2004
Federal Agenda Chamber of Commerce, Huntsville/Madison County Alabama
Chamber Agenda We are grateful to our Congressional delegation for their hard work over the years to grow and protect our community. Through the federal investments that our delegation has brought to the region, Huntsville/Madison County has become a high technology partner capable of supporting the most demanding needs of our military and space programs. Our nation is a superpower, due in part to the accomplishments and breakthroughs achieved in Huntsville through national space and military programs. Many of the federal programs that will keep our nation in a position of world leadership are today based in Huntsville. In addition to the important role these programs will play in maintaining our global leadership, they also play an important role in our local economy. As we approach the next round of Base Realignment and Closure in 2005, we encourage our delegation to remain vigilant in their defense of Redstone. The military value of Redstone and the synergy of the more than 60 resident federal activities make it a logical choice for future consolidation of activities. In addition to many other sensible Redstone consolidations, we continue to believe that Redstone should become the headquarters of the Army’s Research, Development and Engineering Command (see page 1 of Appendix). In this agenda, the Chamber outlines some of the most pressing issues facing our nation today. We rely upon our Congressional delegation to help us realize this next chapter in our nation’s and our community’s growth.
The President’s Vision for U.S. Space Exploration The Chamber applauds President Bush for putting forth a bold new space policy that focuses on exploration. This renewed focus on human and robotic missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond provides a vision for NASA beyond the International Space Station and will serve to focus and rejuvenate the American aerospace industry. Marshall Space Flight Center and our community stand ready to support the President’s vision. Two of the Marshall Center’s primary capabilities lie in the areas of systems development and integration. The Chamber urges the Alabama congressional delegation to work with the NASA Administrator and the Administration to ensure that Marshall is charged with the systems development and integration role for Project Constellation. This effort will entail multiple development efforts including the crew exploration vehicle, transfer stages, lunar landing and ascent capabilities, launch vehicles, and a technology program. A spiral development process will be used to manage Project Constellation. This development process, which will come in stages, demands a systems approach. Through lessons learned from the Orbital Space Plane and Next Generation Launch Technology, the Marshall Center is well positioned to lead this effort on behalf of the Agency. The Chamber firmly believes that defining this role for the Marshall Center should be the Alabama Congressional delegation’s number one priority with regard to NASA issues. The President’s policy also stresses the importance of returning the Space Shuttle to flight and completing the International Space Station. The Chamber supports both of these activities and urges that revisions to the Shuttle’s service life extension program reflect needed investments in the system’s propulsion elements. An aspect of the President’s new space policy that deserves additional scrutiny revolves around the continued and potentially expanded use of foreign launch systems. The Chamber believes that launch capability is an asset with national security implications. Therefore, the Chamber urges that U.S. investments in space transportation and propulsion should be made in order to mitigate the need for future reliance on foreign launch providers.
Build Up the Space and Missile Defense Technology Base Today, the Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) technology development budget has no applied research funds (6.2) and its Advanced Technology Research funding accounts for a miniscule portion of the overall Missile Defense Agency (MDA) budget with the vast majority of funds being dedicated to acquiring and fielding near term systems.
As the current director of MDA stated in testimony before Congress: “At current funding levels, we are able to fund far fewer programs for next generation weapon systems. Since most of our financial resources are focused on development, production, and deployment of our family of systems, we need to invest in technology development if we are to keep pace with the emerging threat…” The lack of funding for applied research by MDA and the US Army leaves a gap in critical technology development for the US Army Air, Space, and Missile Defense PEO. The lack of funding is manifesting itself in three important ways. Firstly, technologies needed to address advanced threats, increase performance against current threats, and enhance reliability are not being vigorously pursued. Secondly, the best and brightest minds coming into the workplace are going elsewhere at a time when applied research for BMD is non-existent. Finally, universities and small businesses have seen a drop in applied research funding since the early 1990’s and have downsized or eliminated their applied research programs accordingly. The U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command (USASMDC) located in Huntsville, and its predecessor organizations have been in the forefront of BMD technology development since the first feasibility studies of a defense against strategic ballistic missiles in 1955. USAMDC, established as the nation’s premier BMD research facility, invented and validated the critical technologies now being used to build the first non-nuclear BMD system scheduled for initial deployment in 2004. The command is the only cost-effective choice to reestablish a world-class BMD research facility to manage, direct, and coordinate with MDA and the services for both in-house research and research conducted in colleges and universities. We urge the delegation to support Army funding consistent with establishing a credible program to address applied research in areas such as multi-spectral image change detection; guidance, navigation, and control for hypersonic vehicles; early launch detection sensors; next generation micro-electronics; and next generation materials which are unique to missile defense. These funds are critical for the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command Technical Center to rapidly start-up comprehensive applied research programs that are critical to keep pace with the advancing threat and maintain the nation’s technological superiority.
Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) Missile Defense Program The United States will field an initial missile defense capability in 2004 to provide a limited defense against missile attack. This early capability will be steadily improved and expanded in deliberate and
controlled increments of increasing capability. The Chamber supports full funding for GMD and urges the delegation to take two necessary actions. Firstly, we ask the delegation to “fence” the GMD appropriation to prevent reprogramming actions that might delay deployment or curtail critical technical upgrades to the system. Secondly, we ask the delegation to provide additional funding for near-term deployment and growth. GMD is the most mature and largest part of the layered defense architecture designed to protect all 50 United States, our allies, friends, and deployed forces against potential long-range missile attack. In fall 2004, initial defensive operations will be in place and working in concert with the testing program. Full GMD funding is mission critical and must be sustained as the system transitions into the deployment phase so adequate development and testing can be carried out. New programs for boost-phase and other layers of the Pentagon’s missile defense architecture cannot be allowed to detract from GMD. To keep the GMD layer of the missile defense architecture technologically superior to future long-range missile threats, the remaining development and test objectives for the GMD system must be aggressively pursued.
Unmanned Systems Initiative Aerospace Corridor of Excellence Unmanned Systems has emerged as one of the key elements for the transformation of the Army. Redstone Arsenal is uniquely positioned to be on the point for defining the technology required, and to lead the integration of this capability into future systems for the war fighter. The Unmanned Systems Initiative will implement the systems-of-systems integration philosophy for transition of unmanned systems and to address near term development challenges. The Unmanned Systems Initiative will fully utilize the resources available within the Aerospace Corridor of Excellence to define and demonstrate the interoperability between manned and unmanned systems, as well as unmanned to unmanned combinations, both ground and air. The Unmanned Systems Initiative will establish a research and development test bed to advance, evaluate, and rapidly transition technologies to address urgent war fighter needs. The proposed FY05 activities will continue to enhance those efforts initiated in FY04. The funding request supports the collaborative test bed development; experimentation and transition; program/project manager users; science and technology users; and academia. Specific activities for FY05 include the expansion and operation of the virtual/live test bed capability established in FY04 to include links to joint users. A focused effort to increase technology transition opportunities will be undertaken. There is to be continued effort to prototype, integrate, and test unmanned systems components. Plans also include the rapid transition of systems/capabilities to technology developers and weapon system managers. The expanded virtual/live simulation capability will be used for system design, development of tactics, techniques, and procedures and test in parallel to ensure the shortest transition path. The efforts described for FY05 will continue to lead the Unmanned Systems community into a fully integrated user-developer team operating in full collaboration.
Huntsville’s Contribution to the Homeland Security Technology Challenge Team Redstone and supporting local industry offer significant modeling and simulation capabilities that may be immediately applied to solving complex Homeland Security issues. The simulation environments reside in the Systems Simulation and Development Directorate of the Research Development and Engineering Center at Redstone Arsenal, and specifically the Advanced Prototyping and Experimentation Laboratory (APEX). The delegation has supported funding of this real-time, high fidelity, distributed modeling and simulation environment for several years, and the Army has invested heavily in building and demonstrating the power of converging constructive, virtual and live environments to support “smart” procurement decisions. The simulation environment at SS&DD has been effectively employed for Redstone Arsenal garrison force protection initiatives and through a mutual aid agreement with Huntsville and Madison County. This capability has been useful in exploring the tactics, techniques and procedures associated with preventing and responding to terrorist threats on and around the Arsenal, and is directly applicable to Homeland Security and the U.S. Army. The delegation should continue to support and build the APEX Laboratory capability, and the capabilities of the simulation environments at SS&DD should be leveraged to bring Homeland Security funding to Redstone Arsenal. One such initiative is the ongoing effort to get direct funding to the SS&DD from the Center for Domestic Preparedness (CDP) in Anniston, Alabama. The Office of Domestic Preparedness (ODP) of Homeland Security provides funding for the CDP. Another potential use of the SS&DD real-time, distributed simulation environments is to support concept development, analysis of alternatives and performance
assessments for Homeland Security technology programs being funded by Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA). Over the years, the Army and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) have invested multi-millions of dollars in creation of high fidelity simulations to test new ideas and technologies for application to wartime environments. The purpose of the simulation environments is to “simulate-before-buy”, therefore exploring alternatives and deriving workable solutions before actually producing the hardware. These simulations enable the RDEC laboratories to help the Army PMs and PEOs to be “smart buyers” of technology. This same concept can be extended to allow the RDEC to help the HSARPA be “smart buyers” of technology for Homeland Security. The delegation should strongly support the initiatives of the simulation community in Huntsville and surrounding area to take the next steps forward to secure Homeland Security funding and leverage taxpayer/Army investments in this important area.
Critical Area Infrastructure Improvements to Enable Further Economic Development The Chamber encourages our Congressional delegation to focus on two extremely important highway development projects during the FY ’05 funding cycle. The Southern Bypass will provide critical access to Redstone Arsenal as well as much needed relief to the overburdened Memorial Parkway. As a critical first element of the Memphis-Huntsville-Atlanta Highway, this project is positioned for immediate development. Preliminary engineering and environmental studies have been conducted and a final route has been designated by ALDOT. Federal funds for design finalization and right of way acquisition is requested. The Chamber requests additional funding for improvements along Appalachian Corridor V – US 72 East from Gurley to Huntsville, to upgrade that segment of the corridor to a limited access expressway. This includes interchanges at Moores Mill/Shields Road, Jordan Road, Moontown Road, Brock Road, the Eastern Bypass and Gurley Pike. Previous federal legislation has substantiated the need for these improvements. Appalachian Regional Commission funding in the amount of $150 million is requested.
Military Systems Test and Integration Hub Aviation Corridor of Excellence Since the relocation of the Army’s Aviation Command and the PEO-Aviation to Redstone in 1997, the aviation workload has expanded significantly as the result of Army Aviation’s key role in the Global War on Terrorism and support to Homeland Defense. The existing infrastructure is insufficient to meet the needs of this critical military requirement. The Systems Test and Integration Facility will house staff from the Aviation and Missile Research, Development, and Engineering Center, The Program Executive Office-Aviation (PEO), the Aviation Technical Test Center, and the Redstone Technical Test Center. This capability requirement is fully supported and endorsed by all the members of this integrated team. The 137,000 square foot facility will provide an integrated capability for Airworthiness Qualification Testing and Certification; perform and qualify aircraft modifications; support the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles program; and provide support for future weapon system integration. The Hub will help keep aviation dollars within the Aerospace Corridor of Excellence and will also be critical to attracting future aviation business to the corridor.
Delegation Senator Richard C. Shelby 110 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-0103 202-224-5744 • 202-224-3416 fax senator@shelby.senate.gov Senator Jeff Sessions 495 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510-0104 202-224-4124 • 202-224-3149 fax senator@sessions.senate.gov
Congressman Bud Cramer 2350 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515-0105 202-225-4801 • 202-225-7623 fax budmail@mail.house.gov Congressman Robert B. Aderholt 1433 Longworth House Office Building Washington, DC 20515-0104 202-225-4876 • 202-225-5587 fax robert.aderholt@mail.house.gov
Chamber of Commerce of Huntsville/Madison County 225 Church Street • Huntsville, AL 35801 • 256.535.2000 www.HuntsvilleAlabamaUSA.com
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