Secretary GILPATRIC. And a good deal of advice from others.

Mr. KARTH. I would like, if you will, to have you give us those reasons in the order of their importance, if you will.

Secretary GILPATRIC. Well, I feel that I can't add to what I have stated in my prepared statement.

Mr. KARTH. I am not sure they were listed in the order of their importance, as you saw them. I wonder if you could do that for the record, so the committee members would have a better idea as they reviewed this hearing?

Secretary GILPATRIC. I wouldn't want to try to establish any order of priority. I would have to sort out my own thoughts to a greater degree than I have.

I have felt that this was an important step to take and, after all, I am only the Deputy Secretary. Mr. McNamara has the final responsibility and he, in turn, reports to the President.

I wouldn't want to try to dissect all the motivations for this. It is simply that we felt, on the basis of experience Secretary McElroy had issued a directive which went very much along the lines of this directive and other methods have been tried-this represents our best judgment, after taking into account all of the input received from even those who didn't agree. We took into account conflicting suggestions, other points of view, and we had, in our judgment, the best advice that we could call upon.

I think I would rather leave it on that broad basis than try to distinguish which consideration came first in our minds. We didn't approach it that way.

Mr. KARTH. Then I might ask you to do this, if you will. If you can't list them in the order of their importance, maybe you can put them all together once more so that they are all in one portion of the testimony, rather than scattered throughout.

Secretary GILPATRIC. I will submit a statement, then, to that effect. Mr. KARTH. Fine. I will appreciate that.

(The statement requested is as follows:)

Following are the principal reasons underlying issuance of the new space directive:

1. Announcements by the military departments of overlapping and duplicative space projects clearly demonstrated the need for more effective control by the Secretary of Defense over all space development programs.

2. The Air Force was already responsible for over 90% of the total defense effort in space development activities, either by direct assignment or in support of other programs. To eliminate overlap and duplication in a highly expensive research and development area, it was logical to assign primary responsibility to the Air Force, while at the same time carefully preserving flexibility in the Secretary of Defense to make exceptions in unusual circumstances.

3. The approach adopted in the Department of Defense Directive permits maximum consolidation of effort while at the same time encouraging all components of the Department to conduct the preliminary space research necessary to their assigned functions.

4. The Ad Hoc Committee on Space, chaired by the President's scientific adviser, Dr. Jerome Wiesner, recommended that there be established a "single responsibility within the military establishments for managing the military portion of the space program."

Mr. KARTH. Mr. Secretary, this in your opinion would have no adverse effect upon basic research and development within the three branches of the Services. Is that correct?

Secretary GILPATRIC. That is my opinion. If we find out to the contrary, there will be opportunity for us to make changes.

We think there is enough flexibility, enough safeguards in this directive, to avoid the contingency that you mention. Certainly, it is furthest from our thoughts to have that happen.

Mr. MILLER. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. KARTH. Yes.

Mr. MILLER. Mr. Secretary, by the time you find that out, will you not put a blight upon the people who are dealing with these programs? Are they not going to feel time has run out on them, and that they have been bypassed? Has this been given thorough consideration?

Secretary GILPATRIC. I think any time you make a change, any time you attempt to provide better management and better effectiveness under changed conditions, there is going to be some resistance to it and some disappointments.

I find you can't change anything in the Pentagon without stepping on somebody's toes, but if you didn't do it you would never make progress.

As Mr. Bass has said, we have to move ahead. We are in a different age and time, and I don't think we are going to lose anything by this. Mr. MILLER. Of course, I agree with you on these things and I know these things, and I am not trying to defend people who are going to be knocked out of the ivory towers they have built for themselves in the Pentagon-and there are a lot of them over there.

I am concerned with the scientists, I am concerned with the people who made the breakthroughs for the Defense Department, who are now seeing themselves completely gobbled up and taken over by a Service not friendly to them.

As far as leaks are concerned, there are some of them right in this thing that haven't been published that have just come out.

Secretary GILPATRIC. I am not promising you we can control the leaks. I think that is beyond anybody.

Mr. MILLER. I am not concerned with the leaks, I am concerned with the scientists and dedicated young officers, the young men who are going into this thing now, the people who are going to be graduating from West Point and Annapolis, youngsters, also, who perhaps wanted to go there who won't go there. People we are going to lose in the future.

Secretary GILPATRIC. There is plenty of room for them. Space is only one aspect of this whole area we are dealing with.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Hechler.

Mr. HECHLER. Mr. Secretary, I share completely what Mr. Bass has said about the value of this directive. The only thing I would like to ask you is, do you think as a result of the headaches that you may have experienced in getting this directive through, that this may inhibit you from taking other action in the future, further to sharpen the decision-making process and achieve real unification?

Secretary GILPATRIC. Speaking for myself, I will not be inhibited as long as I am here, and I think Mr. McNamara is of the same mind, sir.

Mr. HECHLER. I just want to congratulate you on the philosophy that you have expressed here. We have to consider not only the morale of the officers in the Pentagon, we have to consider the general public

and whether it understands who has the button in the Defense Department, and also whether we actually achieve something as a result of our program.

It seems to me that you have taken a step in the right direction. Although I will reserve judgment and hope I will have an opportunity to ask you more questions about this later.

Secretary GILPATRIC. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Any questions on this side?

Mr. Daddario.

Mr. DADDARIO. Mr. Secretary, does this directive do anything else other than changing the management concepts of the responsibilities that the Defense Department now has to develop its program within the area of our national goals for space?

Secretary GILPATRIC. In the military field.

Mr. DADDARIO. In the military area.

Secretary GILPATRIC. You have stated it correctly.

Mr. DADDARIO. It in no way affects the management within NASA? Secretary GILPATRIC. That is true.

Mr. DADDARIO. They have their problems and you have yours. Secretary GILPATRIC. We are going to try to help each other but we are not going to try to run each other.

Mr. DADDARIO. You have said here, and I think it is probably the most pertinent sentence in your whole report, that—

Important decisions affecting the national security of the United States should not be deferred pending a modus vivendi which will be satisfactory and pleasing to everyone.

Excepting for the effect on people who are not going to be satisfied, or not going to be pleased, your objective is not to make everyone happy but to bring order into the space program?

Secretary GILPATRIC. That is our objective. You have put it very well.

Mr. DADDARIO. Now, if somewhere along the line there comes a question as to the possibility of people now in the military space program, people who have great capacity, who are recognized as being people with the ability to help push our space program along, does this management change conceive that these people can be transferred from one branch of the Service to another, to participate in this program?

Secretary GILPATRIC. I think we have that flexibility. I wouldn't want to be too specific about it, but we have right in the Defense Research and Engineering staff, we have two or three hundred very able scientists.

I want to reiterate the type resources to which you refer and to which Mr. Miller refers are in too short supply for us not to make the best use of them wherever they are.

Mr. DADDARIO. If there is a problem which exists today it is the diffusion of this talent, spreading it too thin, and if I am correct in what I have heard here today, what you are doing is preventing this from being spread out and you are bringing it more closely together so that these people can work on programs better conceived and better managed so that they can then utilize their talents better to achieve these great goals in the military space area which we are striving for. Secretary GILPATRIC. That is our endeavor.

Mr. DADDARIO. I cannot help but feel that Mr. Bass has put his finger on this. You have made a statement here which in my opinion is clear, and if the objectives are as they seem to me to be, I think they will answer the questions which have been posed on those problems which do concern members of the committee who certainly have no objective other than seeing these objectives achieved at the earliest possible date.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Randall.

Mr. RANDALL. I would like to associate myself with the comments of Messrs. Bass and Hechler.

I read a little in Nation's Business magazine by the United States Chamber of Commerce, which I don't always agree with, but it is entitled "You Can Get More Defense For Less Money."

It seems to me that many of the thoughts expressed in there are what we have been talking about this morning.

I have noted these four safeguards that you put in here very carefully. Again, it is your conclusion that none of the services in their process of preliminary research will be affected?

Secretary GILPATRIC. Up to the limits we will find on expenditures so as not to allow the preliminary research to get out of hand but they will not be inhibited from going ahead and developing the ideas that they have to improve their capabilities.

Mr. RANDALL. And then the final safeguard, the exception, the unusual circumstance, that will be reviewed and that will be a safety valve, in other words, for such situations of the Board that you describe review; is that correct?

Secretary GILPATRIC. If they affect NASA, they go to the Board. If it is just the military, they come to the Secretary and myself.

Mr. RANDALL. This is no invasion of NASA, this is purely a military matter you are talking about.

Secretary GILPATRIC. Surely.

Mr. RANDALL. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Corman.

Mr. CORMAN. Mr. Secretary, I, too, am impressed by your presentation.

As one lawyer to another, I wonder if I might ask you a hypothetical question. If we can roll back the clock some four years, assume this directive is in effect and an admiral feels you can launch a ballistic missile from a submarine under the ocean and the Air Force doesn't think this is a bright idea. Could you tell us how far the Navy might be permitted to go in what we determine to be the preliminary research and development in furtherance of their assigned function and at what point the Secretary might have to make a decision as to whether to proceed with or abandon that particular project, and then if he made the decision to proceed, who would do it and who would have the responsibility for development?

Secretary GILPATRIC. I believe that if the question of a Polaris submarine came up today for the first time the decision would be no different than that which was reached 4 years ago.

I have been exposed to Admiral Rickover and I believe I have been just as convinced as my predecessors were, with the worth of his program, which has been a magnificient program.

As you will see from our recommendations to the President, when they are announced, we thoroughly believe in the Polaris program. I

don't think this would have changed and in the area where the Polaris functions, underwater launching of a ballistic missile-that is clearly an area where the Navy's competence deserves consideration.

Mr. CORMAN. The total program then probably would have been carried out by assignment from the Secretary of Defense to the Navy? Secretary GILPATRIC. We see no reason to change that.

Mr. CORMAN. I realize you are not going to change the past program, but assuming you had a similar circumstance today, that is the kind of thing that would be assigned to a Service other than the— Secretary GILPATRIC. Yes.

Mr. CORMAN. Thank you, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Secretary, may I ask you something about this booster program? Originally we contemplated writing into the Act regarding NASA that NASA would have the authority to develop booster, or a launcher.

Dr. Sheldon, is that in the authority?

Dr. SHELDON. Not that specifically, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Originally we had language in there that would have done that. Perhaps we changed it later on, but under the concept of the Wiesner Report that the booster program would be a national program, how do you fit that into your statements there on page three in your reference to it? Will it be a NASA program, will it be a Defense program? How will it be handled?

Secretary GILPATRIC. Some of the boosters used now in our vehicle program are developed by the Air Force. Some are being developed by NASA. We have agreement between us--one of the agreements I will furnish for the record-in which we specifically approve a joint program-I have a copy of it right here. It is a classified document but it is the National Launch Vehicle Summary, and we have complete accord between NASA and ourselves on all launch vehicles and we also agree if we are going to start any more we will consult each other first.

The CHAIRMAN. Is it a national booster program? Do you follow the Wiesner concept on that?

Secretary GILPATRIC. Well, I don't know whether this meets all of Dr. Wiesner's points, but we have a national launch vehicle program now; agreed upon.

The CHAIRMAN. Your program now is to divide it between yourself and NASA on a basis of what you agree on?

Secretary GILPATRIC. And making the best use of the reserves we have. We don't want to spend money on programs that will parallel each other.

The CHAIRMAN. Our thought—and I get it from others too-is, to overtake Russia we must get busy and develop a booster that will be more or less a work horse, that we can depend upon it for heavy payloads to carry aloft. Is that your concept?

It might be used by the military or it might be used by the civilian? Secretary GILPATRIC. Well, that is what is happening today. Many of the shots being put up by NASA are on military boosters. The Titan, for example, will be one of our standard launch vehicles for years to come until Saturn and Nova and the others come along. The CHAIRMAN. When you come to the concept of the national booster program as I understood it, we were going to get behind one