utilized if conditions warranted. You can not do that overnight. A program of this type would have to be subsidized, as many countries have. West Germany and all Scandinavian countries, Switzerland. The Soviet Union you cannot necessarily identify, but we know they have provisions for better blast and fire protection. This is the greatest hazard we are now exposed to, and yet don't have much protection.

ENGINEERING CONTRACTS WITH STATES

Mr. ROBISON. Would you or someone on your staff give me some further background information about the prototype contracts you are initiating with 13 States, so far, to enable them to perform Civil Defense engineering services?

Does this replace a program of help that OCD has given directly? Mr. DAVIS. It includes some States under direct contract rather than have these engineering services done by Army Corps of Engineers and Navy Facilities Engineering Command as in the past. Those two primarily had the 'responsibility. We tried to join together several engineering programs. We finished up the fallout shelter survey in many States and there was a need for other services which includedMr. READ. Survey, advisory service, and CSP.

Mr. DAVIS. The moneys for these contracts were allocated out of the overall total and reduced the shelter survey performed by the military engineers.

Mr. ROBISON. In a nutshell, why is this better than going the old way, through the Corps of Engineers?

Mr. DAVIS. The response will be quicker. The States are right at hand closer to the community needs and they can respond much quicker and more effectively to the requirements.

Mr. ROBISON. Do you have New York State on your list? Oklahoma is there.

Mr. DAVIS. Oklahoma was one of the first, incidentally. As I said, these are pilot projects. By coincidence, the previous State director happened to be an engineer and looked at it as a possibility for strengthening his program. The remaining 12 pilot projects are Arizona, Alaska, California, the District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Montana, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia.

Mr. ROBISON. Under your Federal shelter program this is an ongoing program?

Mr. DAVIS. Yes, sir.

SUMMER HIRE OF COLLEGE STUDENTS

Mr. ROBISON. Since fiscal year 1970, you have undertaken a sort of summer hire program using qualified college students to work under Government architects or engineers to perform the survey work you would like to have done here?

Mr. DAVIS. Yes, sir. That is an excellent program. We have hired 400 each year. We generally train about 1,000 and select the qualified. They work under the control and guidance of the Corps of Engineers and Navy Facilities Engineering Command. They have just performed magnificently. I think it is a great opportunity for them. It is good for us and the country to have these young people employed in such an effort.

Mr. ROBISON. Precisely what do they do? Give us a typical example.

Mr. DAVIS. First they are trained to understand what the job is. They then with special data collection forms go out on the survey, and this includes looking at a building, deciding the structural parts of it which are likely to have acceptable fallout shelter. As they gain the information from top to bottom, on the basement, the windows, the walls, the support elements, they then take many, many measurements and insert them on forms. The information then is analyzed by computer, and that tells how much shelter is available, reaching the 40 protection factor or more and where it is in the building. It is a complicated analysis they do.

Mr. ROBISON. You hope to survey, throught the use of these youngsters, about 25,000 facilities in fiscal year 1973?

Mr. DAVIS. Yes, sir.

Mr. ROBISON. Do you give preference in hiring the students to those who are "disadvantaged," so to speak?

Mr. DAVIS. All the rules of equal opportunity in employment are followed. This happens to be on high academic standards in which they are required to take Federal civil service tests initially to be selected. I would like to see more opportunities of the nature that you talk about.

Mr. ROBISON. Architectural students?

Mr. DAVIS. They are nearly all architectural or engineering students. That is one of the requirements before they can get in. They really replace what professional engineers formerly did. We employ them at grade levels GS-4 and 5.

DECENTRALIZATION OF AUTHORITY

Mr. ROBISON. You tell us, on page 5 of your prepared statement, that you are trying to decentralize. Explain what progress has been made in this direction. You are giving additional authority to your eight regional directors in order to assist them in giving assistance, in turn, to the States?

Mr. DAVIS. We have decentralized contracting. We have allocated them responsibility for contracting with the States on civil defense education, maintenance of radiological equipment, and engineering contracts.

Mr. MANNING. Community shelter planning contracting, too.

Mr. DAVIS. We have trained the regional staff in contracting procedures and the reason for this was to get more flexibility in standards and policies that would meet the requirements of the State. This has been very well received and, I would say, very successful.

DECLINING CIVIL DEFENSE BUDGET

Mr. ROBISON. I might highlight from your prepared statement, for the purposes of understanding our record better, that in fiscal year 1964 the OCD, or whatever it was called then, was budgeted $111.6 million. This year you are asking for $88.6 million. In terms of 1964 prices, you remind us that would be worth only $66.7 million. There is a declining level here that needs to be understood in understanding the overall civil defense effort.

INCREASE IN FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE

On page 6 of your prepared statement, you ask for an increase of $2.1 million in matching funds for State and local civil defense personnel and administrative expenses.

You tell us this will permit about 57 additional local governments to enter the program with about 120 full- and part-time employees. How many local governments are now in the program?

Mr. DAVIS. A little over 2,000.

Mr. ROBISON. You have a waiting list of other communities that would like to come in?

Mr. DAVIS. Yes, sir; we do. It takes a while, as you know, after they indicate a desire. Out of our onsite visits we have already had applications in addition to what we mentioned here. There are some over the years that drop out, but on balance we have had a continual increase in applications. I believe the growth of participation, if you look at page 51, gives a pretty good idea of the increased interest and participation in our personnel and administrative support program.

Mr. ROBISON. If you get the increase requested here and can bring into the program about 57 additional local governments, will that help you to clean up most of your backlog of applications?

Mr. DAVIS. Yes, sir; it will.

Mr. ROBISON. You also ask for an increase of $1.8 million for funds to be matched for procurement and installation of warning and communications systems required for civil defense purposes. You tell us, here, that there will be a backlog of about 200 project applications by the end of fiscal year 1972 in this field.

If you have that increase, what will be the result regarding that backlog?

Mr. DAVIS. It looks to me like, with the increase, we will be reasonably able to take care of the demands on us. The only matter that is a little difficult to judge us what our onsite assistance program is doing to identify requirements that heretofore have not been recognized by some communities. This might generate an increase in the rate of applications in the future.

INCREASE IN A. & E. DEVELOPMENT

Mr. ROBISON. You are asking for an increase of $600,000 for an architectural and engineering professional development program. With your 1972 funds you had a course to develop and design buildings to improve their resistance both to nuclear weapons and natural disasters. Can you tell us a bit more about what you are doing here?

Mr. DAVIS. We have had courses designed and taught these people who participate in the program in the civilian sector.

Mr. ROBISON. Do they come here?

Mr. DAVIS. No, sir. We do it at various colleges around the country and at specific cities during the year. Since we have gone from just fallout protection analysis to all effects, new courses are being devised and it is a matter of imparting this knowledge to these people, some 20,000, who have come into the program during the last ten years. It is a matter of updating their knowledge so they will be able to be more effective in the program.

DECISION INFORMATION DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM

Mr. ROBISON. Let me spend the rest of my time on DIDS. We have a problem with this. I am going to refer again to the Civil Defense bulletin that I used before, which tells me that the present attack warning system is a "kaleidoscope" of Federal, State, and local networks, relying on a mixture of different kinds of communication methods and people or agencies responsible for them. One problem with all this is that warning time can vary from a few minutes to 20 minutes or longer. How accurate is that as a summary of what you have?

Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Chairman, as I indicated in my testimony, we are building a new warning system. The concept was a part of what has been said there. Our prototype, which has to be tested yet in the real world, is now under construction. As to its capabilities

CURRENT NATIONAL WARNING SYSTEM

Mr. ROBISON. I want to find out, first, what is wrong with NAWAS. What is NAWAS?

Mr. DAVIS. NAWAS is a communication system by telephone and goes to local governments. I have a chart here. It comes out of Norad headquarters. It is relatively fast but to a limited number of warning points, only 1200, which is administered by Stratcom, Army Communications Command, at an annual cost of approximately $1.2 million. It goes from NORAD into the States, and the States have a very limited number of points as you look at that chart. From there on it is a matter of using local and State networks to activate sirens, plus some contribution, we hope, through the broadcast radio and television networks. We utilize the press wire services, the United Press International, and Associated Press. They send it to the radio and TV stations and hopefully it will go out.

Mr. ROBISON. Does the warning time required vary from as much as 2 minutes to 10 minutes?

Mr. DAVIS. And probably longer than that. Our surveys show that time could be of the essence in saving lives. And the more time they have to respond, the more lives you are going to save. In essence that is the reason for trying to get DIDS which would be a reliable. system and would be faster. The time on notification to any point would be 26 to 29 seconds.

DECISION INFORMATION DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM

Mr. ROBISON. DIDS, which is decision information distribution system, is an electronic system with the capability of relaying national defense warnings from the North American Air Defense Command, known as Norad, to special receivers, voice and teletype, in civil defense, fire and police offices and selected Federal, State, and local government agencies with an ultrafast response time of about 30 seconds, overall. Is that accurate?

Mr. DAVIS. Yes, sir.

Mr. ROBISON. What is the trouble that Westinghouse Electric Corp. has had in developing this prototype?

Mr. DAVIS. I would like to ask the man most involved, Mr. Martin. Mr. MARTIN. I am Special Assistant for Telecommunications for the Office of Civil Defense.

With the chairman's permission, we have a little booklet that would make quick understanding much easier of what it is we now have and what it is we propose to build.

(The information follows:)