EXECUTIVE SESSION

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT FOR DEFENSE

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1961

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND ASTRONA

NAUTICS, Washington, D.C.

The committee met at 2:30 p.m., Hon. Overton Brooks (chairman) presiding.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order.

I will ask the Secretary for his assistance, if he will please check everybody here to see whether or not they are cleared for secrecy. I will ask Dr. Sheldon on behalf of the committee to cooperate with him to that end. Do we have a motion picture?

Admiral HAYWARD. Yes; we have one.

The CHAIRMAN. Is it your pleasure to have the motion picture first? Secretary WAKELIN. If we may, Mr. Chairman. Captain Freitag will discuss a few features of the Scout program.

The CHAIRMAN. It might save some questions.

Admiral HAYWARD. Captain Freitag will give some slides first. The CHAIRMAN. It is satisfactory, Mr. Secretary, that the reporter take down what is said in executive session, and then submit the record to the Navy for proper censorship? Not that which is in open session, but just that for executive session. And then give it back to the committee with the part that is available for release to the press? Captain, then, if you have your machine ready, will you proceed? (The biography of Captain Freitag was inserted in the record at this point.)

BIOGRAPHY OF CAPT. ROBERT F. FREITAG, U.S. NAVY

Capt. Robert F. Freitag is the astronautics officer, Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation Group of the Bureau of Naval Weapons, Navy Department, Washington, D.C. In this capacity, Captain Freitag is in charge of the direction of the Bureau of Naval Weapons' space and astronautics systems development and supporting research.

He was born in Jackson, Mich., on January 20, 1920. He graduated from the University of Michigan (B.S., aeronautical engineering) in 1941, and performed graduate work in aeronautical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during 1941-42. In 1941, he was commissioned an ensign in the Naval Reserve. In 1946, he was commissioned lieutenant commander in the Regular Navy, and subsequently promoted to captain, July 1960.

Captain Freitag has been continuously assigned to billets in the guided missile and rocket field since 1945. At the close of World War II, he participated in the exploitation program in Europe wherein guided missile information was obtained from the defeated Germans. From 1946 through 1948 he was assigned to the Bureau of Aeronautics and was responsible for the aerodynamic development of various Bureau of Aeronautics and Bureau of Ordnance guided missiles, including the establishment of several Navy supersonic wind tunnels. In 1948-49, he 115

was assigned to the Office of the Naval Attaché, London, England, in connection with guided missile intelligence assignment. From 1949 through 1951, Captain Freitag was assigned at the Joint Long Range Proving Ground (now the Atlantic Missile Range) at Cocoa and Cape Canaveral, Fla. During this tour of duty, he was successively chief of instrumentation and chief of the technical systems laboratories. This assignment included the direction and establishment of the basic range instrumentation system for the AFMTC.

In 1951, Captain Freitag was reassigned to the Bureau of Aeronautics where he held several billets: 1951-53 as guided missile program plans officer; 1953-55 as head, surface-launched missiles branch in charge of the Regulus I, Regulus II, and Rigel missiles programs; 1955 as head, ballistic missile branch during which period the basic concepts of the Polaris and Subroc missiles were evolved and established by that activity.

In 1955, he was assigned to the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Guided Missile Division, and served as project officer on the Jupiter and Polaris intermediate range ballistic missiles and on the Vanguard Earth satellite. During this period, he served additional duty on the secretariat of Joint ArmyNavy Ballistic Missile Committee and on the staff, Secretary of Defense Special Assistant for Guided Missiles.

In 1957, Capitain Freitag was transferred to Point Mugu where he was assigned successively as the range planning officer on the staff of the director, range support; Pacific Missile Range planning officer on the staff of the commander, Pacific Missile Range, and as special assistant to the commander, Pacific Missile Range. In November 1959, Captain Freitag was assigned as astronautics officer, Bureau of Naval Weapons, Navy Department, Washington, D.C.

Captain Freitag has, in addition to his primary assignments, served on numerous missile and engineering groups including the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, Subcommittee on Propellers (1944-46), the NACA Special Committee on Space Technology (1958-59), and the NASA Research Advisory Committee on Missile and Spacecraft Aerodynamics (1960 to date). From 1956 through 1958, he has been a member of the Secretary of Defense Special Committee on the Adequacy of Range Facilities. He is an associate fellow of the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences, an associate fellow of the British Royal Aeronautical Society, and a member of the American Rocket Society.

In 1957, he was granted a special award and given the designation of distinguished alumnus by the University of Michigan "in recognition of his outstanding achievements and contributions to the development of the field of engineering." In 1959, Captain Freitag was awarded the Legion of Merit "For exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services to the Government of the United States from 1949 to 1959, in connection with naval and national guided missile programs * * * and for developing and selling the fleet ballistic missile concept to the Navy and the Secretary of Defense."

Mrs. Freitag is the former Maxine Pryer, of Nunica, Mich. daughters, Nancy Marie and Janet Louise, and a son, Fred J. resides at 4110 Mason Ridge Drive, Annandale, Va.

They have two Captain Freitag

STATEMENT OF CAPT. ROBERT F. FREITAG, ASTRONAUTICS OFFICER, BUREAU OF NAVAL WEAPONS

Captain FREITAG. Mr. Chairman, I would like to discuss a few of the

The CHAIRMAN. Can everybody on the committee see that? If you can't, please move around.

Captain FREITAG. Can everyone hear me? The Navy space program which we have been working on now for about 3 years is a highly conservative program. Approximately 2 years ago Mr. Gates, then Secretary of the Navy, and Admiral Burke testified before this committee and other committees about the policy that the Navy intends to follow in the exploitation of space.

This was partially covered this morning. And basically, it is this: That we are looking to use the environment which is known as space and the science or technology known as astronautics first to enhance present Navy missions.

The second thing that we are using it for is to prevent space in the hands of the enemy from being used against the Navy and the Nation in order to prevent blunting of our present capabilities.

The third area that we are concentrating on at the present time is to apply Navy know-how, Navy technology, and Navy capabilities in support of the national program. As we have said many times, as our new President has said, "Look not to what space can do for the Navy, but what the Navy can do for space."

A case of this would be the recovery of the astronauts in the Atlantic, or operations in the Pacific where emergencies might occur.

The fourth area is to keep a broad base of research in the general field of astronautics which will allow us to look forward to future growth in this field.

In carrying out these four points of policy, which we have adhered to very strongly, there are several principles upon which we are operating. As Admiral Connolly mentioned this morning, one of these principles is that we must remain completely competitive. We will not use space systems just for the sake of being in space. Whatever we do, we want to make sure that it does a better job for us on Earth or does a new job on Earth more efficiently than we could do it with present Earth-bound systems.

The second principle that we have taken, which I think is quite fundamental to our whole Navy approach-that we have not spent a lot of money and have insisted the first system we work on be well within the state of the art. That is to say, we are not looking for new inventions or new breakthroughs in order to get a system. First, we want to walk before we run. We would like to be able to see our way clear through to an operational system or an operational employment of a system at the time we start. Then as time goes on, we will move into the more sophisticated or elegant systems.

The next point that goes hand in glove with this is the idea that we wanted to keep things as economical as possible. That is to say, we wanted to make sure that not only were they competitive, not only did they not require expenditures of great amounts of research money, but we wanted to keep the absolute amount of dollars down to a minimum.

In pursuing programs we looked into the areas that gave the most promise first. I would like to describe one or two of these systems to show how the principles operate.

[Slide.] This is a slide of the Transit satellite which I know you have heard much about in the past. You had one outside the door this morning. Tomorrow evening, for example, we are going to launch another Transit in this pattern, one that will be launched about 10 p.m. tomorrow evening. [Slide.]

The CHAIRMAN. From where are you going to launch it?

Captain FREITAG. Cape Canaveral. It will be launched in an easterly direction out of Cape Canaveral and will be in an orbit which is quite close to the Equator.

The purpose of this operation is to obtain information on the Earth's gravity field in the equatorial area, to get performance of the satellite with its complete configuration as I will describe here. It is also going to carry with it two additional packages. One package is being carried on behalf of the Army. It is called Secor distance measuring equipment which I will describe briefly later.

And the second package will be a very low frequency or VLF communications experiment. We try to package as much into the satellite as possible.

In this case we will have two separate satellites which will separate, and a third experiment built inside, the Army experiment.

The CHAIRMAN. It will be a Navy launching?

Captain FREITAG. No, sir. The Air Force will actually make this launching. The Navy buys the booster. The Navy pays the Air Force approximately $4 million to do this job.

The Air Force will make the launching with a Thor-Able-Star launching vehicle. The Navy prepares the upper stage, prepares the payload and will operate from that point.

Mr. FULTON. What kind of inclination will it have!

Captain FREITAG. The inclination of that shot will be 28 degrees which is the latitude of Cape Canaveral.

We will aim for approximately 500 miles circular orbit, inclination of 28 degrees.

Mr. FULTON. What will you get?

Captain FREITAG. Based upon the performance of the Thor-AbleStar, we will probably get something within plus or minus 50 miles of that. That is satisfactory for the experiment. I know you have been briefed on Transit so I will not go into too much detail on how the system operates but how this system matches the policy and principles we are going to operate under.

After the satellite is placed in orbit by the Thor-Able-Star, it is on a steady orbit. During that period it emits that signal which is received on Earth. That signal, as it approaches the point of observation, is compressed by the velocity of the satellite. And, as it recedes over the horizon away from you, the signal is expanded and you get a downward frequency shift on the ground. By observing this frequency and this change of frequency at a tracking station on the ground, we are able very precisely to compute the orbit traveled by the satellite. The Doppler shift, that is what the frequency change is called, is unique as you measure from horizon to horizon depending upon the particular orbit and your location.

This orbit determination technique that we have developed for Transit is the most precise electronic orbit measurement system. As a matter of fact, we are helping the Air Force on the Samos and Discoverer program. We can predict the future position of the satellite just as we can predict future positions of the Moon or stars.

This information is predicted in a computer. The information is computed in a computer down at Dahlgren, Va. That position is transmitted to the satellite and it is retained in the satellite. Also transmitted from the ground is a time correction so that the satellite is capable of spelling out proper time. Then the satellite is ready to do its job. It transmits its steady frequency that I described earlier, transmits it continuously.

Once a minute it transmits orbital parameter and time. Then it is in position to do its operational job. A ship or submarine can receive this steady frequency. It can receive the orbital parameters. It can receive time and very quickly, in a matter of a few minutes, compute its latitude and longitude. One of the questions that you asked Dr. Wakelin this morning was, "What progress have you made?" Last year before this committee we promised this was what we were doing. We have demonstrated that all these techniques can be accomplished and the fact or ability to navigate or locate a position on Earth can be determined to an order of approximately a tenth of a mile. This is satisfactory to us and proves that the entire system is feasible.

There are many problems remaining, like making the lifetime of the satellite sufficient to be fully economical and developing some of the actual components to be used.

Another problem is to take this 260-pound satellite and bring it down to about 100 pounds so instead of using a $4.5 million booster to launch, we can get away with a three-quarter or a million dollar booster.

I would like to show how this system demonstrates the principles I have described.

First, the satellite navigational system yields to ships on the ocean an accuracy that is in the above order of magnitude over what we can presently do with the eyeball and sextant. Some electronic systems and piloting systems do compete with this system in accuracy but they are localized. This system gives a global accuracy of a tenth of a mile. Any place on the face of the Earth you can get the same accuracy. This system is all-weather. If we have heavy fog, overcast, storms, the system operates through the overcast and a ship, say, operating in the vicinity of Murmansk where it is overcast many weeks on end can operate with the same precision.

It has no dependence on foreign sites. The Transit sites are located within the United States. It does not need radiobeacons or other stations located where foreign base rights are required a major step forward. It is passive. The submarine need only receive. It need not transmit as on, say, radar piloting, which is another means of navigating.

As far as costs are concerned, our estimates of the operating cost after the system has been developed, are very, very competitive with any system we have seen that does this order of magnitude of a job. Perhaps $3 to $4 million a year operating costs after the system has reached its full development.

The CHAIRMAN. Would you mind explaining a little bit more for the committee your use of the reference to the Doppler system?

Captain FREITAG. Yes, sir. The satellite issues a very stable frequency; that is, a radio signal is emitted, which is extremely stable. It is stable to about 1 part in 10 billion. That is the variation. Measured stability is about 1 part in 1010. That is stable for a short period of time, not forever and forever.

As the satellite comes toward you, the radio waves are also coming toward you and the speed of the satellite, many thousands of miles per hour, compresses that signal. So that the variation of the received frequency, the time variation of the signal is greater than would be the case if the satellite were standing still.