Secretary MCNAMARA. Over the long haul I think it would be approximately correct.

Mr. HARDY. If we could return for a minute to this program as outlined on page 190, to see if we can develop how this will work

out

Secretary MCNAMARA. If I may interrupt to say

Mr. HARDY. Yes.

Secretary MCNAMARA. The key, of course, in 1964-that, of course, is what we have-5 percent of 800 ships is 40.

Mr. HARDY. I understand that. That doesn't do a thing in the world about this accumulation

Secretary MCNAMARA. No.

Mr. HARDY. Of ships that are completely substandard.
Secretary MCNAMARA. Yes.

Therefore, the question is: When should that accumulation and in what way should that accumulation be overcome?

Mr. HARDY. That is a very important part of this whole thing. That is one of the things that was graphically portrayed to us when we went aboard these three destroyers at the navy yard. There are a lot of those Weeks-class destroyers that are still in the fleet, as I understand. I don't think anybody would contend that that ship was able to do anything much more than serve as a training ship, and maybe to a moderate degree in antisubmarine warfare. But it is not adaptable to anything else at all. It is not adaptable to any further modern situation.

If we let that condition last very much longer, each year we are operating more ships that are not much more than training ships. Secretary MCNAMARA. Yes.

Therefore, I think we should take these two alternatives and look at the condition of the fleet in each year, with those two programs, and examine them for every category of ships by age in each following year. Mr. HARDY. That one would have no problem with if it weren't for the fact that it takes several years to get a ship back on the line from the time you lay the keel.

Secretary MCNAMARA. Right. I would examine it for the future. We have looked up through 1973. I would be happy to make those papers available.

Mr. HARDY. To follow the procedure by which DOD reaches its conclusions with respect to the Navy's program, I would presume that with respect to this year's program, this was reviewed by some of your staff before it got your approval. Is that right?

Secretary MCNAMARA. Well, the papers came directly down to me and I went over them myself with the Secretary of the Navy and I called on others for information relating to this. I called on the Joint Staff, for example, for some information [deleted] which bore on the question of these nuclear submarines. I called on other portions of my staff, Mr. Korth, Dr. Brown's office, and others, for information on other parts of it.

Mr. HARDY. To all intents and purposes, the decision with respect to this program was worked out between you and Secretary Korth, neither of whom are operating people in the Navy.

Secretary MCNAMARA. No.

Secretary Korth came down. I didn't say he is the only person I I discussed it with. I discussed it with Admiral Anderson at great length.

Mr. HARDY. That is what I meant. participate?

What operating people did

Secretary MCNAMARA. I don't consider Admiral Anderson as on my staff. That is why I didn't mention him. Officially he is Chief of Naval Operations, rather than a member of my staff.

Mr. HARDY. I will let you adopt him to your staff for this purpose,

anyway.

Secretary MCNAMARA. We discussed it at great length.

Mr. HARDY. Then the committee can understand that actually this program was evolved through the decisions between you and, primarily, Secretary Korth and Admiral Anderson?

Secretary MCNAMARA. Yes, that is correct.

I don't wish to leave the impression that Admiral Anderson agrees completely with the program.

Mr. HARDY. That brings up another question:

In the discussion with Mr. Rivers a while ago, I understood you to say that the Navy did agree to make this change, particularly with respect to these three destroyers.

Secretary MCNAMARA. Yes.

Mr. HARDY. But which they haven't asked for.

Secretary MCNAMARA. They asked for two DEG's, and in exchange for the two DEG s, I suggested three DE's.

Mr. HARDY. And they said they would rather have those than the DEG's?

Secretary MCNAMARA. They said they would be quite willing to see the change made.

Mr. HARDY. I am a little bit over my head in this thing. I am like Mr. Rivers, I don't want to get in a numbers discussion with you, but I have a little problem here understanding.

If they would just as soon have had these in the beginning, I don't understand why the operating people didn't ask for them.

Secretary MCNAMARA. It is a question of antisubmarine emphasis versus antiaircraft plus antisubmarines. The three DE's are almost exclusively for antisubmarine warfare. The two DEG's had some desirable capability beyond antisubmarine warfare.

Our chief problem is antisubmarine warfare, and it seemed to me. wise to consider putting in three antisubmarine warfare ships instead of two that had some antiaircraft capability.

Mr. HARDY. I can't disagree with any of these things-they are completely over my head-but I am trying to explore how we arrive at the specific things we have.

In connection with the ship obsolescence, your statement says we ought to not rush into a crash program of ship construction. I think all of us would agree with that. But do I understand from the statement you made a minute ago that you consider that this projected program which you have now set up here on page 190 will avoid ship obsolescence and give you a fleet fully capable of carrying out its mission in the midseventies?

Secretary MCNAMARA. Yes, I do, with certain qualifications. They are related to new types of vessels which the Navy presently has under development, and which have not beein included in the program because they haven't reached a stage of development such as we can be certain that we will wish to deploy them. This relates to amphibious support ships, for example; it relates to a new antisubmarine

warfare-type escort that the Navy is working on. It relates to a number of other new types of ships which the Navy is studying.

If their studies lead to the development of a ship that is so much more effective than ships in the active Navy, we ought to consider adding them to this program that I have outlined. Whether the studies will lead to that I don't know. Until they do, I don't think we should put them in the program.

Mr. HARDY. You would agree that your obsolescence can vary very quickly also if we construe obsolescence to include the ability to meet changing technology?

Secretary MCNAMARA. Yes.

Mr. HARDY. In that connection, some of our ships begin obsolescence almost after they are put into operation?

Secretary MCNAMARA. Oh, yes, but some more rapidly than others. I think that is a critical point. Again it is one reason why I don't wish to rush ahead with a ship construction program simply based on averages. There are certain technologies that are developing very rapidly. Nuclear power is one of them, for example. If nuclear power develops more rapidly than we have anticipated, if its costs become lower than we have estimated, it may be desirable to introduce it to a greater degree into our fleet.

If we do have this rapid obsolescence of some of our existing vessels, it may be desirable to replace them sooner than my program calls for. It would also, I think, drastically change the total composition of the fleet. These are factors that I can't take account of today, but which we will wish to watch as the months go by.

Mr. HARDY. The composition of the fleet could change conceivably rather rapidly if technology changes their mission, weapons systems, and that sort of thing?

Secretary MCNAMARA. Exactly.

Mr. HARDY. Which brings me back again to the question of the old destroyer Weeks. I don't know how many of those we have got. I was impressed by the information we were given at that time as to the percentage of our destroyers made up of that class. Certainly I was not impressed with its capability to really serve any effective combat purpose under today's conditions.

Secretary MCNAMARA. I agree.

Be

The question is, if we had our option, would we replace all of the Weeks class today in one budget, or would it be better not to? fore you can answer that question you have to ask what lies ahead for Weeks class replacement? One of the things that lies ahead is the destroyer type that the Navy is studying, carrying helicopters that may have a much greater antisubmarine warfare potential than, any existing ship has. If we go ahead and replace all the Weeks class in the fiscal 1964 budget and then 2 years later come through with a new type of antisubmarine destroyer, I think that would be a mistake. So that this is a factor that we have taken account of in laying out this replacement program.

Mr. HARDY. I wouldn't disagree with that either.

You have been discussing in your paper here some of the new weapons systems, including the TYPHON. Can we modernize this newest class of destroyer so we can put the TYPHON on it?

Secretary MCNAMARA. There is a TYPHON development associated with destroyers. I can't tell you where it stands right at the

moment. It certainly is not ready for a destroyer at the moment. I am positive of that.

Mr. HARDY. That was my information. We don't have any destroyer that even the most modern of them-that could take that particular system?

Secretary MCNAMARA. We do not.

Mr. HARDY. Which means, again, that the entire destroyer system is going to be obsolete if it becomes necessary that they be equipped with some such system as that?

Secretary MCNAMARA. All that leads me to conclude that we ought to move slowly in this massive ship construction program-and it is massive when it is 21⁄2 times the level that it was in 1961. We ought to move slowly in this program because of this rapidly advancing technology.

Mr. HARDY. There is one other type of ship that I think we ought to talk about a little.

I thought you dismissed this 20 years' life expectancy rather casually once or twice when you said that some of the life could be extended considerably beyond that, and you said that the fact some of the carriers are going to be used for 30 years indicates that this is an incorrect rule. Of course, it would be an incorrect rule if it were applied flatly, but I am not at all sure that is so, that we will have to use some of these carriers that have been modernized for 30 years simply because we will not have anything else.

So it doesn't necessarily mean to me that to meet their mission, their life expectancy would run on into 30 years.

Is that a proper approach or not?

Secretary MCNAMARA. I think it means that even when the Navy was considering huge ship construction budgets, of the kind that were discussed with the committee last spring and summer, that even under those circumstances the Navy didn't propose to reduce the life of its carriers down to 20, instead of carrying them out to something on the order of 30 years.

Mr. HARDY. If they could get effective use of them?

Secretary MCNAMARA. Yes.

Mr. HARDY. As a matter of fact, if they couldn't get money to build any more, it is the only thing they would have.

Secretary MCNAMARA. As long as there were no restrictions on the type of ship construction program to be developed, they could come in with a replacement program of those 30-year-old carriers or 27-year-old carriers.

Mr. HARDY. There might not be any restriction, except dollar restriction, but there certainly was some practical dollar limitation. Secretary MCNAMARA. There weren't any dollar limitations on the program discussed with the committee last spring and summer.

Mr. HARDY. There might not have been any specified, but you and I both know there were some rather practical dollar limitations if they had gone much farther than they did go.

Secretary MCNAMARA. The ship construction program went up in those years to $3.5 billion a year-something like that. It could just as easily have gone up another 2 or 3 billion to take care of this.

Mr. HARDY. I wish I would have known that at the time; I would have put more emphasis in there, because I thought we needed it. There is only one other aspect and I'm through; that has to do with the support or auxiliary ships.

I think there should be some clarification as to what constitutes obsolescence with those ships. Of course, a lot of them remain serviceable insofar as their ability to float and carry supplies, and so forth. Would you consider that a determination that we need more speed renders them obsolescent?

Secretary MCNAMARA. I think it depends on what they can accomplish with the greater speed. If the speed of the ship is balanced to the type of mission for it to carry out, then I don't see any need to increase the speed.

Mr. HARDY. Of course, that gets right into the question of the definition of the term "available," and I don't know that we can always anticipate that. In your projects I reckon you do have to come up with some sort of figure.

Secretary MCNAMARA. I think it also depends on the cost of the incremental speed. In some of these cases, as in the case of the Jumbo oilers, we can get out of the conversion approximately the same speed as we can in the new Jumbo oiler.

In addition, there is the question if our Jumbo is the right type of oiler. Do we need smaller types or perhaps more of them?

Mr. HARDY. Some of these support ships that we have, by comparison with the support ships that would be built today, they would be very slow, but we still use them, and use them because we don't have anything else.

Secretary MCNAMARA. I think that is correct. The speed of many of the support ships is very slow compared to the speed of new vessels. But the question is, is there a serious handicap to the fleet?

Mr. HARDY. I had one other question, Mr. Secretary.

This is related but not identical.

I don't recall what the chart was, but in one of these charts you gave the airlift capacity in tons.

Secretary MCNAMARA. Yes.

Mr. HARDY. Frankly, I want to tell you how gratified I was to see what is being done in this respect.

The CHAIRMAN. Airlift.

Mr. HARDY. Airlift.

Secretary MCNAMARA. [Deleted.] Page 197.

Mr. HARDY. I was particularly glad to see what had been done and what is planned in that respect. I wondered if you had a similar computation for sealift?

Secretary MCNAMARA. NO. We are developing it, however. But it is an extremely complicated problem, because we have the commercial, I would say, nonmilitary lift to think about at the time, and the nonmilitary resources to think of also. We have been working on it for a number of months in conjunction with the Department of Commerce, and I would hope before many months go by to complete it. Mr. HARDY. You have civilian factors in connection with airlift, too, don't you?

Secretary MCNAMARA. But in the case of airlift, because the civilian fleet is now well adapted to moving military cargo, we have to depend more on unique military assets than we do in the case of sealift.

In the case of sealift, the commercial fleet is capable of carrying military cargo to a far greater degree than the commercial air fleet is. Mr. HARDY. But you do have such a study going on?

Secretary MCNAMARA. Yes.

Mr. HARDY. Thank you. I would be interested in that.