William M. ``Mac'' Thornberry: “this amendment is the exact same as an amendment that was accepted by all sides on this bill last year and its seeks to…”

“this amendment is the exact same as an amendment that was accepted by all sides on this bill last year and its seeks to deal with a subset of the problem that we have already heard some discussion of, and that is inadequacies of coverage in the new dopler radar system. Most of the country is protected by radar which are run by the National Weather Service. However, some of the country is protected by radars which are run by the Department of Defense, and it is those radars which feed into the National Weather Service system to provide coverage. For example, in a great part of my district, primary coverage is provided by a radar run by the Air Force near Frederick, OK and backup service for that area is provided by a radar by the Air Force out of Dyess Air Force Base near Abilene. Now, the difficulty arises because the radars run by the Department of Defense are not held to the same standards as the radars which are operated by the National Weather Service themselves. So what we have experienced in our area are that communication lines go down, power to the radar goes down, and often, when we most need these radars, they are simply unavailable. As a matter of fact, studies by the National Research Council and the GAO confirm that these DOD radar are simply not available as much as National Weather Service radar, and the effect is they simply do not offer the same level of protection as the National Weather Service radar.”