Transcripts For CSPAN Reps. 20240705

On behalf of csi, i would like to welcome everyone both in person and online for a great discussion on what has become an important component of the department of defenses defense planning, their larger role of Missile Defenses. As the pentagons recent National Defense strategy, the classified version noted, missiles he become a principal means by which adversaries seek to protect conventional or nuclear power. And as such missiledefense is a core deterrence by denial component of how we contend with adversaries. We are her today to mark the 40 th anniversary of rona reagans speech announcing the strategic defense initiative. That speech, which was in march of 1983, came just a few weeks after his evil empire speech, which was march 9. They were all coordinated towards the larger strategic goal of winning and bringing an end to the cold war. One of the most recent books that i wrote was on president reagans Covert Action Program to provide assistance solidarity. I had the opportunity to talk to a number of folks within that administration and to spend several monthsverall in the reagan library, going through National Security council discussions. One of the things i always found helpful about the way he looked at the broader situation that the u. S. Was in at the time was this was a struggle between democratic governments, including the u. S. , not always perfect, but it was a relatively clear competition between that democratic u. S. And its allies and a communist and authoritarian soviet union. There clearly are parallels to the situation we find yourselves in today. We are pleased that todays conference is being hosted by the Ronald Reagan institute. You will hear from several representatives of that later today, including the director of the institute. The title of todays conference is missiledefense at 40. There were obviously a number of missiledefense efforts that proceeded the 1980s, going back to at the very least the 1940s, but what reagans speech would inaugurate is the broader institutionalization of what we call the missiledefense enterprise. It brought together various components of research, development, testing efforts from across the services, under one roof called the strategic defense initiative, and gave them a new purpose. A lot has transpired since that time. We will cover all of that today, at least a chunk of it. We will begin with a panel on congressional perspectives, then turned to scholars, practitioners and alums. We will finally conclude this broader discussion with an industryanel looking at what has changed and what kind of challenges they face today. Each of these panels is designed both to look forward but also to look backward, so be retrospective and prospective. Thank you l for coming, again, both virtually and in person. I will turn you over to the director of the missiledefense project here at the center for Strategic International studies, who together with his fantastic team on the missiledefense project putogether todays conferencend who is going to moderate our first panel. I will turn this over to you. Thank you very much. Thanks everybody for being here in person, online. We will get started with our first sets of congressional perspectives. We are honored to have both the chair and Ranking Member of the Armed Services subcommittee. We will jump right in. I was hoping you all might start off by telling us how you think about the missiledefense landscape today. How do you think about it on capitol hill and more broadly . In some respects, looking back, what has been the legacy of the past four decades of all these efforts . It is always good to be here with my counterparts on this important subcommittee. It is great to be with you and everyone here. Nald reagan articulated a vision that some derived of the time as star wars and scoffed at it. 40 years has made a huge difference. We do have the missiledefense in place against rogue countries or accidental lunches. It was never intended to deter a near peer adversary. That would be destabilizing attempts to do that. We dont go there. For these other threats, which when you look at iran and north korea and the kinds of things they say, are very real threats. Since we have multiple interceptors, multiple shots at the same thread if necessary, i feel we have a robust defense today. There are things on the horizon that we need to be giving attention to, Funding Research and development and making progress on, such as the hypersonic threat. Russia talks about it a lot and they may have more primitive capabilities, but china is the pacing threat when it comes to hypersonics. I think we will talk about that later. Thank you very much f having me and it is an honor to be here with the audience. We are a great person to work with. He has been on the subcommittee longer than i have. There is an awful lot of important work we need to do. Let me start by making two quick points. Missiledefense is pretty remarkable we think about the physics of what we are trying to do. A ballistic missi going up to 15,000 Miles Per Hour, an interceptor that can go up to almost 25,000 Miles Per Hour. You are try to hit a bullet going 15,000 Miles Per Hour and it actually works sometimes. That is amazing. The science, the Technology Behind this is pretty incredible. The second broad point i would like to make is there is a lot of bipartisan agreement on our strategy and what we are trying to do. That is something that bipartisan consensus is something doug and i work hard to find. It is important not only in this divided washington today for a lot of reasons, but because this is fundamentally about National Security, strategic stability. If we get this wrong, its about the future of the human race because a Nuclear Holocaust could result from getting this whole thing wrong. The fact that we can agree on a lot is important. Doug touched on this already, but i think of five different vels of missiledefense. There is the strategic level, lets call that number five, where you can use missiledefense to stop a near peer adversary. We dont do that. We are not trained to stop russia or china. We have mutually assured destruction as are determined as our deterrents in that realm. Next is a defense against a rogue nation. We dont know, iran and north korea primarily right now, but there could be other nations down the road. There is a lot of bipartisan agreement, that is where we are focused on missiledefense. The third level, you could say it is nuanced, but it is the accidental launch, something we dont anticipate, but russia calls us and says we have a problem, we accidentally shot a missile, we hope you can shoot it down. Level two is theater level missile events. This is not antiBallistic Missile stuff, but all the things you see going on in ukraine today. That is lowerlevel, tactical level. It is not destabilizing to the strategic situation that we are able to shoot down iranian drones or whatever else. As a veteran of the middle east, that is important. The ground level is just understanding what is going on, being able to detect hypersonics when they are coming in, it is just the eyes and ears that are critical for Missile Defense. The point is you have all these Different Levels and there is agreement that bipartisan agreement about where we are focused, but also where we are not. I think reagans initial vision was this would stop a soviet assault. We have all agreed that is not realistic, so we are not going to try. It is a Remarkable Technology and there is a lot of bipartisan consensus on how it is being used. We still have a lot of work to do. Lots of stuff tabled there. Hopefully we will work through some of those. Both of you mentioned in your opening comments the homeland, Ballistic Missile defense, or icbms, the grandchild of sdi. It was two years ago yesterday that they went forward with the acquisition of the next generation of interceptor. After the cancellation and things like that, anxiety about that, noise made with the schedule for that. I am wondering how you are thinking about the capability and the schedule of that biggest progm the missiledefense agency is working on right now. My best understanding is we are on a current timeline to have those for within operating capability within four to five years from now, 2027 to 2028. North korea meantime is not standing still and we may be facing some risk in the meantime, but we do have the 44 current interceptors in alaska and california. The First Tranche of ngis will be around 20. We have additional silos we can put those in immediately in addition. To the 44 we have now then you can start replacing the older 44 with the newer generation ngi which are much more capable and eective. That is what i believe is our best timeline at the moment. I completely agree with dougs point on the timeline. Here is the problem. Just using publicly available data, the history of the tests for the interceptors that we have so far have about 55 success rate. And therefore the public shock doctrine is that if the north koreans shoot a missile, we will shoot four interceptors at it in response. To the latest parade, the north reans had 11 missiles. 11 times four is 44. That is great. They get one more, we are overwhmed. That is a real problem. One more icbm and our system to defend against their attack is overwhelmed. We dont have the next generation of interceptor coming along for another four years. At some point we have to think about wheer north korea is at that level four or it actually gets into level five where we have to have a different theory of deterrence. That is a real challenge. I dont know what the answer is to that. I think that is a real challenge we have to wrestle with. One more point. Speaking in round numbers, 50 chance of hitting things. You can understand why it might only be 50 because something going 15,000 miles, that is pretty hard. If im sitting at the missiledefense agency and my daughter is working in l. A. And i call her up because there is an attack, and i say, listen honey, i know everyone is freaking out, i know your phone is going crazy, i know the kids are getting run over in the street with people trying to get out of town, because it is true that in 20 minutes you will get incinerated in a thermonuclear blast, but the good thing is you have a solid three out of four chance it doesnt happen. That is what we are saying. Three out of four chances it does not happen. We have to think about whether that theory of deterrence is something we want to live with. You are making some good points here, but i would like to add this is not a standing situation, this is dynamic. If north korea is lobbing salvo after salvo to the u. S. , we will not try to swap them down one by one and wait until their entire arsenal is depleted. We will have other options if it comes to that, god for bid, in the meantime. I think the north koreans know that. We would not just take it and wait for whatever they have next. We would have good things we would be doing in the meantime as well. Right, i think we would hit back at them, but that is a fferent theory of deterrence than saying we will shoot it down. I think we should use every deterrence we have. It sounds like from the bided administratios missiledefense the Biden Administrations missiledefense reviews, that they framed this problem in terms of staying ahead of the threats, but framing it as missile defeat as opposed to active missiledefense, which i think speaks to the attack operations and how we think about the theory of deterrence. That is right. One of the things doug is referring to is we are looking at other ways other than literally shooting a missile out of the sky that we can potentially defend against the threat. If said things are highly classified and north koreans do not know about them, that is not necessarily a good deterrent. The point is, at some point we will get to the level where we have to say this is they have enough missiles to overwhelm us, and we have to have a different theory of deterrence to make sure we never get attacked. That is one of the important questions i would say that i hope you wrest with today. We are just getting started. I am sure it will come up a few times. We have other issues i want to get at. The Biden Administrations signature missiledefense network, in terms of scope and size in this decade, is probably the defense of guam. You have a well armed near peer in their backyard with not just a lot of ballistics, but all kinds of things. How are you thinking about the defense of guam . I was in guam last october. I went out there because i think it is absolutely imperative that we effectively deter a war in the pacific. Guam is central to our power projection, central to that deterrent. If china thinks they can just take out guam, that does not render that piece of our deterrent very effective. I was curious to see what our guys on the ground in guam were thinking and doing. I fundamentally am trying to ask this question, are the strategies in washington being implemented on the ground . Th know in guam our officers are mainly navy personnelthey know what to do but they are mainly in. The path if you look at what xi jinping laid out for his potential timeline for invading, we need to step up procurement of missiledefense for guam. We are not talking about we dont know exactly how a war would start with china, but the expectation is they would not launch hundreds of intercontinental Ballistic Missiles at guam, so it really is in that theater level category where we have to defend it. We have various systems which has a near perfect interception record. We have a lot of effective systems that can help with this problem, but if they are not deployed yet by the invasion timeline, then we have a problem. I have been to guam several times myself and it is an island, it is not going to sink or anything like that. [laughter] we need to make the defense of it a priority. This is once again an area of bipartisan agreement we have. I agree with the Biden Administration when they came out with their missiledefense review and talked about the importance of guam. I look forward to discussions about pdi in the coming weeks in hearings. Ukraine was mentioned. Mr. Moulton, you mentioned the day to day air defense misle activities. I can remember fivyears ago, my goodness, russian Cruise Missiles are too good. We could not possibly think about that. Here we have things in ukraine on apparently a weekly basis engaging successfully. I am curious on your take on the air and missile conflict that you see going on, and the Lessons Learned for the missiledefense enterprise about what we see happening. First of all, the ukrainians have been remarkably innovative and creative and fast. They dont have time to have a years Long Development cycle. Lots of contracting disputes and finally figu out how to produce these things. They are doing in months what we have scheduled to do in years. That might be one of the most important lessons we have to learn, because when you get that specific and look at our deterrent plans, it is not going to go well for you if you start a war over taiwan or anything else, the biggest concern i have is not that we dont have the technology or the willpower or simply the plans and strategies to do that effectively, it is that we are not doing it on the timeline we need to be. There is a lot of great Technological Innovations that have come out of ukraine. There are. A lot of great lessonswe learned from that one of the most important lessons is they are doing things as quickly as we need to do in the pacific. The ukrainians are doing a remarkable job. Huge bipartisan support in congress for our friend ukraine. And right beyond their borders, our nato allies close by. Our patriots will be very effective once they get in there. They are on the way, so im excited about that. Sometimes you have lowtech weapons like drones, iranian drones working with russia to build a factory there to produce the tubes of these things. Produce multitudes of these things. An iranian drone killed soone in syria this week. Fighting drones is more of a lowtech issue compared to intercontinental Ballistic Missiles or hypersonics, but it is something we need to put our r d dollars there. Ukraine is a crash course. We are seeing in some respects the russians are a paper tiger, but nevertheless they are brutal and vicious and ruthless. We have to do what we can to defend our friends ukrainians, including learning about what is working and what not works. You both talked about the importance and utility and i would say the feasility of active Missile Defenses in ukraine. You talked about the importance and feasibility of missiledefenses for guam, yet both of these are aboutir and Missile Defenses relation to a near peer or rogue state. So much of the missiledefense conversation of the past has been focused on the rogue states, we cannot think about the near peers, because of the big threat, because it is destabilizing. How do we think about stability and the relation of active air and Missile Defense to strategic stability when it looks like russia and china are willing to overturn all sorts of tables and do all kinds of things that are destabilizing to the International Order . How do you think about that post ukraine, post crimea . Are we thinking about that friendly and terms of the last several years . I am concerned about china because their agreement they are forming now with russia, with putin, there was a picture of them having a toast together, that is troubling. China is engaged in a nuclear breakout. They are building hundreds of nuclear Ballistic Missiles and warheads. Ey have overtaken us a country in terms the number of missile launchers they have available to them. The chinese were not even a factor in those discussions, yet now they are trying to overtake the u. S. Who knows what some kind of agreement with russia could produce, god forbid, in a nuclear scenario. I am calling on the Biden Administration to look to include china or in some way incentivize them to come to the negotiating table. They have not yet done so, and i want to call on the administration to do more to force them, to give them incentives to come to the negotiating table. What they are doing is very destabilizing, particularly when you think of some kind of collusion or copartnership that they have with russia. I agree with everything. We are in a totally new world now where we dont have just one near peer adversary. If they shoot all these missiles, we will shoot all those muscles, so neither of us is going to do it. Now we have three. These are very challenging questions. We need to get theories and answers and have these debates. I think your question is about whether the tactical level of missiledefense, shooting ukrainians shooting russian or iranian drones out of the sky using our technology is actually contributing to strategic instability. I think it is not at all. What this conflict has proven is that if defense at that level two level that i laid out im sure you all took notes on the five levels. But if it is at that level two level, it does not affect strategic instability. It is pretty remarkable that ukraine is crucifying the Russian Military using our support, and yet there has not been any fundamental changes to our strategic stability. The u. S. Is not in a direct war with russia despite all of putins threats of the news of of the use of nuclear weapons. He understands our strategic deterrent. So actually no, it is a great question but the premise is wrong. We have proven the strategic stability at the number five level really works. So closely connected to that, also about the near peers, and that is the hard problem of Hypersonic Missiles. Hypersonic missiles are just missiles, but they are able to sustain and control flight in a really complex and aerodynamic environment. It is very unpredictable relative to those predictable ballistic trajectories. Is hypersonic defense possible . Can we afford not to do hypersonic defense of guam and just do other stuff . How do you think about that emerging capability . That is an emerging threat, especially with china. Russia has some capability. China is the one we have to watch. China wants to build multitudes of these, hundreds of thousands of hypersonics. They have some right now in their arsenal. We do not have a viable offensive capability with hypersonics. We are doing some testing, we are learning a lot from our testing, we are starting to build the beginnings of an industrial base. I was glad when President Biden made a declaration with the defense production act on march 3, saying we are going to have an industrial system and base that allows for the production of hypersonics in an effective way. We are not nearly where the chinese are, or the russians for that matter. That is offensive capability. When it comes to defense against hypersonics, that is mach five or higher, 3000 miles an hour or faster, and maneuverable. No one has a defense against that. We are starting to put some dollars toward research and development. I know im working on that. I know seth will agree and help on that as well. We started in the past, but we have to beef up our r d. The missiledefense agency will be the Perfect Agency to do that. Here is the challenge with hypersonics. You have two front metal different types of hypersonics it is really about how they are used, not the technology specifically. One type of Hypersonic Missile is like the next generation tomahawk. You will use these against guam. They are conventional munitions but we will not be able to shoot them down very well, so the chinese have a better way to attack guam effectively. The second hypersonic is a strategic, essentially nuclear hypersonic. We are not developing nuclear tipped hypersonics, the russians are. They view the hypersonics as componentry to their as complementary to their icbm fleet as strategic deterrents. We are looking at how you defend against the first type because we want to defend guam. That is important. We have made a policy decision across multiple administrations that the way to defend against nuclear Hypersonic Missiles is deterrents, that we will make it clear to the rusans that if you shoot a Hypersonic Missile at los angeles with a nuclear warhead, you will get a full response from our triad. The problem is that you cant do either of those things if you dont have the third component, which is just being able to see these things when they are coming. That is another place where we have a lot of work to do. If we cannot even detect they are coming, we will not be able to shoot them down for the first group attacking guam. We will also not be able to launch a response from our triad because we did not know it was going to hit us. The point is we have to get our theory of deterrence right. We made the decision, we want Missile Defense to protect guam from those hersonics coming in, but we have a different theory to deal with the other one. Both of them require us to see these things, which we cannot do right now. I think you are referring to building out the hbtss space sensor layer. That will be important for detecting hypersonic threats if and when they materialize, and for tracking information to whatever defensive capability we might have, like the glide interceptor phase, the equal we would have to get the right signals so they know where to go to intercept. When it comes to hypersonics, we have a real need as a country to develop this offensive capability. There are some problem sets that are only solvable with hypersonics. You think of deep in land china. There is no other way with certain problems to address them without hypersonics. And some people say, well, we dont want to get in an arms race because that is destabilizing. A one sided arms race is even more destabilizing. [laughter] if they have a viable and deadly capability that we are not addressing ourselves, that is extremely. Destabilizing it gives them the 10 patient to start using that. We have to at least show we have the capability that they have to be cautious about. Let me dig in on this. What i heard from both of you in terms of a Nuclear Payload on a hyper sign up on a hypersonic glider as opposed to a nonnuclear attack, your pointing to that is a bad day and it makes sense to use the nuclear deterrent, but it is that second thing the nonnuclear strategic attack, whether it is coming in from a ballistic or Cruise Missile or some highly maneuverable hypersonic thing, that is critical, especially for the guams of the world that we have to defend. My question for both of you, that is pretty important, and you said that threat is already here, so how are you thinking about on the subcommittee making sure that the glide phase interceptor and these things is this going to be something you want to see in this decade . Or is this something we can put off until the 23 until the 2030s . The fundamental problem is we have these two categories of hypersonics. We need radar to see them coming. We can get the most sophisticated writer in the world and will not be able to tell which one it is. That is why hypersonics are so fundamentally destabilizing. There is no dispute that if we see a Russian Missile launched from an icbm facility that has nuclear, we have done the inspections, we know exactly what it has got on it. If they see icbms coming out of wyoming or omaha or whatever, they know what will happen. That is why icbms, the whole triad, has contributed to strategic stability. Hypersonics are fundamentally destabilizing and our senior military agrees on this, because you cannot tell what is coming. We made a policy decision to say we will not even try to develop Strategic Nuclear hypersonics. If russia does not believe that, then that is not very effective for stability. They on the other hand have made a conscious Public Policy decision to have nuclear tipped hypersics. What is our theory if we see one of those coming . If we are serious about our Nuclear Triad deterrent, we should launch a response, but what happens if it has a 500 pound warhead on it when it hits . That is a fundamental problem. We have to wrestle with this, because this kind of strategic instability is not about simply avoiding an arms race, it is about avoiding a Nuclear Holocaust. That is why this is so dangerous. The uncomfortable part ofhis discussion is that hypersonics are a direct legacy of Missile Defense. We started developing hypersonics in the 1980s and we all stopped. Russia and china are ahead of us because they started as soon as we pulled out of the Ballistic Missile treaty and said if the u. S. Will develop a system to shoot down our icbms, which despite our attestations is what russia believes, they have to find a way to get around. That is why we have such a strategic destabilizing weapons system today, because we pulled out. We have a no first use policy. The u. S. Will not be in a conflict where we are launching things in a first use scenario. At least we take that off the table. That is not really ue. We will not launch a first use against russia or china. That they might confuse for a possible nuclear strike. The United States has not signed up for that first use policy because that is central to our defense. We have said to russia, you can have a conventional assault on europe and we will have a response. Your analogy of these things is essentially, if they are nonnuclear, there is a better Cruise Missile, a better tomahawk in terms of the function they are performing. You talked about with ukraine that the act of defense is not only destabilizing, it is also stabilizing. Isnt the take away from this that however they got he is reaction to antiBallistic Missile defens, they are here. Wouldnt a prioritizing hypersonic defense for this new generation of missiles, isnt that the next step . I didnt say that shooting russian drones out of the sky is itself stabilizing, im just saying the broader level of strategic stability because we have mutually assured destruction, doing Missile Defense at a tactical level has no effect. It is not that stability comes from Missile Defense at the tactical level, it is that it does not affect strategic stability. That is the lesson we learned from ukraine. What you just said sounds good. I feel more comfortable myself knowing that we have the technology to shoot Hypersonic Missiles out of the sky. I feel more comfortable today. I feel much more worried about the world im going to hand over to my twoyearold and fouryearold daughter if w continue on this arms race, where every time we develop a new Missile Defense, our adversaries develop a new way to get around at. That is what the world realized, even bitter adversaries in the 1970s when we signed the antilisted middle treaty. Even though it would make us feel more comfortable in the short to deft their current technology, it is only going to lead to an arms race and ultimately like that scenario in l. A. Where you call your daughter because you have a three out of four chance not getting incinerated by a nuclear weapon, that is not the reality we want to live with. That is the biggest thing i hope you wrestle with at this conference. We all like the shortterm plan for Missile Defense, but what does it mean longterm interim move strategic longterm in terms of Strategic Development . It is not an option to do nothing and seed the field to an adversary and hope they follow our example or learn from us or that they have the best of intentions. We have to match capabilities without a mindless arms race, but we have to match capabilities to the extent that they know they are trouble if they go against it and they will not get a free pass with some technology that they are exploiting and we are not. And yet democratic and republican administrations, compare the language in the Missile Defense strategies, it goes word for word, they have a great we are not have agreed we are not going to match them with Strategic Nuclear hypersonics. So we have all agreed we are not going to do it, and yet that is the argument for developing more of these weapons. There is a real fundamental logical disconnect we have to figure out. It is obvious that this administration nor the previous one have figured this out. They dont have good answers to this logical disconnect that could endanger the future of humanity. Hopefully you guys will come up with a solution today, but we really have to figure that out cause i do think it is very dangerous. I agree we should not nothing, but doing somethi might be getting back to some sort of treaty that limits this arms race rather than simply saying we will take the next step, by the way how long will it te for them to take the nexttep after that . I sayo the biden administraon, find a way to bring china to the gotiating table. Essential. It is very hard. I think having some capabilities, even if there is a nascent stage, is more likely to bring them to the negotiating table than not developing capabilities that are out there that they are working it is interesting, i think Matt Pottinger said he does not think china will come to the negotiating table until they believe they have reached parity with us. They will have to get 1500 icb s s to have a negotiation, which argues against getting ahead of them. It argues for saying, that is crazy, we hope you will waste a lot of money. If that is what you need to do, lets get there quickly so we can have a strategic discussion. Regardless of where we are leaning on the active defense against various hypersonic threats or whether we are learning more on the deterrent side or something else, it is helpful, including those years of the cold war to have good, Early Warning and understanding of what is coming at you, so you can inform your deterrence populace. On this track, the space force, the former sta is exploring space sensors. There is only one devoted to fire control quality track for these threats. Duri the trump administration, they kept trying to put it into sda instead of Missile Defense, and repeatedly congress said, no, we will not let you do that, we want to keep that with essential organization. Central organization. You were focused on this for a while, why do you think that is . Why was Congress Insistent on that, and how do you think about the importance of the future role of threats and the Space Mission . Everything u said is absolutely critical and true. It is vital for our fute because of the sensing it does and tracking and possible fire control it gives us if necessary. Hopefully it is not necessary, but if it is, it will be there. Mda is a lot further along in terms of an organization, so in my mind that alone makes it worthwhile for it to be the go to people. I will defer to doug on this. He has done a lot more work. What you said makes sense to me. Lets go to oer advanced capabilities, directednergy, lasers. Kind of taken out of t Missile Agency by the trump administtion a couple years ago. I think john plumb said there is no future of Missile Defense that does not involve kinetic kill. We will always have kinetic interceptors, and yet there is a lot of promise for the nonkinetic side of the house. Fromour subcommittee, how do you think about asking where the nonkinetic solutions are for this space . Im passionate about directed energy, so i started with a former democratic colleague who is retired now and the directed energy caucus. It has such potential as a Cutting Edge Technology to help us in our future security as a country. I think having more options on the table li kinetic kill plus directed energy or other things, that would be great to have in the pocket. As many defenses as possible but directed energy, we are making Real Progress with then becoming more powerful. The more powerful the laser is, the less time it needs to dwell on an incong object. Whether it is a small thing like a drone or a missile in israel they are working on iron beam apart from inner conor lamb intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, but the small theater type msiles will be a viable target were lasers can shoot them down. The more powerful the laser, the quicker they do the job. That makes them more effective. It is real exciting. It is very easy to say i cannot imagine a future without x technology. I think he is a little over his skis to say we will never get away from kinetic interceptors. We do not know what the future is. Investigating this and understanding it and coming to a deep understanding of what the capabilities are is essential. Then we can better adjudicate what money we want to invest in it. We have to get you back for vote, so i want to give you one last opportunityo talk about any other big priorities for the coming year. Anything you would like the community to think about in this space. I have given you my priorities. We need to come up with at the deterrence is for these new systems and Missile Defense has to be part of that calculation. You have to understand not just the good things that come out of this because it makes us feel safer in the short term, but the negative consequences to the arms races it can engender in the long run. This is really about not just what we need to do to meet todays threats and detour the threats in the next few years but the legacy of all the decisions we make today for the future of our world in the longterm National Security of the United States. I would says a subcommittee, i will be really focused on i know everyone will agree on these priorities, three things, the Chinese Nuclear threat, they are nducting a breakout that is troubling, the need to have offensive hypersonic capabilities, and someday defensive. We are behind the chinese. Thirdly, modernization. Modernization of our Nuclear Triad. Missile defense is a huge deterrent, but making sure we have a credible nuclear response. God forbid it is ever necessary but having it in a credible form is essential. That is see based, air based, and landbased. In all cases we are going up to the edge of starting to push our luck a little bit if we do not keep up. We have older systems that are becoming not obsolete but started to get close to the point where the credibility could be called into question. The Sentinel Program for groundbased Nuclear Missiles or the columbia class submarine or the b21 stealth bomber, those are things we are working on. They have great promise but this is maybe bureaucracy in the pentagon, but not as fast as we would like. We have to keep pushing each of those programs, making sure they are funded properly and that there are no glitches holding up future projections. That is a constant struggle and challenge. Only easy problems. We really appreciate you both takinghe time. You have been very generous on a busy day. We would love to welcome you both back in the near future. We areaking a five minute break and will ret the stage then we ll have opening remarks by the director of the Ronald Reagan institute, our cohost for today, and another panel. In the meantime, join me in thanking our guests. Thank you. 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