that is the national cyber investigation joint terrorism task force which has the contribution of a number of agencies including nsa to identify particular threats and investigate the sourcing of those threats to attribute those threats to either a country, individual or group of individuals. that is our role. i think it is clear that we do not have a role in protecting .com, .edu or es. that is the dhs responsibility. but i do believe our role and principal role we should play, and i think we played fairly well, is to bring to the cyber task force are reena what we've learned and utilized in the joint terrorism task force arena. ..

i would call them lone wolves, to any particular segment of any society. many of them, abdul abu mccullough pet one of the best education she can get in the u.k. and came from a wealthy family, so he was not homegrown

quite obviously but. >> it is like the woman who was >> the one that was just arrested. jihad jane. there are a number of ways we do that. we try to pick up on communications whether the internet or otherwise in which a person has gone from the first amendment protected activity to undertaking some attack. we have a number of tripwires whether it be chemical companies weapon shops where we ask people to alert us to persons who may display the characteristics of somebody who may utilize a weapon or explosives to kill others, but it is the most difficult thing we address because you don't have the opportunity to pick up on communications, you don't have the opportunity to pick up persons who might be on the

periphery to who this person may have talked and it is the biggest single threat we face in the counter trey-- counterterrorist marina. >> mr. chairman do i have time left? i want to talk about games domestically. gangs are a serious problem in this country. >> it is also, domestic terrorism arena, and we are still in 1995, mcveigh lieu up the embassy, and that is still the type of domestic terrorist incident that can kill many people that we have to be alert to so it is not just somebody who follows an international terrorist ideology, also somebody who is much more domestically oriented. >> the issue of gangs. gangs is a very serious problem. a lot of times you have children in middle school being recruited to gangs, a lot of reasons for

that. their family life is not good in their gang becomes their family. what do you feel is the biggest for gangs. you have the crips, and you have the ms-13 but it is east coast and west coast in other parts of the country. we have spent so much money on terrorism and we have not spent as much money on drugs and still impact more people in this country and a negative way than terrorism does and it is unfortunate we have not been able to get the resources to drugs we should. that ties into some of the gang issues because a lot of the gangs are dealing with drugs and prostitution on that type of thing. >> we have doubled if not tripled task forces since 2001 which about have in my mind the same types of capabilities the joint terrorism task forces have and gangs have proliferated since the last time we were here. i am not certain the hundreds of thousands of growth but gangs have from proliferated over the

last several years. you mentioned ms-13 is still bloody and violent and the other aspect that we have seen is where gangs used to be fairly localized and then became nationalized and now they are internationalized. some of the-- we have working relationships, close working relationships for instance if you talk about ms-13, we have el salvador, what a mile and mexico because there are substantial components of those gangs operating in this country. we have a task force in el salvador now that focuses on the ms-13 gangs because it is a revolving door between el salvador and the united states. it is true with many other gangs at this point but we have asked and received in the last several years and i believe we have some requests in this budget for additional capabilities when it comes to addressing the gang

phenomenon. >> thank you for your testimony. >> mr. serrano. >> thank you mr. chairman. welcome, sir. prior to asking you a couple of questions i just want to ask you something. does the fbi still continue the practice of ringing new agents to the holocaust museum? >> yes, sir. >> just to have you on the record again because you know i'm a big supporter of that action, can you tell the committee why do you think that is important? >> the worst thing that can happen to a law enforcement or for that matter intelligence agency is to lose the side of the fact that the public has is has given you an immense amount of power to exercise, they give you a badge badge and a gun and you have tremendous power to affect persons lives. it is important that each of our agents and analysts and others understand that power and most

particularly that you have an obligation not to abuse that power, and so the trip to the holocaust museum is to impress upon people what can happen when you lose sight of the authority you have been given and the constraints upon the authority to do good. >> i thank you. i thank you for that statement and i wanted to put you on the record again because i think it is something that is very important and something that i commend you for. in past hearings, i have asked you about. >> let me just check on one thing if i might. i wanted to make certain i was right and they said absolutely. if they discontinued i didn't know about it at no, i have affirmed that. >> i am glad they didn't. in past hearings we have discussed publicly you and i my

concern and the concerns of others that the focus on the war on terror which is extremely necessary at the top of our list would take away from the whole issue of the war on white-collar crimes. and in view of what happened on wall street and in view of what happened to our economy, we know that some people have been convicted and gone to jail, who had certain dealings within our economy, but so-called insiders to my knowledge, none have been indicted or convicted, so first, am i correct? if not, then what has happened there to make people like me feel that while we are fighting it very important and necessary war on terrorism, we are not shoring our resources on man woman power if you will, to fight the other wars that we have to fight?

the drug war also included in that. >> we have given, been given additional resources for white-collar crime and we requested additional resources in the 2011 budget but we have probably close to, last i saw was 2900 some, i am sure up to 3000 are over in just mortgage fraud cases. this is not talking about corporations fraud, securities fraud, just the mortgage fraud cases. our effort has been to identify those cases that we have had to triaged those cases. many of them have losses in addition to $1 million. i have taken the most serious cases and running with the most serious cases we have set up a number of working groups and task forces around the country to enlist state and local, low support but also to in triaging the cases attempting to get state and local law enforcement to follow up on cases that we don't have the resources to meet and to track those.

we would like to be dealing more, but the fact of the matter is there are so many out there that we can't reach all of them. we have been successful in the cases we have rock and we have brought cases against insiders. we have brought cases against banking executives, securities, firms executives and we have currently, have a number of pending prosecutions of high-profile persons who have abused their trust at the top of various organizations. i would be happy to give you more of a breakdown of the number of indictments and number of persons and what we have done. i cannot tell you that we are able to do all we would want. we do have to triaged yurko but it is much like that which we saw immediately after 2001 and 2002 when we had a serious of corporate cases worldcom, enron where we had a substantial

challenge to get through those cases or go the same way we are going through these cases now. >> when you say you wish you could do more is that because there is so much out there that is hard to keep up with all of that, which is a terrible's ein or is it a shortage of resources? >> it is a shortage of resources. we can use many more forensic accountants. i can use far more accountants who know wall street but the good agents from wall street know wall street. >> i got worried for a minute. >> we do have a number of those who helped to prosecute them because they know the ins and outs. it is always a question of resources and i think we are making a substantial dent in the workload, but yes it is always a question of resources. >> now at the expense of getting the obvious answer which is a great relationship, what is the relation between the bureau and securities and exchange commission for instance in terms of them turning over information

to your, or doing some legwork if if you will that may help you? >> the wholesale change, exchange commission and the individuals have come over to take over the investigative side of the securities and exchange commission are former assistant united states attorneys who have worked well with ef vi over the years with film, both we and the department have a very close relationship. i have not, one area i know we are working closely on and that is making certain that documents that are subpoenaed by one entity go to a database so that if there is authority for the other entity to have those documents you don't have to replicate what has been done by the previous entity. it seems basic and simple but we have been working with them so that there is a common database structure when we pull in documents. we want to ensure that they can be utilized in search, given the

appropriate authorizations by the fbi and securities and exchange commission and be ready for the process because that is not always been the case. that is just a small example of the area we are working on to make certain that we coordinate our civil on their side in our criminal activities. >> thank you. let me take you over to the area of hate crimes. as you know the president has signed new legislation that covers issues that we needed to cover in this area. there is also the concern that many of of the us have about hate crimes directed at immigrants or having to do within the whole image ration issue, and as we get closer, hopefully, to an immigration reform, i think there will be more people acting out their anger and their hate and their differences with the immigration community. also, if this economy doesn't

turn around quickly, there will be more feeling somehow that immigrants are causing problems. so, in general the issue of hate crimes, what can you tell me about the involvement of ef vi? again, is the bureau in the situation where it can't do as much as it would want to for whatever reasons, resources or just focusing in on the war on terror and lastly, what kind of request if any are you getting from the local authorities on issues that they feel they need the fbi involvement? >> we have augmented our agents and our focus on civil rights in general, which hate crimes quite obviously is a strong part. as i believe you are aware we had an initiative looking at the civil rights cases that have been under duress for 40 or 50 years, and that initiative, we

have been involved with for about two years and we have had some very successful prosecutions even though 30 or 40 years after the events themselves to place. but when it comes specifically to hate crimes, we generally backup state and local authorities and want to handle them. if we do not believe they are been handled appropriately we in the u.s. attorney's office will move into make sure they are handled appropriately. it is not an overwhelming workload and we should be available because if we are not available to do that, nobody is. and so, we have not seen i don't believe in uptick in hate crimes although with the new legislation we undoubtedly will see in uptick in the numbers and we all have to address those. the other thing i would say we are pressing on is when it comes to reporting the numbers for the

reports that we produce in terms of crime, up and up and down and the like, state and local law enforcement have not been amongst the leaders in terms of reporting hate crimes, and we continually push state and local law enforcement to record that so that we have some accurate accounting throughout the country as to what is happening with that type of criminal activity and the same way we do with rapes and murders and robberies and burglaries. >> one last point in question. mr. direct or, in the past, at public hearings and in private and over the phone i have discussed with you incidents where i felt that the euro was taking actions that i thought were unfair, instead of happened historically about the treatment of certain communities by df ti in general and for the record,

you and i have discussed and agreed has been very helpful for instance in releasing documents about its two years of fbi behavior towards their puerto rico independence movement and so on. having said that you know i have the great respect for the hero, a great respect for you and i think anyone who is a member of the fbi is a person who should be proud of the work they do. with that in mind i encourage every chance i get people from my community to consider the bureau as a career so i bring you the question of recruitment. how do you recruits these days? where are you recruiting these days? are you recruiting and how do people from communities like mine both the physical community and the racial and f. they community i represent get a shot at joining the bureau? >> everybody has a shot at joining the bureau. i will tell you though that it

goes back to what i say about the power that one has when you give them the authority of being a fbi agent, and we generally take persons who have had another career beforehand. in other words, the most important criteria in our mind is judgment, maturity, and integrity in terms of becoming an fbi agent. consequently we don't do as well as other agencies who recruited out of college and it is for the reason that we believe that the euro is enhanced by having persons with a number of skills. it can be military, it can be policed, it can be a teacher, it can be an accountant, it can be in this day and age someone with languages but generally it will be three or four years out of college before they come to us. we have recruiting drives for particular specialties, but i

will tell you i think last year we had something like 17,000 individuals who sought to become special agents, but that does not mean that we want you to in any way reduce your encouragement, your recruiting a persons from your community. we need the representation -- max b. i can give waivers. >> i am glad you cleared that up about three or four years out of college. the way you were saying it sounded like the euro was going to have a lot of older people for a while and i'm glad you cleared that up. thank you so much mr. director. thank you chairman. >> mr. serrano and then mr. fattah. >> let me first applaud your efforts. i wrote to you about this whole mortgage fraud area over two years ago and the fact that the number of cases are well "quite

close to 2000 now" in your written testimony from 2003 is extraordinarily important and i note the significant arrest in pennsylvania in and around philadelphia and i am very pleased that we have vi has been quite aggressive on this matter. i want to go through a couple of things. one is your long public service from your days in the armed forces. it goes over any number of presidents as best as i can count. ford and reagan and bush one and two and clinton and carter and now president obama so you have served in a variety of capacities. you took this job a few days before 9/11, and since then,

that fateful day you were done a great deal to make sure our country can be safe and you should be applauded for that. my question is, given your entirety of your experience, i know there is probably some discomfort about the criticism about how we are handling some of these cases now and i just want to go back over some material because they think that you said, and i want to make sure we get it on the record, that there are no arrests in the united states of america that are being handled any differently for suspected terrorists and since 9/11 up until this moment, is that correct? >> with the rest of the united states we have followed the same procedures, yes sir. >> so when that's what is being criticized about this christmas day activity is kind of like somehow we played a weak hand

and from my read of this, it is not actually true. what you had is you have a suspect who was injured. that is an explosive went off and he was injured and before he could get medical treatment, surgery, he was questioned to make sure that there was no other immediate public danger and then he went into surgery. than when he came out of surgery, as many who have been in surgery, he was less responsive, and then after that that., he became more responsive and has been cooperative. am i miss characterizing data in any way? >> no, it is accurate. the only thing i would say is that after he came out of the medical procedures, i am not certain it was surgery but it was certainly medical. >> whatever it was. >> he was suffering burns. he was less responsive that evening then he had been before

in terms of answering questions. >> writes right but the notion that somehow he was being coddled just does not square with the facts. >> i had not heard that word. >> there has been a lot of criticism that he has been treated, that we should be so much more aggressive somehow, like we had been in the past with the shoe bomber but your testimony is this is exactly the same way these matters have been handled. >> i think they have been handled pretty much identically, yes sir. >> i want to cover one other thing now. there has been a lot of discussion about trials. you are aware and you testified that although the threats facing the country, international criminal enterprises, both the albanian mafia, the african criminal organizations and you go through a hole this. we have domestic terrorist. you are quite engaged in terms of the drug cartels.

we have had a lot of trials in america. you have an expert view about the threats that face our country. is there any circumstances under which you would advise our country that we couldn't put someone on trial but we have captured, that we would be unsafe? would we have gotten to the point where these threats would outweigh our pursuit of justice and could not protect an american city in which a trial was taking place? >> i think we are getting beyond where i feel comfortable testifying. it is really speculative. >> okay. so you can see that, that here too for, all of the cases that have gone on and have been some 300 trials of terrorists in the country, have there have been incidences in which, where those

trials were taking place, in which americans have been harmed or has been under some threat? >> not to my knowledge. that is not to say-- as to say under a threat i can speak to that because i'm not familiar with the circumstance but i am not aware of persons being harmed or any serious threats in the course of one of those trials. >> so, you just had a very significant success today in terms of the mumbai attacks in a trial in which someone was found guilty and the attacks in india, which 136 people lost their lives, right? >> i believe there is an individual who is going to plead guilty either today or tomorrow. >> he pled guilty. today. the point is that, what i am saying is we have gone after drug cartel leaders and we have gone after criminal enterprises

in a variety of ways. i want to be clear because there is a lot of political dialogue whether we could put someone on trial in new york city or not. many developing countries, putting someone on trial is a dangerous thing. it could be a problem but i just thought in the united states of america, that we would not be in a position where we would he fearful of taking someone who had harmed american citizens and put them before the bar of justice. >> i understand your concern congressman. >> thank you very much. >> mr. schiff. >> thank you mr. chairman and thank you mr. director for being here. i have two questions, the first is the issue of great concern to jurisdictions around the country dealing with the backlog of dna profiles collected from offenders in.

in los angeles lapd in the sheriff's department have backlogs of several thousand sexual assaults kids. in order to close those backlogs, the city and county have often sent their samples outsourced them to private labs. and, that has been helpful, but there is now a second backlog created because once the samples come back from the private labs, the city and county need to do a technical review of every case to ensure the private lab did the job right. so last year for example with the chairman's help we got half a million dollars from the city of los angeles to get through the back lot. they use that money to contract out, got through the backlog back blogging but now they still haven't uploaded the dakotas because of this technical review requirement. that doesn't make sense to me for a couple of reasons. one, it is expensive, two none of the technical reviews have come up with any errors in terms

of private labs that i am aware of and number three you could have 100% requirement of a technical review where there is a match made once it it is uploaded in the dakotas and therefore only when it is actually utilized do you need to go through what looks at creasing me like a redundant step. so, my question is, is this really necessary? can we really cut down on the backlog at no expense by eliminating this 100% review requirement except in a case where it would actually make a difference? the second question on mentoring. one area we have tried to make her aggressive in dealing with circumstances where sex offenders take advantage of volunteer programs is to have a system of screening volunteers for mentoring programs. congress tried to accomplish that goal first with the

national child protection act of 1993 and later with a volunteers for children act. youth serving organizations got access to fbi checks working with their states. still more than two thirds of the states don't have a workable affordable system to screen the people that want to volunteer with them. in 2000 with three week passed the protect act which was a national pilot allowing serving organizations to conduct national fingerprint-based background checks and the f. the i has run 60,000 checks through the pilot and 60% of those cases turned up a criminal record of serious concern. for example the pilot identified -- under the age of 15 big because they are applying in a different state and national check would have turned up their record. these checks can be conducted for a fee of less than $25. i have introduced legislation in the support of chairman, the child protection improvements act, bipartisan legislation to

build off the success of the pilot to put in place a fee supported system to ensure every child serving in an organization has the ability to quickly and cheaply do these checks. senator schumer addressed identical in the senate but the bill has been stymied in large part because we are were told despite repeated requests to doj and fbi no formal comment has been offered on the bill. said they were reluctant to move the bill without having drg-- doj or fbi way in. we like it, go for it or we don't like it, see it fixed. i wrote to the justice justice department along with senator schumer and congressman rogers and senator hatch asking for the department's views on the bill and we still haven't heard back. if you could get us an answer, let us know whether you supported so we can move forward or a few thing things need to be

changed. >> addressing the second question first, i will carry that back to the department of justice and i would say under that particular legislation i understand the import of that legislation and the importance, but i will carry the request back to the department of justice. >> i think they are going to be principally understand, what is the fbi's view because it implicates the sub10 more than doj. >> if it is a question of additional name checks, we can do that. if it is a question of who pays that is a different question altogether and i don't know the ins and outs of the bill that i would expect some place in their the cost of doing this is a factor in somebody's view. but, we have millions of name checks now through her name check backlog and i can't can imagine that would be a substantial issue for that but i don't know what other issues there might be. in any event i will try to get back to you.

on the dna backlog in the dialogue we have had, the ingestion of the samples, addressing first of all your question in terms of their request for quality decontrol reviewed by a separate set of experts before it is put into the dakotas we are looking at that and my expect nations will be to remove some of those hurdles on in the very near future. i know that has been an issue. it is one we have been looking at and we want to remove the obstacles to the providing of those samples to codas so i think we will be able to get back to you with what we hope will be fixed in that area. more generally i would say the backlog that we have had in terms of ingesting the samples into dna will be reduced to almost nothing by september. we now in and just i think 25 thousand samples a month. now we will go up to 90,000 a

month given the resources that are appropriated for us back in 2009. we have now brought those persons on board and we are using, reorienting how we do things and also using robotics as we have not in the past so by september our hope is there will be no more than a 30 day to lay ingesting any new samples that come in regardless of the amounts that have tripled or quadrupled over the years as i know you understand. >> do you know where the fact log is now? >> i would have to get back to you on that. i have been looking at charts showing bam, like that in september but where we are in march i would have to get back to you on. >> if you would, where we are now compared to a year ago and how fast we are processing compared to a year ago that would eat very helpful and i would like to work with you on a couple of related issues. one is the lack of uniformity in

the low side that we look at and those that others in europe and other parts of the world look at in databases who can't talk to each other because of that and i would love to see if we can harmonize what part of the dna strand we look at to compare, as well as the rest of the issue which the president recently spoke in favor of. we would love to try to advance and finally a couple of controversial issues, but the partial, running partial dna as well as familial dna both of which i supported think make sense and will take people off the street and i think we can have the right safeguards in place, not to violate anyone's privacy. i look forward to working with you on those issues. >> if i might add, if the universe of samples to be ingested in, we also look at what we are going to have to do to ramp up in taking those

samples. the other thing i would say in terms of working with europe, one of the biggest concerns we have with europe is their privacy rules that inhibit a dialogue and discussions we have with them in terms of exchanges and the capability of identifying criminals who populate both our side and the other side. >> if i have time, yes. in the european union, all of the law enforcement agencies have been cooperating one to another in between the various countries on all of this. are you saying that in terms of interacting with us, there is still a ways to go? >> yes, but in terms of the action amongst themselves it is the lowest common denominator and then there is the question of a have different views on privacy than then perhaps we do, and that becomes a problem when

the law enforcement elements of both countries want to work things out. and exchange information. >> thank you mr. chairman. >> thank you. it is well established and a sad fact that the public safety services in indian country are severely lacking, with the result that being a criminal, that the criminal victimization rate on tribal lands is significantly in excess of the national average. i know that you know that and i know the scarce resources you are dealing with as you address that problem. and native american living on reservation lands can expect fewer police officers, longer emergency response time and higher crime rates than the average person living outside of indian country. i no i am not alone in finding

these disparities disturbing and unfair and i am pleased to see that this administration and the department of justice department of justice mbf ei are all supplementing their resources, the increased resources provided by this committee last year to address this problem. i know it is further disturbing fundamentally disturbing, that the victims and the targets of these crimes are predominately women and because of the jurisdictional issues, there are difficult questions, structurally difficult questions going into an investigation and helping to provide law enforcement activities in indian country. but there is also just a

fundamental lack of resources too, so can you describe the trends this fbi has seen in the level and types of crimes committed in indian country over some reasonable period of the last five years? >> probably will have to get back to you with specifics, specific statistics on that. i can do that. i will tell you that i have tried to corral off the resources of the bureau putting into indian country since september 11. i had to reassign a number of criminal agents. i have left the same number of criminal agents working in indian country since that time but it still is inadequate. there is not enough. it is crimes against women and children, and we take the most serious ones, but it is inadequate. and i am not sure ultimately that we in the sub10 can satisfy

the need for police services in indian country. it is going to take other organizations to be ramped up, to have the capability in addressing crimes on indian reservations as well as ourselves. it is an issue that we try to address with resources that have been allocated but it still is not necessarily adequate to the crime we have seen grow over the last several years. >> i commend you for your request for additional resources and i assure you this committee is going to be inclined to be responsive. on a practical level, as i understand it there are over 200 individual reservations, and that you have approximately just over 100 officers to cover those 200 reservations. does that sound right? >> that is correct.

that is correct. >> i guess, what can you expect to accomplish when you are spread that then? on the face of it, that is inadequate. >> what we accomplish as we address the most serious cases with the united states united states attorneys, but our agents work, our stretched, and their caseload is unbelievable. the time they spend away from their families to provide the services to the indian country is truly remarkable but every one of them thinks that they are doing, contributing substantially in the work that they are doing but we are overstretched.

others, state and local authorities who may have some concurrent jurisdiction are also overstretched. but we do what we can with the resources that are allocated. the one thing i have made certain is that they have not been reduced even though we have this first priority in stopping a terrorist attack. >> for the record here or for the written record, how would you compare your law enforcement presence in indian country to your presence and comparably sized rural areas? >> i think it would really be difficult to look at apples and oranges. there are areas in the far west where we have very low coverage but the population is fairly low. i would have to get back to you. >> maybe this would be an even better comparison. how about the areas where crime rates are comparable to those in indian country? in other words, where are the areas with comparable crime

rates to crime rates in indian country, and how do you compare your coverage in those areas to indian country? did you follow that? >> yes, sir. >> president obama's budget request proposes to add 45 new agents to your program. as i understand it, those agents are to be funded out of the hero of indian affairs. why that arrangement? why is that he requested in your budget? >> i would have to get back to you on that, sir. i am not familiar with the intricacy of that arrangement. excuse me just a moment. i would have to get back to you.

i do believe that we want to prioritize it but we have the white-collar crime, terrorism and the like and consequently we are looking for support in terms of adding agents for this particular responsibility. we have somewhat the same understandings when it comes to health care fraud for instance with other departments, hhs. >> transferring the money to pay for the agency? >> yes. >> maybe with health care or maybe with white-collar crime there is spiking in these areas so maybe it makes sense to fund them out of other budgets. it doesn't make sense to me for these agents to be paid for from the bureau of indian affairs because i don't think there is any contention and i am not sure anybody would contend that this is going to go away. i think funding that bureau of

indian affairs creates a situation where you are not building your face and those dollars could disappear very easily. different subcommunities have different priorities, and different demands on their dollars. i think we would rather see this funding particularly included in your day so it becomes a part of your day so that there is a consistency and the a dependability about the availability of the agents increasing that are dedicated to these assignments. >> i will get with the committee on that. >> just to get some other information, highlighting the problems in indian country, fbi request also to add to to frantic to your lan to address evidence processed in indian country cases. to frantic examiners. the budget notes that the 164 day average turnaround for indian country cases this a

lengthy that they results are often useless for the purposes of intelligence. it is almost the inaccuracy to the point of not being able to really provide the service in indian country so we are very pleased to see this requested increase and i think we will be very responsive to it. do you know or give us for the record again how does the turnaround time, 160 ford day average turnaround time for lab case processing compared to the lab wide average turnaround for evidence processing? >> i would have to get back to you on that but also one of the things we had requested is additional examiners but there are other laboratories that are closer to indian country that might provide the same services if they had funding. >> we will certainly look at it from that perspective as well.

my understanding that, that the violent crime rate in indian country is about 2.5 times higher than the national average , and 25% of all violent crimes prosecuted, violent crimes prosecuted by u.s. attorneys occur on indian reservations. 75% of the a fbi's 268 current cases in indian country involve homicides, child abuse as you pointed out, or violent assaults. these are terrible statistics and we appreciate the fact that the administration is focusing on it and we look forward to being responsive on that. mr. serrano asked a number of-- i think it was mr. serrano, about white-collar crime.

so we have some questions for the record that we will submit there to supplement those. one last line of questioning. mr. director i understand the fbi has recently discovered some problems with phase two of the sentinel program that will affect the budget and the schedule for both that phase and perhaps the overall project and that is of course makes everybody nervous because of the experience with sentinel's predecessor. do you quantify-- well, what are the problems, what are the nature of the problems we are experiencing with sentinel? >> let me start by saying that back in-- we sent the

requirements from the system back in 2005 and the contract was led in 2006 in the first phase i believe we put in 2007. it is a successful system and that we have a number of agents who are already using the fields. phase two was to go to the field at the end of 2009, the beginning of 2010 in terms of pilots. we have delayed that in that delay is attributable to basic me three reasons. overate period period of time, both the technology as well as their business practices have changed and the users have looked for additional items in phase two that have not and could not have been anticipated back in 2005. >> added agency requirements? >> not large-scale requirements but minimal requirements but before we push it out of the

field we wanted to make certain that we maximize the usability so that it would have a high degree of user acceptance, to the extent that we have had it out in the field that already has high user acceptance. the three issues where first of all, some design changes from the tip of the users that we have been very reluctant to do that but these make some sense. secondly there are issues related to coatings coding said we needed to address before we send it out and thirdly there are system requirements we want to make absolutely certain that we have in place so that when we rolled it out it would be successful. so the pilots we anticipated rolling out just about now. >> for face to? >> for phase two will be rolled out this summer. that will push off, we expected to have the whole system complete in 2010. it will push the system completion in 22011.

back, i can tell you i am the one who made the decision to delay it until we got these issues addressed and i'm comfortable and confident that the system is working. it is a good system and will be beneficial. >> phase two is a good system and it is working? >> yes, which is completely different from our previous experience that i would not want to replicate in any way in the future. i will also say our contractor, while we have had issues, we want to make certain this works. >> let me ask a question about that. the problems you have described, are they agency problems or are they contractor problems? >> there are problems on both sides which is always the case in something like this. >> how does that impact the case of the award fees and the. >> we are in discussions with the contractor on that right now. we have halted the continue work

on faces three and four until we have got those issues resolved. >> what are those issues? >> the three that i described, on the one hand there were certain things that users requested and secondly there were coding issues and earthly we wanted to make certain that the system when it goes out needs i guess it would be infrastructure requirements. >> do those changes to the contract and the requirements have a budgetary impact? >> they will. what size i cannot tell you what this point. >> it will increase the costs, yes. in looking at it we believe that we can address those costs with what we have in our watch it but again that is something we are discussing. >> do you propose to pay for those increased costs as a result of these problems through a 2011 request? >> we may.

we are in the stages of determining exact late. >> we have your 2011 request. is it contained in your. >> no it is not. >> is it possible that you would pay for some or all of those cost increases through, through what do you call the payments, the fee, report fees for performance? >> yes. it will be give on both sides. >> otherwise he would be looking at a reprogramming? >> i am not certain that vehicle we would use but we have today and will continue to keep you apprised. >> but right now you are holding back at portion of the contractor's fees, perhaps as a means to pay for it to be determined? >> we have stopped to work on

phase three and four until we get satisfactory resolution of the issues. another point i might make is our experience in the past as we had one solid contract, week after phase one went into an incremental development where we decided to develop in basis so we could accept a particular phase before we moved onto the next phase to make sure that meets our expectations. this is exactly why we went to incremental development as opposed to the development process we use before. >> do you expect to have this system up and operating? >> the system is a rating now. >> phase three and phase for? >> phase two, the pilots will begin this summer which will be pushing it out to the field as a whole and basically this is the most momentous part of the project. phase two, faces three and four will follow relatively quick way after that are crispy it sounds like you are on top of it.

>> one has to stay on top of that weekly, absolutely. >> mr. wolf? >> that is glenn fine's fault. that is a joke that we are striking from the record. we are going to subpoena him. no, that is enough. let me ask you a couple of questions because we do have a vote and i will submit, on the gang issue, the committee plussed-up the gang issue. your national intelligence center has determined that gangs are identified as national threats. in 2858 or sense of the local law enforcement agencies reported criminal gangs were active in their church dictations and almost a 30% increase since 2004. the committee included significant increases of 25 million above your request to specifically address this issue.

can you tell the committee how many task force exist and how many additional agents in task force will be added as a result of the fy10 increase and is this a top law enforcement priority? >> excuse me just one second. >> i needed to know the back round from those who are more knowledgeable of the figures. approximately 13 million is going to additional personnel. we do not intend to establish new state street task force but to augment the task force as we are to have turquoise and mentioned before and i can get you statistics, we have doubled

if not triple the number of state street task force as we have put up in the last several years. >> but, is the money used in a way, because as you recall there then requests that maybe you use the same approach that we use use during the 60s with regard to organized crime and this becomes a major effort that you actually have someone in the hero who was focusing like a laser beam because if you live in a neighborhood where you are terrorized by gangs, that is a form of domestic terrorism but the people can't really live. >> we have certainly gang intelligence centers and gang task forces but what we have come to understand is we need fusion centers focusing on particular gangs. we have an ms-13 specific ms-13 task force with persons operating not just at headquarters but in the various communities, yours and los

angeles and as i indicated before with associates or i should say adjunct task forces in places like el salvador, so we have focused on gangs in general but we also are pushing to make certain that we focus on particular gangs and take out the leadership and to the extent possible, remove those gangs from particular neighborhoods. i think we have had some success in neighborhoods in northern virginia for example and the new assistant director in charge has as one of the mandates to work closely with you to address the continuous phenomenon that we see there. >> okay. hopefully we can continue the additional funding. here again if somebody is living in a poor neighborhood and they fear for their family, and i think-- what impact do you see the killings that took place in mexico the other day, that violence spreading across the border? >> we have had pockets of

violence spreading across the border. in particular, and when it has come to kidnappings, cross-border kidnappings in san diego, el paso, juarez, san diego, and tijuana and we have task forces to address that. in this instance that occurred on sunday. actually it was saturday afternoon. it is something we are working closely with our mexican counterparts to identify the persons responsible and assure that they see justice. ice vent and adjuster down to combine the resources not just the fbi but dea, atf and others who wish to participate to address that circumstance. this is the first instance we have seen i believe that individuals associated with the american consulate in juarez attacked in such a brazen manner. >> did the car have a u.s. license plate?

>> i am not certain whether it did or not or could. >> the people that were murdered in, was that an american car? >> i would have to get back to you on that even one car there were two individuals murdered and one individual murdered, his family was in another carpet both of those cars came from the same birthday party on that day. >> i would be interested to know if they were u.s. license plates or texas license plates. there are a number of questions i will ask him that or go the radicalization issue. over the last year or so we have seen a disturbing trend terror attacks planned carried out by individuals including americans who have been radicalized with islamic influence. the fort hood killings, the christmas bombings in jihad jane and a fellow the other day, there've been reports of americans being detained in yemen, pakistan and other

countries. does this represent a significant shift in the terrorist threats facing the nation and how is the fbi adjusting to counter these new developments? >> i think those in the intelligence community including ourselves with a there has been a shift in the degree of concern about affiliates of al qaeda growing in strength and presenting a much enhanced threat to the united states. by that i am talking, certainly before september 11, the federally administered tribal areas, waziristan, western pakistan in the eastern pakistan still present a threat as we saw with najibullah zazi, the individual who went back to new york and anticipated back in september attacking the new york subways. he was recruited and trained in afghanistan, but we also are

concerned about yemen, individuals in the last year, year and a half individual lead so who was responsible for the little rock shootings of the military recruiters. ..

in and yemen and want to come back to the united states and undertake terrorist attacks we are attempting to identify those persons and attempting to lighten the five persons radicalized by those overseas never travel overseas and radicalized to the point where they want to undertake terrorist attacks in the united states. >> i went to submit for the record i wonder do you think who is doing a better job with regard to the radicalization issue. does great britain to a better job than we used to? you hear a problem over there

but we don't have the problem now. we don't see a g.i. jane from philadelphia. you're from the padilla philadelphia area. we see the five now in alexandria and the major virginia tech graduate born. are we doing everything we should or maybe there should be a development of a different approach clearly what we used to say is no longer the case because it is a problem. are you thinking deep in so far as how we deal with this from a different way we continue to adjust because maybe we were not doing as well as maybe people said we were in comparison of other countries. >> i do think there are somewhat different problems the u.k. faces where it has communities would that have been alienated and to a certain extent i guess you would say dispossessed and they are focused on the

radicalization and many of these communities. we have a diverse community, diverse communities muslims in the united states. and we have -- we are all immigrants and we have immigrants for any number of african countries, middle eastern countries and the like so there are very few areas you can look at and say okay these are pockets. >> i am an immigrant family, too. one half is green and my grandfather could barely speak english. he was a german in south philadelphia. what i meant is but radicalization g.i. jane was not from yemen. she was from the united states born and raised so that's what i'm talking about from that perspective. you find mobley -- i think he was -- i am talking about radicalization of the domestic population that we hadn't thought of before.

you had me confused thinking in an unclean they talk with regard to the pakistan community. i'm talking about domestic recruitment of people born and raised here in the united states that you would normally not think because i looked at the senate foreign relations committee talk about a member of their blond haired blight moving two yen in radicalized in prison so to think a little bit differently and maybe we don't have enough time, we can talk about it while to open to see if there's other ways to deal with that. >> we've looked at places of radicalization prisons for instance with the federal as well as state and local prison systems and various communities working with leaders outreach in the communities but i will tell you the one that is the most worrisome i think is the internet. everybody will tell you the internet, the influence of the internet, non-justin radicalization but moving from

radicalization to organization to undertaking terrorist attacks is the greatest most serious phenomenon that has resulted in many of the cases we've seen in the united states it hasn't been persons in the communities. it has been the internet. islamic maybe you can have someone come up. maybe we can give you some resources to kind of deal with that. >> thank you. >> thank you. mr. schiff. >> thank you. is there any indication yet in the three that were killed in mexico that came from the same party that they were targeted because they were american or do we know whether it was a case of mistaken identity? >> i think it is too early to reach a conclusion, early in the investigation. i know there's been speculation in the media but i do believe it is too early to reach any

compulsion. >> on the broader issue of guns going down in mexico from the united states, i know this is an area where atf has the primary jurisdiction, but what do the agents tell you about the willingness of attorneys to prosecute these cases, even cases that may involve straw purchasers are low on the hierarchy but nonetheless might lead to prosecution of those engaged in the larger gun trafficking? >> i have not heard the attitude of u.s. attorneys periodically i hear the judges were just assuming not to the gun cases in federal court but that's the way some time effectively been in federal court but that is what i picked up. i am going to meet with u.s. attorneys next week with something i will mention, try to remember to mention to them that i have not heard one way or another. >> please let us know if they

need the resources to do it or if they need encouragement to do that. >> i can tell you the needed the resources. >> i'm sure that's right. very quickly and you may need to get back to me in writing on this, in my lifetime as u.s. attorney i've prosecuted the case so i fall with great interest and hansen case and now the inspector general didn't follow-up report on some recommendations made after hanson about changes the fbi could make to improve its ability to ferret out, people who were attacking the fpi from the inside and the recent fall op assessment found that there were several important recommendations that had not yet been implemented including establishment of a new unit detailed or dedicated exclusively to internal penetration. there was the need to have a

need to know systems' computers which were probably set back by the virtual case file systems internal problems. but also one of the concerns was hanson's ability to walk out of the headquarters of these classified documents undetected and the ig also found the fbi informed information insurance program didn't address the key concern. can you respond back to us in writing and let us know where fpi is? >> i think that was 2-years-old. i may be wrong, but i know for instance we head that unit in place for a number of time and we have addressed the other concerns but overall in terms of the recommendations and the wake of hanson we've adopted i would say 90, 95% of them. these are several and very few given the over all suggestions made that we had to close up but i do believe they've been closed. we will get back to you on that.

>> thank you. >> director, think you for your the country andoday and for the service of all of your employees of the fbi. we will have some questions for the record and i know you will respond to them. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

will c-span has launched its video library website. c-span's vice president peter keisler talked about the new on-line service on this morning's washington journal. >> host: c-span vice president. you are here to announce the video library. tell us about. >> thanks, libby to read it is a historical and exciting day of seesaw and histories i will take you back for a few period to the experience of how this is accretive to developing to read the cable industry created c-span as a public service in 1979. 1986 they launched c-span2 the united states senate. shortly after that in the summer of 1987, c-span began in a facility of initially in a partnership with purdue university in west lafayette in began about a decade later we took the total control of the

facility that began to archive and record every single minute of c-span programming. the house and senate proceedings, the speeches, everything you come to know from c-span. over that time it's due to look into quite a large archive. we initially sold video tapes and vv is as the internet grew and expanded we began streaming a lot of that video. there is a team and indiana led by dr. robert browning and ten archivists who over the last few months have been digitizing this archive, everything in it. 160,000 hours of content starting from those early days of 1987. today we are announcing that the entire archive is available for streaming. it's fully searchable, it is i think a resource for a lot of people to use in a lot of different ways so we look forward to inviting or audience to come and browse through the

archives, take advantage of the library and use it in the myriad ways the will find it available. >> host: can you walk us through? >> guest: sure. there's a couple ways to get to. easiest for our audience that knows the c-span.org web site is to go to c-span.org and in the top right-hand corner you'll to killing directly to the video library. cyclical that link and go to the video library and you will see then that you can easily find lots of information. various ways of giving into the library and looking at what has been most viewed, you can see recent programs, you can see programs people have been sharing. when you look at these things, you will see that it's just a simple icon that you can click on to go to the video. to learn more about it in the top right hand corner of the page you will see there is a blog with lots of postings on how to use the library. we think one of the easiest ways

for people to give it is to do personal searches. there's been 115,000 different people that have appeared on c-span during that time and. to find one of those people you simply can't go to the video library and tighten their name. clearly president, members of congress, everyone is in there. one search we've done is if you want to search for a supreme court justices of the confirmation hearings since robert bork in 1987 are on their but see your interest in the chief justice said you can't hide in the chief justice named john roberts and click there. of comes the biography page for that person. each of the 115,000 people has a biography page like that so you can click on the body open agency chief justice roberts comes up and you will go to his history. what i want to show with this is you can go to that and he made a speech this week or i guess last week at the number city of alabama that made news we talked up the state of the union. you can go to that clip, click on it and do what's called a

text search. maybe you're not interested in watching the entire speech from the chief justice but you want to see what he said about president obama attending the state of the union speeches. you can go down and search in the transcript and simply type in union and up will come in the transcript where that specific quote is in the speech. you can then clip that and you see on the screen how can find and extract quote and move, slide those little bars across and clip the except frame of reference. we think is powerful and fun with this is you can then take it with and share it in multiple ways. you can invade that in your blogs and share the e-mail and you see along the center of the screen you can share it with facebook and you can tweak that clip out so i think it is a great opportunity for the chance of public affairs programming to come in, what they think it's valuable and relevant and important to them, something

that helps drive home the point they are advocating for a couple the clip and share it with their audience. islamic who is the video library geared towards? >> guest: we are finding that it's geared for a lot of people certainly educators, historians, people very involved in public affairs certainly students can use the video library. we are finding we've got some blog what's yesterday from jazz aficionado who wrote a blog the last thing they expected to find on c-span was a lot of good information about jazz but they found in the library clips of people talking about members of congress talking about their favorite jazz or wynton marsalis talking about jazz at the national press club and how people need to learn more about jazz. certainly people following the issues of the day can use it. for instance, health care has been such a big issue this year. we have followed the health care process so if you want to get the most up-to-date stuff you

can find the mark up proceedings from this week that have been taking on. if you are looking for a perspective there are 880 hours of content related to health care debate and discussion since obama became president in january of 09 in the library. so you want to see this week's markup, you want to see president obama when he addresses the joint session of commerce last fall, those things are all easily searchable and finding on there's a tremendous resource for people following the issue of the day. >> how about historical perspective? >> again we think health care is a good example to find historical perspective. many people have been talking as the congress has been debating health care this year referring back to the 1990's when the clintons pursued health care and we have a fun clipper i.t. from 1993 in the discussion. >> the chairman on the government-run health care

system. i do share his intention to make the debate in the legislative process as exciting as possible. >> i'm sure you will do that. [laughter] >> we will do the best we can. >> you and dr. kevorkian. [laughter] >> host: peter kiley tonight we will be covering tv correspondents' dinner. are these in the video library, too? >> guest: we think they are. a lot of times where there are a lot of lighthearted moments are in the social dinners in washington that we cover. the radio correspondents, the white house correspondents where big name comedians oftentimes come in and give speeches. the political actors in this town themselves make speeches that are oftentimes pretty funny and we've got one of on a clip from that we will show you from 2007. >> tell me what is your name?

that's true. he's crossing his arms wrapping and chilling and shoving his charming. he would do it without bail shooting quail. this man will never stop looking at him getting ready to help. he's got so much to prove, tell me you never saw this man moved. doing the dance, the coralroot dance. >> host: what about members of, chris? >> guest: there's a special section in the video library for trucking members of congress were if you go to the video library of the top bar you find a button that says congress and if you go to that you will find the congressional chronicle. within that you can track your member or every member of congress. when you see that on their to will find that it lists the people who spoke in the most on the floor of the house and samet or you can secreted by the least. you can look for individual

members of congress. when you click on that you will find not only their biography page but a tremendous record taken from the congressional record of congress. the congressional record as of can be changed slightly or updated as it gets printed. this record you can find on c-span's the exact proceedings what happened on the house or senate floor. >> host: how is this funded and what is the cost and why do this? >> guest: the important thing for the viewer and the user of the c-span video library is it is completely free to them. the cable industry made the commitment back in the late 1970's to have a public service channel. it grew to three channels and now it's developing with the growth of broadband and video online. the cable industry agreed with us that it is a resource that should be made available. it's important for democracy and we've heard from the industry great pride in allowing us and encouraging us in fact to make this kind of content available to as wide an audience as we can

to make a searchable and user-friendly as we can come to make it important contribution to the space process. >> host: if you're reading the newspaper this morning you may have seen this ad in a variety of papers. tell us about the ad and blog features of the website. >> guest: on usual for c-span we took out ads in several major newspapers today full-page ads announcing the launch of the video library. within it you will see dozens of pictures of people who've appeared on a network over the years of the library has been archived in contant. if you go to the c-span video library and see the blog posting at talk you can click and see that and played an interactive game and see if you can name all those people that have been in the library and it will help you with a lot of resources on how to use the library. >> host: peter kiley vice president of c-span, thank you for talking with us about the cs the library. >> guest: thank you, libby, it

was a pleasure. president obama praised the

senate today for passing and 18 billion-dollar bill creating jobs. his comments came after meeting with irish prime minister bill cowen known as t. shock. this is ten minutes. >> good morning everybody. first of all i want to congratulate this sound person right here for having the green earmuffs. i haven't seen that before. happy st. patrick's day, everybody. before i talk a little bit about the strong and enduring bond between the american and the irish people, i just want to thank conquer as for passing this morning the high your act. it is the first of what i hope will be a series of jobs packages that help to continue to put people back to work all across america. this bill will provide tax cuts to small businesses that are

willing to begin hiring right now putting people back to work. it's also gwen to provide significant tax breaks to businesses for investing in their business and so hopefully at a time we are starting to see an of swing in the economic growth will help sustain that and the bill also continue to improve our ability to finance infrastructure projects all across the country. i also want to say to the republicans who ordered for this bill and i appreciate their willingness to work with democrats in a bipartisan fashion to get america moving again i hope that on a series of future steps that we take to help small businesses get financing to help improve our infrastructure around the country and put people back to work we are going to see more progress on that front. i want to thank taoiseach for coming here today.

last year we had the opportunity to get to know each other and we had a wonderful time during st. patrick's day. 36 million americans claim irish ancestry. i'm sure more due on st. patrick's day. it's a testament i think to help close the two countries are that america has been shipped cultural become a politically and economically by the incredible contributions of irish-americans. those bonds in durham and in our meeting we reaffirmed how important it is to continue strong partnership across the whole host of issues think to taoiseach for the assistance they provide it on critical international issues. we use the facilities in ireland

for transit and military troops to afghanistan, the irish police are providing training in afghanistan as the taoiseach indicated the irish government punches of of its weight on a whole host of critical issues we will be working together to enhance food security around the world even in these difficult times it is important to make sure we are tackling the big issues like world hunger. i would congratulate the taoiseach and his government for the extraordinary work that they engaged in working with gordon brown and the british press as well as secretary clinton reaffirming the progress made in northern ireland and to get a ratification of continued evolution. it's a sign of his leadership and we want to be as supportive

as possible in advancing the northern ireland peace process. we also discussed the economy and on both sides of the atlantic we are seeing stabilization of the economy would obviously we want more than just stabilization. there's a lot of people out there still hurting, still out of work and so we will continue to coordinate international and bilateral to see how we can spur investment and private sector growth on both sides of the atlantic. so i just wanted to say how grateful we are for the friendship and the partnership of the united states government and the irish government. we wish you and everybody who is your happy st. patrick's day and we are looking for to the reception in the white house leader deceiving. >> thank you very much, mr. president.

i and my delegation are delighted to join you in the white house this morning this wonderful st. patrick's day morning and i thank the sun shining out shows the relationship ireland joins with the united states not only now but over many generations and that contribution to america by ireland is a continuing one we have to find modern expression to all the time and certainly the level of cooperation and common cause we enjoy together in terms of the issues today with the economy and how we can assure the three economies recover as quickly as possible. something that's very important to both of our countries and certainly in ireland's context the u.s. economy will be a strong indicator of our return to prosperity and we very much, and the very decisive steps that you've taken in terms of the

economic issues and banking issues which have been so successful and which we are seeking in our own context as a recapitalization of the banking system and making sure that we of the banking system fit to assist recovery to grow jobs again in the future and provide investment and credit for the business is hard pressed. for that context i've been delighted to head the delegation here to the united states having visited chicago, the west coast, silicon valley and now washington, d.c. the last couple of days. 70 small and medium priced enterprises have been with us doing trade with american companies. that is to say the two-way relationship in terms of investments is continuing over 34 billion year rose has been invested in the united states and 85,000 people directly and that feels like mirrors for a significant u.s. investment taking place in ireland.

important and bourn on anno is finding jobs for your people and hours. in ireland we are deeply grateful for the continuing deep commitment shown by the obama administration and the president himself and by secretary of state clinton and in the recent months we've been grateful for that continuing interest that has not come so positive. as i said to the president for a place that has been known for its disagreements the vote was a very good vote to get. we look forward to what he's doing during the course of this week. in that context it in force is the fact we are so grateful for

the president's time both himself from the of penetration and people on the hill from both parties are very welcoming of us and we appreciate that as a recognition to the continuing relationship that we enjoy so on all of these fronts again it's a great pleasure to meet with the leader of the free world and we are deeply grateful for his mission in not only terms of how america is progressing but the position on the world and we will always be supportive of the stands and positions president obama has taken not only in terms of the economic issues but on development issues we will have a hearing with circuitry clinton and foreign minister of the u.s. conference on hundred and food security and another

indication of the values that we share and our ability to cooperate in providing leadership positions we are grateful and privileged to enjoy with you. >> thank you, everybody. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> i told him thank you. >> [inaudible] >> i would love to go to ireland. >> [inaudible conversations]

mr. speaker a message from the president of the united states. >> mr. speaker in directed by the president of the united states to the house of representatives. ♪ ♪ now a house hearing on

efforts to protect u.s. troops in afghanistan and iraq from mines and ied. pentagon officials testified about new technology to improve body armor and military vehicles. the house armed services subcommittee hearing is one hour and 45 minutes. [inaudible conversations] >> the subcommittee will come to order. today the expeditionary forces of the committees. join in air and a position to receive testimony protection equipment and operation iraqi freedom and operation will in door and freedom with particular focus on our vehicles, personal body armor and counter ied initiatives. we welcome our witnesses for today. representing the army to discuss army force protection systems or major general thomas spoehr

director of or me g8 come brigadier general peter fullers programs exit at officers salter commanding general. representing the marine corps force protection and the mrap joint vehicle pergamus brigadier general michael brogan commander marine corps systems command and program executive officer from the mrap joint program office. representing the joint ied d.c. organization is the new director of michael oates. representing the government accountability office knees davi d'agostino, director defense capabilities of managed she appears to discuss the latest report on intelligence surveillance reconnaissance issues based on business to iraq and afghanistan prepared for the house armed services committee. today's joint hearing continues the committee's ongoing oversight activities with the full spectrum of the protection

matters and iraq and afghanistan. i will ask activity regarding the protection was a classified briefing in december of 2009. we meet today to receive updates on these critical life-saving programs and to provide an opportunity for the families fighting men and women to here with the army or marine corps and the dod leadership are doing to protect loved ones against the threats of the soldiers and marines. today's hearing is expected to cover and provide updates on a wide range of programs to include resistance of family vehicles to include the lighter and smaller mrap alterman vehicle and individual equipment such as lightweight body armor, the new battle dress uniform, equipment used to detect snipers on country radio control ied electronic warfare, the continued challenge of getting adequate intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance assets and improvements in weapons and tactics for operational forces. at this time last year the mrap altering vehicle was still under source selection.

no vehicles had been produced beyond small numbers of test assets and no vehicles had been fielded to afghanistan. in just one year over 4,780 fees have been produced and over 1400 have been delivered to afghanistan. over 900 have been fielded into operational units. the correct producers averaging 1,000 vehicles per month. what publicly thank general brogan and his team for the service they provided the nation and spearheading the mrap and effort. it is publicly mentioned before i don't see the suburban and acquisition program in the history of the nation this field as fast and with such immediate and dramatic results. the team's efforts have saved lives, general and i want to thank you on behalf of the american people. there are young people out today because of what you have done, what you and your team have done. there's still major challenges ahead for us with respect to long-term sustainment of the vehicles both in the field coming here and overseas as well

as improving these vehicles through the capability. i'm aware of the mrap program office is current pursuing several capability assertions and vehicle modifications to include installing the independent suspensions on legacy vehicles, have your more capable door hinges on the and eight tds and i expect to receive updates on these today. a critical component force protection is adequate training. that means having ability to train on the equipment the warfighter will use in combat range of individual equipment to our word vehicles. for example of the accidents involved in mrap since november, 2007 have been rollovers. i realize some of these soldiers retreated to the poor roads and infrastructure by do believe some of the rollovers i have been prevented through better training. general brogan, you stated in formal response to the subcommittees, and i am quoting, the better training of the trigger the less likely they are

to conduct maneuver that will cells in the vehicle. understand one of the lessons learned from the original legacy mrap program was to concurrently field vehicles to address operational and training requirements and that we are applying the lesson in the program. i'm still concerned over the limited number of legacy mrap vehicles available to the army for training and hope to gain a better understanding of the army's plan for addressing the vehicle shortfalls. clearly be in atv is a good story and demonstrates we are capable of applying lessons learned. however we cannot become complacent. in the last year afghanistan experienced a near doubling ied vince and u.s. casualties continue to increase. general oates in your testimony you stand and i'm quoting the past three years of afghanistan the casualty rates for the war fighters of increased buy roughly 50%. this concerns me. i look forward to hearing from you on our organization as addressing the strength. before going to the witnessing opening remarks about like to recognize my friend --

[inaudible conversations] >> okey i would be recognizing my friend from washington state, i will however recognize my ranking member friend from missouri, mr. aiken for any comments you may have. >> thank you come mr. chairman and for scheduling this important hearing today. because you have hit a lot of the highlights i'm going to be brief and would also like to thank the gao and army witnesses for being here today and of course general brogan, you are no stranger to this committee and we are delighted to have you back. thank you for being here and also general oates i believe this is your first time testifying in front of this committee. welcome. this is an important subject. the testimony you're about to provide will assist us in how we are to proceed with in fighting the necessary congressional oversight of these programs and again i want to thank all of you for the service to the country and for being here and thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, mr. aiken.

we now recognize the ranking member of the air and land committee the honorable roscoe bartlett. >> i will be brief so that we can get to the testimony and questions. thank you for the service to the country and for being here today and i look forward to your testimony. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. the chair now recognizes the new chairman of the air land committee diaz i apologize for running a little bit behind schedule. welcome to you all. if there is no objection i ask my full statement be included in the record and i will follow mr. ward -- mr. bartlett and i will last question to the appropriate time and i appreciate very important issues we are here to discuss the issues and what you're doing on them and with that i yield back. >> thank you. without objection of the one is prepared testimony will be included in the record. general oates, thank you for your service and taking the time to be with us today. please proceed with your

remarks. >> thinks mr. chairman. i appreciate the opportunity to be here today and testify. the ied remains the greatest threat to the life and limb of the forces in iraq and afghanistan to include the civilian employees that are present, and so the protection of those forces is a priority for the organization on the amount of lead the joint ied organization and have provided written statements and i will stand by and by an anxious to answer questions. thank you. >> [inaudible] >> chairman taylor, chairman smith, ranking member aiken, ranking member bartlett and others distinguished members of the committee on behalf of the army, brigadier general fuller and i are here to provide updates on army protection efforts. let me preface my remarks by thanking the members of both committees for their leadership and continued support of the army. we share a common purpose and

commitment to developing the field this equipment available to our soldiers, armed civilians and contractors serving operation in during freedom and iraqi freedom. the brave men and women serving today represent the best of our society and they continue to perform like this is simply against a determined enemy and a complex and dangerous operational environment. after more than eight years of continuous combat, we recognize the importance of keeping our deployed forces at the highest level of readiness and providing them the capabilities available. protection of our soldiers and critical war fighting assets remains the army's highest priority. in response to the continued threat of improvised explosive devices, suicide bombers other nontraditional threats as was the more conventional threats such as small arms fire the army has pursued numerous initiatives to enhance the ability and velte and survivability of our soldiers and formations of which they served.

these initiatives are captured in complementary and reenforcing layers of protection which it would continue as improvements to individual soldier protection, new and enhanced or more and we'll tracked vehicles, new active and passive this defensive capabilities improved battlefield situational awareness with better intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms as well as advances in biometrics and robotics. in addition the army has taken steps to light in the load by fielding play carriers, lightweight machine guns and tripods. while we have made significant improvements in our force protection posture we know we must continue to provide improved solutions for to significant reasons. first technology is always changing advancement are always being made and we await to our soldiers to continue to invest in promising technologies that we will give them a decisive edge in combat.

second, the weapons, tactics and motivation of adversaries continues to adapt and we must be more versatile, adaptable and unpredictable than the enemies we face. there for the army's ongoing canada and to provide our soldiers with the best equipment in the world is just that. ongoing. we always mindful the soldiers in the field are the ones that bear the burden of battle. the army remains fully committed to provide an unwavering support for our soldiers by giving them the best protective equipment and capabilities available to successfully confront current and emerging threats. again, thank you for this opportunity to testify before the subcommittee today. on this important issue. thank you for door steadfast support of the american soldier, general fuller and i look forward to answering any questions you may have. thank you. >> the chair thinks the gentleman. and now recognizes general fuller. thank you.

i have no prepared remarks. i'm prepared to answer any questions you may have. >> i hope you guys don't think you're getting off this light. [laughter] the chair now recognizes a true -- you were all true american heroes but another true american hero general brogan. >> german taylor, ranking members, distinguished members of the said committee, thank you for the opportunity to be with you this afternoon. and to answer questions, and marine corps force protection programs and the joint mine resistance hamlisch projected field program. i appreciate, sir, you're going to enter the statement for the record. your support these last many years and providing necessary funding to equip our marines and the joint force to meet the challenges of regular warfare has been tremendous. we work together on a daily basis with our counterparts in

the various sprick and executive offices in the army to field just this type of equipment. throughout this conflict, we have fielded numerous generations of gear and had the opportunity to improve its. that goes for individual body armor plates from the small arms protective to the enhanced small arms protected insert and the side plates. in a flame resistant gear from the suits normally worn by combat vehicle crewmen to now having fire retardant uniforms that include antimicrobial, antibacterial, antivictor properties i very much appreciate your kind remarks regarding the mrap program that serves states is a team sport. the leadership of the, providing funding with the support of secretary defense, the services,

the defense agencies and our industrial partners at all levels, prime colacello -- southcom of vendor and supplier has made it possible and we've been able to field these vehicles and have market impact on the survivable of our joint fighters. i would only ask that we recognize this is an open hearing and the topic is very important some of the matters in the force protection would go into classified areas we don't want to approach that and we also served to be closer, would like to discuss specific to please and limitations of the equipment in an open session. this nation has fielded the best equipped best protected force in history largely due to the support of the congress. finally, on a personal note this is likely my last appearance in front of these committees and as the commander of marine corps systems command i very much appreciate the access you provide me and the patient to have afforded me and i look forward to your questions.

>> the chair thinks the gentleman and recognizes ms. davi d'agostino. i hope that is correct. speaking to the great job. chairman taylor, chairman of that, members of the subcommittees, thank you for having me to discuss the gao january 2010 report on the dod intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance of ksr processing exploitation and dissemination or sharing capabilities. there's been a dramatic increase as you know in the demand for the systems to collect intelligence in iraq and afghanistan to the point where the dod now has more than 6800 unmanned aircraft systems alone. diyala ksr is also seen as the first line of defense for the u.s. and allied forces against insurgent attacks and roadside bombs. but to be useful to the war fighter after intelligence is collected, it must be analyzed and shared with all of those who

need it in a timely manner. the presentation board beside me shows the intelligence data processing cycle and you should have a sheet in your briefing book that shows that, too, a close. this processing cycle is commonly described in five interconnected phases at the front and you have first planning and direction and second collection. at the back end, you have third processing and exploitation, fourth dissemination, and fifth evaluation and feedback. my testimony today focuses on phases three and four of the cycle or the back end of the cycle that transforms the collected data into usable intelligence for the force. today i will discuss first the challenges the dod faces and processing exploiting and disseminating the information collected by the is our systems and the extent to which the dod

has developed the capability needed to share the information. we've reported on the dod challenges with isr integration requirements and tasking of collection assets. for this report we spent 16 months obtaining and analyzing documentation from undersecretary defense for intelligence all four military services, the is our task force, joint forces command, central command, the national security agency and the national geospatial intelligence agency. we also traveled to several locations in iraq and the united states to observe the processing of isr data first hand. we found the military services and defense agencies face longstanding challenges with processing, exploiting it is amending the data they collect. first dramatic increase in collection has not been accompanied by an increase in processing capabilities. of these capabilities are now

overwhelmed. as the general of the air force on es are chief recently stated in the not too distant future the department will be swimming in sensors and it needs to ensure that we don't end up drowning in data. sycophant transmitting the isr data requires high-capacity bandwidth for communications which can be extremely limited in theater. third, analysts shortages including linguists hamper the dod ability to exploit all of the isr information being collected. forcible, central command officials told us the exploit less than one-half of the signals intercept collected from the predator. the dod has become some initiatives to try to deal with these issues but it's too soon to tell whether or not the efforts will result in a measurable improvement. the dod is also trying to improve the sharing of intelligence information through a family of interoperable systems called the distributed ground system or the d.c. gse.

the dod has directed the services to the transition to d.c. gse but each service is a different stage in doing so. further, to facilitate the sharing of the isr data on the system dod developed common information standards and protocols. a key problem for all of this is that the legacy isr systems, the older systems do not automatically tag data for sharing with certain key information like location and time and the services are also not prioritizing the data that should be tagged. the services expressed concern to us that the dod has not developed overarching guidance or a concept of operations that provides them needed direction and priorities for sharing intelligence information. as a result we've recommended in the reports that the dod develop such guidance and that the services and develop plans with time lines and prioritize and identify the types of isr data

they will share consistent with overarching guidance. dod agreed with our recommendations and while my testimony has been focused on the back end of the intelligence cycle, our prior work for this committee has shown there are also problems on the front end. and theater collection task kings are fragmented and visibility and how the isr systems are being used both within and across domains is lacking. and all of these challenges combined to increase the risk that the operational commanders on the ground may not be receiving mission critical isr information which can also create the perception that additional collection assets are needed to fill the gaps. mr. chairman, members of the subcommittee this concludes my summary. i would be happy to answer any questions you may have. >> the chair thinks the gentleman and recognizes the chairman of the arab lands subcommittee mr. smith. -- before, mr. chairman.

general oates, i will start with you on the jieddo process and this initial the canada and the response to the problems we had in iraq. it was multifaceted and an evolving a threat in iraq and now afghanistan as well and jieddo stood up to try to grab every corner of that and do everything we could to respond and there are many different pieces of it. there have been some concerns on behalf of the committee and others about the way the money has come together, how well organized and well structure jieddo ase because there's a bunch of different ideas floating around out there so everything from individuals certainly body protection for the troops it's the vehicles they are in, other countermeasures that we have employed and i think there has been some concerns in terms of keeping track of the money and whether or not it is being spent and organized a and i know that you have made statements that is a priority of yours and to make sure that you get better organized and structured. just wondered if you could take a moment to sort of walk us

through how that is improved and improve our confidence that the money and the resources are going to the absolute best use in terms of defeating the threat. >> thank you, congressman. it is an interest of mine into the areas. one is full accountability. i do know that we are the stewards of the government money and i want to make sure that that is not opaque to any one especially the congress read the second is transparency with our other parts buyers. they want to include the services, the of their combat commanders as well. let me first start at the process. there are a great number of good ideas. those are generally sheltered by the combatant commander and as you know comes forward with a joint urgent operational need statement and that is the screen by the combatant commander and joint chiefs of staff and not all of those come to jieddo. we are generally the first stop if it is a largely on eda

related issue or there is a requirement to respond quickly. so, and our budgeting we actually set aside about 20% of our budget every year for that emerging enemy technique or capability gap it appears we did donner anticipate. i received my prairies from the secretary of defense and he has just shifted mind recently on becoming the director of afghanistan surge so we have appropriately signed our funding towards meeting the capability caps the task of a central command. >> how do you measure the effectiveness of what you do? and it's hard i know because we are certainly not going to stop the threat no matter how we do it but how do you measure with or not a given idea and give an amount of money spent on that idea worked or didn't? >> let me take that in just a second. i want to conclude by reminding you that we do provide monthly

reports if not more frequent to the oversight committees to ensure there is absolute transparency of the money and i'm very confident that we can account for. this is a very difficult challenge to stop pushing measures of addictiveness against dollars spent in this particular round so there are some objective tenants we use we actually look at the total number of ied. those are effective have many and what type of ied vendors a result in casualty were killed and we can draw some analogies to money we were the force protection and how much more energy is required by the enemy to inflicted casualties for instance in the area of training we rely on our troop commanders and small concession officers in particular to inform us about what training is required and what might be effective and most recently in my short time as the

director i had a chance to see some of what he would call good ideas, developmental ideas and simulator training which we know intuitively from having been in the fight now for a number of years will bring dividends and save our soldiers and deny the enemy access to the soldiers but this is a major challenge trying to establish concrete objectives measures of effectiveness against the money that is spent. ..

>> thank you mr. smith smith and just for everyone's information, we made the decision for chairman smith in the two ranking members we won't have a five-minute rule but i would remind you that we are expected to have vote sometime around three tonko 15. mr. i can. >> thank you mr. chairman. first of all, general oates my understanding is there were some people that were critical about resources and what we were doing with your organization. you have had a chance as i understand it to read over that. you have been a user of the services and now you are charged with providing the same services you are using in the past. are there some structural things you have wanted to change about how you approach the problem or

is it just kind of an ongoing management situation or what has been your perspective, moving from user to first in charge? >> thank yous there. i have been a customer of jieddo for six years. over three tours in iraq i didn't always know where the capability and benefits were coming from. i have a clear vision about now. and i would like to take this opportunity to tank of the congress for what it has done for my soldiers both in the 100 hurston tenth mountain division. from my perspective, the director of jieddo munn of my key concerns is ensuring that we provide good response to congress about these particular lines of operation whether they are adequately funded, whether we need to make any changes, defeating the device largely focused on technology developments and detect, attacking the network is an area that really is difficult to establish measures of

effectiveness going back to the chairman's question, and training the force which in my experience has been the greatest return on investment and an area where as the chairman alluded to earlier with the mrap providing quality training for soldiers in all three of those domains, defeating the device, attacking the network and impact training in this environment will return great dividends. i am not prepared at this point to give you a very specific answer on whether adjustments need to be made or adequately funded at this point sir. the funding is provided by congress and allowing us to make meet these very urgent capability gap requirements that have come out of afghanistan and we believe we can handle them at this point. >> thank you, and then the second question over to the loop, the intelligence data processing cycle and being able to process, we are picking up so many sensors are so good.

how would you, have you seen an approach as to what has to be done to process the data or do you have any suggestions along that line, or what is our plan to be able to process as well as to collect? >> yes, one of the challenges i think they have had is the problem of tagging this data automatically. if it does not automatically tagged either on board the system or at the ground station, it has to be done somehow, maybe by hand or by some kind of adapter or with a computer, so it would take time away from the soldiers main mission, so it creates a difficult problem and if it is not tagged, then it is not discoverable by other people

even if it is put up onto a d. six. it is not discoverable without being tagged so i think that is probably the most pivotal problem that they face an eating able to share. >> i don't understand a word you just said. what do you mean tagged and discoverable? those are not my normal vocabulary. >> it is like when you take a picture with your digital camera. it has a date on it and when you load it onto your computer you can find your digital photos by date. if it doesn't have any tag on it there is no way to find it for you. so, this is part of the problem. >> so it is a classification, how to identify classification? >> it is like giving it a name. without the name there is no way for somebody to discover it, and then use it. >> how do we name it didn't?

>> there are requirements that the data be tagged but the problem is some of the older systems did not have the capability to automatically to that, and therefore, some unknown amount of the data that we are collecting right now in theater cannot he shared in its form that it comes off the platform,. >> i would think you would want a date in a location wouldn't you? wouldn't those be the two main things you are looking for? you want to run the time two days backwards. >> bearer standards and protocols and also rules that have been made about the kind of tagged data that you put on when you tag it. general rogan is going yes, yes. but it is important to get that on to the data so that other people can find it and use it and benefit from it. >> so it is a classification kind of thing.

general brogan do you want to comment? >> it is not really classification in the sense of confidential top-secret but more identification by date, time and implications sir. >> that allows you you then if something occurs you can go back and take a look at what you might've seen, license plates? >> particularly if you are looking at the same area in multiple scans you can look for differences, where there disturbances that were not there previously to help identify the locations of ied's. >> thank you mr. chairman. >> we now recognize the ranking member of air land, mr. bartlett. >> thank you are a much. i have two questions. the first is for general fuller -- brogan in the second is for general fuller. i continue to be concerned about the short-term and long-term effects under soldiers and

marines in regards to the total weight of the equipment they are carrying in afghanistan. as you know, in vietnam the average weight was 30 to 40 pounds and today there carrying nine steep to 100 pounds and sometimes more than that. i understand we have modular design that can help with this issue and certainly every pound we can reduce counts, but in the mid-to long-term what are we doing to incentivize interest? for example what would it take assuming a level of protection to reduce the body armor by say 50% in less than five years? that we even asked industry something along these lines? general fuller as you know the army and department of defense have recently started a new round of audie armor testing to help establish a standard testing protocol with a specific focus on statistical analysis and statistical confidence levels. we briefly discussed this at my

office a couple of weeks ago. can you explain this testing, give us an update on the progress of the testing and explain what you hope to achieve? thank you. >> sir, you are absolutely right. the way to significant but the long-term impact is currently unknown. we have not seen a marked increase in injuries to our marines during training or during our combat operations but we don't know the long-term impact. in answer to your question, we do communicate with industry in a number of forum. in all of my public comments, every two years we hold it advance planning brief for industry where all of those who do business with the united states murray in court and academia as well as government labs are there and we lay out for them what our priorities are under commandant and the commanding general of the marine corps development command have

indicated reducing the weight is important. i believe the most significant thing we need those there is a materials breakthrough. we have nothing better than the ceramic plates we are currently using with the intended weight that goes with them. we need a materials science advance and to that end, the commandant commandant and his guidance for the planning of palm 12 has directed our smt funding defense. if we have those to pay corporately throughout the institution we are not permitted to reach into those scientific knowledge accounts to get the money. much of that money is not run by my command. it is handled by the office of naval research and the research laboratory in marine core war fighting web but that is an area where we could certainly use some help from our industrial partners. >> we were advocating as you know for a specific line for r&d for this. we believe the potential for reducing this weight is there if industry is sufficiently

incentivized and we believe including the acquisition of this in the research along with underwear and the uniforms and helmets and so forth is probably not the best way to get the best technology out there. general fuller, my first question. >> yes, sir. as general brogan said wade is a concern we have with their soldiers and we try not to treat them like they are a christmas tree and we just hang things on them. body armor is one of those elements that we are putting on our soldiers. we have lightened the load when we feel that the-- and as general brogan said not only are we trying to lighten the load but redistributing how the weight was mourned by the soldiers so it is now coming off their shoulders down to their hips where you can distribute and carry that weight better. we have also looked on the soft body armor site a new play carrier which we are fielding into afghanistan.

between an improved tactical vest in our plague carriers eight-pound. that a pounds is what our soldiers are looking for. in terms of the hard party armor, as general brogan said we really need it l. a g.. we are just tweaking the edges of that technology to refine it to try to lighten some of that weight but until we have that new breakthrough in science and tech elegy i don't believe our r&d efforts or even the independent research and development efforts of our contractors is going to give us the breakthrough we need to get that weight off of our soldiers. you heard general spoehr talk about providing our soldiers with improved lethality and that lethality is now lighter. you want to give them the total package, the survive apology and also their operating environment. when we talk, you ask the question specific to what what we call her our phase two testing. server as you are or where congress directed we conduct

testing on our enhanced protective inserts and are next-generation that of our protective inserts. we conducted that testing with gao oversight in d.o.t. oversight and when we completed that testing we realized we have been working, our testing protocol has been one of overmatch. we take our products and we test them to around faster than any round in the battlefield and we realize what we are doing is taking the ability but we don't have the statistical confidence that we have the best body armor. we know it is the best because of what we hear from our soldiers and from the testing. we are transitioning from overmatch to a statistical confidence basis. i am pleased to report we have conducted one face of that testing where we have taken place from our soldiers downrange wearing them, to the mouth and took them off their backs and brought them back and

shot at those plates with real threat rounds at a high statistical confidence interval and we had outstanding performance with those plates. we are taking another set of plates, doing the same thing. these are going to be brand-new coming off our production line so what we are doing is i tell everybody we ours wrapping up our game. we have always had quality product that we are not going from bad to good. we are going from good to great and we want to ensure the american public and congress that we have the best body army and now we are doing it through very through a statistical method so you can demonstrate with high confidence that it is a quality product. >> mr. chairman i would like to record to show and i would like our witnesses to confirm this. there've been questions about specific article in the testing procedures. my understanding is that none of that has in any way permitted any defect if armor to get out to the troops. that d's were some protocol

differences that did not in any way impact the quality of the armor that our young men and women to wear. dxf b. is not yet feel that? it is they are to be used if needed? ps there. the product is currently listed debts contingency stocks. it is available if the threat materializes in the theater and we are watching through different intelligence sources very carefully if that threat materializes and it has not. it is a heavier play. the reason we are not fielding it now, the threat is not there and we don't want the soldiers to bear the weight of a half pound heavier for each plate to have them have that capability when the place we have right now are doing the job as you have said. we might've had some process issues. never had been a challenge with our products. quality product. >> our fathers and mothers can be assured that these

differences in testing procedure in no way had an impact on the quality of the protection in the fields to our young men and women? is that a correct statement? >> that is absolutely a correct statement. >> i want to remove any concern that in any way and the armor was less than what we thought it was got out to our young men and women. thank you mr. chairman. >> the chair rep nice as the chairman of the readiness committee. >> thank you mr. chairman. thank you for joining us today and for your service. i know you were touching on the testing of the technical best, but we are buying from two different sources. am i correct? >> two different sources you mean between the marine corps and the army, sir? the right. >> view we have the same products or. >> the same products but--. >> different colors just like we have different color uniforms.

there are two components, the soft body armor, the same ballistic packages inside, different color and how we might attach them. on the hard place to army figures the hard binary plates for all the services of the marines are getting the exact same place that the army or the air force or the navy is getting. we have currently, we have three vendors building plates and the army is no longer in the procurement business for plates. we have transitioned that over to the l.a., defense logistics agency and they are procuring it for sustainment of all services. >> the prices are the same for the two different services? >> for the hard plates, yes sir because it comes off of our contract and they just buy the same thing. >> i spent some time last year visiting with the troops who were getting ready to deploy in one of the things the army was very concerned with was the color of the camouflage uniforms

that they wear. they would much rather have what the marines have. are you gentlemen sharing information with one another just be what would be the best uniform, not to train but to go? both marines and army are being shot at. have you decided on the army at least, on the uniform or are you going to continue to have the same camouflage uniform that you are utilizing today? >> the first part i would like to answer. the marines in the army, general brogan and myself were closely together. or teams are working closely on sharing information as to what we are working on. is a matter of fact the marines were in our office looking at new capabilities in inquiring as to what we are doing and how we are doing it. we are doing the same thing with special operations command so the three commands generating new capability all the time, we are sharing all that data.

specific to the uniform the army has made a decision based on a new methodology that we are sharing with marines and other services that we believe we need a different uniform for afghanistan specifically and we are in the process of generating the uniform. we are calling it the multicam u-uniform and when you talk about our her uniform of our uniform i consider to be two parts. one is the chassis, how it is designed, how we where things such as velcro and the other is the color. when we feel this new uniform to our troops not only are we going to change the chassis. we are constantly getting input from the soldiers understanding where the challenges with their uniforms are we are making chassis changes and making a color change specific to afghanistan and that is going to be the multicam uniform starting in july, sir. we did consider in that process the marine corps uniforms and actually we had 57 different uniform options we considered and where we see the army

operating in afghanistan we believe this uniform would work the best in all of the environments in afghanistan. >> how soon before you get them? >> we will start seeing the first uniforms available in the july time period and start fielding them to the units deploying in august, the major brigades going in august and we are working carefully with the theater to provide the same capability to soldiers in the theater that we are working through with the theater to ensure we don't fill up their lines of communications with the uniforms when they are also supporting a surge of troops, so we are working on this whole effort real-time, sir. >> one of the things they were concerned with was the issues were not sufficient because they wore out quicker and then if they needed another set, they had to pay for them. are you aware of that? >> server i am aware of that and as a matter of fact i received your letter concerning that. two items, the uniforms we issue

our soldiers use used in a combat zone are fire resistant uniforms. they don't wear the same as our regular uniform. they look exactly the same as far as the chassis and color but they are different material. they wear differently. what we do is provide our soldiers with for uniforms before they deploy them as they were out those uniforms they can go into the supply system and get reissued uniforms and theater so the soldiers do not have to pay for uniforms when they are in the theater if they tear them or rip them or whatever they may do to them. >> i am glad to hear this because it was one of the main concerns when i spent time with them. thank you mr. chairman. >> i would add the fire existing uniforms organizational equipment is issued to the marines and theater and then they wear it out and they do not have to buy that uniform. they do not wear the flame resistant uniforms when they are back at home stationed in

garrison. >> thank you so much. >> the chair rep nice as the gentleman from california for five minutes. speech on summon thank you for for your service. the first thing general fuller i want to make you aware of something. do you know what the counter bomber is? the ecp device called the counter bomber? >> not directly. >> the marines are using it right now. the air force is using it or go the army has 12 here in a warehouse that it has yet to deploy. senator brogan do you know what i'm talking about? >> i am familiar with it and i will tell you it has met with mixed results from user in theater and they are dissatisfied with its performance. too many false alarms so. >> is it better than nothing? >> at may or may not be. best handle probably off-line sir. >> gotcha. the only reason i bring this up is because it is a great device

or a bad one and the army has 12 sitting back here, so they are in a warehouse and this goes along with other things, where there are situations where we have stuff in the army buys it in different services by it. it could be anybody in benefits here as opposed to being deployed. there is no plan or where they want to put them so they are just sitting here. it is one of those things that has been fast tracked. it has been purchased, fast-track tested and sitting in a warehouse. just so you know there are 12 and eight u.s. warehouse that haven't been deployed yet and if the army is going to use them at all or try to upgrade them or whatever so that is the first thing. second, i want to get onto one more thing to touch base with you. as everybody looks at a new car to replace the upper receiver or do something with it if we need anything done with it, if it is done we do want to upgrade it,

right now there are only three competitors in our small-arms industrial base that are listed that can, that are viable options to make the new car. one makes the 50 caliber machine gun so they are out and the other two are the ones that make them for now in a foreign company. a belgian company, so my question is, the secretary of defense has the ability right now to wave this rule and bring other companies and like the three or four other american small-arms manufacturers that we have into this competition in my question is have you encourage them to do so or will you? >> sir i understand what you are talking about. when we look at the improved car competition that will be upcoming and improving our m4, we are looking at ensuring we have a full and open

competition, meaning all vendors can come forward. recognizing the current language preclude potential full and open, we are working through that process right now. i cannot say that we have-- we haven't asked the secretary of defense for a waiver of this time but we are considering that process and how we are going to do that. >> my last question is for general oates. something we don't talk about too often, we talk about ied's. i was able to talk with dr. ash carter in general paxton. it is a party of two and they were talking about they are able to keep more mraps and do some things to bring people's different lanes together and get them is going over faster and they have secretary gates here all the time. buyouts for something yesterday that they didn't have an answer and i asked general petraeus this morning who didn't have an answer and it is this. do we own and any road in afghanistan? do we own 20 kilometers?

do we own five kilometers? can we say we have persistent coverage of any road at all, and a certain amount where we have isr whether it is manned or unmanned, watching that road? >> sir, from this distance away from the war fight, i would not hazard a guess whether we actually own the road, any stretch of its 24 hours a day. i do know that there is isr coverage and force to dominate portions of the road when they operate on them but quite frankly i haven't looked at how many kilometers that is. my first visit to afghanistan was a couple of weeks ago and i was struck by the difference in afghanistan in terms of how much unpaved road there is and an extreme peril of pop rating especially in the east in the north, extreme fallouts on either side and twice as large country from iraq.

>> but less road than iraq? you only have one quarter from rc south to cover? >> i would agree with you, less paved road but i couldn't give you an answer of how much we actually control they are today sir. >> the chair recognizes the gentlewoman from maryland, ms. tsongas. >> from massachusetts, i am sorry. >> i say that because i'd know general fuller is from massachusetts and we are proud of it. first i would like to thank all or our witnesses for being here. i appreciate the time and effort you have not only put into this hearing but they give put into providing servicemembers service members with the best equipment available. your efforts truly stabilize and i thank you for that. general fuller as i said it is nice to see you again and i want to commend you on our witnesses on the fine work that has been done throughout the past eight years to improve soldier survivability on the battlefield to two improvements in body armor.

the services have come a long way to ensure each and every sailor, soldier or airman and marine has individual equipment that they need. but there is still far to go and i still have concerns about how the department of defense is going to meet the requirements of reduced weight, operationally tailored body armor. my primary concern is in the fact that the department of defense failed to establish separate procurement budget line items for body army as was mandated in last year's national the thames authorization act. in this failure leads to the perception in spite of what you all have been saying here today, the department of defense, army and marine corps are not committed to body armor as an investment item. duguid body armor procurement has traditionally been provided through overseas contingency operation funding in this year is no different. the army is requesting $327 million for body armor while there is no discernible amount requested in the base. what is going to happen when there is no funding and the

services can no longer count on the supplemental funds to procure the central protective equipment? the lack of commitment to move body armor procurement funding into the base is compounded by the fact that the army reported in a hearing we heard last week on acquisition and modernization that is fiscal year levin base budget request for modernization of body armor programs is $0. by requesting body armor funding solely in the overseas contingency operation funds and by putting practically no dollars against research and development for body armor my concern is services are setting themselves up for future situation where once again our soldiers are deployed for combat operations with inadequate and outdated body armor. here are my questions and i'm going to have several. first, general fuller and general brogan what is the long-term investment strategy for body armor procurement, and i know as we have heard today

the department is creating one standard for body armor testing and evaluation and i appreciate your efforts and what is the army and marine corps and other services doing to create the same synergy of effort when it comes to procurement and development of body armor? if you could please describe the process you use to communicate body armor requirements and performance specifications to industry? >> yes, maam. i appreciate your question. as we have talked about before, it is a complex issue when we talk about our social protection. we are looking in the army as to what should be a portfolio associated with our soldier protection and when we talk about that we look at how do we protect the total soldier from their head to toe and we are looking at the bomb suits, the conceivable body armor, are hard and soft ballistic army-- armor and our fire resistant uniforms and ballistic eyewear. we are working in the army and the department to address the

language that was in, address this year's language identifying we need to have research and development in a perk per term at line. at this time we don't have it, i recognize that. we are trying to define what should be in that line, what components and how much should be there. in terms of why we are not looking at buying additional product in the future from a are meant perspective, requirements right down the army's approximately 966,000 improved tactical vest and we are reaching the end of that procurement. in terms of our plates, we have procured over 2 million of the place and we have on contract 240,000 of our contingency stock so i believe our soldiers are covered but i do recognize we need to think where are we going to to go in the future when we want to have a new capability and how do we fund for that and currently we are funding

everything through cocoa. >> general brogan. >> yes, maam. to communicate the performance specifications industry, we do that through requests for information. can you provide this capability? requests for quotation which is how much would would your produn capacity the end than when there is an actual decision to buy is there a request for a procurement? telecine proposal how much it would eat, what your production capacity would be, their rates to deliver schedules and things like that. so those are the performance specifications. with respect to purchasing, you are absolutely correct, we have purchased a large amount of this equipment with the operation funding in the supplementals required for that. as general fuller said we now have in our possession the required quantities. however the soft audie armor wears out roughly every three years.

it has not met the investment threshold funded through a procurement line. we have funded that through an operations and maintenance line, and as i mentioned we started the conflict with the outer tactical vest based on feedback from the user in theater. we went to the modular tactical vest which addressed a number of deficiencies and now we have designed in the u.s. government the improved modular tack taylor fest and given that specification to industry to build and to print, so we on the technical data package for that and industry is making it to her specifications. aligned with that is the plague carrier, the smaller fest that doesn't have the extra soft armor. that reduces the weight being carried at the marine in theater. we also on that design. it is interoperable so the improved tactical vest can be moved back and forth between the plague carrier and the imtv.

i mentioned to an earlier question, how we communicate generally with industry and that our 61, six to research and development lines are handled by naval research in the naval research laboratory. >> thank you or your testimony. >> the chair recognizes the gentleman from colorado, mr. culp for five minutes. >> thank you mr. chairman. the preponderance of our casualties in afghanistan, and i believe the preponderance are due to roadside bombs. recently in afghanistan, it's my understanding that the government they are outlawed ammonium nitrate and ammonium nitrate is a primary ingredient in afghanistan for the making of ied's unlike i think in iraq where it was old munitions, more artillery rounds as the primary

source for the ied's there. what impact, and i understand north of 90% of the ammonium nitrate and afghanistan is used for the making actually of ied's. what impact does this outlawing or this end of the ammonium nitrate in afghanistan, if i'm correct in that, have in the reduction of ied capability? >> sir, that is a great question. as a point of clarification ammonium nitrate actually has beneficial uses in afghanistan and every arab country for road preparation and mining to some degree. but, president karzai did at some insistence on our part and ammonium nitrate or go i believe, and i think the command currently assesses that will have an impact, a favorable impact on the availability of this fertilizer to be used as an explosive device.

we also have a challenge with potassium chloride which is used to make matches or go it comes out of the facilities in pakistan as well for perfectly legitimate reasons. but it can be converted to explosive capability. so the short answer to your question is, the enemy has shown us in iraq and is showing us in afghanistan that they are adaptive. were we to take away all the ammonium nitrate, they would ship somewhere else, so while it is a good step in that will have good benefits both in protecting our soldiers and airmen and, it is not going to close out their options are. >> have we seen any effect that can be traced back to this decision at this time in terms of any kind of slow down or reduction in ied making capability? sir, it is a little early. i don't want to misspeak but i think the demand is-- the band

has been in place for a little over a month so i think it is a little premature however there are indications from our intelligence sources that it will have an impact. how much so we will have to gauge. >> thank you. in terms of individual force protection equipment, where are we add in terms of the next generation in helmand? >> the enhanced combat helmet you mentioned started as a joint effort between the united states army and the united states marine corps. they did the first round of research and development testing there was certainly potential in a new composite material that we looked at. we took on the next step of actually putting out their request for proposals to industry and a awarding a number of development contracts for test items.

would make up those test items in and tested them they did not reform as we had hoped and anticipated. we provided the results of those tests back to our industry partners so that they could make the modifications to their designs and we would expect to begin to start receiving the next set of test items early this summer, sir. speak very well. let's see. could somebody go over with me-- i know in the isr area we have been flooded with data and i think the primary problem seems to be it is too much information coming in and the inability to sort it in real-time in order to have an effect on the battlefield. can you tell me what improvements they are are in terms of managing the information coming in from various isr platforms? >> i can speak to two initiatives that were discussed during the course of our work

for the alien subcommittee. one is the national security agency is finding innovative ways to find more linguists to help in translating and dealing with the signals intelligence data that has been collected and again these are initiatives that we are unable to measure how much impact they have. in addition, the air force has announced plans to add 2500 analysts to their court-- board to be able to process and disseminate more of the data coming off of the isr systems, so these are two we mentioned in our report and that were raised to us. people are trying to deal with it. it is the breaking the back end of the cycle with all of this flooding of data. but again, it is too early to tell how effective these efforts are going to be. >> thank you mr. chairman.

i yield back. >> thank you. mr. kissel. >> thank you gentleman and thank you for being here today. i would like to note that while the apparent addition of me being near the end of the line and asking questions i do want to allocate that i have a whole row allocated to me here so that shows you where i am in the pool. >> the room is a little bit or do we are happy in and raeburn when we get back their. >> you lose track of who is behind you when you get back your. >> i didn't even see you down their. >> thank you mr. chairman. [laughter] i do have a question. it is kind of hard, general fuller i think maybe this question goes to you. this is a question i normally might run through channels and i'm not advocating a particular vendor here. but we had, being so much of our

conversation has been about body armor and can we move ahead to a new tech elegy, a new generation, i had a gentleman come to my office a while back that was on the cutting edge of science and using some of the oldest technology on the other. if he said was true, it would seemingly be a huge step forward in the possibility of reducing weight and increasing the strength of protection to our people. he has been working with the department of defense and seemingly getting more frustrated as he went. i am going to ask my military l.a., captain tim vitter. i would like to have a report that from you well. is this a possibility? is what he is talking about realistic? is isn't a step forward, a giant step forward as he is talking

about? i'm not pushing this vendor. i just want some feedback as if it is, then let's pursue it. if it is not i can say i am sorry this is not what we are looking for but there are things that got me somewhat curious about what he is offering. general oates, in the scheme, and mr. bartlett said it today, bad the proportionate amount of money we spend in fighting ied's in protecting our soldiers pursued the cost of ied's, and also we have to keep doing that. we have got to protect our soldiers but are we catching up or are they getting farther ahead? >> sir, it is a quick question and i actually think iraq might be informative here. if we go back and look at what has transpired in iraq and the funding that has come forward to protect our soldiers but also allow us to understand the networks that are engaging us,

begin to attack them directly. understands devices in defeat a great number of them. the trend lines are fairly clear and we can get back to you on the specifics over the years. but an aggregate, take the enemy more ideas to achieve the same results. those were all positive trend lines to now where iraq doesn't begin to resemble this year as it did the first time i was there in 03 and several more times after that. i do believe that if we look at the investment provided to the services and to jieddo that would directly translate protecting our soldiers and in helping us attack networks over there the results are clear. the difficulty is tying individual dollars to what will will 10 more golfers get you in terms of effects against the ied? that one is very tough. we are going to try to do better to the chairman's question in

trying to playback what we believe the reasonable measures of effectiveness are and i think iraq is informative of the great success we have had in this area. >> i don't want to indicate at all that this is a voluntary issue. i am just wondering is all the technological things we are doing and all the efforts we are making, are they getting farther ahead or are we catching up in terms of protecting our soldiers? i do want to follow up with what congressman hunter said about sharing the technologies and making sure if we have something sitting somewhere because someone has chosen not to use it in that point in time that we are not just ignoring the fact that somebody else might have a need for it because there have been a couple of situations brought to our attention that we followed up on where that happened. we want to make sure all of our assets are being used. and i yield back. thank you mr. chairman. >> the chair thanks announcement. the chernow wreck nice as the

gentleman from virginia, mr. wittmann. >> thank you are joining us today. appreciate taking time out of your busy schedule and thank you for serving our nation. general spoehr at last year's general protection hearing i asked general lennox about what the army was doing to upgrade our small-arms capability. in regards p.m. nine at that point i cited findings of the 2006 center for naval analysis study of our soldiers and marines in afghanistan. and also iraq. who had engaged the enemy with their weapons and combat and in that study 40% of the respondents were dissatisfied with the m. nine postal, with 26 % requesting a larger coble weapon and 20% saying it should be replaced. i note the fy2011 dod budget includes new start authority for handguns to replace the m. nine

and they were requirement may be jr approved. i was wondering if he could tell us what progress the army has made towards replacing the m. nine and when can the committee expect nrf t. for the new handgun and what is the army's timeline for fielding the new weapon? >> thank you sir. as you say there has been a new joint requirements oversight council requirement for pistol approved. it was submitted by the air force he felt the need for a new pistol so that requirement was approved. we are still examining the requirements of the army for a new pistol. we are aware of the study you mentioned and the soldiers feedback on the pistol. in light of their feedback we have done key improvements to the pistol. we have given an improved magazine and general fuller's people are going to put modular handgrips to accommodate a variety of peoples hand sizes

for the pistol because we think that is a fair amount of the dissatisfaction with that weapon. we are going to look at the air force requirement document to it than done a lot of work to get to this point. if we believe that requirement meets the army's requirement i think we could proceed with a program but no decision has been made yet, sir. >> there has been some talk about the caliber of the handgun and at stopping power and people being concerned about the small caliber that they currently have so i am assuming that will be one of the array of issues and looking for a replacement for the m-9? >> yes sir and as you are aware the stopping power is caliber and you have probably heard in recent press reports about something called green ammunition for the m4 carbine. much more stopping power and much more lethality. we think that same technology has applicability to the m-9 pistol so as we get done probably we are fielding green ammo for the carbine we are

going to look at importing some of that same technology over the pistol where it may make up for any lethality gaps that they currently have. >> you believe some of the concerns with the him m4 as far as it's range of capabilities will be taken up with this green ammunition? in other words, are the main objections to the weapon basically it is stopping power or are there other aspects of the m4 that are creating challenges for our men and women in service? >> most of the concerns have to do with its reliability and how many rounds between stoppages. the carbine as it is now is demonstrating performance well beyond its specifications. it was only required to do 600 rounds and it is demonstrating around 3600. we are looking at improving the carbine given the heavier barrel and other improvements. there've been over 60 improvements made to the m4

carbine so we don't get a lot of complaints frankly about the m4 carbine. it is met with fairly widespread success and i would defer to general fuller if you have anything you want to add. >> thank you sir. in light of your question what do we think about when we talk about our m4 weapons is it is a combination. it is the munition, the optics and training and how it interfaces with the soldier. as general brogan and i work for not hanging things on soldiers we need to twin sure that what we do for body armor for example doesn't adversely impact the soldiers ability to get a good picture on their weapon. in light of what general spoehr was talking about we are looking at improvements to our m4 and we believe we have made a recent one that is going to have impact in the field. we saw that the magazine did not reliably feed the ammunition straight into the receiver and we have now feel filled with a

new magazine. it is now part of our rapid fielding initiative and we are giving that capability out there but we also are getting ready to release and an rfp a request for proposal that would give us the ability to give the soldiers a heavier earl so they could have been increased sustained to fire. the army is asking us to look at giving them back their fully automatic mode in the m4. we are also looking at changing some of the bolton receiver components and we are looking at all these different options. at the same time we we are look being at the m4, we are looking at the carbine come is there something better but we believe the m4 provides a good capability to our soldiers. i think the green ammunition is going to get back the lethality the soldiers were asking about. where did it go? we gave you a much shorter earl and a lot of other technical

components, sir. >> thank you mr. chairman. >> again i want to thank all of the panel particularly lieutenant general oates. with your combat experience in iraq, you all bring a lot to this conversation but particularly your experience. general oates, the nation's ability to deliver vehicles has been a challenge. the humvee was a great vehicle until the enemy discovered it had vulnerability to explosions from beneath it which resulted in the fielding of the mine resistant vehicles. the striker was a great vehicle but unfortunately since the bar has been raised with the instruction, the striker appears to be more vulnerable to that problem. what steps are you taking to address that, what does this committee need to do to help you and above all what are the lessons that we have learned in the development of the mrap,

because although again i always will commend general brogan on the great job he did, but it is just a sad fact that from from the time we made up our minds we were going to buy 18,000, people needlessly died in iraq and afghanistan. so what steps are we taking four or more survivable striker? what did we learn from the mrap programs so we can fielded quicker than we did and even though general brogan did a phenomenal job building the mrap? >> as you know this is an extremely complex set of independent variables on the vehicle. afghanistan, what we have learned is due to the absence of improved roads, that there is another significant ingredient, the survivability of vehicles and that is the enemy placement of the ied and in some cases the inability to go off road. the striker is a very survivable

vehicle at my opinion. i have been in combat with it. in afghanistan, it can go off road and it is very quiet and so can seek to avoid obvious placements of ied so taking that that and dependent variable you could conclude the striker is more survivable given the mrap is largely confined to the road where the enemy has a very clear attack access. we have studied the process of the mrap at jieddo and looked at the v-shaped in u-shaped holes and we are working with a task force underneath the senior integration group to see what new technologies there may be out there that we have not yet lord and how we might offer some assistance to the mrap task force and what we discover in our own technological reviews. but, to date my major concern is trying to help the forces that

are in afghanistan detect these underbody explosions where they are located and seek to defeat them before we drive over them. that is my primary focus right now. the mrap task force is currently looking at the new set of vehicles and we are in a support role and we offered by us along those. we believe we don't produce the vehicle platform itself so i may have to differ on this issue to my good friend down there who does the mrap business and understands better than i do. >> would anyone like to address what steps are being taken on the striker? it is my understanding one of the manufacturers has come up with a double thee type autumn. the immediate question i would have as general subone explain the drivetrain on the unintended consequence, whether the force in the blast tended to go in the

cap because of that. i guess my first question would be with a double thee do you get that same problem with the unintended consequence of shaping the charge? i guess that would yet eat at the apex of where the 2v's come together. >> industry has come to the army with a proposal for what we call it double thee call. we were concerned about the same thing you were, the apex would channel the energy and then perhaps make things worse. industry believes not. they have done actual blast test. they have done modeling as well. they say because that apex is significantly higher in the floor of the striker, the exponential difference in height from the ied makes a huge difference in survivability. nevertheless, we are going to ask and we have asked osd for permission to build prototypes of this vehicle and as quickly as we get those prototypes we intend to take them up to

aberdeen and blow them up and see for real. >> my next question will be going back to our responsibilities do you have the financial resources, all the financial resources you need to expedite this program? >> right now in fiscal year 10, we can initiate this with no support needed from congress. if we develop something we will come back to this committee. >> general oates, going back to your observation and since you mentioned potassium chloride chloride and ammonium nitrate as being part of the problem, i am curious, i want to make an observation. the center for satellites happens to be in south mississippi. one of the things they pointed out to me was that from space looking at extremely slight differences in temperatures and trees they can tell me you are you which trees in the forest have pine needles in which trees in the forest are stressed for lack of water.

they can tell you the 10 most likely places to catch a blue fin tuna every 90 minutes. a number of things that are absolutely remarkable they can tell us from information that comes from space or go could i would imagine ammonium nitrate and potassium chloride-- chloride, i would imagine they have to give off heat. to what extent have you just put out the word to industry, i need someone to help me find a better way to locate the substances when they are in concentrations of 10 pounds or more? >> mr. chairman it is a great question i would like to take that one off-line with you only because we actually have some pretty good technology right now that we believe is going to assist us in detecting these items, but we are actively looking for additional assistance in both change detection on the road and the detection of the actual items. i would be happy to share with

you for the record on an emerging tech elegy that we intend to put in either very same. it returns, if we can achieve assistant surveillance on these roads it will increase our confidence and understanding what is he doing with those roads. to that and this is one of the top priorities for central command is the placement of additional tethered capability to survey all these roads, much as we used in iraq and that is the first charge of items that we have funded and will be moving forward to afghanistan. the technology you are describing would be interested in, and we have openly and directly with vendors indicated we would like to close that gap. >> let me ask you the same question. has this committee and are appropriated counterparts provided for you all the resources, financial resources you need to pursue this xps sir.

at present we don't have any issues and i would like i've friend here, based on what you have told me personally, we would return to immediately because we understand the sense of urgency if we need additional resources. i would not hesitate to come asked for them. >> the lasley and i will open this up to the panel. on almost every visiting theater, when you asked the troops what is it that you want, what can we get you? almost every instance it comes back to, it if you could just make my audio armor lighter. what sort of resources do you have to pursue that and again, does that attitude really addressed in the residence budget request? do you have the resources you need? if a manufacturer were to come to you today with a 10% or 20 cents-- reset reduction in that weight would you have the funds available to see if that product is worth purchasing?