discussions. I had the assurance of all services, when they left my office that the proposed budget was satisfactory and that nothing had been taken out or omitted that was vital to the military interests of the country.

Mr. MAHON. Are you not getting around to saying that the Air Force had originally asked for about $19 billion and they were shaved down to $16,500 million? Are you ready to say that? I myself really do not know what the actual facts are.

Secretary WILSON. I think that you should get the complete figures. If you do not, you will not have all of the story, because the program that you go ahead with is a combination of new money being requested now plus unobligated funds carried over from the past. Mr. MAHON. We know something about that.

What about this approximately $19 billion compared to $16,500 million? You told us this morning you would give us the figures for the things they asked for that you did not let them have.

Secretary WILSON. I will give to to you on three bases-how much we estimate we are going to spend; how much money we are asking for, which is before your committee, and also what the obligational program is.

Mr. MAHON. And how much the services estimated they would require. We have had that information before but we do not seem to be able to elicit from your group now.

Secretary WILSON. I have it.

Mr. MAHON. We do not have it. That is our trouble.
Secretary WILSON. It is in the budget.

Mr. MAHON. I am speaking now of the original request. We have battled over those original requests and evaluated them in the committee from year to year, but we are not able to get them this year. Secretary WILSON. I do not know why.

Mr. MAHON. Let us have it.

Mr. MCNEIL. In the case of the Air Force the initial request was for $18.881 million. The Budget estimate is $16,518 million.

Mr. MAHON. What was in the $18,881 million that is not in the $16,518 million?

Mr. MCNEIL. The initial request was $18,881 million.

Mr. MAHON. I do not mean in dollars. I mean in forces and in planes and so forth—just in general terms.

Mr. MCNEIL. For comparison you would have to go through the entire shopping list. The forces are identical.

Mr. MAHON. Are there several hundred planes involved in that? Secretary WILSON. It is not as great as it would seem from those figures. That is why I want the other bunch of figures in the record. Mr. MAHON. Put in any figures you feel would be helpful, please.

UNOBLIGATED CARRYOVERS

Secretary WILSON. I understand. I would just like to make the point, however, that we have been criticized somewhat on the Hill here because we had such big unobligated and unexpended carryovers. You people felt to the degree that we had all this unexpended balance we sort of took control of the program away from you, that we could do what we pleased independent of the new money you gave us and

that we ought to shrink the balances down. We have been shrinking it down 3 years now.

Mr. MAHON. It did not shrink much. It has shrunk some, but it is still true that there is going to be $8 billion unobligated carryover at the end of the current fiscal year.

Secretary WILSON. It has shrunk over $20 billion since I first came down here, which is quite a shrinking.

Mr. MAHON. You mean total overall shrinkage?

Secretary WILSON. I am referring to the unexpended balance.
M MAHON. The Korean war has ended, you understand.
Secretary WILSON. That is right.

Mr. MAHON. We shrank it $60 billion after World War II by rescinding some of the funds.

Secretary WILSON. Mr. McNeil will give you all the figures later in these hearings. I would like to provide some of the key figures at this time for the record.

(The matter referred to is as follows:)

Department of Defense

A. COMPARISON OF INITIAL SERVICE REQUESTS AND PRESIDENT'S BUDGET REQUEST FOR FISCAL YEAR 1957 OBLIGATIONAL AUTHORITY

2 As reporte 1 on Budget-Treasury Standard Form 133.

3 As certifie 1 pursuant to sec. 1311 (b), Public Law 663, 83d Cong., 21 sess.

Includes $2,585 million anticipated reimbursements from MDAP fund reservations outstanding on

June 30, 1955.

Excludes expired amounts unavailable for obligation in subsequent fiscal year.

C. COMPARISON OF FISCAL YEAR 1957 BUDGET PROGRAM WITH FISCAL YEAR 1956

! Includes unobligated balances for OSD and interservice activities. 2 In addition, during fiscal year 1956 the Air Force plan contemplates reinstatement of obligations esti mated at $1,253 million which were initially recorded prior to June 30, 1955, but which could not, as of June 30, 1966, be certified as meeting the requirements of sec. 1311 of the Supplemental Appropriation Act, 1955. NOTE. It is worth noting that the amounts proposed for obligation in fiscal year 1957 are substantially greater than the amounts of additional authority requested in the recent budget message of the President. This is possible because of the utilization of unused obligational authority carried over from previous fiscal years.

Mr. MAHON. We will not press that any further here. We have enough information here to make this colloquy make sense.

GUIDED MISSILE DEVELOPMENT BY THE SERVICES

Now, Mr. Secretary, I want to get back to this guided missiles thing. Secretary WILSON. Do you want it on the record?

Mr. MAHON. I do not see why it would not be all right to have it on the record.

It was reported a few weeks ago that the unhappiest of the Nation's three military services was the United States Air Force. The reasons given were that Defense Secretary Wilson's announcement that the Air Force will share with the Army and Navy the responsibility for developing a medium range ballistic missile in an accelerated new program. It had been previously announced that the Air Force would be responsible for this program. They were disturbed by prospects that funds to be requested in the new budget would not be adequate to provide sufficient new aircraft to maintain the projected 137-wing Air Force in a modern condition after mid-1957.

There is a two-pronged question and I would like your comment. That is not from any columnist.

Mr. SCRIVNER. I read it in the paper.

Mr. MAHON. Many of the facts we consider here are read in the paper, but this is no quote from a columnist.

Mr. SCRIVNER. I read the same story in the paper.

Mr. MAHON. Sure. I guess everyone else read generally about it. Mr. SCRIVNER. It went on to say that General Twining probably asked to have it restored.

Mr. MAHON. But the Secretary never heard of it. All right, Mr. Secretary.

Secretary WILSON. Regardless of what stimulated the question, the question is yours now; is that right? You are asking me that question?

Mr. MAHON. Yes.

Secretary WILSON. In the first place, it seemed desirable to us all, with the knowledge and information we had in the whole organization, to speed up this ballistic-missile business. Discussions about it had been going on for a number of months. The Navy feels it has a requirement in this particular area so in an effort to save time and speed it up and have more than one string to our bow, we made the decision that we would let the Navy-Army team go ahead with the development that was largely based upon the work the Army had done in the Redstone missile area and let the Air Force go ahead with what they had been working on, the ICBM, which is the longrange missile.

Mr. MAHON. That is right.

Secretary WILSON. One of them is a technical fallout one way from the bigger device to the smaller and the other is from the smaller one down here up to this [indicating].

We are working very diligently on a complete review of the business.
Mr. MAHON. The entire guided-missile business?

Secretary WILSON. Particularly this part of it.
Mr. MAHON. The ballistic-missile part?

Secretary WILSON. The ballistic-missile part, and the missiles designed to serve almost the same purpose. Those are the air-breathing ones, which are a little different from ballistic missiles, but they are for the same general purpose. That differentiates the smaller missiles that are used for firing from airplanes and for other types, like the Nike.

I have been spending quite a bit of time on it myself, visiting plants and talking to people, and talking to our Scientific Advistory Committee.

Mr. MAHON. Was there any interservice politics in it?

Secretary WILSON. I do not think anyone involved in it would admit it, but you can draw your own conclusions.

Mr. MAHON. It is my conclusion there was interservice rivalry and interservice politics in this.

Secretary WILSON. I did make one commitment, because it was going to take some time to get it into shape. The commitment that I made to the services was this: That the development of the missiles would not prejudice the roles or the missions of the services. In other words, I would not try to say beforehand, when we did not have the missiles, who would use them ultimately after they were developed.

Mr. MAHON. You apparently have a tug of war going on right now. We talk about unification, but we have this tug of war going on and you have effected this compromise arrangement which you think is good? Secretary WILSON. It is an arrangement for development and not for use. I am going to let Admiral Radford and the Chiefs take enough time to worry about the specifics-what we call the specific roles and missions at some later date after we know what we have.

RACE TO DEVELOP INTERCONTINENTAL BALLISTIC MISSILE

Mr. MAHON. I would like to ask you this question: There is a lot of concern in the Pentagon and in the country generally, and certainly in my own mind, over who is going to be the first to perfect the intercontinental ballistic missile. I would like to know when you think we

will perfect it, if ever, and what the situation appears to be with respect to whether or not we will be first in the world to perfect it.

Secretary WILSON. You are talking now as between the Russians and ourselves? You are not referring to one of these teams?

Mr. MAHON. I have no reference to the three services.

Secretary WILSON. I cannot give you an absolute answer to that because I do not know enough about what the Russians are doing. I do think I know, and it is common knowledge, I believe, that beginning right after the war they concentrated on this particular development and have been working hard at it ever since.

Mr. MAHON. After World War II?

Secretary WILSON. That is right.

Mr. MAHON. That would make about 10 years.

Secretary WILSON. That is right. They picked up where the Germans had been working on ballistic missiles and they started to improve that development as far as we know. We elected in our country to do something a little different and spend our money and I am not trying to say whether it was right or wrong, because it is not much use on what we called the air-breathing missile and the airplane, particularly the B-47's, as a sure way of delivering the bomb if we had to.

We cannot say with great certainty that we are going to be ahead of the Russians in everything. It depends upon what they concentrate their efforts on.

(Discussion off the record.)

FUNDING OF INTERCONTINENTAL BALLISTIC-MISSILE PROGRAM

Mr. MAHAN. I want the record to show-not that the record is so important that at all times we have urged the Department of Defense during your administration, and during previous administrations, to use any funds desired, and to ask for more and they would get them, to develop this missile program. If someone beats us to the draw in the development of the intercontinental ballistic missile, it will not be the responsibility of the Congress, it will be the failure of the scientists of the country and the Department of Defense.

Secretary WILSON. Well, I do not think there is any use for me to get into that argument. The record will show that we have stepped up our requests for funds quite rapidly in this area.

Mr. MAHON. Do you need any more funds to provide for an acceleration of the guided-missile and the intercontinental ballistic-missile program?

Secretary WILSON. I think the funds we have asked for for fiscal year 1957, together with what we have from previous years, are right for the program. I do not know of anyone who is advocating spending more money on any bigger scale than I.

Mr. MAHON. You do not think it would be productive to undertake to spend more funds on the missile program?

Secretary WILSON. I made one decision that may be open to criticism on that basis, and that was to have two strings to our bow, and that meant spending more money. If I did not think it was a highly important business I could probably say we could save some money by not doing both of them.

Mr. MAHON. By not having duplication?