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“We're at a point in time over the past 40 years that I've been involved with missile defense, taking it back all the way to 1980, we have never seen, I never seen through eight presidents, the missile threat to this country as great as it is in the last 10 months. 10 months. You could start with the drone attack on Langley AFB that was out in the Wall Street Journal and that was three or four days maybe two weeks [ago] and we had our best equipment we had aerial capabilities, and we could not detect track or take those drones down. Then in January we had the whole episode of Chinese spy balloons going across our country, that happened. We then move into September where the Chinese launched an ICBM test that's the longest in the history of mankind; nobody not our ICBMs tested that we do went as far as they went from mainland China all the way into Tahiti waters on that. Then we're having thousands of drones a month crossing the Mexican border where the drug cartels are crossing into our airspace, White Sands Missile Range. Over the last four days in Alaska just four days in Alaska you've had two Russian aircraft a day crossing our space in Alaska. And we were just up there. We were up in Alaska on September 30th, and we walked through 20 vacant ground base interceptor silos that are unfilled for two years. We've got a degraded fleet that's getting older, and we struggle with this it. And now we have Congress, the military construction committee quoted saying $60 billion we're spending on Guam for a miss defense architecture. How much money are we spending for Alaska or California or Hawaii or the United States of America? We haven't solved the problem. We haven't solved the problem in capacity, in integrated defense for our Homeland. And we're watching the world today, we're watching deterrence fail for the security of nations. Ukraine couldn't deter or NATO couldn't deter Russia from using missiles drones hypersonic capabilities. We saw Iran strike April 13th and October 1st.
We have a problem and it really, no not really, it does not matter who the next president is. This is not political; this is about having an adequate defense for the population United States of America. Whether it's Guam, Hawaii, New York, or Arizona. We have not prioritized it, we have not addressed it, and we have not resourced it. That is a huge problem right now for everybody and we pay taxes for defense that's in our Constitution and we're not being defended across the spectrum I just mentioned and I would add hypersonic glide [threats] on top of that. So the discussion today is let's reset this thing, let's reassess this thing, let's look at what what's going on and how do we go forward, how do we prioritize the defense of this vast nation and our people the right way. I think the way to start this is with policy is in charge of this, to some extent. Policy has to be enabled to be properly give the authorities to the War Fighters and combatant commanders to fight this and to be able to give the War Fighters the ability to advocate for systems across the board that they need and required to defend this country. We’re limited because the policy sometimes controls the funding.”
- Mr. Riki Ellison, Chairman and Founder, Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance
“Unfortunately, I think it does start with policy and leadership and at present I think there's some outdated thinking going on. Thinking that for example nuclear deterrence or the threat of overwhelming retaliation will prevent a missile attack and that's simply not supported by the facts of the last few decades. I mean this is provable, if you look at what the Iranians did for example with the Israelis, the Israelis are a nuclear armed state. So, the argument from that is outdated from the McNamara era goes, well who would dare attack a nuclear armed state with a missile attack on its leaders or its people in large scale because there would be an overwhelming retaliation through nuclear force. False, it's been tried and proven. This is not a fair or accurate statement and the fact that you can defend yourself does not undermine deterrence or strategic stability, it increases it. Witness the fact that Russia and China are either maintaining or deploying missile defenses to protect themselves and it has not led the United States to increase our level of nuclear offensive armaments. This is a false argument. So, we got to break free from that and that's unfortunately a handicap that some of our leaders still have from the Cold War. But even when you have a good policy which is I want to defend the American people against missile attack and our force is because we must and policy sets the priorities, defines well what do I care about in terms of threats, how do I rank order those and what character force do I want to have and what is its role. In this case protection of the American people comes first in the Homeland but secondly, you've got to have a view of the United States as a global power, meaning we do have interests in the Pacific that we want to protect and it is a vital interest of ours to have free trade, free movement, free access to things like the Pacific Ocean and crossing the so-called nine dash line that the Chinese Communist party wants to draw and restrict to itself. But inside that then, after policy sets the priorities and sets the strategy. It's a difficult and unwieldy beast, the defense establishment we have, because it's so large but you've got to have some discipline and execution just like you do in your days for a winning football team. Not everybody can go out for a pass at the same time, other people have to block, other people have to be the running backs, other people have to play defense.”
- Mr. John Rood, MDAA Board of Directors Member
“What I will say on a positive note is as the Army looks through the lens of all the different requirements of critical asset defense that they have in the Pacific, in the Homeland, other combatant commands. Not only have they recognized that they don't have enough kit or capacity to be able to defend all those critical assets they're actually looking through THAAD, Patriot, IBCS as a mechanism to kind of break up subcomponents to give them more flexibility. So just a data point, there's only eight THAAD batteries in DOD right. One is being loaded up in C-17s and heading out to Israel. That is a fantastic capability, that's what the Army does very well. They get up they move, and they provide high-end point missile defense capability. Well, when we look through when the problem set of providing persistent and enduring [Missile Defense] that kind of retracts away from what the Army's main mission and goals are. So, they have realized for a second island chain defense in the Pacific it's not just Guam it's Palau. You move further into the first island chain, you have Philippine requirements, you have Japan Kadena type requirements, and they just don't have enough kit. So, breaking up and going down to the subcomponent level is a good thing, right. They're recognizing that defense in depth and doing upper tier and lower tier all under the same construct is a real thing. It's just like, where is it? We've been talking about it for quite some time. I understand testing and evaluation with missile defense takes time but where is it? INDOPACOM put a requirement out in 2019 for integrated defense and depth and we're 2024 right now and we're still having discussions about who's going who's in charge of this type of integration. Right, who should go out there and fund it and research it? I would offer, as we talk about new approaches to solve these problems, we're in an age where software is providing a major solution for these gaps. So, let's go after software solutions to help with the integration problem set.”
- Mr. JD Gainey, MDAA Board of Directors Member
“I've had the opportunity over the last couple days to watch pretty significant Shahed drone attacks and cruise missile attacks. Sucks to kind of be on the receiving end of this since usually in the Navy we're just on the giving end. Most of the stuff I've seen we could not do the same Homeland defense that Ukraine does. In fact, I would say all of the stuff I've seen we would fail miserably in defending the Homeland but also in many cases our four deployed forces where in theory we had focused our efforts. So, I'll come back and say look John and JD have done a very good job describing what I would call the lost years. The last five years have been lost years in missile defense and we've left the incoming Administration, whether it's a Harris Administration or a trump Administration, a long hard work list of missile defense areas. I think it's a mixture of intent, you know as John implied that there's some people who on some of the areas I'm about to mention there's an intent to not do things, I think some of them it's resource decisions and for whatever reason we decided to take risk here. If the last two years of just butt kicking effort, you know Iran against Israel and Russia against Ukraine, haven't taught us have taught us anything is that this Coalition of adversaries we're facing in; China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, 100% see the value of cruise, ballistic, hypersonic missiles as well as drones in attacking you and rockets and mortars for that matter and attacking Allied and Western forces. So, if this was intentional it's awful, it's derelict, if it was just unintentional it was an awful job.”
- Rear Admiral (Ret.) Mark Montgomery, MDAA Board of Directors Member
"One last thing I'll say on the policy side. I'm at the point where two of our adversaries are weaponizing space, whether we want to admit that publicly or not that's a choice but China and Russia are weaponizing space and anyone here who believes that, I'm from the old Ronald Reagan School of trust but verify and there's no verifying that those dudes are not going to use space as a weapon. We need to make a conscious decision to weaponize space and give space force the effect, the offensive mission, to go along with the defensive mission and it's a policy decision. This Administration wouldn't do that you know if you were water boarding them so you know I think it's going to have to be the next Administration to do it. I'm not sure if both administrations will do this, but we're going to need to acknowledge the facts. The facts are our adversaries are weaponizing space the facts are if only one site is weaponized space the other one is that a tremendous disadvantage you know as John kind of alluded to in his discussion. So look, there are policy issues and there are resource issues, we’ve got to hammer both of them Riki."
- Rear Admiral (Ret.) Mark Montgomery, MDAA Board of Directors Member
“Thank you, Mark. Thank you, John. Thank you, JD. From around the world. This is a national imperative for our homeland, and it crosses everyone, it crosses political lines, it crosses the stove pipes, it crosses self-agendas or agendas. This is a team game now with a common purpose. It’s a common purpose for all of us, for our families, our culture. It’s got to be addressed, it has to be addressed and we're right in the thick of it whether the election, whatever happens in election, this has to go forward and as a great team player if you want to be a world champion, you want to keep our way of life, you are going to have to sacrifice and take risk on offensive stuff and put it back into the defensive stuff because we're not defended. We have to be defended or else we're going to lose world order, we're going to lose our ability to support our allies. It's got to be done and thank you today for addressing those issues and bringing light, shedding light, on what the reality is here, truth telling. I appreciate that we're going forward with it, that's our mission. We're going to be loud, we're going to be powerful, we're going to keep coming to make this nation safe and make the world safe so thank you for your time today.”
- Mr. Riki Ellison, Chairman and Founder, Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance
Click here to watch the virtual event
Click here to read the transcript
Speakers:
Mr. John Rood, MDAA Board of Directors Member
Rear Admiral (Ret.) Mark Montgomery, MDAA Board of Directors Member
Mr. JD Gainey, MDAA Board of Directors Member
Mr. Riki Ellison, Chairman and Founder, Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance
Fight On!
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