into how 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 gaps. mr. chairman, members of the subcommittee, this concludes my oral summary. i be happy to answer any questions you may have. >> the chair thanks the gentlewoman. the chair now recognizes the chairman, mr. smith the smack down one. general of, i will start with you. when this originally came up, serving in our response, the problems we had in iraq, it was multifaceted. and an evolving threat in iraq, now in afghanistan as well and it stood up to try to grab every corner of that and do everything we could to respond to that

threat. and their many, many different pieces of it. there have been some concerns and on behalf of the committee on others about the way that money has come together, how well organized and well structured it is. because as a bunch of different ideas floating around out there, everything from individual, bottom protection for our troops, the vehicles that they're in, you know, a variety of other different countermeasures that we have employed. and i think there has been some concern and keeping track of the money and whether not it is being well spent and will organize. i know you have made statements that that is a priority of yours to make sure that you get that organized and structured so that you can just take a moment to sort of walk us through how that has improved and, you know, improve our conference that the money and resources are going to the absolute best use in terms of defeating the threat. >> thank you, congressman. it is an interest of mine into areas. one is full accountability.

i do know that we are the stars of the governments money and i want to make sure it's not okay to anyone, especially in congress. the second is transparency with our other partners. that would include services, the other combatant commanders as well. let me first art at the process. there are a great number of ideas that those are generally filtered by the combatant commanders and as you know, comes forward with a joint urgent operational need statement. as string by the combatant command and the joint chiefs of staff, and not all of those come to jieddo. we are generally the first stop if it's a largely ied issue related or there is a response quickly. and our budgeting, we actually set aside about 20 percent of our budget every year for that emerging in the technical capability gap that appears that we did not anticipate.

i receive my priorities from the dead the the debbie secretary of defense and the secretary of defense, and he has just shifted mine recently on becoming the director of afghanistan's surge, and so we have a appropriately signed our funding towards meeting the capability gaps and nuance that come out of the center command. >> how do you measure the effectiveness of what you do? you know, it's hard, i know, because we're serving not going to stop the ied threat no matter how we do it. but how do you measure whether not a given idea and a given amount of money spent on that idea actually worked or didn't? >> sir, 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 on the spending of our money. and i'm very confident that we can account for. this is a very difficult challenge, establishing measures of effectiveness against dollars spent in this particular realm.

so there are some objective tenets that we use. we actually look at the total number of ied's, those that are defective, how many and what type of ied's render, and result in kashmir or kill. and we can draw some analogies to money that we put into force protection, how much more energy is required by the enemy to inflict a casualty, for instance. there are subjective tests. larger in area of training, and we rely on our troop commanders and the noncommissioned 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, had a chance to see some what you would call good ideas, developmental ideas and similar training, which we know intuitively from having been in the fight now for a number of years, we'll bring dividends, save our soldiers, and deny the enemy access to our soldiers. but this is a major challenge,

trying to establish concrete, objective measures of effectiveness against the money that is spent, sir. >> have you found the challenges significantly different in afghanistan been in iraq? or is it pretty much the same battled? >> sir, the battle largely against the ied is fairly similar, but the methods employed and the type of id is very different as is the terrain in afghanistan. i be happy to elaborate if you like me to. >> actually, if you can just a statement on that. i've taken a quite a bit of time. i do have a couple of other questions but i will wait until the next go around and give some of my colleagues a chance. but i would be interested if your staff can provide information on how they see the threat different and the response different as the shifting more to afghanistan, obviously it's the problem in iraq, but it is a growing threat in afghanistan. i thank you, mr. chairman.

>> thank you, mr. smith. and just for everyone's information, i have made the decision for chairman smith and the two ranking members, we won't have a five minute will. i will remind you we are expected to vote sometime around 3:15. >> thank you, mr. chairman. first of all, general outs, my understanding is there were some people that were critical about resources, what we're doing with your organization. you had a chance as i understand to kind of read over that. you have been a user of the services. now you're in charge of trying to provide the same services you are using in the past. are there some structural things that you wanted to change about how you approach the problem or anything? or is it just a kind of ongoing management situation? or what has been your perspective moving from user to first in charge? >> thank you, sir. i've been a tactical customer of jieddo now for about six years. over three tours in iraq.

i didn't always know where the capability and benefits was coming from. i have a clear vision of that now. and i would like to take this opportunity to thank the congress for what it's done for my soldiers, both in the 101st and the 10th mountain division. and now for my perspective is director of the jieddo, one 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 third devised largely focus on subject knowledge development 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. an area where, as the chairman of the earlier, with the mrap, providing quality training for soldiers in all three of those domains, defeating the device,

attacking the network, and, in fact, training in this environment will return great dividends. i'm not prepared at this point to give you a very specific answer on whether adjustments need to be made. we are adequately funded at this point, sir. the funding has been provided by the congress is allowing us to meet these very urgent capability gap requirements that come out of afghanistan. and we believe we can handle it at this point. >> thank you. and then the second question, over to the loop, the intelligence data processing cycle and being able to process all of it, we're picking up so many, our sensors are so good. how would you -- have you seen an approach and what has to be done to process the data? do you have any suggestions along that line? or what's 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's not automatically tag, either on board, on board the system or by tom at the ground station, it has to be done somehow. maybe by hand or by some kind of adapter with a computer. so it would take time away from the soldiers may nation. 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. it's not discoverable without being tagged. so i think that's probably the most pivotal problem that they faced in being able to share with the. >> i don't understand a word you just said. what do you mean tag and discoverable? those are not my normal

vocabulary words. >> okay. it's 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. it doesn't have any tag on it. there's no way to find it for you. so this is part of the problem -- >> this is a classification, how to identify information? >> how to locate it. it's like giving it a name, and without the name there's no way for somebody to discover it. and then use it. >> so how do we name it? >> there are requirements that the data be tagged, but the problem is some of the older systems do not have the capability to automatically do that. and, therefore, some unknown amounts of the data that were

collecting right now in theater cannot be shared in its form that it comes off the platform. >> i would think you would want a date and location, would you, wouldn't those to be the main thing you're looking for? if someone runs into an id, you want to run the time backwards. >> there are these protocols and also rules that have been made about the kind of tag, data, that you put on when you tag it. general bolden is going yes, yes. but it's important to get that on to the data so that other people can find it and use it and benefit from it spent so it is a classification kind of thing. general brogan, you want to comment? >> it's not really classification in the sense of confidential secret, top secret. but more of identification by date, time and location, sir. >> and that allow you that if something occurs you can go back and take a look at what you

might have seen, license plates? >> database is searchable. if you're looking at the same area and multiple scans you can look for differences, were there disturbances that were not there previously to help identify the locations of the ied, sir. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> the chair thanks the children. will now recognize the ranking member of errors land, mr. bartlett. >> thank you very much. i have to question. the first is for general fuller and general bolden. the second is for general fuller. general fuller and general brogan, i'm concerned about the short-term and long-term effects on our soldiers and marines in regards to the total weight of the individual equipment that very caring and afghanistan. as you know, in vietnam the average weight was 30 to 40 pounds. today they are carrying 90 to 100 pounds, and sometimes even more than that. obviously, body armor is a major part of that weight increased

that i understand that we have modular antenna designs that can help with this issue. certainly every pound that we can reduce counts. but in the mid-to long-term, when we doing to incentivize to lower this weight? for example, what would it take, assuming a level of protection to reduce the weight of body armor by 50 percent in less than five years? have we even as industries something along these lines? and general fuller, as you know the army and department of defense have recently started a new round of body army testing to help establish a standard testing protocol with a specific focus on statistical analysis and statistical confidence levels. we've briefly discusses in 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 your with the results. >> sir, you're absolutely right. the weight is significant. the long-term impact is

currently unknown. we have not seen a marked increase in injuries to our marines during training or in operation. we don't know the long-term impact. in answer to question, we do commute it with industry. in a number of forms. in all of my public comments, every two years we have an advanced planning prefer industry. we have all of those we do business with the united states marine corps, and academia, as well as government labs are there, and we lay out for them what our priorities are. with a comandante, and the committee gym of the marine corps combat development command, have all indicated that reducing the weight is important. i believe the most significant thing we need though, sir, is a material structure. we have nothing better than a ceramic plates that we are currently using with the attendant weight that goes with them. we need a material science advance, and to that end, for

the common man and his guidance for the planning of well as dreck that are funding. if we have bills to pay, throughout the institution, we are not permitted to reach into this site and technology accounts to get the money. much of that money is not run by my area. is handled by the office of new research, naval research lab coat and the marine corps laboratory. but that is a where we concerted use help from our industrial partners. >> we were advocating, as you know, for a specific line for our anti-for this. we believe its potential for marketing reducing this weight is there an industry is sufficiently incentivize. we believe that including the acquisition of this and the research on this, along with underwear and the uniforms, is probably not the best way to get the best technology out there. general fuller, my first question? >> yes, sir.

as general brogan said, what is a concern we have with our soldiers, and we think about our soldier, 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 and we're looking at how do we lighten that load. we lighten the load when we fielded them the new improved outer tactical vest, it was 3 pounds lighter. and as general brogan said, not only do we try to light in their load but we we distribute how that weight is one by the soldiers. now it is coming off of theirs shoulders down to their heads where you can dispute it and carry that weight better. we have also looked at from the soft body armor side, a new plate carrier which we're now fielding in afghanistan. between a vest and a play carries, 8-pound belt here that 8-pound of what our soldiers are looking for. in terms of the hard body armor that you're talking about, as general brogan said we really need a new technology. we are just weak in the edges of that technology right now and try to lighten some of that

weight. but until we have that new breakthrough in science and technology, i don't believe our r&d efforts, or even the independent research and develop and efforts of our contractors is going to give us that breakthrough that we need to get that light weight under -- on our soldiers that we could as a total system. your general sport talk about we're also providing our same soldiers with light machine gun. you want to give them the total package. the survivability package, and also their operating environment. when we talk to me as a of specific to what we call our phase two testing. sir, as you're aware, congress directed that we conduct additional testing for the next generation of our protective inserts. we conducted that testing with gao oversight and also other oversight. and we complete the testing we realized we had been working,

our testing protocol has been one of over match. we take our product and we test them through a round that is heavier, harder and faster than any ground found in about the. and we realized what we're doing is taking the capability and getting a great capability but we don't have a sophistical confidence that we have in the best body armor. we know it's the best because what we hear from our soldiers and 30 over match testing. so we're transitioning our testing. we're testing from over match to a system of confidence basin. i we are pleased report that we conducted one face of the testing will have taken real place where soldiers downrange wearing them, took them off and gave them other ones. when we took him off the backs, and we shot at those, and we have outstanding performance with those plates. we are taking another set of plates doing the same thing. these are brand-new coming of our production like. so what we are doing is, i don't have an we are stepping up our game.

we've always had quality product, but we're not going from bad to good any of this. we're going from good to great. we want to enter and the american public and congress and anybody else we have the best body armor, and now we're doing it to a statistical method you can demonstrate it with high confidence that it is a quality product. >> mr. chairman, i would just like the record to show and i would like are witnesses to confirm this. there have been some questions about specific protocol in the testing procedures. my understanding is that none of that has in any way permitted any defective armor to get out to the troops, that these were some protocols, differences that did not in any way impact the quality of the armor that our young men and women where. it is not yet fielded yet, is that correct? >> yes, sir.

the esapi park is currently listed as contingency stock. it is available if the threat materializes in the theater. and we are watching two different intelligence sources very carefully if that threat materializes in theater, and it has not. it is a heavier plate. the reason we're not fielding it now, threat is not that we don't want to soldiers to bear the weight of a heavier plate that is approximate half a pound heavier for each play to have them had the capability when the plates that we have right now are doing the job, as you said. we might've had some process issues. never had any challenge with our product. quality product. >> our brothers and mothers can be assured that the differences in testing procedures in no way had any impact on the quality of the protection that got out to the field to our young men and women, that's a great state and? >> yes, sir. that's an apt a correct statement. >> i just want to make sure the record shows that because i want to remove any concern that in any way any armor is less than

what we thought was that to our young men and women. >> the chair recognizes the chairman of the readiness subcommittee, mr. ortiz, five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you so much for joining us today, and for your service. i know that you are touching on the testing of the technical vest, but we are buying from two different sources, am i correct? >> in two different sources, you mean between the marine corps and army? >> correct. >> we have the same product, serve. >> the same product but different -- >> just as we a different colored uniforms on today. on the plates, when we talk about body armor, two components. the soft body armor, single listed packages inside, different color and how we might attach them. on the hard place, the army procures the hard body armor plates for all the services so that the marines are doing the exact same plates that the army

or the air force or the navy is getting. we have currently, we have three vendors building the esapi plates. and the army is no longer in the procurement business for plates. we have transitioned that for esapi plates, and they're procuring for sustainment of all services. >> and the prices are the same for the two different services? >> for the hard plates, yes, sir. because it's 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, and one of the things the army was very concerned with was the color of the camouflaged uniform that they wore. they would much rather have what the marines had. are you gentlemen sharing information with one another to see what would be the best uniform for training, not to train but the goal?

because both marines and army are being shot at. now, have you decided on the army at least, on the uniform? are you going to continue to have the same camouflage uniform that you are utilizing today's? >> first part i'd like to answer on, sir, the marines and the army general brogan and myself worked very closely together. our teams are working very closely on sharing information as to what we're working on. as a matter of fact, the marines were in our office yesterday looking at our new capabilities, and inquiring as to what we're doing and how we are doing it. we're doing the same thing in special operations command. so the three commands that are operating in generating new capability all the time, we are sharing all that data. specific to the uniform, the army has many decision based on a new methodology that we've developed that we are sharing with the marines and the other services, and we believe we need a different color uniform for afghanistan specifically. and we are in the process of generating that uniform that we're calling it the most i can

uniform. and when you talk about our uniform, our army combat uniform i consider it to be to parse. one is the chassis, how it's designed, how we were things such as the velcro and things like that and the other is the color. we feel the uniform to our troops in afghanistan, not only will we change the chassis, we get soldier feedback, we're constantly getting input from soldiers understand what the challenges with a uniform so we're making some chassis changes and we're making a color change, specific to afghanistan because going to be the most i can't uniform that we will be starting in july. we did consider in that process the marine corps uniform and actually we have 57 different uniform options that we considered and we see the army operating in afghanistan we believe that this uniform will 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, sir, it will start fielding them to the units

deployed in august, the major brigades going over in august. and we're working carefully with the theater to provide the same capability to soldiers that are in the theater, but we're working through with the theater to ensure we don't fill up their lines of their lives adjudications with uniforms when they are also supporting a surge of troops. so what we are working on this whole effort in real-time. >> one of the things that we -- were concerned with is they were out quicker. and then if they needed another set, they had to pay for them. are you aware of that? >> sir, i am aware of that. as a matter fact i received your letter concerning that. two items. one, the humans forms that we issued our use in a combat zone are fire resistant uniforms. they don't wear the same as our regular uniform that you would see. and look exactly the same but just different material for fire resistant. so they wear differently. what we do is provide our

soldiers with four of these uniforms before they deployed, and as they wear out those uniforms, they can go into the supply system and get we issued uniforms in theater. so that soldier does not have to pay for a uniform in the theater if they tear them with them or whatever they may do to them. >> i'm glad to do that because that was one of the main concerns when i spent time with them. thank you so much. thank you, mr. chairman. >> sir, i would only add that the fire resistant uniforms, organizational equipment, it is issued to the marines in theater, and then they wear it out over there. they do not have to buy that uniform. they do not wear the flame resistant uniforms when they are back at home station in garrison. >> thank you so much. >> the chair recognizes the gentleman from california, mr. hunter, for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. gentlemen, thank you for your service. the first thing, general fuller, just want to make you aware of something in case you are. do you know the counter bomber

is? the ecp device called counter bomber? >> not correctly, no serb. >> has a video, the rains are using it right now. air force is using it over there. the army has 12 any warehouse that it has yet to deploy. general brogan, you know what i'm talking about her? >> i will take that it is that with mixed results from the user in theater. they are dissatisfied with its performance. too many false alarms, and so we our speech isn't better than nothing? >> it may or may not be. >> okay. >> best handled off-line, sir. >> got you. the only reason i bring this up is because it's a great device, or a bad one. the army has 12 sitting back here. so there any warehouse just kind of, this goes along with other things. where there are situations would have stuff and we don't, the army buys it, could be anybody, and then it sits here as opposed

to being deployed. there's no plan right now from the army where they want to put them so they're just sitting here. this is one of those things that have been fast tracked, been purchased, has been fast tracked testing and now just sitting here in a warehouse. there are 12 of them. just a you know there are 12 in the u.s. any warehouse haven't been deployed yet. and just see if the arm is going to use them at all or try to use them or upgraded or whatever. that's the first thing. second, want to get on one more thing, just to touch base with you. as everybody looks at a new carbine to replace the m4 or place the upper receiver, or do something with it, if we need anything done with it, if at all, if it is found we do want to upgrade it. right now there's only three competitors in our small arms industry base that are listed that are viable options. to make the new carbine. there are three of the. one makes the .50 caliber machine gun. so there are.

the other two left of the want to make the m4 now, and are a foreign company. a belgian company. so my question is, the secretary of defense has the ability right now to weigh this rule and bring other companies in like three or four other american small arms manufactures we have into this competition. my question is, have you encouraged him to do so? or will you? >> sir, i understand what you're talking about. when we look at both the improved karting competition that will be upcoming and also improving our m4 and parallel path, we are looking at ensuring we have a full and open competition, meaning all vendors can come forward. recognizing that the current language would preclude potential full and open, we are working through that process right now. i cannot say that we have asked -- we have asked the secretary of defense for a waiver at this time, but we are considering

that process and how we're going to do that. >> great. my last question is, for general oats. something we don't talk about too often. talk about ied that was going on with those. i was able to talk with doctor ash carter and general paxton, who lead of the ied task force. it's a party of two, and that's good i think because they were talking about their able to get more him wrapped over there, able to do things and getting people's lanes together. and just get things going over faster and have secretary gates their overtime. i asked them something yesterday, they didn't have an answer that i asked general petraeus this morning, didn't have an answer. and it's this. do we own any road in afghanistan's be? do we own 20 clobbers? to we own 5 kilometers? do we say we have persistent coverage of any road at all, any certain amount when we have isr, whether it is man or unmanned, watching that road? . .@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ n

extreme peril of operating. especially in the east and the extreme falloffs on either side. twice as large country from iraq. >> but less road than iraq? less asrs, less msrs. only one quart of the ring road got it covered? >> obviously less paved road. i couldn't give you a answer how much we control day-to-day, sir. >> thank you, mr. chair. >> the chair recognizes the gentlewoman from maryland,

miss tsongas. >> massachusetts. >> massachusetts my apologize. >> i know general fuller is from massachusetts as well and we're proud of it. first i'd like to thank all of our witnesses for being here. i appreciate all the time and effort you've not only put into this hearing but that you put into providing our servicemembers with the best force protection equipment available. your efforts truly save lives and i thank you for that. general fully, nice to see you again. i want to commend you and all of our witnesses on the fine work that has been done throughout the past eight years to improve soldier surviveability on the battlefield due to improvements in body armor. the services have come a long way to insure, every soldier, sailor, airmen and marine has individual protection equipment that they need but there's still far to go and i still have some concerns about how the department of defense is going to meet the requirements of reduced weight, operationally tailored body armor.

my primary concern the department of defense failed to establish separate procurement and budget items for body armor as was mandated in last years's national defense authorization act. if this failure leads to perception in spied spite of what you all are saying here today, department of defense, army, marine corps are not committed to body armor as an investment item. in fact body armor procurement has traditionally been funded through supplemental and overseas contingency operations funding and this year is no different. the army is requesting $327 million for body armor and oco while no discertainable amount requested in the base. what will happen when there is no more oco funding and services can no longer count on these supply mental funds to procure essential equipment? lack of movement to procure body armor money the base compounded by the fact that the army reported in the hearing on acquisition and modernization that, fiscal

year 11 base budget request for modernization of body armor programs is zero dollars. by requesting body armor funding solely in the overseas contingency operations funds, and by putting practically no dollars against research and development for body armor, my concern is that services are setting themselves up for a future situation where once again our soldiers are deployed for come pat operations with inadequate and outdated body armor. so now here are my questions. i'm going to ask several. first, general fuller and general brogan, what is the long-term investment strategy for body armor procurement and rd t & e? i know we heard today, the department is creating one standard for body armor testing and evaluation. i appreciate your efforts but what is the army and marine corps and other services doing to create the same synergy of effort when it comes to procurement and research and development of body armor? if you could please describe the process you used to communicate body armor

requirements in performance specifications to industry. yes, ma'am. i appreciate your question. as, we have talked about before, it is a complex issue when we talk about our soldier protection. we are looking in the army as to what should be in a portfolio associated with our soldier protection. when we talk about that, we look at how do we protect the total soldier from their head to toe and we're looking at bomb suits, the concealable body armor, hard and soft ballistic armor we were talking about previously. even our fire resistant uniforms and ballistic eyewear. we're working with the army and the department to address the language that was in the, address this year's language identifying we needed to have a research and development and procurement line. at this time, we don't have it i recognize that. we're trying to define what should be in that line. what components and then how

much should be there. in terms of why we're not looking at buying additional product in the future from procurement perspective, our requirements right now in the army approximately 966,000 improved outer tactical vests and we're reaching end of that procurement. in terms of our esapi plates we've procured over 2 million of esapi plates and we have on contract 240 of our xsapi i talked about as contingency stocks. i believe our soldiers are covered. but i do recognize we need to think where we're going in the future when we want to have new capability and how we fund for that when we're currently funding everything through oak hill. >> general brogan? >> yes, ma'am. actual communicate performance specialifications we do that through requests for information. can you provide this capability. can for quotation which is how much would it be, what

in your production capacity, that sort of information. and then when there is an actual decision to buy, it is a request for procurement. tell news a proposal how much it would be, what your production capacity would, the rates, delivery schedules, things like that. so those are performance specifications. with respect to purchasing you're absolutely correct, we have purchased a large amount of this equipment with the oversea contingency operation funding and supplementals prior to that. as general fuller said, we now have in our possession required quantities. but the soft body armor wears out ruffle every three years. it has not meant the investment threshold to funded through procurement line. we funded that through operations and maintenance line. as i mentioned we iterated we started conflict with outer tactical vests. based on feedback from 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 tactical vest. we have given that specification to industry to build to print. so we own the technical data package for that and industry is making it to our specifications. aligned with that is the plate carrier, the smaller vest, that doesn't have the extra soft armor. that reduces the weight being carried by the marine in theater. we also own that design. it is inneroperable. so the a cute at thisments that go with the operational tactical vest can be moved between the plate carrier and imtv i mentioned to an earlier question, how we communicate generally with industry and our 6'1", 6'2" research development lines are -- 61, 62 operational development lines are handled by the research laboratory. >> thank you for your

testimony. >> chair, recognizes the gentleman from colorado, for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. the preponderance of our casualties are in afghanistan now, and i believe preponderance are due to ieds, roadside bombs. in afghanistan, the my understanding that the government there outlawed ammonium nitrate. in that, ammonium nitrate is primary ingredient in afghanistan for the making of ieds unlike in iraq where it was old munitions, mortar artillery rounds, primary source for ieds there. what impact, and i understand that north of 90% of the ammonium nitrate in afghanistan was used for making actually of ieds, what impact does this outlawing or this ban on ammonium nitrate in

afghanistan, if i'm correct in that, have in reduction of ied capability? >> sir, thanks. that's a great question. as a point of clarification, ammonium nitrate has some beneficial uses in afghanistan and every other country for road preparation and mining to some degree. but, president karzai, i did, at some insistence on our part ban ammonium nitrate. i believe. i think command currently assesses that will have a impact, fair impact on availability of this fertilizer to be used as an explosive device. we also have a challenge with potassium color rate, which is used to make matches. it comes out of facilities in pakistan as well, for perfectly legitimate reasons but can be converted to explosive capability. so the short answer to your question is, and the enemy

has shown us in iraq and is showing you in afghanistan that they are adaptive. with were to take away all the ammonium nitrate they would shift somewhere else. so while it is a good step and it will have a good benefits for protecting our soldiers, airmen and marines, it is not going to close out their options there. >> have we seen any effect traced back to this decision at this time in terms of any kind of slowdown or reduction in ied-making capability? >> sir, it's a little early. i don't want to misspeak but i this ban has been in place a little over a month maybe. >> okay. >> 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'll have to gauge. >> very well. thank you. the, in terms of