MILITARY CONSTRUCTION AUTHORIZATION, FISCAL YEAR 1973 THURSDAY, JUNE 1, 1972 The Military Construction Subcommittees of the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Appropriations met in joint session, pursuant to recess, at 2:30 p.m., in room 212, Old Senate Building. Present: Subcommittee on Military Construction of the Committee on Armed Services: Senators Symington (presiding), and Cannon. Subcommittee on Military Construction of the Committee on Appropriations: Senators Mansfield, Young, and Boggs. Also present from the Senate Armed Services Committee: Gordon A. Nease, professional staff member; and Mary E. Keough, clerical assistant. From the Senate Appropriations Committee: Vorley M. Rexroad, chief clerk of the subcommittee; and Joel E. Bonner, Jr., minority staff member. TITLE III-AIR FORCE Senator SYMINGTON. The hearing will come to order. We will continue our hearing this afternoon on the military construction authorization bill by taking up title III of the bill relating to the requirements of the Air Force. At the conclusion of this open session, we will have a brief executive session to take up the classified items. Our principal witness will be Maj. Gen. M. R. Reilly, Director of Civil Engineering, U.S. Air Force. General, we understand you have a statement? STATEMENT OF MAJ. GEN. M. R. REILLY, DIRECTOR OF CIVIL ENGINEERING, U.S. AIR FORCE General REILLY. Yes, sir; I do. Senator SYMINGTON. Would you read it? General REILLY. Thank you, sir. Mr. Chairman, and members of the committees: It is a pleasure to appear before these committees again to present the Air Force fiscal year military construction authorization program. As always, the primary objective of this program is to support the force and deployment goals presented to the Congress in the Air Force Chief of Staff's posture statement. In addition, this program provides another increment toward our goal of modernizing by upgrading or replacing buildings and structures that can no longer be economically retained. To achieve these goals, the bill now before the committees requests an authorization of $406,964,000 for the Air Force. The primary subdivisions of this request are as follows: Regular construction, $301,585,000; family housing, $89,979,000; Reserve Forces, $15,400,000; total, $106,964,000. My comments today are directed to the construction request for the Regular Forces. However, it is our understanding that the authorization request for the Defense Office Building, which has been included in the Air Force's regular construction program, will be considered by your committees with representatives of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Before going into the details of the regular program, I would like to cover briefly a few topics in which your committees or others in the Congress have expressed an interest. In addition, I will review briefly the significant management actions that have been brought to bear in program development and evaluation. LONG RANGE PLANNING The key to successful long range planning and programing is the firm professional evaluation of requirements and selection of proper time frame and method of action. Some deficiencies and requirements can be met through appropriate and timely maintenance and repair. Others require major rehabilitation or replacement. It is our practice to avoid making surface repairs to facilities when major deficiencies exist which must soon be corrected. However, we make every economical effort to retain structures that can be made adequate by repair. As a basis for planning and programing, each building or structure in the inventory is inspected by an engineer at least annually. Based upon such inspections and the application of sound engineering judgment, the requirements for maintenance and repair, as well as the need for alterations or replacement, are identified and planned on a time-phased basis. The fiscal year 1973 request now before you is a product of this programing approach. The projects have undergone extensive review and represent our most pressing requirements for funding in fiscal year 1973. ADVANCE DESIGN Once valid requirements have been identified, the quality of the program relates directly to the advance planning and actual engineering design that goes into it. The design of a future year's program is initiated early enough to assure the Congress that our program estimates are on a sound basis and that construction contracts can be awarded on a timely basis. EARLY CONTRACT AWARD We have further intensified our emphasis on early award of construction contracts for authorized construction. This emphasis is designed to provide the Air Force with these needed facilities as early as possible after the Congress has given its approval. I am pleased to report to these committees that the first of the fiscal year 1972 projects went under contract in February of 1972. The bulk of the program will be under contract before the end of this calendar year. CONSTRUCTION INNOVATIONS The congressional committees concerned with construction have continually urged the services and the Office of the Secretary of Defense to approach our task with an open mind and try new techniques and innovations. Under this stimulation, we have moved into new design techniques using simplified plans and specifications, life cycle costing for construction material selection; and new contracting procedures. We are continuing the serious evaluation we began with last year's program of the merits of industralized construction. We remain optimistic on the benefits this technology can produce, and its continuing application in future military construction programs. DEPOT PLANT MODERNIZATION PROGRAM The equipment and facilities used in our Air Force depot maintenance supply and transportation activities today are largely of World War II vintage. The deteriorated physical condition and growing obsolescence limit economic production and responsiveness. The result has been a gradual erosion of organic depot capabilities. To compensate for this, we initiated a comprehensive 5-year depot plant modernization program last year. This program will increase effectiveness through the phased provision of modern facilities and equipment. Our objective is to maintain an organic logistics plant which can rapidly and effectively respond to the needs of current and programed deterrent forces, and to any emergency mobilization requirements. When we presented this program to you last year, we assured you that the program would not be used to increase in-house capacity at the expense of aerospace contractors. We committed ourselves to reduce maintenance personnel as worker productivity increased. We repeat that assurance today. We deeply appreciate your endorsement of our effort in your report last year, and your approval of $52.5 million for construction to get this program underway. We are confident that this year's increment of $38.1 million for depot facilities modernization will also provide very great benefits for the Air Force. The full 5-year program, as we now envision it, will require an investment of $275 million in military construction, and the acquisition of $115 million in equipment. We strongly believe that maximum results can only be achieved through this method of plannnig, budgeting, and programing. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION Our objective in this area is to comply with the national objectives by providing leadership in environmental protection and enhancement. Working from a 1967 base of an investment of over $250 million in facilities for waste water collection and disposal, the Air Force has, since 1967, spent over $93 million from all accounts on pollution abatement at fixed facilities. Of this, the military construction program totaled $23 million for air pollution abatement projects and $43 million for water pollution abatement projects. This year, we propose projects for air pollution control totaling $21.7 million to bring Air Force installations into compliance with applicable air and water quality standards on a time schedule consistent with Presidential direction. However, we must anticipate that additional funding will be required in future years to comply with the more stringent criteria now being promulgated in the various State air pollution control programs submitted to EPA under the 1970 Clean Air Act amendments and the water quality criteria in the Water Pollution Control Act now under consideration by this Congress. PERSONNEL HOUSING AND COMMUNITY SUPPORT Adequate living accommodations and community support facilities on our bases, have a direct relationship to attaining and sustaining the force levels required to carry out our mission. Our bachelor housing must be attractive, provide adequate space, and allow for individual privacy. We are working toward solving this problem by upgrading and modernization of existing facilities and construction of new quarters to replace outdated facilities. Today, large numbers of our bachelor personnel reside in quarters that cannot be economically upgraded. We are requesting $44.7 million in this year's program for this reason. The ultimate Air Force goal is for continued construction and modernization of facilities until each bachelor is housed in a room of appropriate size, furnishing, and accommodations. CAPITAL INVESTMENT PROTECTION Recognizing the need for a degree of separation between military flying operations and population areas, most of our major bases were sited on land that was then rural in nature, and generally removed from urban and suburban areas. The growth of our country, coupled with the natural economic attraction of the air base, has drawn both suburban and actual urban development right up to the base boundaries. While we have the minimum approach zone clearance easement restrictions necessary to insure flying safety at many of our bases. it has not been possible to insure compatible civil land use adjacent to our installations, the extreme result is that homes, schools, and public buildings have been constructed in such close proximity to the base that the inhabitants belatedly realize that the constant noise levels and potential accident hazard restrict the value of their investment. Understandably, they seek relief through either limitations on our flight operations, or outright termination of them. To prevent this situation from becoming more critical than it is, we plan to secure real estate easements on a broader scale than in the past. By arrangement that would limit land use to activities that are compatible with air base operations and community needs such as agriculture, light industry, mineral development, parks and nonpeople |