 Tom Croko, who is setting this up, asked this panel to address sort of the programmatic aspects of homeland defense, national missile defense, looking into the details, the programmatic details of technology and so on. I'm completely unqualified to do that. But nevertheless, I am pleased to have here three experts who presumably are well qualified to look into the programmatic details of this. We have first Mr. Richard Fieldhouse, he's a professional staff member at the Senate Armed Services Committee on the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, currently for a few more days in the majority. And then we also have Rob Sufer, also a member of the Strategic Professional Staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also on the Subcommittee for Strategic Forces currently in the majority for a few more days. Minority? Minority for a few more days. I apologize for that. As a former Democratic staffer on the House Armed Services Committee, I find it hard to say that, but I still will. And then finally, Rebecca Hendricks, who does have a background on the House side. She was the manager for the Missile Defense Caucus, was a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, is now at the George C. Marshall Incident. And we will begin with Richard. Thank you. I'm going to follow the tradition of the previous speakers and use the podium A because that way we can see you all and you can see us. And rather than hiding behind people or not being able to see you, I think it's the polite thing to do. Good morning. It's nice to see a lot of acquaintances and friends in the audience, people I've worked with for a long time. And I'm glad that we pulled this whole morning together because I think it's a great topic to focus on broadly, programatics, you know, Admiral Searing's presentation, policy matters, that sort of question of the future. But before I say anything of substance about Missile Defense, I will start with my go-to caveat, which is that I'm giving my personal views and not speaking on behalf of any member of the committee or the committee itself. Otherwise, I would not be in the majority for a few days. I would be unemployed pretty quickly. So I wanted to dispense with that. I want to start with sort of a question that was dealt with in the policy panel, which is what are the objectives we're trying to achieve with Homeland Defense? What capabilities do we want? I want to make clear that my view is we are really focused on the limited threat from these rogue countries, otherwise known as North Korea and Iran. We, as Congress, have not been trying, and the administration has not been trying to achieve an ability to defend ourselves against every ballistic missile from any nation, Russia, China. And I do not subscribe to that as a notion as to what we should be trying to do. And as to whether we can stay ahead of the threat, I would say we are today. And fortunately, there is no Iranian ICBM deployed. And that may not happen for some time. We don't know. We have a capability today that does provide coverage of the entire United States, including the East Coast. So sometimes a misperceived fact against threats from both North Korea and should they emerge from Iran. So that is in terms of the context. I also want to sort of take a look back as a way to take a look forward. Missile defense is a really hard mission. It's as complex an enterprise in terms of defense technology, planning, coordination, program management, as any in the department, more than most. It spans the world, so you have to be operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, with coordinated inputs in terms of sensors, detection, early warning, preparation to be able to defend. It is a highly complex undertaking. And the technical challenges are immense. I want to underline that because I think while people inherently understand this is kind of hard as rocket science, I think it's actually much harder than rocket science. It's anti rocket science. You're trying to shoot down ballistic missiles or parts of ballistic missiles and you want to be able to tell the difference and that's really hard. And I think part of the challenge that we have had of late is in this program is that we have taken a very high risk approach to the enterprise of homeland missile defense. I'm going to read a couple of phrases from a panel that looked at this question. Quote, the perceived urgency of the need for these systems has led to high levels of risk that have resulted in delayed deployments because of failures in their development test programs. The study group was not surprised to find that accepting higher risk is not accelerating fielded capability. The virtual universal experience of the study group members has been that high technical risk is not likely to accelerate fielded capability. It is far more likely to cause program slips, increased costs, and even program failure. And then the last one is study group heard repeated references to random failures. However, few, if any of these failures were random, a statistical matter. It was caused by poor design, test planning, and pre-flight testing deficiencies, poor fabrication, poor management, and lack of rigorous government oversight. For those of you who have been around the business a long time, you may recognize those as words from the Welch panel. That report was put out in 1998, 16 years ago. And since then, there have been many such panels. General Welch has actually chaired three of them, two since that one, and failure review boards and independent review teams, mission readiness task force done during the Bush administration, because the nature of this program is so complex. And the acquisition approach has been so difficult that we have had to go back again and again and again and look at how to get it right. What do we need to do to get it right? So that's the look back that I wanted to use as a way to look forward. I would say that the current administration and Admiral Searing's program management of this enterprise recognizes the problems we've had with the system and the acquisition approach. He has had a number, he had chartered a failure review board after each of the test failures in GMD. Also had a fleet assessment team looking at the quality, the reliability, sustainability, all of these things across the GBI fleet in GMD. So he has taken advantage of a lot of that technical talent. And I think they've come up with some very good ideas and are working hard to restore engineering discipline and programmatic acquisition rigor that have sort of gone in waves or bumps or worse over many years. And so their focus, which I believe is the right focus, is to fix the current program, make sure it works, and then improve it and improve its capability over time. And what Admiral Searing laid out this morning in the way of a program of record, as we call it on the Hill, is designed to do exactly that. We know about the plan to go to 44 GBI's. We know about the plan to fix the current kill vehicles, CE1's, CE2's, do a redesigned kill vehicle as the next step which will be a very different capability because it won't be saddled with the problems that are inherent in the first two kill vehicles. And also, and I think most importantly, recognizing the need to devote a lot of attention and focus on improving the sensor and discrimination capability of the system. Somebody put it well, not too long ago, saying if you don't know what you're trying to hit, it doesn't really matter how many interceptors you have. It's critical to be able to know what target you're trying to hit. We're never going to have a thousand GBI's, my view, maybe you'll all prove me wrong, nor do I think we would need them. And a big part of the effort at the department is to improve the capability of the system so that you could actually defeat twice as many threats with the existing system. So you're basically doubling its effectiveness, which is a very cost-effective approach, much more so than just buying more GBI's. And before we're going to get into that, we obviously need to make sure they work and are effective. So I would say, and this is sort of maybe heresy to some, but that money has not been the major problem with the program. Technology, acquisition approach, sort of this sense of urgency that led to doing things before they had really demonstrated they were ready to go. So let me wind up with my sort of crystal ball gaze for 10 years into the future as to what we will have, what we are likely to have in the way of homeland ballistic missile defense. I think it is basically the program that Admiral Searing laid out this morning, which is to say 44 GBI's with a caveat. Redesigned kill vehicle, much improved sensor and discrimination capability, the long-range discriminating radar, these tippy-two radars, and just ballistic missile ships playing into that, TULI and filing days and all those things. But getting from here to there over the next 10 years will require focus and discipline on the part of both the administration and Congress, and will also require not getting distracted by all kinds of excursions into things that may sound interesting, but are not core to the capability we're trying to achieve. It's really hard to do this as a matter of policy, as a matter of executive federal sort of cooperation. This is really difficult. This program has changed every year for more than 20 years. The flight test plan for this program changes twice a year, guaranteed. The test plan for this program is designed to be updated every six months because it recognizes the nature of changes that are put out by test results or some other situation, engineering findings, ground testing, and so on. Looking back 10 plus years or more tells me that 10 years from now, if we're lucky and we stay very disciplined and focused, we could have the kinds of capabilities that Admiral Searing talked about, which would be a very significant step up, and I believe would be suitable for the threat that we see coming from North Korea and possibly from Iran. The possibility is if they pursue that, if they actually decide to do that. Thanks very much. Thank you. Now, Rob Sufer of the About to Become a Majority will explain to us how we're going to get distracted in the next 10 years. Right. Thank you. Thank you, Clark. I appreciate it. And like Richard, these remarks are my own unless you don't like what I'm saying, in which case I borrowed them from somebody else. What I'd like to do is suggest, and I challenge you to tell me where I'm wrong on this, but I've been looking at this missile defense issue now for over 30 years, and I can't think of a time in the past where we have so much consensus, so much harmony on what it is we need to do. Now, whether this is a heartfelt consensus amongst all the actors, Republicans, Democrats, the administration and Congress, or whether it's a necessity of choice, I'm not exactly sure. But let me kind of describe the box, the consensus box in which we're in, just to provide some context. And I think that this consensus box creates the area of action on both sides, those who are both in favor of missile defense and those who are opposed to missile defense. So, for instance, on the threat, that's one side of the house. And I think that the threat to the United States is becoming more complex and greater in number. Don't take my word for it. You know, when President Obama decided to get rid of the 10 GBIs in Poland, which was meant to provide additional defense for the U.S., he could have canceled the deployment of Phase 4 of the EPA, which was the 2B missile in Poland meant to defend the United States, because the administration realized that there was a potential growing threat from Iran to the United States that couldn't be handled just from Ford Greeley or from Vandenberg. Then, when the administration canceled the 2B program, partly at the prompting of Congress, to be fair, but Secretary Hagel added the 14 GBIs to Ford Greeley in order to address not only the North Korean threat, but a potential Iranian threat. So, the point is, the threat is there, it's emerging, it's becoming more complex. And I think that the critics of missile defense on the Hill find it unavoidable when the administration makes that case. So, in terms of the other area that sort of bounds this is strategy. I think everybody, not everybody, but most people on Capitol Hill, certainly the defense committees, understand how homeland missile defense fits into our national strategy. And I think Admiral Searing explained it, Jim Miller explained it. You have to provide protection of the United States if you're going to continue a couple of your defense with those of your allies, sometimes referred to as extended deterrents. The United States is perceived as vulnerable to North Korean or Iranian nuclear threats. How reliable is our nuclear umbrella? How reliable is our commitment? And I think that's well understood by most people on Capitol Hill. And so, the requirement to defend against North Korea, to defend against Iran, to strengthen our extended deterrents is irrefutable. And what's going on with the nuclear negotiations with Iran makes people very antsy because it may be unlikely that we can stop Iran from developing nuclear capability, in which case their ballistic missiles or potential long range ballistic missiles become that much more dangerous to the United States. So we have the threat, we have the strategy. The other part of the box is technology. I think Richard pointed out rightly that this is difficult to do. We've had some stumbles. The system is not as reliable and robust as it needs to be. And there are many reasons why. But I would point out that as Admiral Searing mentioned in his presentation, when we started this deployment back in 2004, it was always meant to be an initial capability that would then be improved over the years. And so we're in the process now of improving this over the years. The problem has been over the last five or six years, we've taken our eye off the ball. And we haven't devoted the resources and the attention necessary to take an initial capability and evolve it into a more robust operational system. And I'll just point out that in 2009, the administration reduced funding for GMD by about $1.6 billion. They said that they were going to curtail GMD development and investments. Funding in GMD declined from about $2 billion spent in FY 2008 to just over $1 billion a year from 2010 to 2015, even though I think we understood that there were some reliability problems that were manifested in the poor testing record. If you look at just the GMD research and development, and that's the part of the budget that would improve the system as opposed to the part that sustains it, the R&D funding declined from $1.4 billion in 2008 to $761 million in 2014 and was to be as low as $509 million by 2019. So the amount of funding that would be necessary to evolve the system and improve the system was going down as well. That number is coming back up thanks to Admiral Searing and the administration's efforts. But the point is over the last five or six years, there hasn't been enough money to fix the EKV and to evolve the system over time. There just isn't enough money and that's why we're in the situation we're in today. And also it turns out that the cost to fix the EKV has been greater than what the administration anticipated. According to GAO, this has increased from about $236 million to fix the problem with the CE1 and CE2 to over $1.3 billion. The good news again is on Capitol Hill, I think there's a lot of support to fix this thing and to get it right. In fact, the administration proposed about $160 million in reprogramming in FY14 specifically for the GMD program that was approved by all four defense committees. And in this recent appropriations bill, the ominous bill, Congress added another $50 million for the GMD program. So again, a strong commitment to support the modernization of the GMD system even while there's also a recognition that the system is not as reliable as we had hoped it would be. But still reliable enough to stay ahead of the threat, a point that I agree with Jim Miller on. The other box here is the funding box. So we've got the technology problem. Everybody understands that we're not where we are where we need to be to make the system work. And I'm pointing out that the funding has been going down. So the only way to fix this system or to expand the system is to add funding. And yet even amongst the supporters of missile defense, which are primarily or tend to be the Republicans on Capitol Hill, you have this battle between the fiscally conservative Republicans and the defense hawks. Well, some would want to add additional funding from missile defense. It would have to come out of another part of the budget. Given where we are with the sequester and funding constraints, it's very difficult. So the supporters of missile defense are boxed in as well. And so while they would, for instance, advocate for an East Coast missile defense side, and I can explain the reason why it would be helpful, there's just no funding there. They can't. And also because they recognize the technological shortcomings, they agree, I think, that we need to get on with improving the current system first. So this is the context in which we're operating. Both opponents and critics find themselves, they can't reduce what we're doing on missile defense, and they can't seem to push it forward either because of the funding constraints and because of the emergence of the threat. So having said that, and to make this short, let me just talk about five key issues that I think we're going to have to wrestle with this coming year. As Admiral Steering pointed out, we're going to be upgrading the CE1 and CE2 warheads. There are about 20 CE1s on the current fleet, and there'll be about 20 CE2s. That's going to evolve into the reliable kill vehicle, which will start to, or the redesigned kill vehicle, which will start to come online around 2020, and then eventually perhaps move to a multiple kill vehicle in the future. You've heard that spoken about here. But the problem is, is there enough funding in the budget to do all of that? And it raises some interesting questions. Do you want to, if you're going to upgrade the CE1s and the CE2s, why do you need to move to the redesigned kill vehicle? Why not move right to the multiple kill vehicle? And there's arguments for and against it on both sides. So for instance, the argument to do it in this way, the way the administration wants to do it, is because this is the technologically least risky way of doing it. You just don't know if the MKV approach will work. You don't know how technologically risky it's going to be. And so it makes sense to do the redesigned kill vehicle, make the system more reliable while you're working on the multiple kill vehicle. So for instance, if you have problems with the MKV, you don't deploy the system until 2030. You want to make sure that you have something to replace the CE1s and the CE2s, which are already getting long in the tooth. So in terms of an acquisition approach, pursuing the course we're pursuing now makes perfect sense. The risk is while in 2020 you will end up with a very reliable GMD system, the question is will it be obsolete? So that gets back to the question of the threat. What's the threat going to look like in 2020 to 2025? Will the RKV be able to address that or do you really need the MKV? I'm not sure what the answer is, but it's something that's worth looking at. On the third site, the East Coast Missile Defense Site, again I don't think the funding's there. We've got everything in place to move out quickly once Iran tests an ICBM. The only thing that would be useful earlier rather than later is to get a radar to support the East Coast. You heard Adam was starting to talk about this long range of discriminating radar, which they plan to deploy in Alaska to address the threat from North Korea to improve discrimination. Well, that's good for a threat against North Korea. It should be good for the threat against Iran. And of course that's not as expensive as deploying a full-on site. There's some things you could do in the interim, take that space base, I'm sorry, the sea base expand radar, sail out over to the East Coast. Now you have a East Coast radar. So there are things you can do or you could build a new radar and so we're going to have to, I think, spend some time and look at that. If you're talking about the fence of the homeland, let's not forget Hawaii. And I think it's probably a little difficult to defend Hawaii using the ground-based interceptors. Hawaii does have a prototype Aegis Assure site that they're testing. This is the same site that will go into Poland and Romania. Maybe it makes sense to try to upgrade that system to make it operational, to provide additional defense of Hawaii, which is part of the homeland. Then the other part that's missing here is looking at advanced technologies or perhaps more cost-effective ways of doing homeland missile defense. I'm not sure whether, you know, the administration is, and you heard Admiral Searing explain why they're not looking at sea-based missile defenses or FADs or Aegis Assure sites to defend the United States, but I think it may be worth looking at that and as well as looking at potential other technologies that might be helpful to defend the United States, which may include some boost-based defense, as Michael Hanlon mentioned. And finally, the other issue that I think is worth looking at is something that was raised in the policy committee and that is how limited is limited. And as I think the time you pointed out, the Missile Defense Act of 1999 said, you've got to address accidental launchers. You've got to address unauthorized limited launchers. And that could include Chinese threats. That could include Russian threats. Some other countries are going to sea with submarine launch ballistic missiles. So the potential for an accidental or unauthorized launch is there and we need to figure out how to address that. And part of the approach is a technological approach to make sure what we build now is capable against that, but there may be other things that we can do as well. So I'm going to stop there. Thank you. Thank you. Hi. So good to be here. Just want to thank CSIS for the invitation and it's a great privilege to be on a panel with these two gentlemen who really, they put together the bills for us. So they're eminently qualified to talk about this. So it's good to be here with them. What I want to do is kind of fill in the gaps a little bit, kind of go through some of the details about how we got where we are and then I can kind of show where I agree or maybe disagree with my colleagues on the panel. Since GMD's initial deployment in 2004, military operators have expressed their confidence in the system's ability to handle the contemporary limited threats from rogue states like North Korea and Iran. But of course, North Korea and Iran didn't have an operational capability to launch an ICBM, so that's important to keep in mind. But in 2013, North Korea's long-range missile program gave the Obama administration generally not favorable to expanding or improving homeland missile defense. It gave them cause for concern about the vulnerability of the U.S. homeland. Well, what was going on? Vice Chairman of the J.C.F. Admiral Winnefeld stated in March of 2013, quote, we believe the KN08, the long-range missile from North Korea probably does have the range to hit the United States homeland, end quote. The same month Secretary Hagel announced that the administration would be what they called expanding homeland missile defense and that would include 14 additional GBI's before Greeley and then he also, oh, to be deployed by 2017, the end of 2017. And then he acknowledged that Congress had also mandated that they take a look at a third homeland missile defense site on the east coast and that they would be looking at that. In addition to emplacing 14 more GBI's and the potential of a third homeland missile defense site, the President's budget included $99.5 million in the FY15 budget for the redesign of the EKV, which as we just learned that the, both the authorizing bill and the appropriations bill did support that funding for that. So as Rob said, there is some bipartisan and bicameral support on improving this particular element of the GMD system. And then this new replacement promises to improve the reliability of the kill vehicles, which as Richard said, you know, if you improve the quality of the system, then you don't have to improve the quantity of the system so much. But I would argue that until the quality is up to par, you do need to increase the quantity. Now these new kill vehicles would take advantage of modern technology. The current kill vehicles are based on 1990s technology and Rob said they were supposed to be a prototype when they initially deployed in 2004. So they are long overdue for needed improvement. And the MDA plans to flight test the new kill vehicle in FY18. And since the announcement at every congressional hearing related to missile defense, administration officials have claimed credit for expanding GMD. And when critics question that as Rob brought up the cuts, you know, there's a disagreement with my colleagues between, you know, what's that fault? Is it really funding that's to blame? And critics of the cuts to missile defense would then say, well, isn't some of the problem due to the fact that we continue to decrease funding for the program. And as Under Secretary Mylon Creighton explained, she said that technically, that she blamed those cuts to the overall BMDS, to cuts to technically more challenging programs than what they had actually thought they would be. In other words, it's airborne laser, it's MKV, it's the space testbed, those are the types of programs that are to blame for the SM32B for cutting the overall top line, and it really wasn't to the meat of the program. But that's just not true. Although those programs were cut, some of them actually did prove an initial technical capability like the airborne laser program actually had a successful test right before it was cut, but also the GMD system, the backbone of the BMDS architecture was significantly cut and continues to be cut. As Rob stated, there was an initial big cut in 2009, and then by 2012 the budget was halved for GMD. Under the Bush plans, the GMD system would have been constantly improved. It was never supposed to remain the prototype that it is. In quantity, you know, the Bush administration had already planned to deploy the 14 GBI's, and now the administration is taking credit for deploying as an expansion, but those are already supposed to be in place. A third site in Poland was already supposed to be there, 10 GBI's, that brings the total up to 54, and then there's supposed to be quality improvements to the system and discrimination, et cetera. So those cuts, those enormous cuts up to a billion dollars per year really touched all aspects of the GMD program. It wasn't just the cancellation of the third site in Poland. So when the administration points to program cancellations such as ABL and the 2B, those were significant cuts to the over-top line, but it's just not true that that's where the cuts simply were. So GMD has suffered significantly under this administration long before the effects of the Budget Control Act I would add. So though I agree with Rob that there is, we are under some additional fiscal constraints this year, I can see that we've had cuts before the Budget Control Act before sequester, so sequester certainly isn't solving the problem, it's adding to the problem, but these cuts were policy decisions, I would argue, in regards to Homeland Defense. Meanwhile, the threat continued to materialize. So Admiral Locklear said earlier this year in a press conference about Pyongyang's KN08 that fielding missile defense would quote, based on this threat, against now emerging road mobile systems that can threaten our homeland will be a priority guaranteed, end quote. So I don't think that this administration had planned on expanding GMD when it came into office, but the threat is really driving even this reluctant administration to do so, which I think is really to blame for some of the bipartisan support that we have, the support that we do have, I think it's because of the threat in what North Korea has been doing. So where do we go from here? First, I do think that the underlying problem is one of support. So where I think that support has improved over the years, I agree with Rob that it's the best we've ever have been. I would say it needs to be a lot better. Policymakers must be dedicated to the mission of GMD. Homeland defense is a priority. Everybody says it's a priority, but then we need to actually see it in the budget. I mean, if you look at how much money we've spent on regional defense versus how much we've spent on homeland defense, you can see that the priority has been on regional defense versus homeland defense. So if it really is homeland defense, we really need to see that in the budget. The program does need to have the oversight and accountability that it needs without constantly cutting funds and altering the direction of the program. The support has to come from the White House and from the Congress. And I would actually disagree, too, a little bit on kind of where we are with the disagreement within the Republicans. The Republicans just took over the Senate. They've got control of the House. So what is this Congress now controlled by Republicans going to be like? Before the election, I would say, you know, I was concerned about the fiscal hawks kind of taking reins and taking the Republican Party a little bit of a different direction. But if you look at the elections that happened in the House for the chairman of the committees that are going to be deciding these, making these decisions, and also for the Republican Study Committee, which does have a large influence over what happens in the House among Republicans, you can see that they went with the traditional more hawkish leaders for those particular committees. They did not go with the more libertarian members who were arguing for a decrease in cutting funds. So I'm optimistic. That missile defense is going to do much better under this Congress than it has been doing in the previous years. So that is one of support. I would say it's also necessary to note that even the missed intercepts that the GMD system has had were not wasted tests and were not wasted tax dollars. And much to the frustration of many of these missed intercepts the problem behind them was as Richard pointed out it was not because of the underlying technology. It was not problems with the hit to kill technology. The problems were actually due to manufacturing problems, due to human error, just due to missed things before the tests which is incredibly frustrating. But for me, rather than looking at that and saying, oh my word, this system is just so complicated it can't be done, I'm actually very optimistic because it shows that the technology is not fundamentally flawed. And that if we can kind of, you know, again, a lot of these systems are based on 1990s technology so they're far more complicated and we can actually move to more modular open architecture or kill vehicle and possibly we can avoid some of these problems that we've had with the previous tests. So after several failures MDA did go on to successfully intercept a target on June 22nd completing the most complicated tests to date. That's a big deal. And so I think, you know, we can beat up on the program for its missed tests but if the most recent one was a success and it was more complicated than all the other ones that were failures, this is a very encouraging thing. Also the concept of fly before you buy has broad support. But this concept must not be abused. In other words, I would just point out that policymakers have to understand that given the nature of the program and the way to test the program, operational and realistic testing will not look the same for GMD as it does for smaller weapons systems. So if we say we want to fly before we buy but then that means we're just going to continue to test it until everybody's satisfied before we buy the system before we deploy it, that's no good. That's just holding the program back and not allowing it to move forward. Second point, the top line has to increase and GMD must receive sufficient funds for basic maintenance and sustainment where I would disagree with Richard. It's difficult for me to see how anybody can argue that the significant cuts to GMD has not affected the program. This administration and under Admiral Searing who's doing a wonderful job running the program, they're asking the system to do a lot more than it ever has been asked to do. And at the same time, they are cutting the funds. That's just basic math. You're asking it to improve its kill vehicle, you're asking it to test better to have these successful tests, you want to increase discrimination. Now all of these things that should have already been done at the same time, you're cutting funds. So, you know, just like anything else, if you ask it to do more and you're giving it less, it's going to strain the program. And I just don't think that's acceptable given the threat. Third, the third CONUS site must move from talk to reality. We continue to talk about it. Secretary of Defense announced whenever we needed to increase the GMD program based on the KNO8 development that we will continue to look at it, but it's kind of getting to the point now. We've been looking at it for a long time. The threat continues to increase. I do not think it's a significant problem to deploy additional interceptors even as we improve the kill vehicle because we can always go back and retrofit and improve the kill vehicles once they're already deployed. And again, as I said, if there's a problem with the reliability of the current GBI's by increasing the number of GBI's, you're actually increasing the reliability of the system overall. And so I think in the meantime I think that's a good way to go even as we improve the reliability of each individual ground-based interceptor. As a northern commander Jacobi said a third site does provide him what merely additional GBI's in Alaska and California simply cannot. And that's the I'll just quote him here. He says, what a third site gives me, whether it's on the east coast or in an alternate location, would be an increase in battle space. That means increased opportunity for me to engage threats from either Iran or North Korea. So this is from an operator's standpoint that it would actually increase his ability to defend the U.S. homeland. This is something that, of course, the previous administration had agreed on, which is why the third site in Poland was necessary and as Rob pointed out, this administration even agreed on that because when they canceled the third site in Poland they didn't just leave nothing there to bolster the homeland. That's what the 2B was for. The SM3 2B was there to provide additional coverage of the U.S. homeland. So now that the 2B has been canceled and now we're still thinking about a third site, I mean, I think it's, we've been thinking long enough and it's time to actually get moving on that. And Congress, there's broad support in Congress, I think, for a third site. And I think if the right arguments can be made now given the new Congress and as we educate new members I think that the support will increase. But Admiral Searing has pointed out in hearings that environmental impact study needs to follow once that third site has been picked and that could mean 18 to 24 months of an environmental impact study which I think is just bureaucracy and I think that the threat is really there and we're really serious about it. We can we can waive that and get moving even if it just means site preparation and getting ready before the GBI is ready to be put in the ground. So in conclusion the current rate, even if we are able to ensure the GMC system performs more reliably, if we don't significantly increase its capability both in quality and in quantity in a timely fashion, it could still as Rob pointed out and Senator Inhofe has pointed out multiple times, the system could still become obsolete. So we're at the danger here in the danger of actually making sure the system is currently very reliable while the threats continue to increase and then the system isn't even ready to handle the constantly evolving threats from North Korea and then possibly Iran. So even with these significant improvements, and some of them are, that the Obama administration has proposed if all goes planned, it still might not catch up the system to where it should have been already. Thank you I'd take the chairman's prerogative, even an uneducated chairman's prerogative and ask one sort of basic characterization. I was fascinated Rob by your developing a consensus box where you thought that there might be growing coherence on a number of different propositions within it, but then I saw you say, well a couple of those boxes are inadequate funding and then you listed five issues you thought had to be addressed, which certainly seemed to indicate that it may be a consensus but it's an inadequate program around which a consensus may be forming and then I listened to Rebecca come back with a characterization that really represents a very different kind of program that Richard was talking about at the beginning and when I first when I was in the Air Force working space issues, I came up with a sort of an oxymoron of fully funded and adequate programs to describe the way the Air Force approached the space program and it strikes me that in this case it's even worse because we might have a barely adequate funding for an adequate program or really insufficient funding for an adequate program now would you agree that that's sort of what we're at now is that it doesn't matter whether you're focused on as Richard said, narrow focus no distractors got to make what works happen here and you're saying inadequate program but if you try to address the kinds of things that you think need to be addressed in order to have an adequate program you have really inadequate funding for that would anyone disagree with that characterization Richard go ahead so a lot of the discussion about this severe draconian deep cuts for GMD I would take substantial issue with that and take probably an hour to have a good discussion about what's actually happened year by year and what are the inputs and what are the outputs and so on remember this is a program which for a period of years had not been able to show successful test results of systems that we had bought and deployed and a lot of effort has gone into that and the clear priority was to fix the system and so the idea of marching down and buying a lot more of the same thing before we have demonstrated that we've got that system fixed does not seem to me to make a lot of sense the broader perspective on that Clark is that the program that has been put together now by the Defense Department Admiral Searing briefed you all on this morning is a program that is intended very carefully to put into the program the acquisition rigor the systems engineering rigor the testing rigor all the things that this program needs and that program is funded there are some things that have not been adequately funded but I would argue and Rob and I have this discussion a lot the focus had to be fixing the system and we have focused on that and demonstrated in a flight test in June a correction to the CE2 kill vehicle and now we as Rob said we approved additional funding earlier this year for FY14 to improve such things as surveillance testing maintainability a lot of that though is going to go to improving the kill vehicles we have a lot of work to do because of where we've been and so we have to be careful not to change focus and so I would argue the program that Admiral Searing presented today is the consensus box that you're finding Congress in right now we've approved the budget request for all that work we mandated that there needs to be a long-range discriminating radar we also said there needs to be a capability to put a radar in the Atlantic if the Iranian missile threat emerges there's no disagreement on that we want a redesigned kill vehicle we've supported that we want the common kill vehicle technology program this is where Congress is in extraordinary agreement so the current program of record you would contend is adequately funded and is an inadequate program to address the threat is that something that you would agree with as you know risk is a factor I would suggest that the current program the consensus box I think it is adequately funded but there are some risks you can buy down technological risk by increasing funding so for instance one of the risks might be again as I pointed out you get to 2020 you've upgraded the CE1 the CE2 you're starting to deploy this RKV but if the threat advances quicker than you anticipate then again you may be sort of running in place I use was a reliable but potentially obsolete system so there's some risks involved but we take risk across the entire panoply of the Department of Defense program this is probably no different if we can find additional funding to expand that box I indicated where I would do that I would you know additional funding for the radar for the east coast site which is not inconsistent with what everybody says that we need anyway and it's a step short in the actual site itself the interceptor site so there are things that you can do bolstering the defense of Hawaii again not a very expensive thing to do but consistent with trying to protect the United States and Rebecca you would be moving further to supplement the program beyond that I agree that we're doing a lot of things well now I think it's late and I think that we should have had done six years ago so we're still playing catch up while the threat continues to evolve what I think we saw when Secretary Hagel gave the announcement that we would be canceling the 2B and then now increasing the number of GBI's in Alaska you kind of sense some desperation that they're nervous about this mobile system that North Korea has I think we can get into a danger looking at the program so long looking at the numbers so long that we kind of get satisfied with smaller top lines and then kind of nitpicking on what needs to improve here and there but I think you need to take a step back and realize what is the system supposed to do we need a homeland missile defense system because we're not sure how fast and how successful the North Korean road mobile missile system can be and so these mobile systems are dangerous because they can roll them out quickly and then we have shortened amount of reaction time to decide what we want to do and with a shortened amount of reaction time we might not be able to preemptively take care of the ICBM before it's launched and especially given the nature of the erratic regime we might not know what they're planning on doing which is why there's an increased pressure on the need for a robust missile defense system and so I think that if we look at the threat I think that there does need to be an increased sense of urgency in making sure the system is right before we actually even get to the point where we're satisfied with qualitative improvements we do need to increase the quantity of the system and that takes money Alright take some questions right here Hi Tom Collina Plash is fun thanks to all of you for being here my question goes to the proposed east coast site and all three of you had varying different opinions on whether we need it and if so when my question is the Republican majority coming into the Senate and Rob congratulations on that is this will we see a dramatic shift in the outcome on the east coast site going forward or because of budget constraints and because we haven't really seen in Iran and ICBM are we pretty much even though we're getting this political shift we're going to be sort of in the same status quo of study it for now so just your thoughts on that thank you Tom my guess is that it's going to be similar to what happened over the last couple of years the House will push for funding the east coast missile defense site to actually begin earlier construction and the like and I think in the Senate at the end of the day I predict that the best that we're going to be able to do and I'm just just my own personal view I don't know where my members are I think if we can get additional funding for that radar the east coast radar to improve the discrimination capability of the capability we have today that will help us against Iran we are spring loaded to be able to deploy a site as soon as the threat from Iran becomes more apparent my gosh I mean two years to do an environmental impact statement to find out where we're going to deploy the system you know three years to deploy we fought World War 1 World War 2 in four years certainly we can deploy a system to stay ahead of the Iranian threat Peter I'm sorry if I could just add a perspective I don't want to disagree with Rob's perspective he obviously has a better sense for what the incoming majority members of our committee will think and I think I happen to agree that our committee has taken the view which has become the view of the final enacted defense authorization bill for a couple of years that is more important to improve the sensor and discrimination capability of the system writ large so that it can do more and better with what we have today than to proceed with an east coast site call it east coast some of its under consideration is not right on the beach and that that determination really will depend on the threat evolution from Iran it's a very expensive undertaking this is a multi-million probably four billion dollar ballpark effort and because that is not budgeted if you say you must do it by a date which is the worst part mandating dates is a terrible thing to do from a programmatic standpoint but if you if congress were to mandate you do this it has to come up with the money from somewhere and nobody has really solved that problem and we haven't been talking about regional missile defense but I want to remind you the regional missile threat is expanding very quickly and our regional combatant commanders have very significant needs for increased missile defense capabilities and we're not producing them at the level that meets those needs so this has not been part of the discussion but when you talk missile defense the regional missile defense component is urgent you know that you talk about the Iranian missile threat it's going big time North Korea they're pumping these things out and our regional combatant commanders know it and they have to have the responsibility to be able to handle that so we can't just say yeah let's just take money out of the regional missile capabilities you know you don't want to lose sight of that but so the money really matters if you're going to push for something that's going to cost four billion dollars where does that money come from and by the way on that regional point the money to improve homeland missile defense is coming out of regional missile defense so they're slowing down SM3s and FADs okay it's a fact of life and you know if you want to debate it I mean I think homeland missile defense comes first and foremost but if you want to do what the other side wants to do and you know there was an emphasis on regional missile defense at the very outset of the Obama administration the fact that these countries are deploying the shorter range systems if you want to keep spending money on that you got to increase the top line of the missile defense program did you want to add anything to that I just agree with what Rob just said it's only a fact of life because that's what we've made it we can yes we are under tougher fiscal constraints but there's still a lot of money in the defense budget if we wanted to be serious about missile defense we wanted to be serious about getting homeland defense right we could increase the top line and I'm optimistic that it could happen in the next couple of years Peter Hi Peter, you see with the Air Force Association this is for all three members of the panel would you address whether you think a threat from the ocean either freighter born or submarine born of missiles of whatever range you think is a threat and if you think it's a threat that we ought to look at and defend the homeland begin to think about defending the homeland from such a threat Peter, I think the way I would put this in context is given what we know North Korea is doing with ballistic missile technology they literally put these things out on parades so we're sure to know about them that is a much more tangible and significant threat and yes it's technically possible for countries to put various types of missiles on sea going vessels barges, ships, etc that is not what we see North Korea doing as its main line of effort and so I basically take the perspective that we need to keep the focus on defending against long range ballistic missiles from countries like North Korea and Iran we have though thought and there is thinking I don't mean just we congressional staff we the Department of Defense administration about the kinds of capabilities you would need against a shorter range sea launched missile and this sort of thing just ballistic missile defense is pretty darn good and a system like that but I don't think we're at the point where we feel compelled to start deploying those systems to defend against a threat that we don't see really manifesting itself or becoming as serious as what we face with North Korea I'm a little more worried than Richard is about the threat but I'm not sure how you would see that the other side is doing it they have a mobile launcher that they could put into a container ship and so I'm not sure you'd be able to know in time but again I get back to this affordability problem and this is a risk Clark that we have to I think assume because we have so many other things that we need to do and that's my problem even though I am concerned about and if you deploy and you just a shore site in Romania and Poland why not one for the East Coast why not one for Florida to defend against the Gulf of Mexico if you have the funds you can do it Rebecca last comment I would agree with Rob on that last point I mean I think you just assure is a system that I have heard individuals talk about that would be a workable solution in response to that kind of threat that you're talking about Peter but we just have to get serious about doing it recognize that this is a plausible threat if it is a plausible threat based on the intelligence that we do have and then go ahead and move forward on that I'm concerned at this point about the threat from a long-range missile coming from North Korea if you join me in thanking our panelists Tom would you have a last real quick thank all six panelists today and thank you Clark for moderating we'll be doing more of these things and we'll be doing a report on Homeland Missile Defense in particular and I hope to be talking with you folks about that so thank you