a much more dynamic picture emerges. It is only an estimate at this point, but we estimate that nearly 90 percent of our funding has been dedicated to these noncancellable commitments. And I would emphasize that this is truly an exceptional accomplishment for a program of this scale in its first full year. I would also hasten to add that the credit rests not only with the program office but more importantly with the hundreds of agencies, firms, institutions and along with the thousands of individuals across America that are dedicated to the success of the President's initiative.

Now, I would like to touch on just a few of our significant technical achievements of the past year. We have had some genuine breakthroughs, and we have seen progress beyond that which was expected. For example, in the directed energy field, work with atmospheric compensation technologies has progressed to the point where it appears that the potential for large, effective groundbased lasers is very real. This clearly has important ramifications on the difficulty question of survivability as well as lethality. Those are two of the program's more important criteria because of the increased feasibility of ground basing as an effective approach for such defensive options.

Research with free electron lasers has progressed far more rapidly than anticipated with the possibility of jumping_years ahead of what had been foreseen as recently as this spring. In addition, our test last month of the MIRACL chemical laser, the free world's highest average power laser, against a static Titan booster section, demonstrated graphically the lethality of this technology.

Similarly, we have had some very encouraging results from work with kinetic energy. These technologies are the more mature and hold the potential for some earlier options with respect to defensive systems. Electromagnetic launchers, or rail guns, may offer the possibility of firing small projectiles at extremely high speed that would home on and destroy a booster or warhead by impact. The ability to input high levels of power to these devices has been dem

onstrated far sooner than we expected. This means that heavier projectiles could be used and/or higher speeds attained. Overall, our work with rail guns has progressed more rapidly than we anticipated. Once more, all of this is a tribute to the dedication of the people in the field who make such results possible.

While I would like to continue enumerating our technical accomplishments, it suffices to say that they have been sufficient to cause a reprioritization in a number of our program efforts. At the same time, budget cuts have caused major, and I would emphasize major, revisions in our program. At the current authorization level, the program has been severely affected, and considerable changes have been forced. The result has been that the program has had to make premature down selection of certain key technologies. That is with great regret, I would add. Those are many promising technologies with teams of people that believe in what they are doing that have plans that will be affected, and it is with great regret, but we have to move into backup technologies. This will significantly increase our program risk and in some cases it will cause program slippage and delay completion, and certainly increase total cost.

For example, reduction in the number of contractors in any individual project will decrease competition and reduce our program scope. These reductions have left the program at a minimum level to study the complete requirements of a future strategic defense system.

Against this backdrop, then, I would like to review our program objectives and discuss our priorities as they are currently defined to support these objectives.

Overall, the SDI Program objectives are to develop a comprehensive R&D program to demonstrate key technologies for defense against ballistic missiles; to provide the basis for an informed full scale engineering development decision in the early 1990's; to protect an option of a near-term deployment of a limited ABM capability as a possible response to Soviet ABM breakout; to emphasize nonnuclear kill mechanisms; and last, but certainly not least, to provide an arms control environment conducive to substantial reductions in offensive nuclear weapons; and certainly to coordinate the SDI with our other defense programs and to support other strategic defense missions.

I would like to stress that there are many technologies and some specific programs that are required in other portions of our defense programs that are not funded in any other line except in the SDI line. Now, in order to effectively meet these objectives, the SDIO must expand and accelerate the progress of relevant technologies. It must identify and evaluate the potential effectiveness of candidate BMD defenses that could be assembled and deployed from these technologies while providing a basis for showing how such options could be operated and maintained to do the job. This must be done in the face of the very demanding criteria of cost effectiveness and survivability. Finally, all efforts must be conducted in full accordance with the applicable U.S. treaty obligations.

To accomplish these ends, I have established priorities for the SDI to best use our available resources. These priorities serve as the basis to guide my directors, as well as the activities in the serv