Transcripts For CSPAN3 Senator Cotton Calls For Budgetary Changes To Bolster Missile Defense 20170629

The time is short. Good afternoon, everyone. Im Harry Kazianis and i serve as the chairman of the National Center for interest, and welcome to friends in the flesh as well as those joining us on Facebook Live and cspan 3. Today, we are presenting a treat and not one but twopart discussion on the u. S. Missile defense policy. Part 1 is with the gentleman sitting next to me on the right, senator tom cotton from arkansas, and part two after senator cottons keynote address and keynote address is going to be Rebeccah Heinrichs and joseph cirincione. And obviously, north korea is very much in the news, and due to the short range and ba lis h tick missiles dews due for the fact that it could reach the homeland. And senator cotton has been at the forefront, and his remarks will be around 20 minutes or so, and after that, we will open up the floor for about 20 minutes. In the q and ash state your nam and affiliation as we are very much on the record as you can see from the cameras here, and as time is limited, keep the question as compact and precise as possible. With that, senator cotton, the floor is yours. Thank you, ha ri, and thank you all for being here to discuss this very important topic. The defense of the homeland is the most basic premise of the american grand strategy and has been before this country is founded. If you are reading the bill of particul particulars in the declaration of independence, you will see one of the complaints is that the king was not protecting the american citizens from attacks on our own land, and this is a kcon sis tent theme since our founding in the revolutionary war and stra tee kick discusster whether it is the sacking of the washington in the white house or the monroe documents and where we would not let those come from the new land and be salient, or the cuban missile crisis that we would not at a tack cuba again and absence the offensive weapons capable of striking the homelan and after the 9 11 response of what we saw when we are attacked on our own soil, and why we have all of the Forward Deployed bases in places like europe, and east asia on the eurasia rimland and yes, to assure the allies and defend them, but more than anything, it is forward defense for the United States and our citizens and our territory so that if any war is going to be fought, it is going to be fought as and away game and not a home game on our turf. That is why the Missile Defense is a musthave for the military and not a nice to have one. It is becoming more so in the future, because our rivals are continuing to advance their ballistic and Cruise Missile technology. I devised the threats that we face into short term and long term. And short is north korea, and longer term is iran and russia and china as they are deploying more advanced systems. Preview, i would say four things we need to go to koucounter att those, and first is to increase the defense spending, and second is to spend some the additional money on the integrate and layered Ballistic Missile systems, and he third is to develop Missile Systems, and reconsider, and reevaluate the intermediate range, and first, let me turn to the threats that we change. As secretary jim mat tis said to testimony to congress, north korea is the most urgent threat to peace and security that we face. This year alone, north korea has been test firing short range missiles per month. They are working on the submarinelike Ballistic Missiles as well. Everyone agrees it is only a matter of time before the North Koreans can flight test a Intercontinental Missile to be capable of hitting not only hawaii, but the mainland and that is why president obama warned President Trump that it might be the most urgent crisis he might face. And so i must say that if they should hasten the attack in the kuala lum par airport, they could also have ballistic technology, and one must worry about the command and control missiles, and they are also work working on road and submarine missiles, and one has to worry if they are under the full control of the National Leadership and crisis. And second, iran, since the joint comprehensive action of iran has tested the Ballistic Missiles on 14 occasions, the firing of syrian Ballistic Missiles last week to i suggest send a signal to the United States and israel and to say that they were developing missile capability in israel. And so while they were hoping to show that they would have reliable weapons for any Nuclear Weapons. And a third country that es skaps notice is pakistan and one cannot discount the capability of pakistans over 100 Nuclear Weapons that might fall out of the country, and out of that governments control, and potentially into the hands of extremist, and of course, a loose Nuclear Weapon in the hands of the Nuclear Group is the kind of threat that that the ballistics weapons system is going to stop, and the next is russia as one is well aware, and the russians is to maintain the largest inventory of Nuclear Warheads, and slaurussia has te and deployed the intermediate range. And general silva, the vice chair of the joint chiefs of staff testified to congress that the russians have quote violated the spirit and intent of the inf treaty and they do not intend to return to compliance. He also said, quote, the system, itself, presents a risk to most of the facilities in europe. In other words, russia is violating a treaty from which they receive greater benefit from the United States, and need more without paying any consequences. Chi china, the pla navy has fielded four ssbns and giving beijing a credible seabased nuclear deterrent. China, also, is not a member to the inf treaty, and therefore they have developed a number of dual missile use in the 500 to kilometer use that have contributed to the denial strategy in east asia. Moreover, both russia and china are blurring the doctrinal missile use. And some may say it is provocative to theed a ver te a because it could disturb the balance, but i say it is already disturbed by the technological advances as well as the blurred doctrinal lines. Russia sees the theatre weapons against conventional military targets as a way to escalate to deescalate in their terms to end the conflict in their favorable terms for rush sharks and china, likewise, they are begins to rethink the nouse doctrine to be used up to any point in the nuclear crisis, and Chinese Military journals are discussing Nuclear Units as a higher component of the high access strategy in the western pacific, and in china, now doubt, must note that we have the deal with the fact that the size and the quality of the Nuclear Forces are largely a mystery to us as we have little transparency on what the nuclear with weapons they may have produce and whether or how they the are concealed. Deferring what we may not know about of course is a difficult task. If the adversaries are contemplating the if Nuclear Sources in warfare, then we need to develop the nuclear Ballistic Missiles, and they have already discarded. So what we do about all of the threats . Well, first, as i said, the most fundamental decision is to inkrecrease the Defense Budget,d with that comes the requirement of repealing the budget control act. The budget control act was passed in 2011, and in a very different world that we face now. Congress has repeatedly made it clear that we cannot abide by the limits after spending caps went into effect in 2013 and Congress Passed a twoyear budget followed by the omnibus and fol olowed by an omnibus, and congress did it in 2013 and if they do not pass a control act, we will see another t twoyear budget in fall, and another omnibus in 2018 and then we will repeat the cycle again in the 2019 and 2020 phase and it is not going to be saving money, because the spending caps will inkrecrease, and it ist no wise, because the military will not have the long term stability and predictability they need. Only 47 senators in office in 2011 to vote for the bill. And the 112th congress was not the constitutional convention, and the budget control act is not the constitution, and so it must be repealed. How should we spend the money . We have a lot of needs. A lot of conventional needs, and a lot of needs to modernize the conventional needs, and the threats that we face also say that we need to accelerate the layer and the Ballistic Missile systems that incorporate forward based a assets with the space sensor, and the groundbased assets on the ground, and explore airborne senators as well. A and in the short term, we need to be able to stop a limited icbm threat from states like north korea and potentially iran. And over the long term though, i would suggest that we need to be able to stop an attack from near peer adversaries as well. So i was pleased last to see the Missile Defense agency successful interceptor test last month that destroyed the incoming missile from the pacific, and now we are on track for 44 groundbased interceptors to be deployed by the end of the year. And to accelerate the Missile Defense, i have cosponsored the american Missile Defense act with sullivan, cruz, rubio, cappie toe and shats, and Bipartisan Group of senators who are recognizing the threats that we are facing and some of whom own citizens face. And so some will face the accelerators to face the advanced intersceptor technologies as well as the advancement and deployment of the spacebased sensor layer, and accelerate the Environmental Impact layer on the east coast as well as one in the midwest of the United States. And it would require a dod report on the possibility of up to 100 groundbased interceptors distributed across the united state states, and ask about optimal groundbased intersep or or thes. In addition, i think that the Missile Defense a agencies should rapidly demonstrate airborne aerial boost phase interceptor capability, and the concept here is to involve, and would involve High Altitude long endurance uvas with payloads loitering at a days of a time, and managed by a ground crew, and why would we do this . We well, intercepting the missile in the boost phase before it achieves mid course is the holy grail of the Missile Defense because it is moving slower and therefore, easier to track, and so no missile debris to complicate targeting the warhead. It is also, of course, over the Enemy Territory and not over our territory, and all of these things combined make it increased the probability of an intercept and the impact of an intercept. The concept is of course challenging, an ma an the concept is of course challenging, an ma d mainly due technology, but however, the technology is advancing, and with advancement, it is a feasible concept. Third, we need to encourage our allies to deploy their own ballistic Defense Systems. Four deployed u. S. Defense systems, and four allied Defense Missile sharing is to protect the homeland and extended deterrence and assurance of the allies. The United States has deployed two thad lad launchers to south korea, but they have delayed the deployment of two more thadd la launchers, and south korea is wait waiting to deploy two more. And the we should encourage them, and those in the mideast such as the united emirates. And the United States has approved for sale for qatar and saudi arabia sale for layered Defense Systems from iran. In europe, it is one year since n nato has deployed aegis shore site, and four aegis destroyer shore deployed in spain. And more can be on the way to help develop or create the layered theatre systems that our troops and allies and it is zens ne and citizens need. And fourth and final, it is time to reevaluate the nuclear treaty. If russia is going to deploy and test intermediate Cruise Missiles, then logic dictates that we must respond, because russia benefits more from the inf treaty than the United States unless we believe that canada and mexico are going to be developing intermediate range missiles any time soon or to be deployed to cuba none of which is going to be happening and yet russia isimpunity. And it is obvious that negotiating with Vladimir Putin has not brought russia back into compliance and nor not likely to do so and therefore strengthening the deterrence, and specifically the missile ballistic deterrence is to. And so here we have testified that renegotiating the treaty because it has become in his words a unilateral deterrence to us, and since we are part of the two nations, and russia is violating it, and the United States is the only country on earth that is not only exploring or developing and actively deploying the cruise and ballistic misles in the range of 2000 to 2,500 range. And the that is why this preservation act is to take aims of permissible within the imf treaty and to urge russia to come back into compliance, and to establish a record of due plikable exchange. And the it will open exchange or sky range studies until russia returns to compliance with the imf treaty and these are a few of the steps that we need to counter the threat s ths that w facing from the adversaries intermediate range threats. I am happy to take questions. And i will ask the moderator for question, and then open it up for the audience. And senator, i have been thinking of north korea, and there was news friday and over t the week and they because over the weekend of the 25th, we had the anniversary of the north korean, the war with north korea in the 1950s, that there could be a nuclear test, and so lets say for example that north korea were to test an icbm and what is the appropriate response from the Trump Administration . Should we use the Missile Defenses and take it out . Observe it . What is the best approach . Yes. Im going to leave some of those questions to our military experts. But we should bring every pressure to bear we can on north korea to deter them from doing just that. I have to say i dont think china has done much in the last six months or to that matter in the last 30 years in trying to deter this threat from north korea. They continue to try to have it both ways and theres much more we could do in terms of sanctions against north koreas illicit network as well as individuals and businesses in china whose facilitating north koreas military and their Ballistic Missile technology developments. At the same time, weve got to continue to take prudent precautions which is working with the new Moon Administration and so to hopefully deploy the remaining thaad systems, to encourage japan to take whatever choice they choose. Whether its the thaad system or the aegis system. There are steps left to be taken that we have not yet taken with north korea before we simply cede to the choice between accepting north korea as a Nuclear Armed state that can hold at risk the states of the United States of america or having to fight another korean war. Okay, fair enough. Well, with that, it is question answer time. Please keep in mind to state your affiliation when you ask your question. Well open up. You go first, maam, please. If we can get a microphone, that would be great. Right behind you. Thank you very much. From financial times, thanks for having me. I wanted to ask the basis for your aim to have 100 interceptors. And what you make of the risk of so many of the counterinterceptors deployed, that being first and Second Generation which have been shown to have all right. I think we need more intercepters. Obviously if north korea develops an Intercontinental Missile or if theres another missile threat to our homeland, you dont want to have one interceptor for one missile. The success rate is growing but the success rate is unlikely to be perfect or 100 . Therefore we need to increase the number of intercepters we have. Inner its of the technology, obviously, as i said, i was pleased to see the successful test earlier this month over the pacific. Of course, the question to ask on these tests is not whether it was a success or a failure. But what we learned. Because you learn from success or from failure. If were succeeding with the first or Second Generation interceptors. Thats a good thing. But it also leads to more Lessons Learned for future generations as well. Please. Wait for a microphone, if you dont mind. Richard white. Following that, i would think that one way you could make the best use of any additional interceptors is improving the kill vehicle. Some longterm objectives but it might be useful to think about having the redesign kill vehicle at least as an interim step towards that process. I would agree. Go ahead, please. We can get her a mike right over there. Thank you. From the congressional quarterly. You spoke earlier about russia and china blurring the lines between conventional and Nuclear Weapons used. Does that have any impact on your thoughts on whether you should develop the new rso which critics have worried will also confuse the two . No, of course we need to develop the new longrange standoff Cruise Missile. Our current alcms, air launch Cruise Missiles, are soon to be reaching their shelf life. Were having a new b21 bomber. But i think it would be unwise to assume that throughout the multidecade life of that aircraft that its always going to be able to evade the most complex air defenses and reach the interior of our adversarys territories. In addition, the b52 with the right kind of modernization can be deployed for many decades to come. The b52 cannot penetrate the air Defense Systems of our adversaries. And a new Cruise Missile is essential for make the b52 a viable part of our Nuclear Triad. Thats why almost every flag officer whos testified from the Armed Services committee has said it will be a longrange Cruise Missile will be a vital part of our Nuclear Triad in addition to the b21 and the deterrent. Jake. Jacob, the national interest. Thanks for coming, senator. Thank you. Ive had a broader question for you in listening to your remarks. What country do you believe poses overall the greatest threat to American Security right now . Well, its a good question. The answer to that question always is Something Like asking how many adversaries can advance on the head of a pin because all of our adversaries pose serious threats. So as the most immediate threat, you might say north korea. You might say iran. Or some of the Terror Networks that a country like iran supports or a nonstate actor like al qaeda or the islamic state. Those are all reasonable answers to your question. At the same time, russia is a very reasonable answer to your question. Because russia at this point, absent massive strategic surprise from china, is the only country that has the Nuclear Arsenal capable of destroying our way of life. And russia over the last several years has made it clear that they are remain hostile power and that Vladimir Putin doesnt think soviet union or russia lost the cold war and they were simply behind at halftime and are working quickly to make up the difference. So much so that you might ask today whether russias better poised to get to france or get to spain than they were in the late stage of the cold war. So theres different ways of looking at that question. The takeaway, though, from the fact that i think its hard to pinpoint a single threat that is the gravest threat we face is that our military needs to be agile and flexible and dominant in every domain and region and part of that is Missile Defense. Not just to protect the deployed troops, but to protect the u. S. Homeland which is the most basic premise of the american strategy. Christina long. Hi. Hi, senator, great to see you. North korea and on north korea, do you think its time to give up on china, trying to get china to help with north korea . What more pressure can be applied . What do you make of the president s tweet on china . How do you think the administration is handling it so far . With leaving the inf, sparking new arms race . Thank you. Its better to win an arms race than lose a war. So thats really in the hands of Vladimir Putin and the russian leadership. Theyre the ones who are violating the inf treaty. Theyre the ones who deployed an intermediate rang Cruise Missile that is extremely destabilizing in europe and potentially in the middle east and east asia as well. My legislation is designed to bring russia back into compliance with the inf treaty. Again, russia needs the inf treaty more than we need them. One reason they came to the negotiating table is that once we deployed intermediate range missiles to europe in 1983 on a policy that started under the carter administration, was continued under the reagan administration, they recognized just how grave the threat was to them. Again, the United States faces a much more limited threat from intermediate range missiles. Russia also gets much more from the open skies treaty than does the United States. Yet russia continues to violate the open skies treaty. And russias likely to want to extend the new start treaty. We have many points of pressure that we can bring to bear on russia to get them back into compliance with the inf treaty. Even if we do get them back into compliance, of course we still face the reality that china, since its not a party to the treaty, has something north of 90 of all its missiles into that intermediate range, as admiral harris pointed out to the Armed Services committee recently. But i think an at a minimum we have to take the steps necessary to bring russia back into compliance with inf treaty. First question on north korea, i dont think its time to abandon the effort to try to encourage beijing to bring more pressure to bear. On pyongyang and there are effort s th efforts that we can take that we havent. For instance, the threat of secondary sanctions against Chinese Business institutions and individuals who are key facilitators for north korea. There are also direct steps that we take about north korea. Like relisting them as a state sponsor of terrorism. Or cracking down again on some of their Financial Institutions like we did in the last decade. But in a misguided effort to try to reach a negotiating outcome with north korea, we lifted those things. I commend President Trump and secretary of state tillerson for undertaking these efforts with china. I dont think theyve yielded fruit yet. I think theyre worth pursuing further. Say hi to jim for me. I will. Question about nato, there has been even the past six months, montenegro, questions of its usefulness and effectiveness. Even today its been called a cold war relic. Weve seen them step up exercises and involvement in response to russia. So with Congress Kind of playing on the side of nato, or the administration has questioned it as the president s talked about the gdp 2 , what are your thoughts on the usefulness for nato and how we can see involvement and encouragement to our allies especially in Eastern Europe . Nato is still vital to our National Security. As i said at the outset, a fundamental premise of american grand strategy since before we were a country is the defense of our homeland and our citizens. And every citizen in all 50 states deserve under our constitution equal protection from those kinds of threats. And we have all those bases not just in europe but in the middle east and in east asia and the entire euroasian homeland. So our military plays road games. They dont play home games here on u. S. Soil. Many of the countries in nato are relatively small and theyre not wealthy countries. Theyre not going to contribute, you know, ten divisions to our military. To our military efforts. However, there are vital things they can contribute through their geopolitical position and through accesses or insights they may have. Thats one reason why we have nato and we have all those bases overseas. President trump is very right that our nato allies need to spend the amount of money that we all pledge to each other a few years allege. And that too many have not been doing. The most important countries are the larger richer ones like germany. It would be nice if the smaller poorer countries in nato spent enough to meet that commitment as well. But again, if youre a country of a couple Million People and a relatively limited economy, youre not going to field ten mechanized divisions. Ultimately deterrence is not about uttering magic words. Its not a political matter. Deterrence is a military matter. Vladimir putin knows just like aggressors always know that no words backed up or not backed up by action mean anything. It would be a much greater deterrent if nato spent the 100 billion to 120 billion every year that it hasnt been spending because our european allies are not matching their commitments than anything that any National Leader can say. I think we had thank you. Marvin, former government and now johns hopkinss and the wilson center. Id like to probe your knowledge of the technology in the Missile Defense side based on, you know, if you have Privileged Access to a world i once worked in but no longer do. The prelude to that is i take your point that there are still screws to be turned potentially on pressure on north korea. But weve been at this for well over 20 years. Weve tried a variety of approaches. Trying to use sanctions as a route to bring them around for a very long time. It gives grounds for someone like me to be ultimately pessimistic that thats going to be a viable route. And what youre left with, then i think is your topic, which is Missile Defense. And i just i wonder if you can see anything about, you know, the Technology Technical challenges in this world are huge. The complexities are mind numbing. How good or we and how good can we get . So first on the geopolitical point about north korea, as i mentioned earlier, i think there are steps that can be taken that have not yet been taken to bring pressure to bear on north korea. China made a show earlier this year of cutting off coal imports which didnt really have much impact. North korea gets Refined Petroleum products almost exclusively from china. If china would stop sending those, you would see basically within a matter of weeks north korea would almost be entirely out of gasoline, just to give you an example. I think there are political steps that can be taken. That we ought to take if china doesnt quit playing both sides in this rivalry. In terms of medical technology, cant go into great detail. It is very complex. Also caveat, im not a Rocket Scientist and i barely got through physics in school. The experts who do this work at the Missile Defense agency and more broadly within the pentagon or outside experts are increasingly confident that with higher level also of investment and more focused leadership in the executive branch, and interest and pushing from the congress, that we are on the cusp of some pretty major breakthroughs. Not just groundbreaking interceptors as i mentioned but for instance Airborne Laser interceptors. Its very cuttingedge stuff but given the pace of technological innovation, especially in this country, i believe that sooner rather than later we could see a genuine Missile Defense system that could largely if not entirely neutralize a threat from a country like north korea. So you mentioned you want to build potentially build this thing into something that can defend against a peer level threat which would be russia or china. What kind of investment do you see that would take in order to achieve that . Youre talking about hundreds, if not thousands, of interceptors and no guarantee of success. I mean, that almost invites a kind of situation where they might be perceived threat launch first strike if were going to do Something Like that. Second point was also with the the europeans are still threatened by russian groundbased missiles in that case. I mean, we would not be threatened but they are. Its kind of a problem because we are also we dont have skin in that game but they do so what can we do to reassure nato allies well do something to defend them and thats their situation . So your first question, youre right, it would be a large investment of resources. Thats one reason i say the budget control act must be repealed among many other reasons. But we wont know until we continue the technological developments. Again, with the pace of technological innovation in this country, with the possibility of advanced spacebased systems, i do believe we can one day get to a layered system that would make the United States homeland protected against these kinds of threats. Going to be longer than it would take to get to north korea as we were just talking about. I do think its technological feasible. I dont want to get into more details, though, about the kind of, you know, cost estimates ive seen. Second, on the inf treaty, of course europeans are threatened by intermediate missiles for the same reason that europe is. Thats why europeans should support our efforts to try to bring russia back into compliance with the inf treaty. Those missiles are being driven around russia right now. And they could strike any European Capital with virtually no warning. So european countries, rather than suggested we look the other way or bury our head in the sand or try, you know, to talk more and take no action, should be supporting the kind of legislation i have. Which is designed within the current parameters the inf treaty to put pressure on russia to come back into compliance. All right, we have time for maybe one brief question, if possible. Please. Microphones coming for you. Sir, that was a fine presentation. Im a cold war military guy, and all of those increases in the nations military capability, it warms my heart. But, im also a guy that balances the checkbook every month, and i know that is a quaint concept in modern government, but with somewhere in the neighborhood of a 20 trillion National Debt and entitlement spending on upward vectors the of 10,000 boomers adding to the rolls on a daily basis, how are you going to pay for all of that . Just for the record, everybody, it is the chairman chuck boyd. Very good question. It goes far beyond the topic were addressing here on ballistic Missile Defense. I would say though as a general matter our Defense Budget is not the cause of our deficits or the cause of that 20 trillion in debt. If anything, it helps make that deficit and that debt more manageable long term. Because it keeps open international lanes of commerce and keeps our people and our assets protected. Inevitably, when we try to balance the budget on the back of the military as we did immediately following the demise of the soviet union as we did over the last eight years, our enemies catch up with it, as they did to us on 9 11 or as youre seeing around the world now. And we end up spending even more money than we would have. Often on a crash course. Often on things we wouldnt have had to spend them on, had we simply maintained operations. Further on our strategic forces, i have sometimes heard the objection we shouldnt spend so much money on weapons that we never use. I would dispute both premises of that statement. One, we dont spend that much money on our strategic forces. It is only 3 or 4 of the total Defense Budget, and we only use very little bit of the Nuclear Forces every single day, and we have for 73 years, because they help deter the existential threat to our homeland. Your point is very right about the need to get our fiscal house in order. The most immediate is get our economy growing once again at a rate thats much higher than 1. 5 to 2 it has been. President truck has prioritized that through regulatory action. Congress is working on it as well. Were looking at Health Care Legislation this week that might have the impact of making medicaid for instance one of the three big drivers of our National Debt more financially stable in the long term while developing an equal or greater quality of care to the most vulnerable populations that have needed it since its inception. Youre right about the challenges that we face from our debt. I would just say that our military so far from being a cause of that debt is actually something that helps keep it within manageable levels by keeping by protecting peace and prosperity, not just here in the United States but around the world. All right. Well, that concludes part one. If we can get a hand for senator cotton. Thank you very much, senator. Nice to see you. Appreciate you for doing that. And so if we could have joe and rebeccah to join us, we will m jump on to round two. Hi, good. Just right here. All right. Well welcome to round two on our discussion on Missile Defense. Next we have two presentations that showcase very important and i think very different perspectives on u. S. Missile defense policy. Both speakers will present their views for about ten minutes each which should leave us probably a good amount of time for q a. And just like the last q a, please present your name and affiliation, because we are on the record with Facebook Live and cspan. As you can el tell from all of the cameras. Its always great when people know who theyre hearing from. So with that, let me bring in our first speaker. President of ploughshares fund, a Global Security foundation, and hes the author the of a new book nuclear nightmares, secure i secureing the world before it is too late. Its a romance novel. Sounds like it. He previously served as president for National Security and International Policy at the center for American Progress and director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for international peace. I happened to watch you yesterday on Fareed Zakaria so congratulations on that. Thank you. The floors yours. Thank you very much for inviting me here. We have ten minutes each. Is that correct . Yes. Good. Just cue me up when im getting near the end of that, ill stop. Its a lot to say in ten minutes. I will disagree with everything senator cotton said except it was nice to be here. I represent sort of the other side of this and let me focus my remarks primarily on Missile Defense, the point of this session. I have been in washington working on National Security for about 35 years. Ive known dimitri for almost all that time. And jack kemp for almost all of that time. A big part of that was focused on Missile Defense beginning in 1983 when president reagan launched the strategic defense initiative. I was joined the staff at Services Committee in late 1984 and was assigned oversight of that responsibility. Ive been tracking these programs ever since. So let me state very clearly and fully that i am strongly in favor of an Effective National Missile Defense system for the United States. Who wouldnt want an Effective National defense . If you could reliably protect the American People from Ballistic Missiles, the only existential threat that we have besides climate change, who wouldnt want that . I want it. I also want a cure for cancer. I would also like a really good light beer. But some things are beyond our technological capability. An effective Missile Defense is one of them. Its not for lack of trying. Weve spent 330 billion on Missile Defense over the last decades. 330 billion. We have had some of our best contractors, our best Scientific Minds focused on this. We have been pushing. This it is not as Newt Gingrich said in his contract on america in the 1994 election when his onl only, and the only one of the ten points in his contract on america of National Security was about this, was about Missile Defense, it is not because we lack the political will. That has beeen the critique tha we have not been trying hard enough. No, no, we have been trying. Republicans and democrats have been trying, and since 19 0, t 1980, the republicans have been holding the branch for about half of that time and evenly split on the side of republicans actually. And theyve been trying to push this. The result has been that every Major National Missile Defense system we tried to produce has failed. It has not worked. And were left about this system. The groundbased Ballistic Missile system or gmd, groundbased Missile Defense. This is the system that senator cotton talked about in the ground in alaska by the end of the year. This system does not work. It cannot protect the United States from a sophisticated and even north korean Ballistic Missile attack, and heres why. The problems with the satellites shooting star warslike lasers out and blowing up incoming warhead, like popcorn. You needed to go to space because groundbased missile ballistic defense was inherently flawed. Inherently flawed. It would not work. I have Daniel Grahams book promoting high frontier from 1982, 1983. I went to the center for strategic and National Studies to grahams early lectures. I thought he was nuts then, but his comments on ballistic Missile Defense on the ground were absolutely spot on. Number one, a groundbased Missile System can be easily overwhelmed. It is far cheaper for the offense to proliferate warheads than it is for the defense to proliferate defenses. Its a simple task. Thats why we were never worried about the soviets deploying a ballistic Missile Defense around moscow. They had 100 interceptors. We just targeted 200 warheads. We were never worried about our ability to penetrate those defenses. Number two and most important, as Daniel Graham says, the farther away the targets are, the higher up, the harder it is to discriminate between the real warhead and the decoys. A groundbased Missile Defense system cannot discriminate between a warhead and a decoy. Couldnt do it in 1993. It still cant do it. Thats why none of the tests of this system have actually been tested against realistic decoys. Realistic decoys meaning decoys meant to look exactly like the warhead. Weve had some test where theres a big fat balloon and a tiny warhead. That you can do. Something where the opponent is really determined to spoof you, in fact, until the last test, weve had 18 tests. The last one of this system was the first one we tested against an actual icbm target. One that was actually icbm range even at the lower end of that range. Other than that, theyve been slower, easier to hit targets. The reason we dont test against effective countermeasures, because we cant see, we cant discriminate. We cant hit the system. But heres the final flaw in the groundbased Missile Defense system, says Daniel Graham and others such as the george c. Marshall institute. Even if you could fix that, even if you could discriminate, even if you could deploy hundreds of effective interceptors, your system is still vulnerable in its soft nodes. Its radars can be attacked. As you know, the beginning of any air campaign is to suppress the enemys defenses. That would be true for Ballistic Missile as well. You would suppress the enemys defenses. Attack their radars. You would blind the system by simple means such as north korean frogmen blowing up some of the Forward Deployed air defenses. Or by Ballistic Missile attack on the radars themselves or by other means. Fine. So thats the problem we have. With some of this. Thats its a confusing subject because so much of us are confused by the benefits of short range ballistic Missile Defense. See, that we can do. With some success. You can build a shortrange system to shoot down scuds. Things that go 300 kilometers. 600 kilometers, maybe 1,000 kilometers. You can do that with some reliability. I spent a year of my life investigating the performance of the Patriot Missile in the gulf war, the gulf war of 91. They said it hits 41 out of 44, said george h. W. Bush. No, it did not. Believe me, the patriot system did not work. It was not designed for the job it was given. We estimated it hit somewhere between 0 and 4 of those scuds. But the patriot could be fixed. To the armys credit, theyve done a very good job of fixing that patriot. New, much more capable system. New software, new interceptor, so i think the patriots does give you a pretty effective defense against shortrange targetsts. It gives you a pretty effective defense against short range. Its only when you go long range that you get those problems. This is what thad will incounter if it tries to intercept missiles. Once youre in space where everything is the same weight, where theres no friction, then you cannot distinguish between the warhead and the balloons, the jammers that can be deployed. The 1999 National Intelligence estimate concluded that any nation capable of Ballistic Missile threat to the United States, said that any nation that can build an icbm capable of hitting the United States could deploy any one of more six basic counter measures. So thats why when people say and you hear some generals say this that the ground based Missile Defense system can provide protection to the United States from a limited Ballistic Missile attack, thats what they mean, a limited attack, no counter measures. This system will only work if the enemy cooperates. If the enemy gives us a target that we expect and thats why the problem is our testing has been so unrealistic. Its been from one site. We know the trajectory, we know the velocity, we know what the system looks like. Everything is set up. These are as they say in the trade strapped down chicken tests. And you kill a strapped down chicken and you think i can kill chickens . Oh, really. Go catch one. Go shoot it when its 200 yards away. And thats your problem here. This is a system thats been designed for contract success, to keep the money going. Thats why you cannot rely on the system. So why do people keep promoting it . I think some people dont know. I think they dont know this thing doesnt work. They havent spent the time. They havent examined the test which is why my solution to this which ill give you at the very end, might be a way to settle this debate. But some are driven by ideology. This is a beginning of the Missile Defense debate. People rejected the idea of arms control. We will not allow the security of this nation to depend on a piece of paper. They do not believe that you can control these weapons by treaties eliminating them even though Ronald Reagan did it and eliminated an entire class. Even when it happens they dont believe it. And so therefore we have to rely on technology and our own military might thats why you hear senator cotton in full cold war mode, abrogate the treaties, abandon any effort to limit weapons with russia, full on deployment of Nuclear Weapons in europe, proliferate Missile Defense. Missile defense will save us. You think we have trouble with our european allies now, start deploying Nuclear Weapons in europe and see what happens. Remember what happened in the 1980s. This would be a disaster. The course that senator cotton is advancing will not only fail, it will make our situation infnly more dangerous. Infinitely more dangerous. We have nothing to gain by abrogating the intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty and a whole lot to lose. I wish Missile Defense worked. I wish we could do this but as dwight d. Eisenhower said the awful arithmetic of the atomic bomb does not permit of any such easy solution. Should you keep trying . Yes, you should. Should you do deploy systems that dont yet work . No, you should not. Since we began deploying these ground based intercepters in 2004 it has a success rate of only 50 since 2004. So the even in the strapped down chicken tests it fails half the time and the reason is this is really hard to do. It is really hard to hit a bullet with a bullet and its amazing that we can do it at all even under pristine ideal conditions and yet it still fails 50 of the time. We know the kill vehicle that are deployed in a third of these intercepters dont work very well. Theres a fundamental flaw. Yet we have them. So a third of these interceptors we know dont work. Theres problems with even the replacement kill vehicle but well see. It shows more promise. Even if you take the best record since 2010, since 2010, we still when you think at the beatles say, its Getting Better all the time. No. This system is not Getting Better all the time. Its got a 50 failure rate since 2004. It has a 60 failure rate since 2010. Weve now had two successful tests in a row, thats good. In the 18 tests that weve had, weve had two, three success tests in a row followed by two, three, failures. So how do you settle this . How do you decide if rebeccah is right, shes about to say everything i said is completely wrong and foolish and dangerous, or im right . Lets have an independent commission examine this. This is the way we settled the directed energy weapons, the space based weapons, the original star wars weapons, whether they could actually be built. The American Physical Society did a study in 1987 that said it would take 20 years before we would know whether such weapons were ever feasible. It was at that Point Congress decided to pull back on those programs. Go for much more limited defensive system. The debate on whether the star wars type systems could work was essentially over. Thats what we need now. Were never going to solve this in congress. Put together an independent commission or ask the American Physical Society to assess the feasibility of the ground based Missile Systems to defend the United States from a limited or largescale Ballistic Missile attack. Lets get some scientists involved who dont benefit from defense contracts, who arent institutes benefit from defense contracts who dont have an ideological bent to them. Then the American People can decide if we should rush forward with this fatally flawed system or wait until we can perfect something that might actually work before we deploy it. Thank you very much. Thanks, joe. Phrase of the day, strapped down chicken tests. I will remember that. Im going to use that in a piece, i promise. So next we have a different perspective and thatll be taken on by rebeccah hieinricheinrich. Shes a fellow there. Rebecca has served an advisor on military matters. Member of the house Armed Services committee and she helped launch there the Missile Defense caucus. Shes testified before congress. Shes a regular on tv. Shes on fox news, cnn and many other outlets, published very widely in national interests. Rebeccah, the floors yours. Im going to share this with you. Rather than digging right in and responding to some of what joe said im going to give my remarks and hopefully will be able to go back and forth and dig in where theres the major points of disagreement. Missile Defense Systems and by that i mean the entire suite of Missile Defense systems. Joe talked about gmd, thats ground based mid course Defense System. Ill talk about the whole entire concept of what the United States is trying to do. Yes, theres gmd. Thats the only currently deployed Missile Defense system that can protect United States homeland. From an intercontinental Ballistic Missile. Without gmd, we have nothing there. We also have the ejus Weapon System with the family of fm 3, intercept interceptors, thad, and their sensors radar. Theyre currently deployed and integrated as part of the u. S. Military operations. These systems complement offensive weapons both strategic and conventional to deter the launch of enemy missiles and if deterrence fails, to defeat those missiles midflight before the missile reaches its intended target. Thats the purpose. At one time the concept of Missile Defense was controversial. There is disagreement about whether the systems could work and whether they would be stabilizing contribution to the u. S. Posture. Im happy to report actually there is broad bipartisan consensus, broad consensus within the scientific community, that the hit to Kill Technology that is central to u. S. Missile defense is in fact proven and does work. Now, the disagreement among the Consensus Community relies on how fast do we deploy these system, where do we invest, how do we prioritize and what does the inventory look like moving forward balancing some of our resources, et cetera. Recent tests point to the success of some of the technical aspects of the programs. Weve just recently seen successful tests on a couple of the systems, the only system deployed to defend the u. S. Homeland gmd successful intercepted for the first time an icbm Ballistic Missile with countermeasures. This was under very realistic conditions short of launching it from north korea at our own homeland, we have to take into consideration safety precautions in clearing the seas, et cetera, despite what hit to kill deniers say, the military, the Missile Defense agency along with Pacific Command and everybody else who was involved in that test did not have the exact time when the launch would take place, they just had a window and they were, in fact, able to successfully hit that, discriminate against what was not the actual warhead and what was the mock warhead and successfully hit that target. And the cooperative system with the japanese had a successful intercept in february of this year. So yes the most recent one missed but again these are tests and so we test and we point out areas where we need improvement and we build on those tests and we dont quit until we have increased the credibility and reliability of these systems. Theres a lot to be excited about with the sm3 family of interceptors as well. Back to the bipartisan point, in fact, the term Missile Defense appeared over 20 times in the 65 page Obama Administration 2010 Nuclear Posture or about once every three pages of text. So the Obama Administration while starting its first term significantly cutting Missile Defense including senator cotton talked about the boost phase element which i think he rightly described as the holy grail of Missile Defense. Its really where you want to get it. He cut those boost programs and he cut the gmd program in half. He did restore funding to gmd in the in his latter half of his time in the white house and initiated the deployment of the 14 additional groundbased interceptors to alaska. Those are the same ones he cut the first year in office. The administration also initiated the phase of data approach to Missile Defense in europe. The former those changes to Missile Defense was in response to the quickly expanding the gmd changes were in response to the quickly progressing north Korean Missile program. Thats what just thats what changed the administrations mind and they made that announcement that theyre going to deploy those 14 gbi and reinvest in Missile Defense and look at a third Missile Defense site on the east coast. Or the midwest of the United States. And then the epaa was in response to the Iranian Missile threat to europe. Also the commitment to epaa and to give the Administration Credit it stuck with those first two phases even though it eliminated the last phase due to russian complaints. It stuck with those initial phases because of the threat of irainian Ballistic Missiles and because our european allies wanted them and it was showing them allies. Russia continues to oppose those european Missile Defense sites. So what happened here aside from just the change in the threat. I would actually say that the threat wasnt really a change but it was enough of an uptick that even persuaded the most staunch Missile Defense skeptics in the white house to change it but it was the threat that drove the military requirements which is the way it should be. It should not be ideology. That i agree with. It should be based on what is the threat telling us and then those drive military requirements and then we work on the technical capabilities and we work to plug in those military requirements, which is how weve actually done Missile Defense. And all of the threats from missiles continue to grow worldwide and this is because despite arms control, missiles worldwide are still improving and spreading. And we have entered a new and dangerous era of missile threats marked by missile improvement, range, survivability and mobility. Antiship missiles of various kinds, hypersonics and various satellite weapons. So missiles are not nearly reserved for those nations with cutting edge technology. Missiles provide a relatively inexpensive way for countries whose militaries are far less sophisticated than that of the United States to deny access to contested areas and hold at risk u. S. Allies and themicisms. Dont take my word for it. In the last couple of days the pentagon just released to congress a new assessment on the threats to the United States and it said quote, many countries feel Ballistic Missile and Cruise Missiles are Cost Effective weapon and that is driving the need for Missile Defense worldwide is this explosion of Ballistic Missile technology. The report goes on to assess both russias capabilities, north koreas, chinas, and irans. If one does not believe that an enemy is being in possession of a nuclear icbm, france, north korea, that it be necessarily to a variety of kinds of aggression, therefore, taking away the enemys ability to credibly threaten the United States dramatically enhances the ability of the United States to conduct its Foreign Policy as policymakers see fit. We have to close those deterrent gaps. By leaving the United States exposed we are creating an incentive for our enemys to develop capabilities to hold those assets at risk. As the senator stated there is now underway a great bipartisan effort, this is not a republican effort, it is a bipartisan effort in the senate to expand both in inventory and just investments in these programs. Thats across the entire spectrum of Missile Defense systems from ejus to ground based midcourse system. Im in firm agreement that especially on the heels of this great successful intercept test of gmd now is the time to actually increase the number of groundbased interceptors. We already have space in alaska and california to deploy them and so as weve continued to improve the technology we should continue to test rigorously we shouldnt wait until the system of course is perfect because our enemies are not. The general gave a great talk of comparing the way the United States does acquisition versus North Koreans. The North Koreans are just quickly trying to actually get their offensive systems to work, so thats why you see all of these missiles blowing up on the launch pad. They dont get discouraged like we do. We have a missed intercepttist and think oh, no, and you have people looking to cut the program. The North Koreans are determined to have the capability so what theyre doing is testing, theyre having set backs but theyre learning where those mistakes are and theyre applying that new knowledge in order to actually improve the capability. I would suggest that the United States need to take more of that approach to getting our defensive systems right. I wont go into too much of the detail because the senator did that in terms of whats in his bill, but theres also a great bipartisan effort in the house of representatives, a lot of democrats that are very interested in not having their state and constituents held at risk of a nuclear icbm, so theyre working hard to make sure we have a robust and credible Missile Defense system. The last thing ill point out before we get into questions. Very important last year, the congress again both the senate and house bipartisan effort amended the 1999 national Missile Defense attack to strike limited of it. Its not the goal of the United States but it was stated the way the bill, the way the law was written, it left the impression to the pentagon and to the Missile Defense agency that the United States was only to build a Missile Defense system to defend against limited Ballistic Missile attacks. The United States has always been able to build a Missile Defense system as it sees fit. Limited was the baseline, not the ceiling. Now congress has prudently amended that law so now it has stricken the word limited so now the United States is just free to build a Missile Defense system based on the threat and can go forward in terms of increasing the technology, qualitatively and then the number of systems that we have deployed in the inventory and that i would suggest includes expanding gmd, expanding the weapons system, expanding thad, and also getting a spacebased sensor layer so we have a way to track these missiles so we have a better idea of whats on these missiles and where theyre headed and eventually having an optimal advantage point of intercepting missiles in the boost stage of flight. While its a shame that its taken so long, in terms of Technology Capability and that is because of the political fight that we have had that we have much to be grateful for and much to be optimistic about in terms of the Missile Defense systems deployment and also the increasing the current political consensus weve fought for and continue to grow. All right. Thank you, rebeccah. So now the fun begins with q a. Just please state your name and affiliation because we are on the record. Dave, youre first, and then well go to you, eric. So this is a question for both rebeccah and joseph. What do you consider to be like a nonscript test because this test this last one technically youre right it did have a window, they did have prepositioned and [ inaudible ] in the spots where theyre supposed to be the radar where its supposed to be. All these need to be deployed in the right spot and need to be tied in. I was actually there last week, and basically, they can tie it all together. Thats all true. Without those advanced radars and what not, you cant shoot this thing, so you have to have these things prepositioned around the world and you have to know somethings coming before you actually shoot. Without the spacebased element of this already in place, how do you what do you consider to be a fully, like, real system that can defend the country without any sort of advanced notice . Let me start. Look, if youre serious about this, if you are a warrior and a politician that wants to protect the American People, you dont deploy a defense, something made to look like a defense so it makes people feel better, because that is dangerous. You will then enter into combat situations, you will escalate a conflict with the enemy thinking that you can actually defend against them when you cant. This puts american lives at rist. This puts troops lives at risk. You want to test something. Do it the way the military knows how to do. Red team it and blue team it. Lets get a red team up that designs a target size thats put something up thats intended to stress the Weapon System being tested, and then you have a blue team who knows nothing about the target, maybe you give them a window. Of course, you have to have certain limitations here. Its going to come this week, this day. And then lets go try it. And they dont do that. Thats dangerous to america. That is not the way we should be buying our weapons. Do you want to deploy something on an emergency basis because you thought the North Koreans actually had a weapon that could hit us . They do not right now, but theyre working on it. You just let the North Koreans do what they do, they will have an icbm that can hit seattle or los angeles in the next four or five years. Thats my estimate. The north korea threat is coming. Do you need emergency defense, something blast stab, yes, but treat it that way. Understand that this is an emergency deployment, this is not an effective defense. And then stress it against what you think the North Koreans actually would do, pieces of wire, little low voltage jammers, balloons that look exactly like the warhead. Or even simpler you just take the boost vehicle and you have an explosive rope that blows it up into little pieces so the warhead is coming add you in pace and its filled with 100 pieces. You know what the defense has to do . It has to target every single one of those. It cant. So do stuff like that. Then you might have a judgment of whether your system is actually going to protect the American People or just protect you in the next election. Rebeccah . I would just say that the past several northcom commanders recollection fourstar commanders, have all verified they believe the gmd system does provide them with the capability to protecting the United States against the threat of north korean intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. Theres that. This is this is not a partisan issue. This is gone beyond just one republican administration, democratic administration. Its spanned the administrations. This last test, in fact, by the director of Operational Test and evaluation at the department of defense continues to look at the system specifically and in the past and its been tough. This is the system theyre only looking at what is the system able to do and theyre stressing the system. Theyre pushing the envelope. Theyre trying to stress the system to see what it can do. In the past it has said that it has a limited capability to defend the United States from homeland from the small number of medium range or intercontinental launched from north korea or iran. That has been what theyre comfortable saying the system can do. After this most recent intercept test it has upgraded its assessment and said that they have demonstrated a capability to defend the United States homeland from a small number of intermediate ranges. Its no longer limited. We academics can read open source data and pick and choose what we want to say about the system. Youre talking about the people who are looking at the hardware and system and the threats the northcom commanders, the Pacific Commanders, u. S. Forces korea in addition to both members of congress from both sides of the aisle that are getting the highly classified briefing on this and theyll say moving the radar where it needs to go, we are watching what north korea is doing. We dont want to be totally caught by surprise but as they begin to move we can get sensors and radars where it needs to be to get the system ready to intercept. Even if you believe what rebeccah just said and even if you believe the commanders who she quoted, you have to understand, this in the 18 tests, its failed 50 of the time. This has a 50 failure rate. You wouldnt get in an airplane that failed 50 of the time, why do you put the defense of United States in the hands of such a system . North korea, theyre ratcheting up tensions. But say youre in a situation where the tension of north korea, say iran has a Ballistic Missile we dont know about and now its in a cave somewhere and pops out and shoots for whatever reason. You cant react to that because your radar is out of position. Youre making a great argument for increasing our radar and sensor architecture, and i would agree. [ inaudible ]. Those of us who are evidence based analysts are merely looking at what the system is currently able to do. We have made progress. Were very happy with where its at. Were not satisfied with where its at. We would like to expand in inventory and the capability. Ill be the first to say we need more radar and the mda has said that, that has not been contested. We need the ldr, et cetera and we need to have spacebased sensors. Eric davis. Excuse me. I have been working on a project recently looking at Missile Defense development with strategic capability with schiena. And part of that has been going through some declassified articles about past Missile Defense systems such as sdi, such as the systems in the 60s. One thing that struck out that stuck out in that analysis is that in the past observers were pretty frank about the impact of Missile Defense on strategic stability. The idea that if we were to build better Missile Defenses there would be an incentive for the soviets or the chinese to expand their arsenal or invest in the kinds of technology that could defeat it. I dont hear that in modern debates much. Im curious to hear what the panelists think about why do we sort of ignore or downplay what yes, gmd is intended to be against north korea or iran or limited missile threat. However, the more money you put into it, the more interceptors you add, the higher the incentive for countries like russia and china to develop countermeasures to them. Is this conversation happening in policy making circles or is it being ignored . If i may take that one. The reason you dont hear that debate any more because its no long applicable. That conversation applied in the cold war whenever you had one particular enemy in which you were trying to deter, you were worried about seeing the strategic balance. Because of the proliferation of missiles, that dynamic just no longer applies. You have the chinese and the russians that have been free to develop offensive Ballistic Missile capabilities, even though we dont have a defensive system in place. This fear that the adversaries are going to be incentivized to build offenses in response to our defenses is not proven to be the case. Theyve been offenses because of the absence of a defensive system. This is what i would call deterrence gaps in our system. Where there have been gaps you have the enemy stepping in there. We do not have a robust different defensive capability against our space assets. The more we create an incentive for the enemy to target those vulnerabilities. What i have argued is as you have seen, we dont need to incentivize our adversaries to do what is in their own interests. States act in their interests. China would like to hold the United States at risk so it will. Its up to the United States then to respond by closing that deterrent gap that weve allowed to remain vulnerable because of the abm treaty and then just the lack of policy makers interests in actually moving in that direction. Thats why i think its so important that congress had the prudence and insight to amend that national Missile Defense act to make it clear that should the United States deem it responsible and technologically possible to close the gaps, that were free to do that. A deterrent gap. I must i dont think ive heard that. Maybe i havent been paying attention. Just so you all know and those of you watching at home, the United States has about 5,000 thermal Nuclear Warheads in its active stockpile. Russia has approximately the same, about 4,000 now, weve come down a little bit. Thats enough to destroy human civilization maybe 20, 30 times over. Thats a pretty good deterrent. I dont see any gap in either side. We could easily cut down to a few hundred each and wed still have a robust deterrent. So this deterrent gap is an interesting slogan that i dont think it has any relationship at all to the reality of Nuclear Weapons but on the question of a Missile Defense. This center used to be called the nixon center. Richard nixon believed in deploying a ballistic Missile Defense. He supported the democrat, president johnson when he started deploying a limited Missile Defense in the United States but secretary of state Henry Kissinger understood if you wanted to stop the arms race, both u. S. And russia were racing to deploy thousands of Nuclear Weapons you had to put a cap on defenses because as long as you proliferated defenses the other sides obvious and cheapest and most effective answer was to proliferate offensive weapons. Thats the way you handle a defense. This has been true since castles and catapults. This is the way offensive and defensive work. In 1972 when they wanted to limit the offensive weapons of each side, the strategic arms limitation talk they agreed to the abm treaty, antiBallistic Missile treaty which capped the defenses each side could deploy and that logic held. That logic helped rein in the cold war, and in fact, when neither side, the russia or United States were deploying sensors, in fact, since Ronald Reagans day, when he just not only limited but started cutting Nuclear Weapons, the arsenals have been coming down steadily. There are about 15,000 Nuclear Weapons in the world now. There used to be 66,000. In the World Without Missile Defenses, the numbers have been coming down steadily. That will change if you start deploying defenses. How do we know . Look at south asia. Theres a debate going on about Missile Defense, both the pakistanis and the indians are talking about Missile Defense systems, are negotiating with various u. S. Contractors to help with Missile Defenses. And whats the answer of the other side . We have to build more weapons to overwhelming the defense. So there is a Real Nuclear Arms Race underway in south asia, now its being accelerated by the introduction of Missile Defenses. Its pouring gasoline on the fire. And so this debate has been more not happening because we have not been in a Missile Defense race. Weve just been playing around with these limited defenses, theater defenses. The one place where it is going to flare up is in europe, this socalled european phase of adaptive approach. It was supposed to be aimed at iranian icbm. There is no iranian icbm. The iranian deal has truncated that program, insured there wont be a Nuclear Weapon for at least 15 to 20 years, and yet, the Missile Defense systems we said were aimed at the iranians are still going in and are about to expand. The russians say, see, its about us. Its been about us all along and, in fact, you have some senators who want it to be about russia. They want to put Missile Defenses in europe. You do that and youve just done whats going on in south asia. You will pour gasoline on the fire. You will see the proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in europe once again. Just a couple of factual errors there. The european phase of that approach started by the Obama Administration was not merely to handle an iranian Ballistic Missile. It was to deploy the short range missile and end the program that was unfortunately canceled. But it was aimed at iran. But this point is important. Iranian Ballistic Missiles still exist. Putting aside the wisdom of the iran deals, putting that aside, it did not handle, it did not restrain iranian Ballistic Missiles and even though sanctions still forbid the testing of some of these missiles, the gcpo does not prohibit the testing of Ballistic Missiles. Europe is still at risk currently of short and medium range Ballistic Missiles. The european phase was to deploy short and medium range defenses in the first two phases. Thats what were doing, thats what we committed to our allies. This is not i find it so interesting when hit to kill skeptics continue to say when this is partisan when you have seen the israelis, the japanese, the saudis. You have all of these countries that are looking at the capabilities, the same information that were able to, looking at what theyre able to do, and saying we want these systems. The south koreans, if i didnt say that. Missile defense, this is not a matter of ideology, its just a matter of military requirement regardless of what people say in terms of strategic stability, what we have seen is missiles have exploded worldwide. We are in the middle of a new missile era in terms of quantity and the quality and technical ability of missiles. We have a couple of options. We can actually just choose to remain vulnerable as our adversaries and enemies continue to proliferate and increase the ability of these systems and hold our assets at risks or we can close our gaps. Our military and our allies have chosen to close those gaps. Im optimistic about what this portends for the future. It has never been made to be the end all be all to totally and utterly make all of these missiles unable to target the United States, but it is part of an overall u. S. Strategic posture to complement conventional and nuclear capabilities. Thanks. I have been waiting a long time for such a spirited debate to take place. So i recall that when reagan gave his speech march 20th, 1983 on sdi he did not consult the state department, and like donald trump, just went out and did it on his own. This was a fix of his for decades. The impulse was not to ramp up the arms race. It was, as he put it in his speech, to render Nuclear Weapons impotent and obsolete. Now, in thinking about our debate here, did reagan set the bar too high, in fact, whats wrong with having an imperfect Missile Defense system to strengthen deterrence . Imperfect Missile Defense systems stimulate the offensive so it leads to an arms race that doesnt end an arms race. And this has been true in almost any place you have seen Missile Defenses deployed. This is our response. Look what we do when the soviets started deploying Missile Defenses in the 1960s, because we didnt have hit to Kill Technology, these were nuclear tipped missiles, our response was to proliferate warheads. This is what led to the merging of warheads. Putting multiple ones on one missile to overwhelm the defense. So thats the danger. If you could have a perfect defense as i said in the beginning, i would be in favor of it. And the promise of sdi, the star wars was that it was going to be that perfect. Ronald reagan was misled by Edward Teller who told him that he had back at his lab the proof of concept of what later known as the xray laser, the excalibur experiment that could with one weapon eliminate the entire first wave of ss18 soviet warheads. It could hit thousands of targets in one blast. This, of course, was a fantasy. It was never true. I looked at the xray laser in depth. There was no proof of concept. It like all the other laser and particle beam weapons and speed of Light Weapons turned out to be a fantasy, just militarily impractical, scientifically impractical, economically impractical. But thats why people thought you might be able to do this. It wasnt because they thought we could get better ground based intercepters. Or we could do hit to kill better. That was never the plan. This was always a small tertiary layer of defense in a comprehensive spacebased system. We couldnt build spacebased, and theyre continuing this targo cult they have, thinking that some kind of technology will come out of the sky and protect us from Ballistic Missiles. It is not going to happen. Ground based ballistic Missile Defense is not going to protect you from Ballistic Missiles. It will never be perfect. The only way to eliminate Ballistic Missiles is to eliminate Ballistic Missiles. You have to have treaty that eliminate things before they can be built. I would just say in the real world, countries act in their own interests. Arms control, just based on the evidence, with all of the arms control and counterproliferations we have, counterproliferation efforts we had, some more successful than others, it has not slowed or stopped the proliferation of Ballistic Missiles worldwide. This is just reality. This is not ideology. And because of that, you have to have, again, i have never been a proponent of until we get a perfect system, the goal is a perfect system. I dont think well ever have a perfect system because theres too many Ballistic Missiles worldwide. What i have been advocate for is doing what the military has been doing. Id like them to see more political backing and more backing from policy makers which i actually think is going to happen under the Trump Administration to expand what we have, to build on the progress that we have had. On this spacebased system, i would just say there has been studies done. They did a study on this. And they determined that you could have an initial capability which would be 24 satellites in space, over a 20year life cycle, it would cost about 26 billion. And that would give you the ability to intercept Ballistic Missiles in their boost phase of flight. And that would also provide defense of what what i can say that was in the open source, the unclassified report, which was the only one i read, that it would provide some defense of whats being targeted against our assetst at sea as well. So if you think about those areas you talked about, china specifically, we have areas in which theres no need to anning itinize them. Theyre already doing it. Theres no defense over what china can throw at us in terms of Strategic Missiles and theyre continuing do do that. Theyre continuing to develop their anticarrier capabilities. Theyre continuing to develop their capabilities to target our allies in the pacific and the United States. The United States can allow that to happen or work towards closing the gap. The same with north korea. The North Koreans have not been incentivized to target the United States. That is what is driving their programs. Its not because were creating some sort of destabilizing system. Critics way say the system doesnt work and its destabilizing. How does a system that doesnt work destabilize anything. Its like confronting a policeman with a plastic gun. It doesnt work, but they will respond. One point on this. There has not been an explosion of bulestic missiles in the world. This is not true. There are not more Ballistic Missiles in the world now. There are fewer Ballistic Missiles in the world now than there were in the 1980s. There are fewer countries with Ballistic Missiles. Im not worried about our Ballistic Missiles, the iranian, youre talking about adversary Ballistic Missiles globally it has exploded. It is expanding. No. Im afraid not. Part of the reason is we have fewer adversaries so the people we worried about in the 1980s, a lot of them have been dealt with. Those Ballistic Missiles are a threat, its just not this global threat. When the justification for the european Missile Defense system is now no longer iran, its this list of 30 countries with Ballistic Missiles. You look at the list, almost all of them are our friends or allies. There are a few problem programs we have to deal with. I dont want the iranians to be testing Ballistic Missile. This is their air force. They dont have a very good air force, so this is what they use to threaten saudi arabia and people they think are their adversaries. Lets negotiate with the iran to reduce and constrain their capability. I dont want the North Koreans to have a Ballistic Missile that can threaten the United States. Lets negotiate with the North Koreans to put a cap on their program. We have done so in the past with other nations. We have done so with iran and their nuclear program. This is the only way forward. This is why theres so much emphasis on Missile Defense. Because Missile Defense proponents do not want to have negotiations with these other countries. They do not want to have a deal that would somehow legitimize these other countries. One they dont believe in it and two they would rather have regime change on north korea, regime change on iran. So you have to examine the whole complex of rationals and discussions for this before you buy the myth that theres a Missile Defense system out there or soon could be that could actually protect us. There is not. Im old enough to remember why nixon decided to negotiate about the Missile Defenses. And that was not just because of the terror, not just because of kissinger. You know better than me what was in favor of Missile Defense. It won by one vote in the environment of the street nonwar. Nixon came to a conclusion that you have no choice but to negotiate. It doesnt mean he was wrong. But Political Considerations were at least as important as the deterrence. Let me now go in a totally different direction and agree with you. I think when we are talking about major Strategic Moves, like what were discussing now, beyond technology, its a very major strategic move to change the world power. We should ask ourselves not only where were going to be after our move but where are we going to be after possible and even likely responses. Were not good at that. We are now preoccupied with russian interference in american elections. There is no doubt in my mind that there was russian interference. Some of us were predicting that interference for years. After the United States and the europeans decided to interfere in the russian political process, supporting a position given money to anitputin groups, publicly and privately pressuring putin not to run again. Now i am not in moral symmetry business. And while were not doing what the russians have just done because we were doing it openly, and the russians have done what they have done secretly, and we wanted to promote democracy and the russians wanted to undermine democracy. Having said that, it does not release us from responsibility to think about the likely consequences of the actions. And were now surprised. I have learned about the surprise when i was at the place called casablanca. Where there was a certain captain, as you remember, who was shocked when he discovered there was gambling. I dont want us to be in this situation again. If we decide to proceed with the major problem of improving our Missile Defenses, i think we need to do, joe, what you have suggested. We need a commission, we need a serious conversation. We have to go beyond technology. I would want to hear, for instance, what are we going to do to avoid [ inaudible ] which would be very much against american strategic interests. I was interested in senator cotton making the point that russia, as he put it, is in violation of Bilateral Agreement in spirit and in depth. I dont know what that means. If you have violated an agreement normally you have violated the agreement. Spirit and in depth, its normally our own interpretation, which is not quite a violation. What worried me much more was a statement how it would be to our advantage to get out of this agreement because we would not allow the cubans to have russian Cruise Missiles and we apparently would be able to do it in europe with impunity. Im not sure how the czech ambassador would feel about that, but if i would be concerned because if russia comes to the conclusion that allowing ukraine to go west, to become fully independent, if they would come to a conclusion, that would mean american Cruise Missiles on ukrainian territory, it could change putins cooperation. Let me make one final point. When president obama was elected, there was a Public Opinion poll in russia conducted, and the opposition, and putin was slightly behind president obama. Slightly behind was president obama. Today putin is still close second except now number one is Joseph Stalin and im quite concerned that we can move into a situation where we would be improving our defenses but simultaneously promoting processes, and maybe we come to a conclusion that russia is such an enemy that it doesnt matter anymore what we decide to do or not to do, but at least i think we have to take a very serious strategic conversation about all of that first. Let me comment just quickly, first. One, you want to solve this debate or at least inform your decisions moving forward, you have to have independent commissions looking at the state of technology and the current Missile Defense system. Evaluating the tests for their realism and dependability and give us a baseline of whether we want to go forward with this Defense System or another one that might be better or whatever. Number two, you have if youre going to make Strategic Moves with an adversary, you should at least be trying to have a Strategic Dialogue with that adversary. This is what we did with the cold war. We didnt always agree with the russians then and were not going to now, but we talked with them. There has to be a dialogue going on and i would say thats true of north korea too which is what president moon jaein is going to tell President Trump when he comes to visit later this week. Lets have a dialogue with north korea. And number three, i dont know why, maybe rebeccah can help us. I dont know why senator cotton is getting a little head of himself there, why senator cotton believes that russia needs the treaty more than we do. I believe russia is in violation of this treaty. They are deploying and tested before that a new ground based Cruise Missile which exceeds the ranges perimate permitted by the treaty. This is a violation. Under the agreements we have, we have mechanisms for correcting that violation and pressing to get it corrected. It doesnt mean the treaty is now null and void or we have to abdicate it. We do not want the russians to have free range. To deploy Nuclear Weapons again in europe. We do not want that. We dont need to deploy Nuclear Weapons in europe. We can hit russian targets just fine from the systems we have. We dont need it. They do. That would be a power play for them to intimidate europe. Heres this one last thing on the defensive system, the launch system that we put in romania, that were about to put in poland. These are ejus interceptors, the new version of the ejus interceptors and they use the same launch systems we use on cruisers and destroyers. One of the problems with this is we also launched tomahawk missiles from the launch system. And one of the things the soviet keep complaining about is yes, were putting defensive systems in there now, but how will they know if we start putting offensive systems in . I think theres an answer to that. They say what if you change your mind and you have these launch systems put in place and you can put tomahawk and cruise mistals in there and threaten us with almost no warning time. Flight time would be eight, ten minutes before they hit their target. This is a real problem for us that we have to have a dialogue about. I agree with you. I was not so much talking about that i was talking more about the our own commission. Thank you. I would just say that i would agree with you that we need as a country to devote more time and attention into thinking about deterrence and thinking about, you know, one, two, three steps down what are actions the effects they have because we have moved away. We used to invest a lot of intellectual capital in just thinking about deterrence during the cold war and weve moved away from that. I will say, again, joe keeps talking about how we need to have sart of an objective analysis of the current ability of the system, but we have that. Dot e continues to access and evaluate. They have not been easy to please. They have been very tough and they have once again said that the ground based mid course Defense System does provide the United States the capability to defend against icbms. Without gmd, there would be nothing, so even if it isnt as perfect as we would like it to be, i say we look at the capabilities it has and build on that. It makes no sense to move in the other direction. The other point i would make is again, i dont know how you can say that this is again driven by partisanship or some sort of weird conspiracy to help the defense contractors when you have again Combatant Commanders across administrations and democratic administrations that are not intuitively in favor of it but have been persuaded by both the threat analysis and the briefings on a technical capabilities of the system, to move forward and expand in capabilities in addition to the evidence provided by our allies. You watch what happens with israel and the iron dome Weapon System and you can understand why our japanese and our south korean allies would say we would like to have a capability to not intercept every single weapon that can come our way but to actually, you know, just absorb some of what can happen to us and give the United States the ability to control the escalation a little bit better and hopefully prevent that from happening in the first place. These are calculations that countries are making, looking at the evidence themselves and theyre all coming to the same conclusion that it makes sense to add defensive capabilities in their overall strategic mixes. The last point i would make is just that russia continues to develop its Missile Defense system. This was not something that was just going on in the cold war. They are still are they still have nuclear tipped Missile Defenses. They dont do hit to kill like the United States does and theyre still doing it. You almost never hear from the arms control Community Concern that the russians are going to upset a strategic balance. Its always beating up on ourselves. Again, in a room like this at this place, you would think it doesnt need to be said. Countries are going to act in their own interests and not do anything for you. North korea has determined in its interests to have a nuclear capability. We have tried across administrations to use diplomacy and to pressure the North Koreans to give up their nuclear program. It has not worked. I am in favor of using diplomacy and every other ability that the United States has to try to persuade the North Koreans to give up their nuclear program. That has not worked. It makes no sense to intentionally remain vulnerable when we have a capability however limited it may be to remain to keep the United States vulnerable to north korea homeland icbm when they have not been convinced to get rid of their program. Each regime is going to act in its own interests. They each have Different Things they value and Different Things they would like to hold at risk, so the United States has to take that into account and try to deal with those and arms control simply cannot be the end all be all to handle that problem. Did you have a question . We have icbms which are relatively theyre expensive but not compared to some of these intercepters. Interceptors are expensive and you need more than one, with the possibility to control these, youre going to need two, three, four, five. God knows how many. We dont know. We dont know. Hopefully one. Hopefully we dont have to use it at all because it has a deterrent effect. It missed a couple days ago. Missiles dont hit, right . So anyway, so at some point, i mean, how do we how do we get the cost the ratio of costing us versus costing them to a reasonable level . At some point, if we put up all these missiles, this is going to be a very expensive proposition. How do we get to a point where were not bankrupting ourselves . I think its a great question and a couple points on that, one i think its i think the question we should be asking is how much are we willing to spend to protect the United States population against these missiles. Its not if we get fixated on how much is the defensive interceptor cost verses the offensive interceptor, were going to wind ourselves crazy. If we look at what damage can this interceptor do to the u. S. Economy and to american lives, thats the calculation we look at, what are we willing to spend in order to make sure we close up that gap. Now im going to thats the first question. I would just say that the underlying calculation that youre looking at is actually not the right one. The right one is were talking about defending the u. S. Homeland, how expensive it would be if a missile actually hit the United States, what are we willing to spend to close that capability gap. But there are things that we can do, i am also a fiscal conservative and i believe that the United States has not always done Missile Defense the most Cost Effectively and that is because we start and stop these programs. We start and stop them. We dont have predictable funding streams. One of the things we can do to get the cost down is have predictable funding streams. Invest in and devote predictable resources so our contractors and predict and assess what we need to do. We can keep these lines open rather than constantly firing people and hiring people to get the production lines going again. The other thing we can do is buy more interceptors at once. If you buy only a couple here and there, its going to cost a whole heck of a lot more money. Ifio decide, we have empty space, we have already done the Environmental Impact study, we already have fields laid out, we know where to put the silos but theyre empty and not filled. If we want to put more bullets in the chamber we can. If you buy more at once, each interceptors cost will go down per item. Thats a very smart way to do defense acquisition. Its a very dumb way to continue to stop and start our program. [ inaudible ] i think they should. We can go back and forth and spend all day the overall question we should continue to talk to our allies about investing in their own protection. We are in this administration. I think its doing great work in that regard. We are seeing increases in what our allies are willing to contribute. The polls want Missile Defense and the United States committed to giving it to them. So were going to continue working towards that. And as they can contribute, they should. Final word with joe. Pols dont want Missile Defense. They dont care about Missile Defense. They want american troops. They want a trip wire. They want a commitment that the United States is dependent i see the czech ambassador shaking his head. This is what the europeans want. They want to make sure that theyre going to get the same defense that germany and france get, that there are u. S. Bodies on the line here. And the Missile Defense plan was offered to them under george w. Bush and adapted by president obama and they took it. You could take them out and they would be just as happy. They dont care about the Missile Defense part. Its contractors who care. Thats what theyre interested in. Heres the other secret. The military doesnt care about a national Missile Defense system. This has always been true. Its nice to have, and if you can do it, theyre willing to spend money on it. Let me give you just one brief example. When president clinton came in, after all the debate, he asked the joint chiefs of staff what we should do with the Missile Defense budget. They recommended we cut it to 3. 1 billion. And that two thirds of it should be spent on theater Missile Defense. Thats what the military wants. They want to protect their troops against the short and mediumrange threats. So my proposal for how to handle this is to give the military a vigorous say in the budget. The Defense Budget is not going to go up as much as it needs to to buy all the weapons currently on order. It is not going to happen. Choices have to be made. Historically when the joint chiefs choose, they do not choose Missile Defense, they do not choose nuclear. They choose planes and ships and tanks and weapons they really need. This band the Missile Defense organization which only exists to be an inhouse lobbying shop, for defense contracts on this program, disband that and devolve the system back to the services. Let the navy decide how many interceptors we need. Then youd have the forces that you need to make sure we have a balanced defense and are not being propelled into spending ourself into bankruptcy by a handful of ideologues and defense contractors. All right. I know some of youve been here since 11 30, so i think were going to leave it there. Thank you very much for your time. We appreciate it. Thank you. [ applause ] a house panel will look at access to oil and Gas Development on federal lands. Well hear from state and federal energy officials. This house Natural Resources subcommittee hearing begins thursday at 10 00 a. M. Eastern, live here on cspan3. You can also follow live coverage on cspan. Org and with the cspan radio app. Cspans washington journal live every day. With news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up thursday morning, former new york Lieutenant Governor and donald trump supporter Betsy Mccaughey on Republican Health care efforts. Then Mississippi Republican senator roger wicker discusses the decision to postpone the health care vote, and andy slavic, acting administrator, looks at what the Senates Health Care Administration would mean for medicaid, also Maryland Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen on the senates decision to delay the health care vote. Be sure to watch washington journal thursday morning. Join the discussion. Live sunday at noon eastern, author, journalist, and history professor herb boyd is our guest on in depth. I often draw parallels between detroit and new york in the book. You look at the 1863 draft riotsts, theres a nice contrast, a comparison between what was happening in new york and happening here in detroit. Almost for the same reasons. You know, we talk about the black and Irish Community at each others throats. In terms of jobs and housing. So if you go down to the 1943, in harlem in 1943. You go down to 68th, same kind of thing. Almost for the same conditions that created that. Mr. Boyds books include autobiography of a people, by any means necessary, and black detroit, a peoples history of selfdetermination. The black lawyers, the black doctors, the black laborers could all live right next to each other. And benefit, you know, so the class amalgamation was going on. We could talk about some benefits of segregation, but certainly, that would be one, the opportunity to have contact, you know, with people of another class. And of course, that beginning, the demelding of the black middle class in detroit. Join our live threehour conversation with mr. Boyd with your calls, emails, tweets, and facebook questions live sunday at noon eastern on cspan2. The Senate Intelligence committee took up the nomination of david glowy to serve as undersecretary for intelligence and analysis at the Homeland Security department. He is a former assistant commissioner in the office of intelligence with the u. S. Customs and border protection. The committee is chaired by senator richard burr of north carolina