Captain CAMPBELL. Mr. Chairman, the most remarkable new set of problems that we have has been due to the continuance of the test suspension. We have been closed off from going into the full-scale laboratory that the proving grounds represented, and as a result we have had to reorient our research program to attempt to obtain information to meet critical service needs in the field of weapons effects through laboratory, simulation, and computational work.

Mr. MAHON. Colonel, do you have anything to add to that?

Colonel LEDFORD. No, sir, except that during the last 2 years we have developed a DOD-wide coordinated program in this effort, at the direction of the Secretary of Defense, in an attempt to make up for the lack of full-scale testing.

Mr. FORD. Would the chairman yield?

Mr. MAHON. Yes.

Mr. FORD. The general impression would be that because we are no longer having tests that this Agency's work ought to diminish substantially. I recall 7 or 8 years ago when this budget was considered, you had a long list of projects. We went into the advance funding, we went into the current funding, we got the results of your tests and how much they cost. Under the current situation we cannot see anything as concrete as that. Now, why under these circumstances do you need just about as much, if not more than you used to get?

General BOOTH. On the contrary, sir. I think our work has increased. Testing was not entirely our function. It was also a function of the Atomic Energy Commission.

Mr. FORD. You used to come up and justify the budget.

General BOOTH. For the logistic support of it, sir, and for weapons effects tests.

Mr. FORD. But the budget as I remember was about this size or bigger and now, with the testing ceased, we get a budget request of about the same amount.

General BOOTH. You will notice, sir, that our request for Research development test and evaluation funds for new weapons effects research has increased materially. This is due to the suspension of testing. The laboratory work that we are doing to replace the testing is now a major item.

Mr. FORD. What are we getting for this extra money?

General BOOTH. We have some 350 projects, sir, to try to get the answers that otherwise might be sought in full scale tests.

Mr. FORD. Can you give us any feel for what you are getting? Is it successful, is it unsuccessful?

General BOOTH. We think it is going along quite well, sir. I understand that in industry, for example, if they get back a useful result from 5 percent of what they put into research they feel that this is pretty good.

Mr. FORD. A payoff of 5 percent in this business is a pretty small percentage where survival is involved.

General BOOTH. Yes, sir. We are in an unknown field of research, in basic things that we have not dealt with before. We feel we are getting answers to many of these problems. We are getting answers to some which will perhaps be better for us than what we would get on a test. We do not visualize that if we resume testing that our laboratory work will cease. We figure it will go down about 50 percent.

Mr. FORD. If all of a sudden, March 31, testing was resumed, what would happen to your budget?

General BOOTH. We would need about $100 million more to take up testing.

Mr. FORD. $100 million more for the next 12 months?

General BOOTH. Yes, sir.

Mr. FORD. That would be $167,911,000.

General BOOTH. These are atomic tests, sir, that we would be conducting. Yes, sir.

Mr. FORD. If the word were given to you right today to resume your operations in the testing field March 31, how soon could you go and what would you get done the first 3 months?

General BOOTH. Development and proof testing is an Atomic Energy Commission function, and we think they could start testing within 3 to 6 months; as for weapons effects tests, which would be conducted by the Department of Defense, we could start underground tests in from 6 to 12 months and high altitude tests in from 12 to 18 months. We could start detection tests within about 6 weeks, sir.

Mr. SIKES. I thought you said the AEC conducted tests.
General BOOTH. The proof and development tests, sir.
Mr. SIKES. What would you need the $100 million for?
General BOOTH. For weapons effects tests.

Mr. SIKES. In view of that, what do you now do? Do you simulate tests?

General BOOTH. Yes, sir. That is all we can do.

Mr. SIKES. That is your job.

General BOOTH. We conduct laboratory experiments.

Mr. SIKES. What are those laboratory experiments? Is that a guessing game?

General BOOTH. No, sir. I would not think so.

Mr. SIKES. Let's try to round this out.

General BOOTH. Colonel Ledford can answer your question.

Colonel LEDFORD. In order to meet the requirements of the military services, which are established and approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we employ a weapons effects board, which consists of a steering group and 12 technical panels. These technical panels have memberships from the service laboratories, industry, universities, et cetera, who recommend logical and feasible research programs in order to come up with the answers.

Mr. SIKES. All right.

Give us an example.

Colonel LEDFORD. An example of the military requirements or a specific research program, sir?

Mr. SIKES. Both.

Colonel LEDFORD. A first and most important requirement is to determine the effects of nuclear detonations as a function of yield, altitude, duration, frequency, area affected

Mr. SIKES. You are telling me you do that without tests? Is it done by process of deduction, by scientists getting together and theorizing on the outcome?

Colonel LEDFORD. Yes, sir. We attempt to form theories or a theoretical model. For the remaining part, since we are denied full scale testing, we attempt to test these theories and the theoretical models out in the laboratory.

Mr. SIKES. What are your actual responsibilities as an agency? Colonel LEDFORD. Our responsibilities in this field are to provide the answers on the effects of nuclear detonations.

Mr. SIKES. Now tell us how you are going to do that without nuclear detonations?

Captain CAMPBELL. May I give an example or two? Let us take a Navy problem of what happens under water when a nuclear detonation takes place. We are able in the laboratory, with a large centrifuge, to simulate a water environment under the pressure that would occur several hundred feet down.

Mr. SIKES. And you do not need to resume atomic testing?

Captain CAMPBELL. In this case we detonate a small HE charge inside the centrifuge and measure the result of this particular charge as it affects the pressure, the gas bubble as it expands, and the theory of the propagation of damage producing phenomena that we are interested in.

Mr. SIKES. That is a good answer. Can you learn as much that way as you would with an actual atomic test?

Captain CAMPBELL. In some cases we can learn as much and perhaps do even a little better because this can be repeated.

Mr. SIKES. Then why do you need atomic tests?

Captain CAMPBELL. In the real world, the nuclear detonation is of an order several hundred million times greater than this miniscule high explosive event in the laboratory.

We need to refer to the real world to prove the theorizing in the laboratory. Of course, we have a great body of knowledge which was accumulated up to October 31, 1958. We are continuing to draw upon that. However, this does not go into new environments where our problems now lie, and this is one of the greatest difficulties that we are facing.

We must deal with the NIKE-ZEUS as a weapons system, without knowing what the kill mechanism would be of the NIKE-ZEUS against an incoming enemy missile in a vacuum that is represented by the space environment.

We have theories about this, but they have not been proved.

SHOCK TUBE TESTS

Mr. SIKES. I like the way you talk. You are a man who obviously knows what you are trying to do. Now, what are some of the things that your agency has done in the fiscal 1961 budget to justify the many millions of dollars that were appropriated to it for fiscal 1961?

year

Captain CAMPBELL. Mr. Sikes, I have here the documentation of each of these projects, with the details that go with them in the current year. I will turn here and pick one at random and see if it will shed some light on your question. This one has to do with shock tube recording instrument improvement. A shock tube is a device which is a little large for the usual laboratory-it would be about the size of the boiler of an old-fashioned railroad engine. Inside the shock tube there is a core around which is wound prima cord. This is high explosive in ribbon form. It can be detonated all at once to create a shock contained inside the tube. Then through the orifices in the

tube we expose specimens to determine the effects of this shock upon things that we are interested in.

Now, I will read the brief of this subtask with its background history and progress, which is short, and I hope that it might serve to answer your question in one example:

The requirement is to improve the capability of the shock tube facility to stimulate the blast effects of a nuclear explosion

Mr. SIKES. Why is that necessary and what did it cost?

Captain CAMPBELL. It makes a difference if you are trying to design a structure which will withstand the effects of nuclear explosions upon our country. We are theorizing upon knowledge, which perhaps is inadequate.

Mr. SIKES. Where is this information to be used?

Captain CAMPBELL. Sir, it affects the amount that we will spend to harden our communications, command, and control centers, and the missile sites that we are building, and this, I might add, is a several billion dollar problem.

Mr. SIKES. We are talking about hardening to a hundred or 500 p.s.i. What more information do we need on that?

Captain CAMPBELL. This is exactly the area in which this inquiry lies.

We have said that we will harden to 100 p.s.i., and we have gone out to spend several billions of dollars to build, let us say, missile sites, but we do not know at this time whether we have hardened to 100 p.s.i., or perhaps more, because of our very conservative approach to the design of these structures in the absence of this kind of knowledge.

Mr. SIKES. You are going to determine this by laboratory tests? Captain CAMPBELL. In the absence of the full-scale laboratory this is the only means available to the United States to go forward in acquiring this information. We must calculate and simulate, and create facilities such as this shock tube.

Mr. SIKES. What does this particular project cost?

Captain CAMPBELL. In this particular case the amount is $200,000, which we are spending this fiscal year.

Mr. SIKES. How was it spent-by contract?

Captain CAMPBELL. We have given the Air Force Special Weapons Center the task of conducting the research in this problem. They, in turn, are authorized to go to private industry for the needs that they have for material, for people, and for subsidiary studies.

Mr. FLOOD. If the gentleman will yield, I want to dig a canal across Nicaragua. I am concerned about two things: utilization of fissionable material for the excavation; secondly, the fallout upon fauna, flora, and human beings. Could such a project be intelligently approached by your mission? I am in a hurry. I cannot wait to dig it with picks and shovels and trucks. I want to dig the canal with fissionable materials. I am concerned about that, and secondly, with blast fallout upon flora, fauna, animal life, human beings across Nicaragua. I want to build it last night.

Captain CAMPBELL. May I say that the peaceful uses of atomic energy are outside of our competence.

Mr. FLOOD. This is not a peaceful use. This is a military use.

Captain CAMPBELL. I will answer that it is entirely feasible to use atomic weapons or devices to assist such a task as you envision, without the necessity of creating intolerable fallout, provided that the design of the explosions is such that they are mostly contained below the surface of the earth, and therefore they do not vent unduly to the atmosphere and spread radiation and fission products.

COORDINATION WITH MILITARY SERVICES

Mr. SIKES. Who develops the projects?

General BOOTH. We do working with the military services.
Mr. SIKES. Who approves them?

Geenral BOOTH. The Director of Defense Research and Engineering, Dr. York, sir.

Mr. FORD. Is your budget and R.D.T. & E. separate or how does it tie in with the services' budget?

General BOOTH. We coordinate the program, sir. We get the requirements from the services and develop this research, test and evaluation program with them. We present the budget and defend it to the Department of Defense and the Bureau of the Budget.

PROJECTS COMPLETED AND PROJECTS INITIATED IN FISCAL YEAR 1961

Mr. SIKES. How many projects were completed or scheduled for completion in fiscal year 1961 and how many projects are to be initiated in fiscal year 1961?

General BOOTH. We have some 350 going now, sir. Do you have that information, Colonel Ledford?

Colonel LEDFORD. No, sir.

General BOOTH. We can get that information and furnish it. We do not have it at hand.

Mr. SIKES. I would like to have for the record a listing of the projects completed in fiscal year 1960 and the projects to be completed in fiscal year 1961. I would like to have a listing of the projects to be initiated in fiscal year 1961, possibly for the committee's own use and not for publication, but it would be interesting to me to know more about what the agency does.

(Classified information was furnished to the committee.)

General BOOTH. This is in the field of research you are talking about?

Mr. SIKES. Yes. What other fields are you in?

General BOOTH. Training, damage assessment, control and operation of the national stockpile sites, central inventory control of atomic weapons, and atomic weapons development. Research is only one of our activities, sir.

Mr. SIKES. How many other activities do you control?

General BOOTH. Our field command and the Sandia Base. This last is an installation which conducts training and serves as our operations center.

Mr. SIKES. You are the controlling agent?

General BOOTH. Yes, sir. We are responsible for the operation of them.