Secretary IMIRIE. I believe that is correct, sir. Mr. HÉBERT. Any other questions, Mr. Hardy? Mr. HARDY. I have one or two more, Mr. Chairman, If I may. Colonel, I think this falls in the same category as the thing we were just discussing or talking about. Back on page 2 of your statement, you say: The policy is to maintain an inservice capability to perform combat and direct combat support functions. Now, a little further on you become a little more specific in connection with that. But that does not include functions in connection with missiles and missile systems? Colonel HILL. It would include functions in connection with missiles, yes, sir, if we were contracting there. By this I mean the operation and maintenance of the missile systems. It does not include the construction of the facilities or the purchase of the hardware, procurement, or anything of this nature. What I am referring to is restricted to the operation and maintenance. Mr. HÉBERT. Well-may I interrupt? Mr. HARDY. Go ahead. Mr. HÉBERT. Doesn't that fall in the category presented yesterday by Colonel Riemondy? Secretary IMIRIE. In-house? Mr. HÉBERT. The in-house, and contracting out. Secretary IMIRIE. Yes, sir. It is our determination with respect to missiles-the Atlas, Titan, and the Minuteman, as they come in-that this is a military function. In the operation of the bird, the maintenance of the bird, and everything connected with it. There may be some aspect of maintenance, however, as the programs get older, that may go out to contract. But primarily our plan is to maintain them in our air materiel areas. They will be maintained there. Mr. HÉBERT. That is my appreciation of the presentation yesterday, and projected to the year 1965. Secretary IMIRIE. Yes, sir. Mr. HÉBERT. It is going to be for all comparable purposes-it is going to be about a 50-50 break in-house and contracting out. Secretary IMIRIE. Yes. Mr. HÉBERT. In some areas completely contracting out and in some areas completely in-house, and with the price factor comparable both ways. That was my appreciation of Colonel Riemondy's testimony. Mr. HARDY. Well, you have your price considerations there. But even more important is the ability to control the combat readiness insofar as any outside contracting is concerned. Secretary IMIRIE. Yes, sir. I think the operation, the control, and operation of, say the Atlas, in an operational site as against a research site, is a blue suit operation irrespective of cost, in my opinion. Mr. HÉBERT. I think that was reflected, too, Mr. Hardy. Mr. HARDY. Yes. to Mr. HÉBERT. In what they call the vital or essential items. Mr. HÉBERT. That is concentrated more in-house. Secretary IMIRIE. Yes, sir. Mr. HÉBERT. Things that you have been on the alert on, to be ready go. Secretary IMIRIE. Yes. Mr. HÉBERT. And as they phase out, then, the graph goes more to the contracting out? Secretary IMIRIE. Contracting out. It in effect takes care more of the peaks and valleys in that way, too. Mr. HARDY. Pursuing one more item on page 6, where it says: The Air Force is experiencing difficulty to retain airmen trained in highly technical skills. Then you go on and say: We currently have only 66 percent of the total authorized senior aircraft control and warning radar maintenance airmen. Now in that particular area, in the A.C. & W. and the radar stuff, are you using any inhouse civilians, or is that confined strictly to Air Force personnel? Colonel HILL. No, sir. We do use inhouse civilians in this area. Mr. HARDY. You referred to airmen in this statement. Colonel HILL. Yes, sir. Mr. HARDY. That is why I raised the question. Colonel HILL. Yes, sir. Mr. HARDY. You don't depend exclusively on Air Force personnel? Colonel HILL. Here it gets into the area of the type of maintenance that we are speaking of. If you remember yesterday Colonel Riemondy showed there were three levels of maintenance in his presentation. He spoke to one level, which was depot maintenance. I am speaking here to the other levels, where they are actually onsite or in the unit, or the organization maintaining the equipment at field or organizational level. Mr. HARDY. Well, that is the thing I wanted to clear up. Now yesterday, in the very beginning of Colonel Riemondy's statement, as I recall it, he said that these decisions were based on military necessity tempered with economic considerations. And that was pursued to some extent. But the economic considerations that are involved: Do I take it that the Air Force really does try to make a determination as to the comparability of costs in determining, where no military necessity is involved, whether it will be contracted out or performed inhouse? Colonel HILL. Yes, sir. Mr. HARDY. Then you have not pursued a policy of just contracting out for everything that could be provided regardless of the cost? Colonel HILL. That is correct, sir. We have not pursued the policy of contracting out for anything and everything that may be provided simply because we could contract it out; no, sir. We compare costs in those areas. Mr. HARDY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. HÉBERT. Mr. Kitchin? Mr. KITCHIN. I would like to ask one question in connection with the question that Mr. Hardy asked a few minutes ago. You also followed up on this highly technical phase, saying that there were approximately 17-percent reenlistments? Colonel HILL. Yes, sir. Mr. KITCHIN. Now, is that just your enlisted personnel, or what is your attrition in your civilian group that are maintaining this service? Colonel HILL. What I have in the statement, sir, refers to enlisted personnel only. I am not prepared to answer regarding the civilian personnel. Colonel RECTOR. We will provide that for the record. (The information is as follows:) We do not have a separate attrition rate for civilian personnel in the A.C. & W. maintenance field. There are approximately 1,200 civilians and 24,000 military personnel in the aircraft control and warning and the tactical control squadrons in the Air Force. This includes operating as well as maintenance personnel. Mr. HARDY. Well, if Mr. Kitchin will permit Mr. KITCHIN. Yes. Mr. HARDY. Can you expand your civilian complement in those areas requiring skills in A.C. & W. work and that sort of thing, to compensate for a reduction in your enlisted personnel having those capabilities? Colonel HILL. I would say "No," sir. The civilian capability in this area is located and works primarily in the depot level area. The area that I am speaking of is the specific Air Force unit. Mr. KITCHEN. Well, I was mistaken in my premise then. I thought you said that in this particular situation, where your highly technical services were in field services, such as your DEW line and so forth. Colonel HILL. Yes, sir. Mr. KITCHIN. That you did utilize civilian personnel in the technical phase. Colonel HILL. We do in some cases, sir, contract for that type of thing, in operation and maintenance. And as a matter of fact, DEW line is one of them. But when we do, we contract for the total operation and maintenance. We don't have any military units Mr. KITCHIN. I wasn't speaking about the contract service. I was talking about the inhouse services Secretary IMIRIE. Very few, sir. Mr. KITCHIN. In the exclusive use of only military personnel in this particular types of technical service? Secretary IMIRIE. Yes. Colonel HILL. Yes. Mr. KITCHIN. I was wrong about this. Secretary IMIRIE. We gave you an erroneous impression. Mr. HARDY. They are not anticipated to be invloved in any actual combat, are they? Secretary IMIRIE. The people on such as DEW line? Mr. HARDY. That is right. Secretary IMIRIE. I believe not. Mr. HARDY. I would think not. And if there are civilians available-I am thinking now of inhouse rather than contract—with the capabilities that are required, why shouldn't they be used? Secretary IMIRIE. Well, it is a complex question. Certainly you could argue that way, that they could be used." It relates also to the ability to hire inhouse the supervision necessary, with the electronic and similar competence necessary to run these outfits. on. These are inherent in the likes of RCA and General Electric and so Mr. HARDY. The thing that I was thinking of, Mr. Secretary, is that generally there has been a policy that we wouldn't use enlisted personnel to perform noncombat functions for which civilians were capable, so that the military personnel could be freed for more military duty. Secretary IMIRIE. Yes, sir. But in this case—and again repeating an Air Force premise not to create an arsenal system-which we didn't begin with. We have traditionally gone to contracting. When it is beyond the military necessity point, we have traditionally contracted for it. Mr. HARDY. I would doubt it would ever be feasible to contract for the operation of an A.C. & W. site, or the DEW line. Colonel HILL. Sir, if I might add something here Mr. HARDY. Whereas it might be feasible to do it with civilians in-house. Colonel HILL. You are referring essentially, sir, to what our definition of "combat" is. Now this is in a changing nature at the present time. We have defined "combat" and "direct combat support functions," if you remember, as any work which if not accomplished would immediately impair our combat capability. Under these circumstances, the A.C. & W. sites, DEW line, and Mr. HARDY. Maybe your definition is cockeyed. Mr. HARDY. I don't know. Secretary IMIRIE. The definition in this case is cockeyed to the extent that it has proven beyond our capability to get the military in the skills area, that is the airmen with the skills required, to man these functions, and therefore we contract it. Mr. HARDY. That is what prompted me to raise these questions. Mr. HARDY. Now I don't know whether contract feasibility here is comparable to civil service employee feasibility. Now theoretically at least you have a better control over in-house civilian employees than you do over contracted. Secretary IMIRIE. Theoretically. But of course Mr. HARDY. If you don't, then, Mr. Secretary, your administration is poor. Secretary IMIRIE. Well, we are in the business, for example, with Halaby over at FAA-Mr. Halaby-of turning over to air traffic control such elements as the military still control, which is heavy overseas, and one of our concerns, of course, is that in replacing military personnel with FAA civilians, do we get control and responsiveness in wartime? To this very point-and we both, Halaby and the Air Force, are fishing for the construction of some legislation to submit to the Congress which will allow us to call up these people, or have military control of them in the event of hosilities. This is a problem that we recognize, particularly overseas. Mr. HARDY. Well, just one other sort of a related item in this line of thinking. To get back to the kind of services that you contract for: Do you, for instance, contract for the overhaul of aircraft engines 2 Secretary IMIRIE. Yes, sir. Mr. HARDY. You do a lot of that, don't you? Secretary IMIRIE. Yes, sir. Mr. HARDY. Now in some areas you perform at least some of that work with military personnel, don't you? You have to for combat readiness. Secretary IMIRIE. Yes, at base level. Mr. HARDY. That is right. Secretary IMIRIE. That is right. Mr. HARDY. And don't you also perform some of that with civil service employees? Secretary IMIRIE. Civil service at depot level. Mr. HARDY. So you perform that same function with all three categories? Secretary IMIRIE. Correct. Mr. HARDY. Now, that is a pretty important function, too, in case of a combat requirement, and if your engine overhaul program fell down you would be in awful bad shape. Secretary IMIRIE. That is absolutely right. We try to keep a level of depot competence, and also where we have the money to do so, we try to keep a civilian industry competence. But the J-47 engine which we have just phased down: We kept our depot level competence, and reduced the contracting competence. So in this case we kept it in-house. We kept in-house competence as opposed to contracting competence. Mr. HARDY. The thing that prompted this little exploration-you said you were considering the possibility of asking for legislation to provide for military control over civilians in the event of emergency. you do that, you probably are going to have to extend it to all these other fields too. If The only difference is you might have a degree of dependence, but that is all. Secretary correct, sir. IMIRIE. That is all, a degree of dependence; you are Mr. HÉBERT. Mr. Norblad? Mr. NORBLAD. I am just curious about this enlistment rate of 17 percent on A.C. & W. Is that basically because the work to be performed is in a remote location, like in upper Canada, Alaska and so on? Mr. MORRILL. Yes, essentially. In the A.C. & W. field, with these radar people, they are faced with one remote hilltop after another. |