Norm Dicks

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. General Skantze, who was one of our best procurement people in the history of the Air Force wrote me a letter, a very strong statement saying: There are no bomber engineering design teams left at Rockwell or Boeing. Nor can you assemble them overnight, nor do they come up with a sophisticated design in less than 2 or 3 years at best. Building Boeing 747's is no more like building B-2's than building Cadillacs is like building M1A2's. Ask the Boeing people who build the After Center Section and the Outboard (Wing) Sections of the B-2. The Aft Center Section of the B-2 begins manufacturing and parts fabrication; assembly of bulkheads, skins, panels, and beams. Then it goes into sub assembly of spars, carry through assembly, keel beams, upper panels and ribs. Most of this work involves careful layups of special composite materials. The final assembly goes through clean, seal, paint, installation, test, and preparation for shipment. Most of this is very sophisticated composite work and assembly with tolerance of thousandths of an inch. The process takes 37.5 months. When this assembly comes together with the Outboard Section, the Intermediate Sections, and the Forward Center Section at the B-2 final assembly at Palmdale, California, the buildup goes through an excruciatingly accurate mating process to ensure the careful laser-measured joining preserves the aircraft outer mold line, which is fundamental to the very low radar signature. The resulting total flow time from the B-2 from lead time to rollout is currently 6 years.

Mr. DICKS. I want to say one final thing. This is a bipartisan effort and the support for the B-2 has always been bipartisan. I just hope that the people who are watching C-SPAN all over this country will let their Members know and then tell them what they think about this. This is not just some pork barrel project. This is the future security of our country. I enjoy working with the gentleman from California [Mr. Hunter], because I know he too cares about the future of our country; he too has seen too many body bags come home and know we have a way to prevent that, to save American lives, and to have a less expensive program. Because we can have fewer people in the military if we have this technological superiority and we can save money for the taxpayers; we can save American lives in future conflicts, and we can, I hope, some day have a conventional deterrent in the B-2 that will prevent a future war. Then everyone will recognize why we fought so hard to try and save this capability. Mr. Speaker, I submit the following: January 4, 1995. The President, The White House, Washington, DC. Dear Mr. President: We are writing you to express our concerns about the impending termination of the B-2 bomber production line. After spending over $20 billion to develop this revolutionary aircraft, current plans call for closing out the program with a purchase of only twenty bombers. We believe this plan does not adequately consider the challenges to U.S. security that arise in the next century, and the central role that the B-2 may play in meeting those challenges. At present the nation's long-range bomber force consists primarily of two aircraft: the B-52 and the B-1. The 95 B- 52's are all over thirty years old, and their ability to penetrate modern air defenses is very doubtful. The 96 B-1's were procured as an interim bomber until B-2's were available. Even after all twenty B-2's are delivered, the inventory of long-range bombers will total barely 200 aircraft. This is not enough to meet future requirements, particularly in view of the attrition that would occur in a conflict and the eventual need to retire the B-52's. As the number of forward- deployed aircraft carriers declines and the U.S. gradually withdraws from its overseas bases, it will become increasingly difficult to use tactical aircraft in bombing missions. It therefore is essential that steps be taken now to preserve an adequate long-range bomber force. The B-2 was originally conceived to be the nation's next generation bomber, and it remains the most cost-effective means of rapidly projecting force over great distances. Its range will enable it to reach any point on earth within hours after launch while being deployed at only three secure bases around the world. Its payload and array of munitions will permit it to destroy numerous time-sensitive targets in a single sortie. And perhaps most importantly, its low- observable characteristics will allow it to reach intended targets without fear of interception. The logic of continuing low-rate production of the B-2 thus is both fiscal and operational. It is already apparent that the end of the Cold War was neither the end of history nor the end of danger. We hope it also will not be the end of the B-2. We urge you to consider the purchase of more such aircraft while the option still exists. Melvin Laird. James Schlesinger. Donald Rumsfeld. Harold Brown. Caspar Weinberger. Frank Carlucci. Dick Cheney.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, tonight I rise to address my colleagues and the American people on what I consider to be the most important defense decision that will be made by this Congress in this decade. This summer, the Congress will case a deciding vote on one of our most critical issues facing the future of our Nation's defense capability. What is at stake is nothing less than the future of the Nation's only bomber industrial base and our ability to not only fight and win two major regional conflicts, as our current war fighting plans require, call for, but to deter such conflicts from arising in the first place. During the time of diminished resources and diminished threats, we are confronting the temptation to abandon efforts at maintaining our technological superiority. In the case of the B-2 Stealth bomber, seven former defense secretaries have issued a strong warning that such a move would risk one of the key factors that will allow us to meet future defense requirements. This is a warning that the President and Congress should not ignore, in my judgment. I have long been convinced, as have many in Congress, that the wise move at this time would be to harness the giant technological advances represented by the B-2's design and its capabilities in order to meet the new and difficult conventional power projection requirements. The wisdom lies not only in retaining the newest and least vulnerable of all the weapons we have already paid for, but also in the economic reality of defense downsizing. When you have fewer and fewer weapons and forces, there must be an even greater premium on technological superiority. Herein lies the essential reasoning for last year's congressionally led effort to build at least an additional 20 Stealth bombers, a force consistent with recommendations of several comprehensive defense studies, one done by Rand in Los Angeles, and on bomber requirements and with the recommendations of the seven Defense Secretaries made to President Clinton in January. Simply put, 20 B-2's do not represent enough bomber capability to meet our [[Page H 7980]] Nation's future needs, even when supplemented by B-52's and B-1's. In conventional war, time plays the central role in guiding choices and measuring success. The significance of this maxim is magnified by the single most intriguing ``what if'' question of the Persian Gulf war: What if Saddam Hussein had not stopped at the Kuwaiti border and quickly proceeded into Saudi Arabia and elsewhere at a time when the United States and Allied forces in the region were minimal? Though we remember clearly the great victory of 500,000 allied troops over Saddam's Republican Guard, we should remember that we had nearly 6 months with which to ship troops and materiel into the gulf. If Saddam's military advance had been immediate through Kuwait into Saudi Arabia, there is no doubt the cost both in terms of dollars expended and lives lost would have been much more severe on all of the allied nations, including the United States, in order to expel him. We cannot base our military capabilities on the assumption that we will have a long period to build up forces and unimpeded access to in- theater basing. We were very fortunate in the gulf that the Saudi Arabian people had airbases, had port facilities. But if that had not been the case, we would have been faced with a much more daunting challenge. If the B-2 currently in production could have been deployed to the Persian Gulf, as Saddam Hussein was threatening to invade Kuwait, I believe the Iraqi dictator would have had a much more difficult decision to make before crossing the border into Kuwait. With a fully equipped fleet of Stealth bombers, the President could have launched a strike force of B-52's from either Whiteman Air Force Base or Diego Garcia, and with one aerial refueling they could have engaged Saddam's prized Republican Guard. In a Rand study, a simulation was conducted utilizing B-2's against one of Saddam's advancing armored divisions, consisting of approximately 750 combat vehicles. The B-2's, armed with sensor-fused weapons known as skeet conventional munitions; they are currently in production and now coming into the inventory; managed to destroy 46 percent of those 750 combat vehicles, not only halting the armored division's advance, but inflicting so much damage that the division could not be reconstituted, and the people at Rand, I asked them had there ever been any other combination of conventional weapons that could stop a mobile division in the field, and their answer was, ``Congressman, there is no other combination of conventional weapons that could have stopped a moving division.'' Extending the Persian Gulf scenario, which is clearly the type of conflict most representative of our national security challenges in the years ahead, we should look at how we would repel the invading Iraqi forces if Saddam had not given us a 5-month head start. We know the advantage of Stealth fighters, the F-117's with smart weapons, gave us when the allied attack actually began, but without the long-range Stealth-bomber capability in the early August days of the Iraqi advance, what assets would we have used? The answer is an expensive one, and this is the one that this administration is proposing to the Congress and one that I think is very, very foolish. With the existing fleet of bombers, primarily B- 52's that are now as old as their pilots' fathers, expensive standoff weapons would have been used capable only of hitting a fixed target rather than being able to engage moving divisions. Each of these cruise missiles would have cost 1.2 million, and usually an airplane would carry somewhere between 12 and 16 of them, and the cost of the conventional munitions such as the ones that would be on the B-2, which could penetrate against fixed targets, are about $20,000, and the cost of the skeet munitions, which I mentioned earlier, are about one-fourth the cost of a load of these expensive standoff cruise missiles, and remember that those skeet munitions, these are little pucklike weapons with a parachute. They come down over the battlefield, hit the tanks, the Bradleys, all the vehicles as they come into the country. Those would cost about a fourth versus the load of cruise missiles, but of course the cruise missiles do not have any capability against a mobile target, and the two most important things were the advancing division and actually the movement of Scud missiles. We were unable to detect those Scud missiles during the gulf war, and find them and destroy them. The B-2, or the Block 30 upgrade, would give us a new capability with better intelligence to find those Scud missiles, and if those Scud missiles had had chemical, or biological, or nuclear weapons, the outcome of the war in the gulf could have been vastly different. Now where B-2's are stealthy, survivable, and able to operate autonomously, nonstealth-bomber aircraft require significant protection including air escorts, fighters, and electronic jammers, and that is why I put this chart down here to show you the value of stealth. On the far side is a package of airplanes. I think it is about 76 aircraft that would use nothing but dumb bombs. Then you have a package of airplanes using precision weapons, and then you got to the stealthy F-117's, and the major difference is that these nonstealthy aircraft were unable to go into the most heavily defended areas. They were forced to come back out, as General Horner has testified, and then, before we had gained total air superiority in the gulf, we used the F- 117's, and eight of them were able to be used to go in and knock out these surface-to-air missiles and do it in a very timely way, and what happened also was that our pilots in these stealthy airplanes survived. They were not shot down even though they were going in against the most heavily defended areas. And the comparison is, and here they have two B-2's because the Air Force never sends just one airplane, it always has two, but one B-2 is equivalent to these airplanes and to all of these stealthy aircraft--I mean nonstealthy aircraft in terms of their capability to attack these targets, and remember the standard package on the far right. All those 76 planes were turned back. They could not get the job done. So stealth worked, we saved money, because we were able to use less-expensive weapons. They did not use the standoff weapons, and we were able to have all of our pilots survive. That is the value of this revolutionary technology. Now the saving comes not only in dollars, but in lives, and both, as I mentioned, are significant. In dollars we reduce the cost of weapons alone in the gulf scenario from approximately $2.24 billion per day for the expensive standoff weapons to about $300 million per day by utilizing the radar-evading capabilities of the stealth, and 1 week's savings during such a conflict could pay for nearly 20 additional B-2's. Even more important is the lifesaving ability of utilizing a much smaller attacking force of aircraft that can operate undetected in hostile airspace. The B-2 can provide us with conventional deterrence, but if deterrence fails, it can help us win wars more quickly and with fewer losses. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my distinguished colleague, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Procurement of the Committee on National Security, and one of the real experts on defense and national security matters in the House. I yield to the gentleman from San Diego.

Mr. DICKS. Which had to be one of the dumbest military moves in the history of warfare.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, we have never had that kind of capability before because the B-52's and the B-1's only drop dumb bombs. They do not have the capability to drop smart conventional weapons. Now we hope to do that someday in the future on the B-1. I support that. Also, the gentleman, another important point to think about here is if that division is moving, it is going to have air defense capabilities. Russian air defenses have proliferated all over the world, and so, if you came in with the B-52, or the B-1's, or any other nonstealthy airplane, they would be shot down.

Mr. DICKS. And the gentleman is so correct. Think about our history in World War II. If the Germans had had a stealthy bomber force, they would have potentially defeated England. I mean it was the fact that those planes were not stealthy and radar was able to detect them that allowed during the Battle of London, you know, for their fighters in those days and their air defense system to function. I mean a stealthy airplane in those days could have been devastating to the effort in World War II. And also one other thing about this. We went through this whole thing about the vulnerability of battleships, and, what was it, Billy Mitchell finally flew over and dropped down a bag of flour on the battleship, and all of a sudden the battleship admirals had to admit that they were vulnerable to air attack. It is the same mind set here. These nonstealthy airplanes are vulnerable to being shot down, and that means, as you suggested with Captain O'Grady, that we are going to lose those lives, and that is why the revolution of stealth is so important. You can go into those heavily defended targets, knock out the surface-air-missiles, gain air superiority, and then you can use your nonstealthy equipment.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the position of the gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. Montgomery] on this issue, because I believe that having a Selective Service System in place maintains American readiness, and that is the crucial issue. If we do not have a Selective Service System in place, we would have to reconstitute it, if we had to go to a draft, and it would take a long period of time to do that, at least 2 years. So I would tell the gentleman from Oregon [Mr. DeFazio] that all those veterans that we all support in terms of health care would much prefer the country being prepared, keeping this tool in place. What is the compliance rate? Ninety-nine percent of our young people have been willing to register without any objection. So this is a good tool, a good mechanism, and I think it keeps our country prepared.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I would like to enter into a colloquy with the distinguished chairman of the committee. Mr. Chairman, the version of the Alaskan oil export legislation which was passed in the other body as S. 395, included as section 206 an amendment to the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 to provide for a vessel in the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary or the Strait of Juan de Fuca to assist in towing and oilspill response efforts. H.R. 70 as reported by the Resources Committee does not contain a similar provision. I had been prepared to offer an amendment to H.R. 70 concerning this issue, but as you know our rules are different from those of the other body and I have been advised by the Parliamentarian that such an amendment would be ruled out of order as nongermane. Accordingly, I am hoping that this is a matter that can, with the assistance of the chairman, be addressed in conference.

Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentleman from Alaska.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman for his assistance.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I want to be very brief here. I want to commend the chairman of the Committee on Agriculture, Mr. Roberts, and I certainly want him to have an opportunity to speak, and I know he will, for his leadership in this effort. Also, I want to complement my colleague on the Committee on Appropriations, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Walsh]. Coming from the State of Washington, I see some of my colleagues from Washington State on the floor. We had a very serious E. coli breakout in our State 3 years ago. Three young children died, hundreds were sick, and so I was definitely very concerned in the appropriations committee when there was an effort to delay the implementation of the new regulations, which our ranking member, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Durbin], so carefully described, someone who has had great experience in this area. But I think this is a model of how we should work these problems out, and I commend the gentleman from New York for engaging Secretary Glickman and the chairman of the authorizing committee and the Democratic Members, and they were able to work out a reasonable compromise on this issue. We will not delay the new regulations from going into place. What the gentleman from New York wanted, properly, and I wanted to commend the chairman, too, the gentleman from New Mexico [Mr. Skeen], for facilitating this, was that all the parties should be heard. He talked about a negotiated rulemaking, which I happen to believe this was too complicated an issue for that, but we got the same achievement by giving all the parties the ability to participate. The most important thing is we are protecting the American consumers. Seven thousand people a year die from salmonella or E. coli and hundreds more, hundreds of thousands more are sick and ill. So this is a serious consumer issue, and some of us on the Committee on Appropriations have been very concerned that there has been a pattern of, in essence, gutting health, safety and environmental legislation in the name of helping the private sector. That is not right. The American people do not want unsafe meat. They do not want unsafe drinking water. So I commend the gentleman from New York for working this problem out and getting a satisfactory result that is in the interest of the country and in the interest of consumers and certainly in the interest of the people of Washington State, because we went through a terrible crisis just a year or so ago. So I commend the gentleman and I support his motion to strike.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Is the gentleman opposed to this rule, even if it were a positive rule?

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio. [[Page H 7115]]

Mr. DICKS. The point I want to make is we are now reinventing government. What that means is the Forest Service has been reduced in personnel by 3,000 people. Timber sales have come down dramatically. If we change the standard from 5,000 acres to 3,000 acres, they are going to have to redo all of their forest plans throughout this country. That will be a disaster that will mean less timber harvesting. Timber harvesting nationally has come down by 60 percent. So I have supported wildernesses. I voted for my wilderness bill in my State. But to come in now after this dramatic reduction in timber harvesting and to come in now and say we have got to reduce this standard and change it, is a mistake. By the way, this is the Clinton administration. There is Jim Lyons and Albert Gore and Jack Ward Thomas. They are not going to go out and tear apart the roadless areas in this country, and I think it is an affront. I think it is an affront to this administration to change this standard after what they have done for ecosystem management and improving our environment, and I am shocked the gentleman from Massachusetts would do such a thing.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. DICKS. Would the gentleman answer me this one question? If the Department has a good and appropriate rule, obviously the first rule was fatally flawed. If you were blocking the first rule from going into effect, I would have no problem with what the gentleman is attempting to do, but the gentleman has already won the battle. The Secretary of Energy withdrew that rule. She is now listening to all these people and trying to come up with a new rule. What you are doing here with this amendment is prohibiting for the next 15 months a rule to go into effect on that subject. I think that is wrong. I think the Secretary has already given you what you want, and this goes too far.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, will the next amendment eliminate all funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities, after the committee cut it by 40 percent?

Mr. DICKS. Yes, Mr. Chairman, I wish to be heard on the point of order. Mr. Chairman, it seems to me that this is a lot more straightforward than we are trying to make it with these long orations about the technicalities. But let us get to the bottom line. We are changing, and the Forest Service has already said in their letter here, that they have been operating on a 5,000 acre basis. We are now going to restrict that to 3,000 acres. That is going to be a major new responsibility, ministerial duty, on the Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service. They apparently do not have these areas at that small a size. Therefore, it is going to be an additional burden. I think, therefore, it is legislation and is subject to a point of order.

Mr. DICKS. We are still here, though.

Mr. DICKS. I would have to rise, then, in very strong opposition to this amendment. What the Secretary of Energy is basically telling us in this: Here is the report to our committee. Fluorescent lamp ballasts, after reviewing the comments in the proposed rule, the Department determined the engineering analysis was flawed. On January 31, 1995, the Department announced its intention to perform a new analysis and prepare a proposed rule based on the new analysis. Since the January notice, the Department has been meeting with the NEMA, individual manufacturers, and representatives of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, to develop a new engineering analysis. Once the analysis is completed, the Department intends to prepare a new proposed rule. It seems to me that starting on the first of the fiscal year, we would then for the next 15 months be barring any opportunity to do a rule even if it was an appropriate rule that would save us energy.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I just want to ask the gentleman a question here. If I read the gentleman's amendment correctly, there is a positive cost-benefit ratio, and if there is not an antitrust problem, can then the Secretary of Energy promulgate a new rule on fluorescent lamp ballasts? She has said here in her letter to us that she has withdrawn the original proposed rule because it was flawed, but could she now do a new rule on this subject, or is that completely barred by your amendment?

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I would like to engage the distinguished chairman of the Subcommittee on Interior, if he could tell the Members, we have some concern about what the plan into the evening is.

Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Goodling], the distinguished chairman of the Education and Labor Committee.