A look now at the future of Missile Defense. The center for strategic and International Studies hosted a discussion recently with former defense officials and Global Security experts. Panelists talked about the challenges of Strategic Missile defense, the threats posed by north korea, iran, china and russia. Former defense undersecretary for policy, james miller moderated this event. Its about 90 minutes. Ready to go, okay, good morning, everybody. Thanks for being here today. Im jim miller. President of the adaptive strategies. I have had involvement with Missile Defense over a number of decades. Starting on capitol hill, House Armed Services committee in late 80s and early 90s and continuing on through my time including as undersecretary of defense in the Obama Administration. We have a great panel here today. You have already met tom karako, senior fellow here in the international program, director of the Missile Defense program and tom will talk about in particular his report Missi
Including as undersecretary of defense in the Obama Administration. We have a great panel here today. You have already met tom karako, senior fellow here in the international program, director of the Missile Defense program and tom will talk about in particular his report Missile Defense, 2020, next steps for defending the homeland. Dr. Laura grego, thank you for being here as well. Laura is a Senior Scientist in the Global Security program for the union of concerned scientists. And also has a recent report entitled shielded from oversight, the disastrous u. S. Approach to strategic Missile Defense. And well speak to that and a number of other issues, i think. And our third panelists today, major retired general fran mahon. His last posting was a j5 director of plans and policy for norad and north com and headed up several commands for army missile and air defense and at one point was director of tests for the Missile Defense agency as well. So its a great group. I want to thank you, g
Pennant. He will take remarks and then well have about 10 to 15 minutes for questions. If you have questions i would ask you to limit to one in a followup. With that thank you. Good afternoon. I appreciate the opportunity to brief you on the president s request for Missile Defense agencies 2018 budget. The Agency Requests to continue the development of reliable increasingly capable for our nation deployed forces, allies and international partners. The fiscal year 2018 Missile Defense will support the deployment and of accept sores and command control management Communication System for bmds. A priority remains the delivery of greater Missile Defense capacity for the war fighter which includes investment and advanced technology and future capabilities. Next chart. Mda remains committed to delivering, expantding and sustaining our homeland Missile Defenses and requests 1. 5 billion for the ground based program. Today we have in place 36 ground based intercepters on track to expand the fl
Critical step in the pacific is to deploy a radar in the pacific. They plan 5 million for a study to assess appropriate tracking and discrimination sensor to support the defense of the United States against immerging missile threats from iran. Finally we are requesting for the enhanced Homeland Defense radar hawaii to conduct source selection activities. We plan for the delivery of this radar by 2023. Next chart. Moving now to regional defenses. It is 1. 7 billion which includes the fleet. Mda will procure missiles for deployment on land and later in poland. Along with associated hardware and support costst. It will bring missiles to 287 missiles by the end of the 2018. Mda will procure six which youll support Operational Testing and our commitments or epaa. Beginning it will upgrades hardware and software. The president s budget request for the terminal High Altitude is 797 million. It will allow us to support the maintenance and upkeep as well as all training devices. Limited irbms a
In order to ensure each can deliver two ships per year. Today the lcs program is on budget and blows the congressional gao to actually read the gao report which is not a friendly one. They conclude cost isnt the issue. Strategically, what are we talking about . Why do war fighters keep asking for it . It is not only an ideal platform from which to employ Unmanned Systems to increase important in the future, it can go places tanker ships cant. The commander of logistics in the western pacific said they can go places and do things no other american ships can with flexible large payloads that enable easy integration with Regional Navy for mandatory missions. There are 50,000 islands across the philippines to sri lanka. Larger ships can visit 50 ports, the lcs can darken 1000 ports. Admiral harris was invoked, in a meeting with chairman thornberry, myself and many members of the delegation who had to leave for no fault of your own told us the lcs is playing an increasing role in the pacifi