Opening Statement (As Prepared)

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Thank you, Chairman DesJarlais, and thanks again to all the witnesses for your testimony today. This is esoteric but unbelievably important work, and we appreciate your dedication to our nation’s strategic defense.

As I have said repeatedly, missile defense has a mixed legacy, but let’s start with the vast areas where my colleagues and I, and most experts, agree.

We have pursued robust investments in sensing and tracking, the foundational basis of missile defense, including the “Golden Dome” idea, and we are doing more. We have matured regional missile defense capabilities that are truly miracles of engineering – Patriot, Aegis, and THAAD - that have real battlefield benefit today to our allies and partners under attack. We have sought to defend fully against the strategic threat posed by rogue nations, such as North Korea, who may not be deterred by mutually assured destruction. But we have relied on our nuclear deterrent – on the concept of mutual assured destruction – when it comes to the huge, complex threats posed by Russian and Chinese ICBMs, hypersonics, and other systems specifically designed to evade our missile defense.

As stated in the 2019 Missile Defense Review, authored by the first Trump Administration: “The United States relies on nuclear deterrence to address the large and more sophisticated Russian and Chinese intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities, as well as to deter attacks from any source consistent with long-standing U.S. declaratory policy.”

To be clear, Golden Dome completely upends this policy, which is credited with keeping us safe from nuclear attack for the last 70 years. Do we believe that the fundamentals of the strategic landscape in the past 6 years have shifted so dramatically that we require a monumental shift in our strategic defense policy, a shift from every prior Democratic and Republican Administration, including the first Trump Administration?

If so, I am more than happy to hear why and entertain that debate. But we have not heard why. We have not heard any rationale. We have not heard any plan. And here’s why this could be dangerous.

The goal of missile defense is to keep us safe, but paradoxically, more missile defense is not necessarily better if it upsets strategic stability, the equilibrium that deters any nation from launching a nuclear attack that could explode into a nuclear war.

Most people don’t know how close we have come to nuclear war by accident in the last 70 years; we’ve had at least 13 close calls, like the time when Soviet systems detected a massive U.S. attack and a lowly Russian major only averted a nuclear holocaust by suspecting it was a false indication and deliberately disobeying a standing order to launch a retaliatory attack. Part of why he relied on his intuition in that instance is knowing that his own people, his own family, would be obliterated if he got that wrong.

That is why mutually-assured-destruction, an assuredly frightening concept, actually promotes stability. If nations know that they themselves will get obliterated if they use nuclear weapons, they are unlikely use nuclear weapons.

The potentially devastating problem with Golden Dome is that it upends this strategic stability, and if Russia or China believes, instead, that the United States is not so vulnerable to a retaliatory strike, it makes them less likely to think twice about acting quickly, acting first, or using novel delivery methods that get around our defenses—including Golden Dome itself—before we do anything to them. This is why, even though Golden Dome sounds good, it could actually make us less safe.

I fear that some of my colleagues, who tout their fiscal responsibility, want to spend billions of dollars of taxpayer money without a plan—and worse—on something that could actually make those very taxpayers less safe and our nation less secure. That is neither fiscal nor strategic responsibility.

Sadly, as with most complex national security issues, the president understands neither the history nor the implications of his plans. He just wants to one-up his friends with the gold-plated version of whatever they have.

As we continue to evaluate DoD missile defense programs, I will ask these questions: How will expanding U.S. missile defense today impact strategic stability tomorrow? Does it raise the incentive for our adversaries to strike first? We are already in an arms race – will this accelerate it? Do these choices make our nation and our world more or less safe? These are the questions we must ask ourselves on this subcommittee, not just with an eye to this year’s budget and NDAA but with a view towards how our decisions will impact the world we leave for our children.

Let me be clear once again, it is the job of this committee to have this debate; to investigate whether something has changed, with technology or our adversaries or otherwise; and provide the oversight that we are Constitutionally required to provide. What is not our job is to fund a fantasy—especially a dangerous one.