STRATEGIC DEFENSE INITIATIVE

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1985

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON STRATEGIC AND

THEATER NUCLEAR FORCES,

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES,

Washington, DC.

TECHNICAL ISSUES

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 3:08 p.m., in room SR-222, Russell Senate Office Building, Senator John W. Warner (chairman) presiding.

Members present: Senators Warner, Thurmond, Cohen, Wilson, Nunn, Hart, and Exon.

Staff present: Alan R. Yuspeh, general counsel; Robert F. Bott, Douglas R. Graham, William E. Hoehn, Jr., and George K. Johnson, Jr., professional staff members; Colleen M. Getz and Russell C. Miller, research assistants; and Karen A. Love, staff assistant.

Also present: Romie L. Brownlee, assistant to Senator Warner; James M. Bodner, assistant to Senator Cohen; Mark J. Albrecht, assistant to Senator Wilson; Allan W. Cameron, assistant to Senator Denton; Janne E. Nolan, assistant to Senator Hart; Jeffrey B. Subko, assistant to Senator Exon; John B. Keeley, assistant to Senator Levin; and Gregory B. Craig, assistant to Senator Kennedy.

OPENING STATEMENT BY SENATOR JOHN W. WARNER,
CHAIRMAN

Senator WARNER. The subcommittee convenes in open session this afternoon to continue to receive testimony on the President's Strategic Defense Initiative [SDI] Program. In this afternoon's hearing, which is the fifth in the series, we will hear the views of private witnesses on some of the vital technical issues related to the SDI program.

Our first witness this afternoon is Dr. Solomon J. Buchsbaum, the executive vice president for customer systems at AT&T Bell Laboratories. In addition to his distinguished career in private industry, Dr. Buchsbaum has served this country with distinction in a number of advisory capacities over the years.

For example, he has served on the Defense Science Board since 1972 and is now a senior consultant to that body, and he has been the chairman of the White House Science Council since 1982.

Dr. Buchsbaum, it is my pleasure to welcome you this afternoon on behalf of the subcommittee.

We are going to change one thing here. It was the intent of the Chair to have an additional witness on this first panel. However, due to scheduling difficulties, we were unable to do so. The Chair will continue to make every effort to ensure that all points of view are represented in these hearings.

Our second panel will focus specifically on the computer and battle management requirements associated with the SDI Program. Our witnesses are: Dr. Danny Cohen, the director of the systems division at the Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California; and Dr. David Parnas who is Landsdowne professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Victoria, British Columbia.

Thank you, Doctor, for a very long journey. Dr. Cohen is the chairman of the SDIO panel on computing in support of Battle Management [BM/C3], commonly referred to as the Eastport Group. It was from this panel that Dr. Parnas resigned several months ago.

Both of our witnesses are recognized for their expertise in the areas of computers and computer software.

On behalf of the subcommittee, I would also like to welcome you gentlemen this afternoon.

Now we will hear from each witness and at the conclusion of all witnessses providing their direct testimony to the subcommittee, we will then engage in such questions as members of the subcommittee wish to propound.

Senator Hart.

Senator HART. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I join you in welcoming these witnesses.

First, I want to stress that this subcommittee, indeed the entire Congress, is being asked to perform an extraordinary role here in interpreting the SDI. Most of us are not scientists or technicians. We are being asked to finance one of the most complex, if not the most complex, technical undertaking in the history of the human

race.

As we struggle as nonexperts, nonscientists, to understand what it is we are supposed to be funding, it seems to me hearings such as this become increasingly critical. In particular those that are open to the public are important because it does give some members of the public and, through the press, others, an opportunity to engage with those of us who must make these policies or share in them, this process. This is a process of nonexperts making their way through a very dense forest, encountering all sorts of strange flora and fauna and trying to decide whether to continue through the forest and if so, in what direction and at what speed.

It is our hope that these witnesses, as well as others, will help us determine those questions.

I thank the Chair again for scheduling these hearings. Senator WARNER. I thank the distinguished Senator for assisting in the arrangements for this panel.

Senator Thurmond.

Senator THURMOND. Mr. Chairman, I have no statement.

I want to say I am very pleased to be here at this hearing. I congratulate you on holding this hearing. I think it is a benefit to the public to understand more about this strategic defense initiative

which the President has advocated and which I feel is very important to the security of this Nation.

Senator WARNER. Thank you.

Senator Wilson.

Senator WILSON. Mr. Chairman, I will not take the time of the subcommittee.

I again commend you and Senator Hart on these important hearings.

Senator WARNER. Thank you very much.

Now we will proceed to receive the direct testimony from each of the witnesses. Dr. Buchsbaum.

STATEMENT OF SOLOMON J. BUCHSBAUM, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, CUSTOMER SYSTEMS, AT&T BELL LABORATORIES Mr. BUCHSBAUM. Thank you very much Mr. Chairman.

With your permission, Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit my written testimony for the record. It is rather long. I do not propose to read it. If I may, I would like to summarize it. My summary will take about 10 minutes.

As you indicated, my name is Sol Buchsbaum. I am employed by AT&T Bell Laboratories [Bell Labs] as executive vice president, Customer Systems. AT&T, our parent company, does a lot of business with the Federal Government. The bulk of the business involves communications systems and services provided to both civilian and military agencies of the Federal Government.

Also included are specially designed systems for the Department of Defense, particularly the US Navy. Much of that business is supported by research and development done by Bell Labs, and the people doing that work report to me.

During the 1970's Bell Labs was the prime contractor for the Safeguard project. And perhaps it is worth mentioning that a decade earlier Bell Labs people, operating in Bellcomm, a company founded by AT&T to assist NASA, were responsible for the systems engineering of Project Apollo that put our men on the Moon.

Bell Labs has no contract with the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization [SDIO], but we do support one of SDIO's systems architecture contractors, as well as ballistic missile defense work for the Secretary of the Army.

However, my familiarity with the Strategic Defense Initiative [SDI] Program comes not so much through my work at Bell Labs as through three other activities of mine. I serve on General Abrahamson's strategic defense initiative advisory committee, which has been briefed in some detail on SDI projects and their management.

I chair the White House Science Council, which has also been interested in and exposed to SDI and its program.

And, lastly, I am now a senior consultant to the Defense Science Board, having once been its chairman.

During my years with the Defense Science Board, I was particularly interested in command and control. For example, a few years ago I chaired a Defense Science Board task force on Command and Control Systems Management.

In appearing before your subcommittee today, however, I do not represent or speak on behalf of any of these entities or bodies. I am testifying as an individual. The views I will present are those of Sol Buchsbaum, a citizen, hopefully an informed citizen.

Let me say at the outset that I recognize that the strategic defense initiative faces enormous challenges and problems which I do not minimize. However, a vision of the world in which the two superpowers have agreed to constrain their respective offensive nuclear forces to levels much lower than today's and, at the same time, have also agreed to protect themselves and their allies against nuclear attack with defensive systems-a protective shield-of reasonable effectiveness is an attractive one. Surely, that would be a more stable world than the one in which we live today. Therefore, I believe it behooves the United States to do the research to determine whether or not we can develop the technology that such a protective shield would require.

No one can deny that this is a complex and difficult task. But I for one am heartened by the progress that General Abrahamson and his people are making. The President made his speech raising the possibility of such a defensive system in March 1983, less than 3 years ago.

The SDIO has been in business for only about 2 years. During that time, however, progress in its programs has been made in a number of areas and I discuss these further in my written statement.

I want to address particularly the challenges of integrating the various elements into a complete system whose parts work coherently to accomplish the SDI mission. A key function that must be considered from the very beginning in coming up with this integrated system is battle management and its associated command, control and communications, BM/C3 for short.

Here I want to go into some detail because recently BM/C3 has been raised as the area in which we face the greatest-some say impossible challenges.

The battle management/C3 function is basically a problem of information movement and management-involving all SDI elements as well as key human decisionmakers.

The problem is not easy because of the vast quantities of information that must be obtained, processed, and synthesized throughout a large geographically distributed system, and done so quickly. Such a system, it has been estimated, would require tens of millions of lines of software. The issue of software complexity is compounded by the associated needs to test, simulate, modify, and evolve the Battle Management System.

Some critics have specifically questioned if it is possible to generate great quantities of error-free software for the system, and to ensure that it is, indeed, error-free software.

This is the wrong question. Designers of large real-time systems-systems that depend on complex software and hardwareknow that it is impossible to generate great quantities of error-free software.

They also know that major problems in field use of software need not be associated with program bugs. Software is always part of a

larger system that includes hardware, communications, data procedures, and people.

The right question, as well as the key issue, is the broader one of whether the total BM/C3 system can be designed to be robust and resilient in a changing and error-prone environment.

The key, then, is not whether the software contains errors, but how the whole system compensates for such errors as well as for possible subsystem failures. The BM/C3 system must operate continuously and reliably despite any errors or failures. Parts of the system must cover for each other to limit the effect of such problems-and they must do so quickly, typically in milliseconds or seconds.

Can such a large, robust, and resilient system be designed-and not only designed, but built, tested, deployed, operated, and further evolved and improved?

I believe the answer is yes. I seem confident of this answer because most, if not all, of the essential attributes of the BM/C3 system have, I believe, been demonstrated in comparable terrestrial systems.

The system most applicable to the issue at hand is the U.S. Public Telecommunications Network, with which I am quite familiar. The network has attributes that are intrinsic to the BM/C3 System as well.

These include the capabilities for continuous, reliable operation; for fault tolerance and overload control; for evolution in response to changing demands, functions, and advancing technology; for human control over key operations if and as required; for compatibility and interoperability among all systems; and for continuous testing, diagnosis, and maintenance-much of it by remote means. I might say that this network today needs for its operation well over 40 million lines of software.

In other words, the telecommunications network has high reliability, availability, maintainability, and adaptability. And the network achieves these capabilities largely because it is a distributed system that uses redundancies and that uses well-specified, wellcontrolled interfaces in the coupling together of all component systems.

Now, let's imagine for a moment that the switching machines in the network are SDI battle stations; and that everything connected to the network, feeding information into it and requesting actionphones, data terminals, private branch exchanges [PBX's], and so forth corresponds to SDI sensors.

Let's also imagine that the network signaling system that interconnects all switches is the nerve system, the backbone of the SDI communications system.

By the way, these switches, these battle stations, contain large computers. A typical switching system today operates with over 2 million lines of code. The total network needs over 40 million lines of code.

Some network battle stations, each with its own brain, are connected to others directly and some indirectly, but all are interconnected in a hierarchy. And these battle stations can communicate with one another, but not on an equal basis.