Transcripts For CSPAN3 Panel Discussion On Missile Defense 20170510

A look now at the future of Missile Defense. The center for strategic and International Studies hosted a discussion recently with former defense officials and Global Security experts. Panelists talked about the challenges of Strategic Missile defense, the threats posed by north korea, iran, china and russia. Former defense undersecretary for policy, james miller moderated this event. Its about 90 minutes. Ready to go, okay, good morning, everybody. Thanks for being here today. Im jim miller. President of the adaptive strategies. I have had involvement with Missile Defense over a number of decades. Starting on capitol hill, House Armed Services committee in late 80s and early 90s and continuing on through my time including as undersecretary of defense in the Obama Administration. We have a great panel here today. You have already met tom karako, senior fellow here in the international program, director of the Missile Defense program and tom will talk about in particular his report Missile Defense, 2020, next steps for defending the homeland. Dr. Laura grego, thank you for being here as well. Laura is a Senior Scientist in the Global Security program for the union of concerned scientists. And also has a recent report entitled shielded from oversight, the disastrous u. S. Approach to Strategic Missile defense. And well speak to that and a number of other issues, i think. And our third panelists today, major retired general fran mahon. His last posting was a j5 director of plans and policy for norad and north com and headed up several commands for army missile and air defense and at one point was director of tests for the Missile Defense agency as well. So its a great group. I want to thank you, general, especially for coming to pinch hit for keith from the Missile Defense agency who was unable to be here today due to the schedule conflict. So i want to say a couple of words to kick off. Then well turn to the panelists today. As was mentioned by senator sullivan, the Trump Administration is kicking off a major review of u. S. Ballistic Missile Defense posture and policy. If we harken back to the review from the last administration, it placed it as a number one priority for Missile Defense. S our allies and partners can control to the theater Missile Defense for defense of their own key assets and population, and to indeed to support the deployed forward processes. No one should do the job of defending the u. S. For us. It made clear the prior review of the Obama Administration that our Missile Defense system is aimed at north korea and iran. And that is not intended to affect strategic stability, visavis russia or china. One of the recommendations in toms report would say shift that focus a little bit and include as a goal the ability to engage Ballistic Missiles from russia or china and well talk about that issue and any potential implications for stability. But clearly, as we think about Missile Defense today, the driving consideration is north koreas continued missile testing. Its continued effort on the Nuclear Program and while north korea poses an uncertain threat to the United States homeland today, it does pose a threat even today and that threat is likely to grow in the coming months and years. Missile defense is not the only part of the u. S. Approach to that problem. And to our allies approach, but its got to be a fundamental part. Currently, a lot of qualitative improvements are under way. I give great credit to jim searing for pushing these along, including for modified kill vehicle. For improvements to command and control, bmcq and to the sensors as well. A lot of work under way. One of the questions to discuss is whether the pace is appropriate on the qualitative side. And if there are any places that are missed. We want to discuss as we get into the panel whether we should be looking today to grow beyond the 44 ground base intercepters that are deployed and that we would like ready for operations if ness. If necessary. So these will be among the issues we discussed. Theyll be among the issues that the new administrations Missile Defense review what have to discuss and i think well get a good start today. Well start with tom. All right. Well, good morning. So im tom karako. Also i want to thank jim and the other panelists for joining and to thank senator sullivan for coming out this morning. As jim mentioned im going to give an overview of the report of Missile Defense 2020. And on the basis of both the ndaa and president ial directive as jim mentioned, the administration will be looking at Missile Defense policy, posture and strategy and also by explicit president ial direction, the relative balance between homeland and regional. You know, every month or so north korea lately seems to be doing something new. In terms of missile development. And theres other new threats out there as well. And i think that given the circumstances we find ourself in, i would not be surprised to see a relative rebalancing in the near term in favor of homeland, at least relative to where we have been in recent years. We kind of hope that this report lays out a menu of options or a kind of road map for how one might do that. Before i get started i want to acknowledge a couple folks including my coauthors. Ian williams and wes rumba are both here. I want to thank the smart people in and out of government who let us bend their ear about this. Its been Ongoing Research for a while. And those who kindly gave us their time and finally to the csis ideas lab and particularly carolyn who put together some great graphics of helping to communicate some of this stuff. So let me say that, you know, one of the reasons we wanted to put this report together was that i think that the conversation about homeland Missile Defenses remain too polarized and underinformed or misinformed. To some extent thats pretty understandable. Its hard to keep track of all the different kinds of kill vehicles and all of the all the Different Things in development. Gbi math has its own rules as well. So one of our secondary purposes here is to kind of serve as a compilation. Maybe a guide for the perplexed on all of the kind of complexity. Bring stuff together in one place. But i think the problem with how this is frequently discussed runs a little bit deeper, including with a lot of historical baggage that tends to confuse the debate. And i think with respect to homeland Missile Defense in particular, the discussion is too frequently divided between on the one hand cheerleaders who dont take special account the difficulties and on the other side kind of a folks snickering or deriding. I think that both a better understanding of the past and the Current Program of record might help mollify some of that. So the report tries to do three things. First, to bring together a bunch of information in one place. Kind of a reference guide of where things have been. Secondly out of a menu of options for looking at the benefits of a lot of those. And third, make some of our own findings and recommendations. So i will say that i think the Current Program, both gmb and related systems need a range of reliability, capability and capacity improvements relative to where we are today. And as well some policy and budgetary adjustments would be in order in the forthcoming mdr. So theres been a lot of back and forth policy wise and programmatic wise over the last 20 years or so and in the report we deliberately try to highlight and emphasize the continuity. On the one hand the strategic continuity but also the problematic continuity. On the strategic side, i think go back and read president clintons speech in 2000. One where he said, he was not going to decide to deploy national Missile Defense, then look at the speech that president george w. Bush gave in 2001 announcing the withdraw from the abm treaty. I think theres a lot of continuity there in terms of not necessarily the exact smentsdz of the assessment of the readiness, but in terms of the strategic rationale. The idea being very simply were not unwilling to accept complete vulnerability to certain kinds of threats. Were unwilling to accept and risk deterrents failure with concern to certain actors. I think appreciating the evolution of todays program is also important. Looking at really the roots of gmd and mmd for instance. I also think one cant really appreciate the some of the reliability issues of the ekbs and silos today. If you dont appreciate that in many respects they are still the advanced prototype design, put together in the 1990s under abm treaty restrictions. And that furthermore the 2002 decision to field a limited defense capability in two years left little choice but to embrace the kill vehicle still under development and to adapt cold war systems that had not been designed for this in short order and put them to use. So ever since then were still i think kind of waiting and life extending the program in different ways. I will say i think the conversation is a result of some of these things suffers from an unfortunate and weird dynamic. An old dichotomy gets embraced. The dichotomy that regional Missile Defense is good and effective. But homeland Missile Defense is bad. And the perception extends beyond the particular systems to the mission itself. Regional Missile Defense is effective so goes the argument. You can take it as an article of faith that homeland Missile Defense is impossible. I will say that the cheerleaders who do not sufficiently i think acknowledge some of issues out there dont do the issue justice either. So what we try to do is to kind of be fair and candid in both directions. That means we get criticized from both sides so ill just say there are a lot of shortcomings, but i think that the path forward that you heard about about the rkv really is really is a good one. And that especially it begins o to that dichotomy i mentioned is important. Because the path forward is going to leverage a lot of that path testing. A lot of that development thats taking place in the regional systems and applying it forward. So thats commonalties between xo kill vehicle on the one side and xo atmospheric kill vehicle on the other side. So let me start to walk through a little bit of this. Jim mentioned the the bmbr highlighting homeland Missile Defense as the highlight. This actually is just a general overview, you know that kind of xo atmospheric intercept is taking place with an xm and sav and this is the historical emphasis between homeland and regional really going back to 1996. So its fluctuated a lot. There was a big surge especially for the capel investments in the 2002 to 04 time period. This is the overall emphasis, green being homeland and blue being regional. Well have these online for you so you can download them to your pleasure. I also want to put this in a little bit of a historical perspective. This is i think senator sullivan mentioned it. This is the relative modesty in terms of the number of intercepters we are talking about. If you look on the far right thats 2017. That will be in the ground by the end of this year. But compare that for instance to the clinton administration. The three phases of the clinton administration. 100 to 250. Before that kind of the gpals. Right, who was job it was to go after the limited threat of 10 to 100 rvs. Before that, kind of sdi phase one. Safeguard and sentinel and that sort of thing. But in terms of the overall context, i think you really see that modesty. Sorry, i keep looking for the keyboard down here. The other context here, another important context here is the legislative environment. This past Year Congress went back and updated the 1999 national Missile Defense act which by the way was 17 years old. A few anachronisms were in there. First of all, we dont talk about the National Defense anymore. This is talking in the future tense about we ought to deploy and well, we have done that. So i think congress correctly has gone in and weve updated this. I think unfortunately theres been a lot of hyperventilating about the update. That to my way of thinking proves that the schools do not sentence sentence diagramming anymore. All the focus has been on the adjectives like limited. But it is a complete sentence. And that the subjects and objects of defense in that sentence have changed. It is no longer about national Missile Defense, but also as you can read allies and forces and, you know, the word limited may not apply in the same way that we used to think about it in 1999 or sort of the gpals kind of context. So i actually think you look at these these adjectives, you compare them to the 2010 bmdr. There are a lot of a lot of continuity. The overall budget top line this goes back to 1985. Sdio, you do see that surge with mda with respect to the deployment. In the 2004 time frame. But just within the past ten years as we heard about this morning and i hope you can see this, this is specifically the homeland elements that we have broken out. This is a kind of a falling tree graph. Those are the fideps and the actual spending that you see there. As we heard this morning a 24 decline over the past decade for the top line, but then some deeper cuts for here well go deeper now into the gmd. These are the various components. That goes out into the but the trend is pretty clear. I can show you about 50 graphs here. Theyre in the book. They all kind of look like that. Now, let me im missing the key board again. Let me walk through we have a chapter on intercept develop, sensors and well blow through this. Let me just put up here the long view of interceptors, the lineage really of where we are today. One limitation of the gbi fleet today is its a lot of different kinds of intercepters going on. Its also the case, you can look here at some of the c1s, c2s, relative frankly to other deployed systems today. Unfortunately the c2s dont have the on demand communications to the ground for instance. The ekbs of today. That theres also a shortcoming of the three stage booster that the intention to go out and get a two stage booster was never done. An nba is looking for a selectable way to get at that flexibility but what that means is youre not able to buy more time and fire later. You have to fire sooner. Because all three stages have to burn out before the kill vehicle can be released. Especially if youre operating from alaska. Thats going to be thats going to limit you. Let me move to the mdas three phases. This is kind of the current road map. The current road map for going forward, enhanced robust and advanced is kind of their categories but what it really is is what we are this year, getting the 44 gbis in the ground. The cg 2s. The second one being the centerpiece of the advanced homeland Missile Defense. Although rkv is not a dramatic departure its that kind of design turn that should have happened a decade ago but never did. The good news is theyre not starting from scratch. Theyre going back and leveraging a lot of the parallel work thats been going into other programs but the idea is to make ek 4 cheaper and have fewer points of failure. These are the kind of reliability issues that have come up again and again. Getting to that rkv will also reduce kind of the did versety diversity in the fleet. Ill show you a chart that shows how many different types are in todays gpi fleet. The rkv in particular will draw the seeker, kind of the telescope, a lot of discrimination algorithms have been floating around and draw upon all of that. So its not going to be starting from scratch. Then further out in the future to the advanced section is the mlkv which we heard about this morning. That again is, you know, quite a bit far behind. Relative to where the plan was, multiple kill vehicles, atop a single booster to kind of compensate for some of the discrimination challenges and really improve your effective magazine capacity. Unfortunately the time line is currently 21 plus. Its really pretty far out to the right in terms of that. This chart right here is actually kind of the center piece of whats going on and what the agency currently plans. We call this the skittles chart. You can taste the rainbow and kind of see a lot of different muscle movements of whats happening there. The green at the bottom is the ce 1. Thats kind of the oldest kill vehicle put in place in 2004. The red is the ce 2. The blue is kind of the ce 2 plus or ce 2 block one. The orange, Pay Attention to the orange thats the rkv. Thats supposed to come online kind of in the 2020 time frame. Testing in 2018. Potentially deployed 2020. Now, this as i said is kind of i think the best snapshot of whats going on. Whats intended to be going on. We would point out a couple we think short falls of what mda currently plans. One of them is what is likely to be under current plans a big gap between the things that are put in place this year, the 44 by 17. After that were going to presumably wait, wait for the rkv to come around. Especially if rkv goes to the right it can kind of retard some of our efforts to increase capacity and might unfortunately hurt our rkv later on. A second limitation is that, as we heard earlier, notwithstanding a recommendation in 2013 by the department of defense to go it and buy some operational and test spares that wasnt done. After we get down to 34 well go down. They have to pull one out of the ground to test it. Theres one less operational. That kind of starts to add up until you begin to get to the next generation. Thats kind of the current picture. Thats why i think thats one of the several reasons why youre hearing folks talk about the performance of capacity to instead of going down, go down i think by at least four if not more in the next couple of years and then before rkv comes online. Again, the schedule that you have been hearing 2020 for rkv that could be too ambitious. If thats too ambitious then that reduction might be more important. Then the third limit is fortunately or unfortunately i think mdv is putting some of the oldest boosters and thats perhaps for cost and that might kind of reduce some of their effectiveness. All right. So lets talk into testing. Im sure well have a bit of a discussion about this right now. I want to walk especially through first of all, an instance of the testing budget. Theres good reason that the testing budget is down so much. They had to go back post 2010, they had to take apart the ekv and figure out some of the problems. Then put it back together again. So some of this is kind of the overall top line reduction pressure and some of it has to do with that that choice. But i think it really is the case that this is one of those probably the best instance of the mischaracterization of the testing record of gmv overall is with the test. With that one exception that i mentioned that they went back and had to fix with the imu. Most of these are not hightechnology problems. These are dumb problems. As everybody attests its kind of manufacturing stuff. Its the maybe workmanship or Something Like that. But its not hightechnology. One of these failures is because of a the silo cover not opening and the missile not coming out, you know . Thats the sort of thing its not about the kill vehicle. Its about that kind of difficulty. So i think mda has in the past couple of years has been much more forthright about kind of articulating really these failures. And the true causes of them. So sensors you know, no Missile Defense system is better than the sensors that tell it where to go and what to kill and it is we have what we call the mother of all testing charts in here. Not only goes through the 31 flight intercept tests and what became of them, the failure explanations, things like that, but also what sensors were involved. You see from kind of the late 1990s to where we are today a pretty consistent increase as more Early Warning radars are stitched in. As aegis and other things are brought in, you see a lot more of that. Thats a good thing. Theres probably a lot more to do on the sensor side. Probably the single most important thing that we recommend on the sensor side is a space based probably infrared tracking and discrimination sensors. You get that field of view from which you can inform not only gmd, birth to death, but also the other programs as well. Overall, you know, vice admiral serling has characterized the test record as nothing you wouldnt expect from a test bed for a prototype. I think in sum that really fits what we are. The key of where we need to from here to the future is to get out of that test bed. To get out of that prototype and get to the rkv design term. This right here is just a quick picture of a lot of the sensors that have evolveled over time. Over decades. That are slowly coming online and lrdr at the top is some of this. This is the sensor budget. You know, some of these high end Capital Investments dont need to be made or continued. Look at the bottom. And these are broken down by category. The last category at the bottom is the space based. Thats really whats kind of gone off the cliff. This is mda space based budget overall and you get the youll get the idea. In terms of future options, you know, we kind of put together a lot of the uva directed energy. Some of the boost phase concepts that have been circulating and are continuing to come back. The budget is not there for them. We had another report last year, talking about the budget pressures especially on the r d account. You see what we call the r d valley of death between about 2010 and onward and admittedly some of its still potential. But thats the mediocrity for the mdas r d. I think in relative terms i think r d could be doing a lot more. Let me sort of run through the recommendations. Im not going to read them all. Thats why we gave you the book. But i think in terms of the policy, i think we should continue to have a more robust and layered Missile Defense for a variety of threats. Against both ballistic and Cruise Missiles. Thats part of the mdr report x explicit explicitly. So there arent a lot of programmatics on that side yet. Restore homeland Missile Defense for being commensurate with the First Priority and to prioritize rkv and look at excel rating mlkv and directed energy. In terms of interceptor capacity, continue the current coarse that mda is doing but look at accelerating mlkv as well. In terms the in terms of capacity continue to look at adding to the 44 or the 40. In the coming years, continuing to grow that out. We heard about that this morning. Ft. Greely has a lot of capacity. Were going to talk about activating the hedge that was described in again that 2013 dod hedging strategy. Activating the hedge, if you want to do that, growing out ft. Greely is the most Cost Effective and nearest Term Solution to do that. Now, theres a lot of i think a lot of attention on kind of the east coast site possibility. We encourage some more cost or less costly approaches to that. We dont want to exhaust the here mda budget on new capital improvements. If theres a way to add some capability and battle space with transportables or an underlay in terms of quality, thats a more Cost Effective way to get it at it. I think theres more interest in it. But we we get the idea of adding the capability, but theres cheaper ways to get there. Then in terms of sensors and testing, i think really the space based censor layers, the most important one there. Im going to leave it off there and turn it over to other folks. Thank you. Tom, thank you very much. Very nice presentation. Terrific credit to your to yourself and to your team. Laura grego, youre up next. Okay. Hi, so thanks so much, tom, and csis. Im grateful for the opportunity to participate in this panel. I expect i was invited because i coauthored a report last year on the ground based Defense Program and its a pretty detailed report. Id be happy to give you a copy if you were unable to get one. We were pretty tough on the system. You can probably tell by the title. We were tough on congress. We were tough on the Missile Defense agency and the bush and the Obama Administrations policy and stewardship. Our intent though was to spark detailed engaged discussions about the role of the Missile Defense in our country. I believe that these were well informed conversations are essential to u. S. Security and to Global Security. We cant have an informed debate about the current value in the future potential of the gmd system without a clear eyed assessment of it. So i appreciate csi taking on this topic. Separating myth from truth is critically important when the topic is contentious as Missile Defense is. And tom alluded to the long standing debates. Since its been almost 15 years and 40 billion sunk into the gmd system after the inception we thought wed see where we are, how we got here and what are the lessons if any we can learn from that. Our work was based substantially on the findings of the official u. S. Government sources. We drew heavily from the gao. From the pentagons own testing office. The test evaluation. We have found that its in worse shape than most people realized and why we thought it ended up this way. So we ended up looking a lot at the oversight and the accountability systems set up around the system. We thought we found that it undermined the systems development. Rather than summarizing the whole report, im just going to make three short points that i think reflect the differences in agreements between our reports. I think tom the first is we agree that the system is in pretty poor shape. Tom and his coauthors describe the gmd system as being in its adolescents or certainly an advanced prototype and notes that the system has some serious reliability issues. This is an area of substantial agreement between the both of us. I would note that in nine of the 17 tests since 1999, the kill vehicle failed to destroy the target and that record hasnt been improving over time as youd expect for a system thats maturing. So keep in mind also that the tests were essentially developmental in nature so as tom mentioned sort of advanced prototype type of tests. They were conducted under simplified conditions not operational conditions. Which are certain to be much more challenging. Instead in each test the missile defenders because of the nature of the test had significant information about the time and place of the target launched, how it would look, the conditions hadnt varied all that much. Essentially i think were set up for success. Just the way that the csis report describes it, its difficult to assess in the improvements have made the test as realistic as they could be. I think we have quite a bit more information about the realism of the test program. We have a specific office in the pentagon to evaluate that. They look at the Missile Defense endeavor and provides advice on the program. In that report the chief testing officials assessment was that the test to date i quote insufficient to demonstrate that the operational use defense capability exists. Some of the shortcomings as we agree its yet to be tested against the icbm range target. We expect to see that later this year. Hasnt used a salvo of intercepters against the single target or hasnt used the salvo interceptor against targets. Some of the conditions youd expect the system to be facing in the real world. Nor really against a set of complex countermeasures. So further that dotini report says that the reliability is low and discovering new Failure Modes during testing. So heres where we agree with c that the robust testing is critical. We strongly agree with the recommendation for improving the realism and pace of the testing program. Testing not only helps Reveal Design and Quality Control issues but provides the information you need to assess reliability in a quantitative way. So if the u. S. Plans to launch multiple intercepters to make up some of the ground for the intersenters with low interceptors with lower reliability, unless the effectiveness of the interceptors is already high. You need to know what the reliability of your interceptors is and also have launching doesnt help if theres a common failure which needs to be discovered in testing. So the second point i wanted to make, why did this happen, heres why we make some divergence from this report. In 2002, Missile Defense was brought under a different system, and those those systems were set up to prevent premature and expensive fielding, most call it before you buy. It moved into the special system which allowed engineering corners to be cut. It was also giving an unrealistically unrealistic time line for deployment which ensured the corners would be cut. And we found that that has had real and lasting consequences. We document that in the report but it shows up in the csis report too. And we dont really see that the problems with the gmd system were due to the lack of budget. There instead because the development has been driven by the schedule rather than technical readiness. I think this has been fairly well accepted even in circles less skeptical than mine. A key example is because Missile Defense is exempted from the obligations to fly before you buy that other especially in the past, that other major Defense Programs are subject to, the pentagon was able to field untested prototypes. Nearly every intercepter was fielded before having undergone a successful intercept test. So the Failure Modes and flaws are discovered the fixes had to be made to the fielded intercepters or as we see in some cases the fixes just didnt get done. And i think this is a serious problem especially when youre developing something as complicated as a gmd system. Its an enormous endeavor. One of the most complicated projects the pentagon has ever take on. We saw during the end of the Bush Administration and the beginning of the Obama Administration, they dont seem to be sufficient to the task of preventing a reoccurrence to many of the problems. We field the interceptors with known flaws based on imposed deadlines rather than the technical maturity. We still see tests being conducted under heavily controlled conditions. And which are not rigorously evaluating the conditions under they waste time and the money that could be better spent. I see congress exploiting this lack of accountability by adding into the Strategic Missile defense portfolio projects have not been asked for by the pentagon such as the third continental intercepter site or showing dead ends such as space based interceptors. This lack of rigor allows Wishful Thinking about how well the system works to dominate discourse about it. In our report, we collected more than 30 quotations from defense officials over the last decade and a half and theyre confident it can protect the United States from the missile attack. Im concerned about that because believing that it works better than it does can lead to riskier Decision Making. It can reduce the incentive to vigorously pursue other perhaps more effective approaches to the problem of Ballistic Missiles. If you think youre defended you may be less prone to engage in the very difficult negotiations that are necessary to slow or stop and push back the north Korean Nuclear Missile Defense programs. So the third point i wanted to make is a recommendation for moving forward where we have certainly some overlap and some differences. I really appreciate the work in this report. And really laying out a menu of options. I would have loved to have seen more analysis and prioritization to see which ones you think are further since we have so many budgetary constraints for the foreseeable future. But given the analysis in our report, we dont see a reason that spending more money will buy us our way out of the problem without making tough decisions. We have seen in 15 years under two administrations and under the most flexibility Acquisitions Program we have designed we havent got a working system. I understand the desire to be more agile and efficient. Im a technical person. Im not an acquisitions person. So i see it from the outside. But i am concerned without due attention we run the risk of repeating the same thing that we had had of 40 billion system that the d. O. T. And esc has demonstrated real world capability. Rather that than holding on we should be demanding the highest accountability and really making tough choices. This issue is especially acute for program such as Strategic Missile defense which is highly politicized. Has strong entrenched debates. But especially because we incur the financial and the strategic costs of deploying Missile Defenses. Whether or not the system works. Right . Not only complicating our Decision Making but it provides Strategic Missile defense provides an incentive for russia and china to get their arsenal and the disincentive for the u. S. To engage on the issue of north korea. Those are costs that we bear. Whether or not the system works. So while the csis report makes a number of interesting recommendations for Technology Paths that could be used to improve the u. S. Ability to defend the homeland, i come out really with caution that the ideas be vetted. Really strongry by rigorous requirements of a different process. Congress should not be creating programs of record such as a space based Missile Program and i find the space based Missile Program program problematic. This is one of the recommendations of this report but i think at this point its unwise and premature. We have had, you know, lots of good analysis and premature. Weve had the highest advice about this subject in 2012, the National Academy of Sciences Public lishd a congressionally mandated report. It was asked tell us what you think and they concluded that the space based options would cost ten times as much as other basing options and more than 300 billion for an austere capability and recommended that the u. S. Not spend an single dollar more on space. I havent seen any revolutionary technology that would change this assessment. So this is a prime example where the process is important to keep us from our worse i am pulses. Research and development is one thing but putting interceptors in space just as research and development would be the first time that anyone put a weapon in space. Thats a bridge we havent crossed yet. That sets a precedent that would make it more difficult for the u. S. To keep space safe and putting a test in space provides no defensive capability and actually provides no offensive capability in a sways that we dont already have. I agree that we should be building our bridges between skeptics and boosters. I would hope that both proponents would make real hard san diegos. Its a necessary although not sufficient step to develop working technology and kriltics should welcome it as a process that keeps untested equipment out of the field and it provides credible information about how it actually works and what its potential in the future is which is essential ashlt any debate about the system. That includes any real hard testing. I think that an overnight sight system provides a reality check and a miss around a politically charged issue such as ho homeland Missile Defense. Ill leave it there. [ applause ] laura, thank you very much for that presentation. And fred, over to you. Well, thank you for the opportunity to be here and tom, thank you to your team for all the great work theyve done on these reports. Im kind of the pinch hitter here for keith and you know, i got the come on down late yesterday. Im happy to be here. Its a very good topic, a very interesting topic. If you know my background, im a little bit of an operator, a little bit of a programmer. I was a little bit of a tester and ive been around the system and air Missile Defense for a long time. My comments are brief. Ok. Some of them reinforced, some of them challenge whats been said. I think the basis will be the dialogue we have when the questions start coming. The entire bmds is a challenge, from a technologying aspect, space from a battle spaektd, fighting across 15 times zone as a system, chejsz from a fiscal system. Its waxed and waned over time. Theater clearly has always had the near term threat. The homeland has not. In 15 years thats changed. And 9 11 significantly changed the attitude. It was get something sooner rather than later. And i wont say haste makes waste, but haste can force you to make decisions youd rather not. It can force you to settle on a design or technique youd prefer not to commit to at this time. It may compel a decision and when faced with a decision point, national security, decisions get made. We accept the limitations and the future restrantsz and we have to work through them. Thats kinds of where we are right now. Toms papers talks about a number of things, are we an adult, are we a mature adult. Look at the sensor family. They wrnts designed for the task theyre being asked to do. So that patchwork of sensors has had to grow as v weve grown a family interceptors. The variety of gbis is large. If you ever saw the components, youd say what a fruit salad this is, and that looks like a vegetable. Yes, the test record has been spotty. Four consecutive successful tests before ioc. But you have to remember how you test and what you test and what are your attitudes and criteric. All tests, as i say, its what are you pursuing. You set your objectives, you design your tests to evaluate those tests. You assess what happens and then you determine do i need to retest an objective. Have i found a flaw or a short coming i need to work on before i go to my next test. The twoirt return to flight was the most challenging intercept test and a significant valuable tefrs to the agency. Taking strides in theater brvegs md. Weve been here before. In the technical fight we had technical challenges, budget issues and advocacy issues. How many people in 1990 thought hit to kill was going to work . I tell you a lot of people didnt think it was going to work but we endeavored and hit to kill works because now its the basis of all our missile systems. Ok. Patriots pac 1. Not a term you hear very often. 1988, the first bmd camability and it was mainly swea lly s. Pac 2, the missile, the interceptor designed to kill a theater ballistic missile. I went to desert storm with two, two missiles. Thats all there were in the fall of 1990. Ok. We can argue what happened in desert storm didnt happen in desert storm. It was kind of reserb rated with me when five gbis, well, not much has changed. But what we learned in desert storm was valuable. We went to desert storm with no ttp, no dock the trillion sfwrags. By free wed gone through countless software, Hardware Upgrades and we had the pac 3 interceptor. We almost literally lost it at a jroc in 2002 because it failed to achieve one nuance in the k pp. We got it through the jroc. 70 of that kpp was good enough. We went to oif in tw 2003. Not with two missiles. With a full quiver of 13. 13 big ones. Two of them fully instrumented for tests, taken off the range and sent forward. So what im getting at is, you know, its a long hard road to get a cakaipability to the fiel. You can look at agaes. Theyve come strides. I dont aeges had arrived. Thad has arrived. All these programs lad their uppings and downs and challenges but they all contributed to the ballistic Missile Defense. I think the aegis capability, when you have the other sensors were starting to stretch the theater of war to the strategic level of war. But none of these have the Global Operating environment that gmd must operate in the dof. The enormity of the bamt space is staggering when you stop and think about it. We cannot afford to walk away from gmd. We may be able to discipline the process thats gotten us here. I dont think we should say its a traditional Acquisition Program or process. And we must not forget that its not the only thing we can focus on. So we quantity cease all effort in the theater or cease all effort in air defense solely on gmd because our adversaries are not. Ok. They are advancing. Just look at north korea. Sublaunch cape blimt, solid fuel, mobile launch. Air, sea, land, launch, crystals last year from one of our future adversaries potentially. Ok. Unmandate aerial systems being used by conventional and unconventional forces. I believe we need to create that tighter shot group for the ekv. As the senator laid out, were on the right path. The rkv is critical. Sensors are critical. The titler the group you can give me, the more likely im going to hit the object. Growing gbi field for more gbis, yes, a more robust quiver would be good. The ability to cycle in and out of there without loss of overall capacity is good. Im not certainly where the location should be. Increased zep at one of the two we have now or create a third . Based on where the fields are and your for architecture that affects how you can engage different threat aspects. Director of energy. Yeah. Thats nirvana. 2014 is the deputy at fort bliss, the air defense center, i received the task to deploy a counterrocket artillery system until one year. We had no requirements documents. We were outside of the acquisition process. We had 365 days. I love director of energy and all those believers were in my office or the reality was it wasnt going to get there in 365 days. And im still waiting but were making progress. But we met that requirement and we deployed a system that was pretty ugly, pretty klugy and its still in theater today doing its task. We put it through tests and you know what . It was kind of like a d i dont know whether it was a drvegs police or a c minus but we aint got knock, somethings worth a lot. Its still in theerlt performing today and its been improved. With respect to to tv five points the senator put out there, i think hes spot on. With respect to testing, testing is important. Its an element of the Systems Engineering model, but you just cant say everist 12 months were going to take a test, because that would be a waste of resources and testing is difficult. Difficult to plan. Its difficult to structure. Its difficult to execute. Especially in the gmd realm. You look at the battle space were trying to rep indicate. Ok. You look at the places you can and cannot operate from. You look at the Environmental Constraints and restraints and i once had to negotiate the closing of International Airspace during storm, a storm that had taken my airspace away because airliners were diverting into my airspace so i could get a g. M. D. Toast off. Ok. So just stop and think about that. We ceased international and i was losing my window of test opportunity while i had ships, sensors and everything strung out across the pacific taking a pounding in this bad weather. We ultimately got the approval and we held International Air traffic to allow us to execute our test but we were down to about the last 15 anies of our test window. Not simple. You build your test, you have assess your criteria that you night to test, you execute your test and you evaluate your data and then you say, did i validate . Did i invalidate . Did i find something new . And you reorganize and plan for the next test. You could do it every 12 months. The integrated master test plan lays out numerous tests that will get after different criteria that we want to assess in the system. The schej i cant just reach out to 2021 and pull that test forward and execute it in 2018. Because theres a whole litany of preplanning and pretest 1i78 las vegas that had to be done before i could get there. There are targets that have to be built and some of these targets with one off or one of a kind. Although weve developed a test plan and that test plan is out there and dote signs off on that test plan every time its updated, the ability to pick and choose what test im going to do this year is a difficult and challenging thing. Im going to end there. Because i think ive run my guns enough. I think a key thing we need to focus on is we do need to move forward. The threat has brought, a back into iamd and a in my opinion goes well beyond Cruise Missiles. When you look at the whole operating environment, air supremes si is no longer guaranteed nor is air superiority. As we move forward doing the review in the coming year or years and we are going to expand it, i think, to include Cruise Missiles, i think it all the to be intense the entire society, not just the missile part of it. I look forward to your questions. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you. What wed like to doing is have a conversation here. Ill ask a few questions. Id like to leave a few minutes for questions from the audience as well. Lets start with talking about the goals of the system. Then well talk about questions of size and qualitative improvements and capacity and then well talk about testing. Senator sullivan talked about a goal specifically with respect to north korea, and as i recall, he said the system should have near certainty of destroying at least three to four north korean icbs. Im going to start with you, tom, and well ask both laura and fran to respond to the question, so is that the appropriate goal or should we be thinking about dozens of potential north korean rvs . Right . If you project forward to the possible threat. Second, where does iran figure in there and third in particular for you, and we can take a little time on this question. Should we and for you, why should we design a system that is explicitly aimed at engaging russia and chinese vehicles . Let me sthap if we design a system, if were north korean and iran and a missile is launched at us from russia or china, the system would try to engiej without a question, but should it take as its defining set of threats missiles and vehicles from russia and china, which youd expect to be more advanced measures as well. First on offensive coordinator, then iran, then russia, china for starters. Ok. Tom. Lets get started. On north korea i dont recall the typical three or four youre speaking of. T i would say the question of how many offensive coordinatorian missiles do you defend gerchs, thats going to be in terms of the new threat assessment. As you know, back in the twren blrvegs mdr and again in 2013 time frame. At that point folks looked around and said, ok, this is worse than it was in 2013 and i guess i would say whats happened since 2013, i think the new administration will take a look at that. Its not like anybody has a crystal ball to say theres going to be 37 as opposed to 39 icbm thereats you need to look at. Take a look at the threat again. Last time i checked, i dont think were better off than we were in n 2010 of 2013. So i suspect theyll look at that in realistic terms. Where do you place iran in terms of that but recognizing that either iran could cheat or break out and after a period of now eightplus years theyll begin to have more rights under that agreement to go forward with enrichment. Right. So we didnt make any particular prediction about you know, whats the year that the iran icbms going to come around. It does get looser in some respects as it goes forward. I dont think anybody knows whats going to happen in eight years, i dont think anybody knows whats going to happen with u. S. Iran relationships today. Its not a function of what you do, they do in fair garage alone. But they get assistance from folks. And so i think that the Obama Administration look at this and say we have to hedge against that to some extent. You dont wait for theic bmw plumes out of iran. But we say lets look at some options here. Is it an lrdrlike thing . Is it an spx on the ground something is it spx on the shore . Is it some expanded radars at some uawr sites . Right now our Sensor Network is not only ground and sea based but its pointed in the other direction. And so the omni directional or beginning to recognize that weve been fairly focused on one particular projetrajectory for g time and to a degree reflects that focus. Up think what were seeing, there is nothing special. You see they have been talking about that for a couple of years. I dont think thats anything surprising. Then, with respect to i tell you what. Yeah. Can i ask. Does a terrifically detailed answer on those, lets get laura and fred and well come back to russia and china. I suspect there will be a significant im putting people to sleep is what hes saying. No. It was an excellent answer. Let me ask in somewhat broader terms. Do you agree that an objective of the survegs national Missile Defense should be to stay ahead of the threat from north korea and iran . In other words, this the system thats deployed at any given point in time is prepared to deal with not just the known threat but the plausible threat for the relative near term . Sure. I think look at it, verify intelligence assessment and make those plans accordingly. Thats part of the requirements process which isnt part to have the same way we do Missile Defense, but i think, yes, certainly a formal iced proegs and staying ahead of the threat. I mean, i think in some senses weve been pretty lucky or fortunate that these icbm threats may not have matured as fast as we predicted. 2015 came and went and we didnt see tested and deployed icbms. And north korea korea has made slower progress. We havent seen its solid fueled space launcher. Possible there was a test last year. Its unclear. We havent seen that maturity, so i think being keyed in that intelligence is important when planning. Thank you. Do you agree with that objective and are we well postured to meet that aboutive today . I agree with the posture or the objective of the shape your defense to the most likely threat. You be as you build that defense, dont ignore other potential threats i think would be the way going forward. Dont make a decision that precludes your building from lifting and shifting. In my mind its always been about well, you want 3 360degree capability. You may wait. I think thats the way we approach the problem. From the aspect of is iran the next guy to worry about . Yeah, probably, if you think of all of those who are not on my Christmas Card list. Yeah. You probably ought to keep that in your mind. And when do you make a decision or is there a decision plan out there of now i must act because maybe rereally are a relevant threat and i need to start investing. Or if im going to invest in the official capacity, wherever i put that next sensor knowing my next concern is north korea, how do i posture it to help that defense and set the stage for the defense to the east. Thank you. All right, tom ill give you relief on having to answer first on the next question after this. But lets come back to russia and china. On the one hand, as i noted, if either of them launched a missile at the iran launched a missile at the United States you would of course expect that the system would be directed to attempt to engage that. The question ist if we should design a system specifically armd at even limited threats or limited attacks from russia or china. So it your report suggested so. Tom, do you think theres a high possibility of unauthorizedor accidental attack from russia or china or do you believe that its important for the United States to have the about to negate an attack for reasons in the midst of a conflict, and are you concerned that this is a leading question. Are you concerned that that requirement will in terms of both quantity and quality drag you to a much more complex system . And that it could actually compete with the ability to get the Current System and planned improvements to that system in place to deal with the north korean enemy. Let me first begin by quoting back to you the 2010 vmvr which says that the gmd system would be used against a missile from any source, but, rights, but that phrase, any source. Thats the phrase that appears in our report. Its also the phrase that was used back in the early 1990s with respect to the should be designed im getting there. Im getting there. So the question is first i want to establish kind of i think that the u. S. Policy is frequently overstated. To kind of say that we have nothing to do with that. But then the second part of that is what would you try to do and i think it came up earlier, i think general mann, you emphasized the Cruise Missile problem. And that is explicitly one of the three things that the missile defeat review to ask the department to go out and look at. Whos Cruise Missile from the homeland . Are we talking about north korea . No. Were probably talking about russia or china. Congress, i suspect, had that in mind when they put that into the bill. So i think in the first instance, i think it makes a lot of sejnse to look at those call them nonstrategic Cruise Missile threats to the homeland. Ive said we ought to be looking at that in a yeeshszserious way for forces and allies in nato. Begins with a nonstrategic socalled for the Cruise Missile threat and i think in terms of the strategic ballistic thing, i think if you were to go that way, its at most you would be pursuing the purpose of raising the threshold for the time being or perhaps protecting some kind of asset. That may not be gmd. The that may be Something Else entirely. But i think that every administration should ask and answer that question and get for itself how do you think that makes sense. Thank you, thank you. Let me go to fran with this. I welcome your comment on this, as well. Are you confident that we know how to develop even a limited system against a russia or china threat that has advanced kountder measures . And second, are you confident that we have an understanding of how to develop and deploy a Cost Effective cruise Missile Defense that involves advance Cruise Missiles with significant stealth cape blimts coming off undersea platforms, off of ssns. I would tell you frld my perspective on the first question, i dont think the technologys sitting on the shechl. I cant say definitively efforts have been put against it, but i think the technology could be achieved. Its going to take time and effort. Well, you come back to whats my resources, whats the threat i know im going to face, which is a threat i might potentially face and where do i put those resources. I think weve shaped it cell in our overall strategy. On my cruise Missile Defense, we looked at it and assessed it, that kind of goes back to the basic air defense tenants. I cant defend everything. I do not have an umbrella over the nation. So tell me whats important and i will do my best to defend that. Do we have the capability today that to give you a confident cruise Missile Defense . All depends how close you want to be from that Cruise Missile from asset. Ill be hovrns. Ive said it before. A loss of jl lirvegs ns is a tremendous loss. As ugly as many people thought it was and as laughable as they thought it was. I was in key west last week and they were flying. They must be continuing to the mission set because theyve been there a long time. Weve got them flying over in the oar. Weve lost them and weve replaced them. The jlens capability or one like it is in a sense getting after uavs. I agree with that comment in particular. Laura, in the interest of time and to let the audience comment, im going to ask one more question but ill let a few of you respond as well. Lauri, as you think about the requirements and acquisition process thats been used for the gmd system, if youre going to now use regular order essentially for both requirements and accession. What do you think acquisition, how would you apply it . In other words, would you stand down current efforts to improve the system pending going back through the process . Would you say ok, as of a certain point in the future were going to apply this regular order acquisition and requirements approach or how a would you do that . And second, on testing, on testing, what do you think would be an appropriate number of tests per year on average, understandings that as fran pointed out, it varies by the place the program is with respect to its development. But for an operational system, one would expect a regular 359 earn of tests. So what are your thoughts first on acquisitions. And second thank you. Those are not easy questions. We are flush with experts here in washington, d. C. But the way we look at it is what i would ask from that requirement system is to save us from our worst impulses or to sets up the incentives right. If were not testing as hard as we can because we want to see successes and if a system like the gmd doesnt have a clear path to be owned by a service and in a services budget, for example, as something goes through developmental and Operational Testing and then gets offloaded to somebody like egypt or is that acquisition to practice still doing what it aughts to do to myself the gmd system forbid in the sense that is there a credible way to replicate if it doesnt go into j lfr 5,000, for example, to make sure that intersoeptors dont get fielded before theyre well tested. Normally youll have to go through operational tests in order to be procured. Tom makes a good point in his book about the gmd budget asking like a Procurement Fund but really being rdt and e funded. Its perpetually in research and development. Just to be clear. Yeah. If i could, do you think that the gbis on the ground today have been adequately tested . I dont. Do you think they should be buld out so that the United States would have no defense at all or do you think we should go in where we are and have defense based on what appears to be a very real and growing north korea threat . I would leave them on the ground, of course, yes, and i would maybe experiment with the rkv and put it through sort of one of these j5,000 process or a better description of that. Ok. I think in terms of testing, i think testing officials have often said and i think weve just heard this from general manthat its hard to up the tempo. Even throwing money at that problem doesnt really make it much better. There are so many places i can launch that big missile from towards the two test sites, potentially launch the interceptor from. Its a difficult dilemma. Fren, do we have a cultural problem. Should we be addressing that . I think we do have a cultural problem. Every time we launch an interceptive we expect to see something go flash and bang in the sky. But i mean, the i agree in one sense, you know laura. Having been on joint staffs, service staff, and they say plan something and end up on the other staff where youre responsible for it or play in the solution set. The agency in the gmb have been given a Carte Blanche go forth and do. We had a requirement document to pull it down. Whats it supposed to do . Hows it supposed to do it . Im not sure i could find that today if i had to for the system. On the other hand, when you look at the jseds process and its rigid itself and its cut and dry, buddy. Deliver the k pp or youre done. Thats a grant waste of money. So we need something in between. What are we going to do with this cape bliltd what do you hope to achieve. Put your marks on the wall. Lets develop, lets test and if you come back with a 67 score against a requirement of 85 or 90 , then we ought to have the dialog dialogue. From the 65 today, 67 isnt much value added. If im zero today, 67 s pretty good. Babe ruth, how many times did he get on base . A little bit more than a third. But hes a hero, isnt he . Can i jump back . Ok. In 2010 they looked at this and decided that they saw no benefit to moving mda back to the to j seds process. Maybe theres insufficient folks looking over the shoulderers. Maybe thats possible. Sounds like theres quite a bit of oversight going on. Last time i checked at mda. Put pause right there. I would throw this back, that you know, under that process wasnt doing so great in the 1990s and what do we see with the fad and the s. M. . 13 and 13 for thad, 24 of 28 or thereabouts the for aejig. How do you accounted for that outside of the j syds and if thats the cause of gnbs problem how do you account for that. I think it never got the design turn. Everybody knew it was a prototype back in 2014 and it never got that life expansion. Thats why the next design is so important. Tom, thank you. We are almost up at 11 30. I have to ask you how hard is our stop . Probably a couple of minutes. Lets go over a couple of minutes. So raise your hand, please. Wait for the microphone and gentleman in the second row, please. If youd let us know your name. Sure. John harper with National Defense magazine. Tom, you mentioned the importance of space based snaertsds and senator sullivan touched on that as well this morning. I was hoping you could flesh that out a little more. We have satellites that can detect mechanism launches but what would a space based entail and how realistic are they from either a technical or a budgetary perspective . I actually think that this is maybe the most important its a good question. Most important thing that maybe ought to be aed to what were doing now. After rtp. And that is to say that every first of all, every administration, last five administrations have had a spacebased central not for detection but tracking and discrimination. Every single one of them have had it on paper as a critical element of long range Missile Defense. Nobodys done it. Nor whatever reason it continues to get pushed back. So this is something that i think that the administration has indicated they want to look at and they should look at and admiral sheering has said where the threat is going, space is a must. But right now it continues to be a maybe because we dont have it underway. Having said that, the demonstrator satellites, right. Theyre demonstrating, theyve dramaticcally increased the range of aegis already in the last couple of years. They dont necessarily have to be battlestar galacticasened more drtded, smaller, cheaper. Thank you, tom. Richard. Thank you. Richard fieldhouse, former Armed Services, senate Armed Services staffer, currently independent consultant type. Thank you all. I want to ask start of a question that gets somewhat at your answer to jim on russia and china and somewhat to the discussion of testing. And it wasnt clear to me, tom, from your answer, so ill put it this way. Would you agree that any of our home nland Missile Defense efforts should both be intended to and have the effect of improving our security relative to, say, strategic stability question . Which is a russiachina question. And that all our Missile Defense systems should be tested and demonstrated to work effectively before theyre deployed. Right. And in a glothat goes to the russiachina issue, which i think what jim was getting at is if we say were going to design a system specifically to try to intercept their Strategic Missile systems, its relatively easy for them to increase their capacity, their systems over whem, etc. Up want to try to pin you down on that. Yeah. So what i would say im going to pull back another one of your colleagues, rose said even at 4, we are 24 less than the number of interceptors that moscow deemploys today. We dont agonize over what they have on us. By the way, theyre pretty up front about that. I think were so far away from that in terms of number as much as anything, so while i think that the systems that we are advancing today, sms as well as gnb, are continuing to blur the line between national and regional, as it better. I think that were just so far from that. If you get to a point where you begin to have that capability, you would still have to have a lot of numbers to really affect and i think actually that you could have improvement on strategic stability rather than hurting it, but look, that was the concept of safeguard. Right, was to protect critical classes. Its not crazy. Its been kicked around many times. Making sure that you have strategic survivability for Different Things. Thats what informs thats what informs strategic stability, so thats actually where weve emphasized when we talk about russia here, is look at how it might improve strategic stability. Not as some kind of perfect umbrella but within these particular side issues. Ill put a anaheim my concern very briefly and that is that is the requirement is established to deal with even relative little limited russia and chinese threats that resources will go toward that end. Im skeptical that we have the ability to defeat the Counter Measures today let alone tomorrow. If were able to pursue that and people believe that it must be done, they may come to say, for example, ok, were going to throw more money at the quality side or that could be a large well. Secondly, lets go 10 more. Im concerned about the costs implications and the knockon effects in the event that russians and h chinese believe our system may be more capable than it is as theyre doing their planning. And i think its an important set of issues that i think this administration should address. I dont rule out the possibility of looking at that capability. I and as i said, i believe that if a missile is launched at the United States, whatever system we have, should try to engage it. Would you say that same thing for Cruise Missile threats . The challenge with Cruise Missile threats is that we dont yet have a viable concept for nationwide defense. Fran alluded to this. And what we have a reasonable concept for and it aint cheap, as you know is for selective defense of the National Capital and of and so on. And i see that as an impedestrian meant to strategic stability is selected no i dont. I dont disagree with your point, though. Yeah. I think what well do is have one more question and the gentleman here in front. Yes. Im russell king retired federal employee. I have a question about missile threats from the south. Theres a particular Advocacy Organization that says the gulf coast is particularly vulnerable. As we know in latin america, there are regimes like the ma dura regime. In venezuela they have Close Relationships with Missile Defense powers. In is 62 we had a cuban threat. If i look at figure earnings s 3 im not seeing any Missile Defense assets south of the gulf coast or at the gulf coast. I thought eggland air force base had some but im not sure. How do we consider dlets in the south . Are they important enough to put in this mifrl defense framework . Tom, did you want to go . Theres nothing there. The theres nothing there. Not just cruise but ballistic. Were all looking in the other direction. You detect it with you but you wouldnt be able to do much about it. Correct me if im wrong on that. But this is why we have the outlook for maybe what are you trying to defense against . Is it the venezuelan irbm program . I dont know what that is, but i think the principle of flexibility and mobility might be more valuable. Transportable and other things might be more valuable. So if something happens, if it happens, were able to adapt to it. Thats what we emphasize on the report, we cant line the we cant go back to conrad of the 50s and 60s. The past year ive been part of a series of table top exercises the Defense Agency has done for the commanders. For some of the other combatant commanders. We have done off axis attack where we hit the day who today is not really an adversary, but weve declared another 20, 30 in the future. Theyretheir governments come apa apart, theyre an adversary. Commanders got the assets hes got in that year. Whatever it is. Son of thad, aegis, xm six or seven or eight or whatever. We play the game to say this is the kachability you have got. Now you have a threat. How do you deal with it. Not now although i was part of a test about fe we had a threat out of south america, how would we deal with it . At that time i can see cover diagram. So i cant tell you. Might be able to put it in the gulf. They played tad at the time. Ok. Ill defend dallas. You want new orleans coverage . Ill coverage new orleans. But i am not covering the state of texas. Im not covering its selective what i could do with the to we had. Thats the dynamic, the whatif. What if canada goes rogue . What are we going to do then . You kind of focus on whos the bad day today. Whos the potential bad guy and the what ifs and the wild ones. Yeah, thats an interesting point. We can role it into an exercise and see how people deal with it. I think thats a good place for us to conclude. Id just observe as both you and tom noted that mobile and particular seabased assets give us some ability to deal with any tlaet might emerge from within the region and in the meantime weve got our hands full with north korea and with establishing posture vosa vee reducing their incentives to want to go backs to their Nuclear Program because it can see that they would not be able to threaten the United States or stleld other games to restart. In my view its an important part of deterrence visavis rand as well. Id like to see us address these challenges well as a starting point. Thank you all for being here today. Please join me in a round of applause for our great panelists. [ applause ] sunday on qanda, the comparisons between president s donald trump and Andrew Jackson. I dont think he represents the positive values that jackson represented. He certainly represents some of the negative values that jackson represented, but i think i would tell President Trump that if he wants to be like Andrew Jackson he has to put nation in front of his own personhood. Has to put nation in front of his own family, has to put nation in front of most of his interests. Sunday dmielt on after words, physician and journalist Elizabeth Rosenthal exams the business side of health care in her book an american sickness how health care became big business and how you can take it back. She was interviewed by dr. Blum all that. I was wondering if your book gave you any thoughts about whether hiltd care is a free market, whether we can solve our products through free Market Forces . I think what weve seen as the answer is probably not. At the beginning of the book i put a somewhat tongue in cheek list of the economic rules of the dysfunctional Health Care Market where, if you think of health care as a purely a business proposition that the market will solve, you know, you get toe crazy places like you know, a lifetime of treatment is preferable to a cure. Now, i am not saying for a second that anyone really thinks that. But that is where Market Forces put you right now. Watch after words sunday night at 9 00 p. M. Eastern. Now on to a Panel Discussion regarding sexism. It includes women bloggers, entrepreneurs, journalists who have talked about the subtle and not