Mr. WYMAN. Do we have enough SSN's to be able to hunt and kill, if necessary, the excess Soviet capabilities?

Admiral KAUFMAN. Will we have enough SSN's? I do not think

we know whether we will, no, sir.

Mr. WYMAN. How many SSN's will we have

with the SSN's the Soviet Union will have?

as compared

Admiral KAUFMAN. I think we ought to provide that for the record. I think we are projecting about SSN's.

Mr. WYMAN. How many will they have, if you know? Will they have as many as we have?

Admiral KAUFMAN. They certainly can have. I do not know. We will provide that for the record.

Mr. WYMAN. They will have more SSN's in relation to the number of SSBN's that we will have by a substantial amount, than we will have in relation to the number of SSBN's that they will have. Admiral KAUFMAN. But there are other things that we look at if we are talking about doing the job against SSBN's.

Frankly, I have concern about - To say that you can have enough capability to blunt their force of SSBN's or to wipe them out would take an awful sized force on our part.

SURVIVABILITY OF ULMS

Mr. WYMAN. I realize these are perhaps imponderables. Will there be anything about the new ULMS when we have one that will make it harder to be caught, detected, attacked, and destroyed, than the present SSBN's?

Admiral KAUFMAN. Yes, sir.

Mr. WYMAN. What is it?

Admiral KAUFMAN. First, it will be

Really, the most im

portant thing is that it will be in such an area that it would take you a tremendous force to search out the area.

Mr. WYMAN. You do not mean depth now. You mean because it has more ocean because of the range of its missile ?

Admiral KAUFMAN. Yes, sir.

You recall about

and more if we want to.

times the ocean area that we could patrol,

Mr. WYMAN. Even with the small ULMS?

Admiral KAUFMAN. Yes, sir. Really, we can get more range, but as you see from the chart, all you are buying is the South Pole, or something like that. We do not really have a lot more ocean to go to. We are looking at making this thing much quieter, which means it is harder to detect. We are putting a lot of other steps in, such as decreasing

We are experimenting with

Mr. WYMAN. If there is any single factor that would render improbable the success of an SSN attack upon an SSBN of the ULMS type, it would be the fact that they have more ocean to be looked for in, rather than any other single factor?

Admiral KAUFMAN. That is the largest fact.
The other thing is if you start talking of

or his capability

NUCLEAR REACTOR TECHNOLOGY

Mr. WYMAN. This morning, I asked the question, weren't we being a little shortsighted if we started an ULMS with a long leadtime and a lot of money in it, that would

What about our technology on nuclear reactors? Will we not get along the road with a nuclear reactor powerplant for these vessels that might be able to produce more power in smaller space?

Admiral KAUFMAN. Right now we do not have an expert here on the development of nuclear reactors, but we are looking more in our development now toward a

with, I think, from the

use for ULMS,

reactor, which you are familiar reactor, the one we are proposing for

A number of times we have asked the question why can the Russians apparently build a reactor plant When you start looking at the comparison, we can do this, too, if we want to do the same thing the Russians are doing. If we want to take away our "unfair advantage" that we like to have in war, we can jam more power in

there.

We feel that he does not have the same degree of that we have, for example. We have done studies ourselves to see what we could do in this same volume, and we can come out to about

Mr. WYMAN. And it takes
Admiral KAUFMAN. That is

to build the nuclear plant?

for existing reactors that we

know how to do. It takes about

Mr. WYMAN. I am at a loss to understand that. For the record, would you insert a brief explanation of why it takes something that we have been building for

years?

to build

Admiral KAUFMAN. Yes, sir.

(The information follows:)

The Nuclear Propulsion plant is the longest leadtime item in the construction of nuclear submarines [deleted]. Actual leadtime depend on suppliers' workload at the time funds are released, the effects of any breaks of production lines, and competition from commercial orders.

The manufacturing cycle for nuclear components-commercial as well as naval-is influenced by the stringent requirements for quality control and inspection. The nuclear plant components are complex pieces of equipment which require many different manufacturing steps to complete; a number of these steps must be performed in series. In addition to being large, many of the dimensions in the components-commercial as well as naval-must be made with great accuracy.

Even with the stringent naval requirements, leadtimes for nuclear propulsion plant components are in line with the leadtimes for components for commercial nuclear power stations.

ULMS POWER AND SPEED

Mr. RHODES. May I ask one or two questions.

Maybe this was asked and answered this morning, but I am a little at a loss to know why you plan an ULMS submarine with

Admiral KAUFMAN. That was asked, sir. It comes right down to what you need the speed for above a certain point. We were torn tremendously within the Navy trying to decide why we needed speed in ULMS.

As I mentioned to the people this morning, sir, we set up a special ad hoc panel of the most experienced submariners we could get

Mr. RHODES. I read about the panel.

Admiral KAUFMAN. A lot of these people felt we should have building for the future, but you are drawn to the facts of life about how much more it costs, how much you can afford, and then how much do you need it to use against the enemy.

For example, We feel we have them very definitely today. With these we are saying you do not need to have all that speed; that you can compromise somewhere in here.

Mr. RHODES. But since this system is on the drawing board, you do not have any real way of knowing what the Russians will do from now until the time that you actually have this ship deployed in the fleet. Admiral KAUFMAN. No, sir; we do not.

Mr. RHODES. They may have faster SSN's and quieter SSN's at that time.

I just don't like to see you start designing something that is not adequate, at least in my opinion, at this stage of design. Of course, I recognize the fact that you have this panel of experts, but logic seems to indicate to me

Admiral KAUFMAN. Sir, if it did not cost anything, you would have a unanimous opinion of the panel that they would want

Mr. RHODES. How does this panel know how much the country is willing to spend for the best submarine in the world, instead of the second best? This is a matter of judgment. Are we talking about a lot more money?

Admiral KAUFMAN. Yes, sir. In the studies we did, which admittedly are not final-type design studies, we would run up to as much as $42 million or $45 million per submarine for the plant to make it go. The largest plant was $42 million more than a

Mr. RHODES. What is supposed to be the cost of the submarine when it is completed, at

Admiral KAUFMAN. In the submarine we picked, on which we are going into preliminary design, the preliminary studies indicated something like million. That is a really rough figure.

Mr. MAHON.

Admiral KAUFMAN. I think plus or minus 25 percent on that, with the emphasis more on the plus.

Mr. RHODES. I did not get your answer as to how fast you could make this ship go for $40 million more.

a

Admiral KAUFMAN. You would not get over

perhaps, even

in that ship, sir. You get to another point. In our studies we looked at shaft horsepower plant, a single plant. We really never have put more than shaft horsepower in a shaft on a ship. You get into large shafts and there are a lot of things that we do not know about.

It is a compromise. You really say, what is he trying to do? The only time in all this area that he really has a chance of getting you, at least in enough numbers to do anything to the force, would be when You If we find he has the capability to do that, there are lots of other things we can be doing.

We can call in general-purpose forces to

There are lots of things that you can do operationally and not charge the American people untold sums just to get what you feel you would like.

Mr. RHODES. How many of these ships are you going to build?
Admiral KAUFMAN. We do not know yet, sir.

Mr. RHODES. Have you made a decision to build a weapons system? Has the decision been made to go ahead with it?

Admiral KAUFMAN. No, sir, we are in R. & D. right now.

I think Mr. Laird in his testimony described this as an option, and we are still under development.

Mr. WYMAN. Doesn't this all come back to the fact that in the tradeoff position, you do not consider

Admiral KAUFMAN. That is absolutely right, yes, sir. In our newest SSN's, one of which I was on another ad hoc panel for recently, sir, we came up with a speed requirement from knots for that particular SSN.

Admiral SMITH. I think one observation should be made. That is, for the same technology on both sides or the same technology applied to submarines carrying large missiles or an attack submarine, the attack submarine is always going to be able to go at with the Mr. RHODES. I realize that, but you should not have too great a disparity in I should think. Otherwise, the survivability of

same technology.

your SSBN

Admiral SMITH. That comes down to a judgment of what is too great. There will always be a sizable difference.

Admiral KAUFMAN. In our exercises today, to add a little operational reality to this thing right now, we are limited to about plus, some of them higher.

PRODUCTION DECISION

Mr. RHODES. How soon do you expect to make the decision of whether or not to go into production on this system?

Admiral KAUFMAN. We have to go now for the R. & D. We have to settle on a design in R. & D. and get firm on the reactor. Admiral MOORE. Long leadtime in

Admiral KAUFMAN. Long leadtime is necessary in

first ship construction money for the ship to be deployed in

for the

Mr. RHODES. That is the date of the deployment of the first ship. Admiral KAUFMAN. It is fiscal year

Mr. RHODES. It is a long time.

Admiral KAUFMAN. Yes, sir.

Mr. RHODES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MAHON. Thank you very much, gentlemen. It has been a very interesting session.

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE REPROGRAMING,

FISCAL YEAR 1971

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1971.

Mr. MAHON. We have met today to consider certain reprograming proposals submitted by the Department of Defense. We will submit for the record at this point some of the special items which will have the attention of the committee.