we get to it. From the testimony yesterday, the point is that at the policy level and at the Executive Agent-Manager level, you have not taken these considerations into account and planned for the types of situations which may arise.

I recognize that individual problems arise, and you have to deal with them as they come up, but you are not dealing here with a program for 1 year or 2 years. How long is the contract for?

LENGTH OF COMSAT CONTRACT PERIOD

General STARBIRD. The contract is actually on a year-to-year basis. However, there is a termination liability. In the case of one of the nations it extends 1 year, 2 years in another nation, and one of those nations extending for 3 years; and, therefore, we have been evaluating the contract in terms of an expectation of at least 3 years of use.

Mr. HORTON. Do you have an option to renew at the end of 3 years? General STARBIRD. In all of these, sir, we do not have an option as such to renew, but if we have the circuits it is customary to let us renew and hold those circuits.

Mr. ROBACK. You have a master agreement, and you can contract from here until doomsday.

General STARBIRD. That is right.

Mr. HORTON. This is the type of service that the operational system should provide, is it not?

General STARBIRD. No, sir; it is not.

Mr. HORTON. Then what is unique about it?

General STARBIRD. The words "unique and exceptional" are not my words. Those are the FCC words and, as I said, they are not fully defined.

However, I have to admit, as I said earlier, that I believe that we have unique and exceptional circumstances here in the war in southeast Asia. But we are not designing the ADCSP to have the capacity to handle the southeast Asia situation.

Mr. ROBACK. There is no technical reason why you could not do it. General STARBIRD. There is no technical reason we could not do it. It would be a large system, a large standby system. We hope it would be standby normally, and it would be quite an expensive system.

DEALINGS WITH CARRIERS

Mr. HORTON. Are you designing the system to take care of the requirements of NASA

General STARBIRD. No.

Mr. HORTON (Continuing). With a program similar to Apollo? General STARBIRD. No, we are not.

Mr. HORTON. It looks to me like you are going to be dealing directly with Comsat in the future to the exclusion of these carriers.

General STARBIRD. We will be using heavily circuits from the Comsat and Intelsat system. Whether we get those circuits from the carriers, the record carriers, or from Comsat direct is not something that has been decided.

Mr. HORTON. When you put out bids or you sent out these invitations to bid to the various carriers, looking toward this unique service

with regard to these 30 circuits, didn't you, as a practical matter, expect that these carriers could not responsibly reply to that?

General STARBIRD. I expected them to reply, and I expected the replies to come back and to be completely truthful with you, I thought Comsat would have the best proposal. But that did not affect my evaluation of the proposal once it came in.

GROUND STATIONS FOR SOUTHEAST ASIA

Mr. HORTON. Now, a couple of other minor things. I have taken too much time, as it is, but I want to ask about this.

On page 2 of your statement you referred to the operational system and said that this fall "we are deploying the terminals to southeast Asia to give us the capability of handling minimum essential traffic." Why did you wait until that late time to make these plans for the terminals in southeast Asia?

General STARBIRD. It is the availability of the terminals, themselves, Mr. Horton. We have only four terminals now available. One of them is in Hawaii, one of them is in the Philippines, which is a way station on the way out to southeast Asia, we want to cover that branch of the cable. One of them is in Asmara, Ethiopia, which is a part of the back door around, and one of them is in Germany.

The next two, I think, are the ones we have earmarked are to go to southeast Asia.

PROBLEMS OF MSC-46 GROUND STATIONS

Mr. HORTON. Well, is there some slippage? I think it was mentioned yesterday that the slippage in this system, one of the pacing items has been this matter of terminals.

General STARBIRD. We are having difficulty with the terminals right now. They have slipped on us.

Mr. HORTON. Is there any reason why that cannot be studied in advance or planned for in advance so that when the system is up, the satellites, they are not going to be held up because of terminals? General STARBIRD. We believe, as Mr. Rogers said, we can make a fix on these terminals, actually a fix in the field.

Mr. HORTON. It is not a technical question, a technology question. General STARBIRD. No. There is no basic theoretical error in the terminal. However, the terminals are quite delicate to manufacture, that is, delicate in the sense of intricate to manufacture, and we cannot try them except on a similator until you get the satellites up.

Most of the problems we have run into are brought on by the environmental conditions; in other words, it is the humidity, the heat, the fact that some of the people who are operating them are not completely familiar with the operation.

Mr. HORTON. All right.

STUDIES FOR ADCSP

Now, the other question I have to ask you has to do with a statement you made at the bottom of page 3, and in which you referred to the IDCSP, indicating that you sought advice of industry on various

schemes for fulfillment by contracting for six independent studies looking toward the ADCSP. What was the cost of those studies? General STARBIRD. It was around $1 million for the six studies.

Mr. HORTON. Why did you have six? Why not 4, and why did you have 6 and not 10?

Genera! STARBIRD. Well, we asked for proposals from anybody who was interested, that we thought was qualified. We got six proposals that we thought were of extreme interest. They had ideas in there that should be looked into, so we, therefore, went ahead with each of the six investigations, six study contracts.

Mr. HORTON. When did you make the decision to go with these six independent studies?

General STARBIRD. It was about September or October-August. I would like to correct the record and insert that date exactly. The decision to go to six contractors was made in June 1965 and authorization for the contractors to proceed with the studies was given on August 13.

Mr. HORTON. August of 1965?

General STARBIRD. Of 1965, right, sir.

Mr. HORTON. Why wasn't this done sooner? You knew that you were going to be thinking in terms of an advanced system.

General STARBIRD. The first thing we did for the advanced system was attempt to crystallize what the system should meet in the way of requirements, and we actually determined the requirements that should be met in July, and then we had-with that in hand we went out and asked the various segments of industry which might be capable of carrying out an effective study, asked them to submit a proposal, and in connection with that we gave them a preliminary indication of the type of requirement that would have to be met, the numbers of circuits going between different places, the quality of the circuits that was required. So the study was really following the establishment of requirements and approval of the requirements to be met.

Mr. HORTON. What has management got to do with the decision; namely, to have six independent studies to determine what the system is to be? Isn't this more of a policy decision?

General STARBIRD. No. These six studies

Mr. HORTON. Or at least an Executive Agent study.

General STARBIRD. These six studies were carried out with research and development funding to determine different approaches for getting to the same end, in other words, getting to a place where you could meet certain requirements.

Mr. HORTON. Well now, you are not in research and development. General STARBIRD. I was carrying out under the direction of the Director, Defense Research and Engineering

Mr. HORTON. You mean Mr. Rogers?

General STARBIRD (continuing). The investigation.

I beg your pardon?

Mr. HORTON. Mr. Rogers' office?

General STARBIRD. Mr. Rogers' office.

Mr. HORTON. So you were acting in this capacity for him, for his office?

General STARBIRD. For the Secretary; yes, sir.

You see, we have one of our responsibilities is to serve as the strong focal point for the integration of the efforts of the Depart

ment of Defense in the communications satellite area, and, as such, we submit plans periodically, and those plans then are approved, and we are instructed to carry out certain elements of research and development for the Secretary. They are generally items that have to be carried on across the board between the several services, not just one service.

Mr. HORTON. Who will make that decision as to what the ADCSP contains and what it does not contain?

General STARBIRD. The Secretary of Defense will, sir. However, he will do this on the judgment or on the recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

USE OF MILITARY AND COMMERCIAL SYSTEMS

Mr. DICKINSON. Will you yield right there?

General, if I understand the summation of what you are saying or have said, both the IDCSP and the ADCSP are designed for normal peacetime military operations; is this correct?

General STARBIRD. No, sir. The IDCSP had a limited capability, and if I were going to say what it could do, it would handle emergencies that arise, but nothing of the scale of southeast Asia.

Now, the ADCSP is designed to handle contingency operations that would arise, again not of the scale of southeast Asia. You would mobilize all your communications resources for this, but it also is designed to give you a highly survivable last-ditch minimum communications system that would serve you if you ever needed it.

Mr. DICKINSON. Then if those are the intentions, if that is the purpose, for both of these systems, do you envision a time when you will not need to contract directly with Comsat?

General STARBIRD. No, sir. I think you used the words "directly with Comsat."

Mr. DICKINSON. If I leave "directly" out, you say, you would answer in the affirmative?

General STARBIRD. I would answer in the affirmative that we are going to be using commercial satellite facilities from now on out. Mr. DICKINSON. Whether or not you deal directly or not will depend on each individual case.

General STARBIRD. Yes, sir; or some policy decision.

Mr. HORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. Would you mind yielding to the staff at this time for questioning Mr. Horwitz? Mr. Horwitz is not going to be able to be with us, I understand, tomorrow. He is leaving on an assignment, and we would like to get these questions on the record. We will probably have to ask you to come back tomorrow morning, General. General STARBIRD. Right, sir.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. If you will be available, Mr. Horwitz, you might come back, too, but otherwise we will try to get through with you today.

POLICY ON CAPACITY OF GOVERNMENT SYSTEMS

Mr. ROBACK. Mr. Horwitz, in House Report 1340, we made the observation on page 69 that the policy which has been cited for designing a military system made for the limited capacity in the

IDCSP, and that the decision to procure from Comsat, that this policy was narrower than the law.

Are you familiar with that observation?

Mr. HORWITZ. Yes; I am familiar with this observation.

Mr. ROBACK. Do you agree with it?

Mr. HORWITZ. This is a rather difficult problem that I have beenas you know, I am not in the legal end of the business any more, and I have not given it study. I know that this argument has been made and is made that the law is much broader than the policy. Some people contend that it is.

However, insofar as the National Communications System is concerned, I am brought within the constraints of the policy which is laid down.

Mr. ROBACK. This is, of course, more than a matter of legal interpretation. Practical consequences flow from it.

Mr. HORWITZ. Yes; I recognize the practical consequences that flow from it, Mr. Roback.

Mr. ROBACK. You do?

Mr. HORWITZ. But, as I say, I have to operate within the constraints of a policy that is laid down.

Mr. ROBACK. An executive policy, if it is going to be broadened, that is not your responsibility.

Mr. HORWITZ. That is not my responsibility.

Mr. ROBACK. Do you have any understanding or information on the way this policy has been treated in the statements that have been sent to the Congress? For example, in the report that was transmitted by the President to the Congress on February 15, 1965, reporting on accomplishments under the Satellite Act, the statement is made that and this is on page 7:

This decision to proceed with a system responsive to the unique and vital national security needs does not alter the policy

This was in reference to the decision to go ahead on IDCSP.

Mr. HORWITZ. Yes.

Mr. ROBACK (reading):

Does not alter the policy under which a national communications system and other Government services will use the commercial satellite and other common carrier communications systems for the transmission of the bulk of its traffic between the United States and various overseas areas.

That was in 1965.

Mr. HORWITZ. Yes.

Mr. ROBACK. We were talking about the bulk of the traffic.

Mr. HORWITZ. Yes.

Mr. ROBACK. In 1966, the statement in a similar report, the next report, is:

The U.S. Government may establish and maintain separate satellite communications facilities, including surface terminals, to meet its unique and vital national security needs which cannot be met by commercial facilities. The capacity of the separate facilities shall at all times be limited to that essential to meet such unique needs.

Now, obviously, those are not the same.

Mr. HORWITZ. I do not think that they are really different, Mr. Roback. They are stated in different words but