CIVIL DEFENSE

Part I-Atomic Shelter Tests

THURSDAY, MAY 8, 1958

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON MILITARY OPERATIONS

OF THE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS,

Washington, D. C.

The subcommittee met in room 1501-B, New House Office Building, pursuant to adjournment, at 10:05 a. m., Hon. Chet Holifield (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Holifield (presiding), Fascell, and Lipscomb.

Also present: Herbert Roback, staff administrator; Carey Brewer, senior defense specialist; and Robert McElroy, investigator.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. The subcommittee will be in order.

We are pleased to have the Department of Defense witnesses before us this morning. The Chair will recognize Mr. Hugo Facci. Is that the correct pronunciation?

Mr. FACCI. That is right; yes, sir.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. From the Office of Director of Construction, Office of the Secretary of Defense (Properties and Installations).

Mr. Facci, we will ask you to proceed in the manner in which you plan to have your witnesses appear and introduce them for the record at this time.

STATEMENT OF HUGO FACCI, OFFICE OF DIRECTOR OF CONSTRUCTION, OFFICE OF SECRETARY OF DEFENSE (PROPERTIES AND INSTALLATIONS); ACCOMPANIED BY ALLEN FORE, OFFICE OF DIRECTOR OF CONSTRUCTION, OFFICE OF SECRETARY OF DEFENSE (PROPERTIES AND INSTALLATIONS); COL. J. E. MCHUGH, OFFICE OF EMERGENCY PLANNING, OFFICE OF SECRETARY OF DEFENSE (MANPOWER AND PERSONNEL); CAPT. DAVID LAMBERT, DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY; LT. COL. ELLIS E. PICKERING, DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY; CAPT. FERD E. ANDERSON, JR., DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY; MAJ. ROY C. WEIDLER, DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE; AND LT. COL. SVEN BACH, DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY, MEMBERS OF THE ARMED FORCES SPECIAL WEAPONS PROJECT

Mr. FACCI. Thank you, sir. Our general plan this morning would be this, Mr. Chairman: I will speak for OSD. We will not call on any other witnesses from the Secretary of Defense's office unless we

get into areas in which the committee has particular questions. Then we will be followed by the Army, then the Navy, then the Air Force representatives.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. All right; you may proceed.

Mr. FACCI. I have a statement here that will give a general picture, we trust, of the entire DOD approach, philosophy, and programs in protective construction without going into too much detail.

The protective construction policy was stated by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1952 and extensively revised and restated in 1955. It was implemented by a series of Department of Defense directives and instructions in 1955 and 1956, and the military departments have, in turn, disseminated the policy by memorandums, instructions, and planning operational documents.

The policy on protection of personnel is simply to provide protection comparable to that which is established for the population of the country as a whole as a national policy.

For protection of operational missions, including equipment and personnel, the policy consists of the following elements:

Protective construction may utilize or consist of shelter-structural strengthening-dispersal, alert, duplication or camouflage, or combinations thereof, to produce the most effective essential protection against an anticipated attack.

This protection must be justified on the basis of an operations analysis; the level of protection must be supported by a target analysis. The operations analysis will establish the equipment and personnel which are really essential to carrying out the mission during a specific period of time.

The target analysis determines the "survival probability" for the mission on the basis of the size of weapon, error of delivery and the level of protection. For any assumed attack, the "survival probability" increases with the level of protection. This latter may vary from high overpressure values to fallout protection only.

The priority by which protective construction projects are approved and carried out depends upon the strategic importance of the operational mission which is protected. The highest priority items, obviously, are the elements of the retaliatory force, with comparable or lower priority on command centers, vital communications, active defense aircraft and missiles, and so forth.

That is the summary statement on the existing policy, and I would like to take just a few minutes to go into the philosophy of protective construction as we see it in the Department of Defense.

Protective construction is primarily an operational requirement. It is part and parcel of the equipment and personnel with which it is associated in the same way that armor is part of a tank. It must fit the operational requirements of the equipment and personnel. In other words, it is an integral part of a weapon system. Its function is to assure that the weapon can carry out its mission, not to preserve it for posterity.

Thus, "shelter" alone will not necessarily provide the best or optimum protection. An aircraft, after attack, may not be able to operate out of a cave or an underground shelter, or its crew may not survive in the existing radiation environment once it gets out. Therefore alert or dispersal, neither of which involves shelter, or both, may be the solution in this case.

Briefly, the best method or methods of protective construction are determined first of all by the characteristics of the weapon system being protected. Furthermore, for any one weapon, the type of anticipated attack and the available active defense and warning time will determine the necessary protection.

Base dispersal and alert status may be best for SAC bombers, which thus can get out of range before the attack actually hits, but they probably are of no value-that is, dispersal and alert-to ICBM's which cannot be moved readily, and alert obviously means nothing for such items as atomic weapons storage.

Conversely, the SAC bomber dispersal and alert, which today is quite a practical solution, may lose some value 5 to 10 years from now as more weapons are available to the enemy and as warning times decrease.

Therefore each system and element must be first studied from the operational point of view and then if alternative feasible methods of protection are available, choice must be made on the basis of cost, time effectiveness, et cetera.

All protection will cost more money. The best formula to use in justifying it is how much more operational capability will this buy, or, ideally, how many fewer weapons do we need to buy, if we protect them, to assure the same attack intensity against the enemy.

Once the decision is made regarding the type of protective construction to be used, the level of protection must be established so that each element of the system-and these may be rather farflung and complicated systems has the same degree of protection and the whole is not appreciably stronger than the weakest element.

A completely sheltered missile may be saved, but will nevertheless be useless if the nearby radar guidance equipment has been damaged or destroyed, and cannot be replaced readily.

On the subject of construction and engineering, I would like to give a little background on the early studies.

In January 1956 the military departments were asked to submit order-of-magnitude estimates of possible future protective construction programs. At that time the SAC dispersal policy and protection of overseas petroleum storage by all military departments were already under active planning.

The reports were not program documents and represented probably the highest potential expenditure for protective construction. These are the highest priority items.

The Army and Navy reports together amounted to about $750 million for future 5-year period; the Air Force did not cite actual cost estimates but indicated a long list of facilities and missions which might require some type of protective construction.

The actual programs which were subsequently submitted and approved were, naturally enough, much more restricted in magnitude. Most of the difference can be accounted for by the difference between an idealized concept and a real program. But there were several secondary reasons for the greatly reduced scope.

The strategic categories of the facilities were overestimated, that is, were set too high in the 1956 studies.

The programs, when submitted, were not sufficiently well justified. The cost of protective construction ran into the stone wall of a relatively fixed and limited construction budget. In some cases, where

the more tenuous and indefinite requirement for protective construction competed for funds with urgent and fiirm requirements for other facilities, the protective construction lost out.

These difficulties are being gradually ironed out as we gain more experience in planning these programs.

The total of the authorized fiscal year 1957 and fiscal year 1958 1958 programs and the as-yet-unauthorized fiscal year 1959 program are given only to illustrate the size of the effort so far undertaken in the Department of Defense. Construction of SAC dispersal bases and alert facilities will total somewhat more than $500 million.

Virtually none of this consists of shelter for personnel. The rest of the program cost attributable to protective construction for all military departments ZI and overseas-that is, in the continental United States and overseas-amounts to about $50 million in facilities whose total construction cost is $300 million.

In other words, out of this $300 million of facilities which included some element of protective construction, $50 million of that very roughly is accessible to protective construction.

Unit costs of blast-resistant construction will depend primarily on the level of protection desired, the clear span required, special entrance requirements, and the permissible shape and location of the structure. Each of the military departments has had its own history and experience with costs.

The range of these costs is from the order of $2 or $3 per square foot additional for small aboveground structures strengthened to 10 pounds per square inch-by additional, I mean over and above the conventional construction cost-to almost $200 per square foot for moderate span, below-ground, rectangular structures strengthened to the 100-200 pounds per square inch range.

I may state here that this includes equipment-without getting too much in detail as to this particular type of structure, it includes equipment for moving the operational mission equipment. In other words, there is considerable mechanical and electrical in that cost of $200 per square foot.

Comparison with conventional costs becomes extremely complicated and almost meaningless for high design over pressures and for belowground construction because operational functions, space requirements, accessory facilities, et cetera, change entirely.

Dr. Newmark's statement on the "state of the art" of design and construction made to this subcommittee last week, fairly represents the DOD point of view as well. A few additional points are emphasized.

First, variations of 20 percent to 30 percent in actual strength of structures will not be important in most cases. The effect will be a relatively small reduction or increase in survival probability of the facility or mission.

The important factors are that a facility is entirely unprotected or has low, moderate, or high level of protection. This is particularly true for our retaliatory force, whose strongest influence is in deterring an enemy attack. The mere fact that these retaliatory forces are hard to destroy or damage by an enemy surprise attack is of the utmost value in itself.

Returning to the question of design capability, the Army and Navy have their own design and review staffs both in the headquarters and

in the field. The Air Force has a review staff in the headquarters and has been made fully responsible for the design of its SAC missile technical facilities.

These agencies have used the services of virtually all the outstanding engineering firms in the country who have capability in the field of protective construction. Preliminary and final designs for construction projects which are being done currently include fuel storage facilities, missile launching facilities, and communications operations facilities.

In general, we feel that we have now everything that we need to know to build personnel shelters which will resist the weapons effects in the area of 200 pounds per square inch. There are certain military problems requiring protection of sensitive equipment and, possibly protection to higher levels, so that we are continuing our research and will continue some testing if we have the opportunity.

One of the major problems that exist today is to assemble the large amount of outstanding information into such form that it can be readily understood and used by practicing engineers. There are some efforts along this line, but a lot remains to be done.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. I would like to interrupt you here. We have a list which the Air Force has prepared of a large number of studies extending back several years, some as far back as 1951, I notice.

This all has to do with the problems of protection in case of attack, does it not?

Mr. FACCI. Yes, sir.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. I am struck with the number of studies which have been made. Would the Chair be right if he assumed that you have a tremendous amount of information in the field of materials and structures and stresses and strains and all the other problems that would go with the impact of weapons?

Mr. FACCI. Yes, there has been quite a mass of information, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. How much of that has been digested and put together in composite form?

Mr. FACCI. There are a number of publications from the engineering point of view. Probably the best example is the series of manuals put out by the Corps of Engineers on design-structural design manuals, which all include all of this.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. How much of this material has been duplicated by other branches of the service? Have these studies, in other words, been made available to all branches of the service?

Mr. FACCI. Yes. The next part of the presentation will get into research studies. The monitoring agency or the focal point for these studies, both laboratory and field, and the coordinating agency has been the Armed Force Special Weapons Project. They work with the three military departments and with the Secretary of Defense in order to see that the services are aware of what each other are doing.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. Let me ask you another question. Has all of this information been made available over the years or has it been available to the Federal Civil Defense Administration?

Mr. FACCI. Some of the information has been made available to the Federal Civil Defense Agency.