l reilly welcome back thank you for being with the subcommittee thank you for your leadership you're both experts in your field and we thank you for your contributions to our national security we have an unusual task before us today in a single hearing we must cover two broad areas space and missile defense that under normal circumstances could equally merit their own hearing we also have an unusual budget request to consider this year during last week's full committee hearing with the secretary of defense we heard of profound changes in the budget that not only occurred outside the quadrennial defense review process but were arrived at without what appears to be a commensurate level of rigorous analysis as our full committee ranking member mr mchugh said the only unifying theme in this year's budget is that the aggregate fit within the top line this appears to be an apt description of the missile defense budget this year during a recent subcommittee hearing on the nuclear security budget request we learned that major program decisions at n s a would not be made until the completion of the nuclear posture review yet over in the department of defense sweeping missile defense decisions have been made ahead of the q t r and prior to the administration's completion of its missile defense policy and strategy review by making such decisions now is the department prejudicing the outcome of these reviews we just observed yesterday a determined iran test of its two thousand kilometer solid fuel stage all to ballistic missile that iran's president suggested was linked to its ongoing nuclear program there is  clear desire by some actors to emphasize the development of longer range missiles how good is our intelligence we know short range systems well in many cases they're based on decades old technology what concerns me however is our level of knowledge about rogue nations longer range systems this detailed intelligence information is critical to having effective missile defenses when such uncertainties exist one usually compensates with increased margins and more diversification not less given this growing threat i am puzzled by the department's decision to stop deployment of ground based interceptors interceptors at thirty rather than forty four reduce the d program by the eighty five percent and curb its development i have not seen any analysis or formal for structural requirements to justify this decision nor have i seen any changes in the intelligence community's threat assessment that would indicate a decreasing threat for the more what are we to make of the disconnect between secretary gates testimony the department will continue to robustly fund research and development of g m z to improve its capability year two thousand and ten help today we can address these basic questions we've also been induced to a new concept this year i sent phase intercept it sounds promising but it also sounds a lot like parts of boost some parts of mid course or like a better understanding of what this entails it would seem risky to move away from a b l k i n m k v for this as yet unproven concept reilly i would ask you to address what gives you confidence that ascent phase intercept is more technically feasible effective an affordable during our last missile defense hearing we reviewed an independent study on m d s roles and missions requested by this committee the request commanded that m d s mission should be refocused on r d t any and that science and technology should receive renewed emphasis and increased funding however i'm hard pressed to find such emphasis in this year's budget how does india advance our missile defense technologies and foster innovation and ingenuity w responsive to these requirements and i'm pleased and i am pleased with the how over the joint study only looked at these two systems how do we know the force structure requirements for other missile defense elements also why does an increase in he just something bad have to come at the expense of g m d and europe european missile defense systems designed to protect the u s homeland and are ours looking across the one point two billion dollars to m d a i believe that we have been presented with a number of false either or choices we can do better in contrast the budget requests for space appears relatively balanced important acquisition programs such as w g s g p s sippers and impose are provided with stable funding however these three satellites are not a long term solution to addressing the military's increasing communications requirements without insight into out your plan funding i find it difficult to have confidence that the air force has adequately committed to a budget for these capabilities the budget requests for space situational awareness has doubled it appears a large portion of this increase is allocated to the joint operations center i'd like to better understand how the department's effort to improve s s a space protection and our intelligence capabilities additionally can you discuss why operationally responsive spaces on the air force unfunded lasley air force base command is in a state of transition can you discuss the status and challenges of divesting your nucular mission and inheriting the cybermen i would like to acknowledge the men and women serving in the organization these are two worthy fields to have a career and we're proud of their service and  as an airman and as the commander of your command thanks very much for your continued support not only for the united states air force but for the capabilities that we contribute a joint force i will certainly take the words that you because it's our job to put those capabilities directly into their hands and we are constantly mindful of the joint team members who are in harm's way we're very proud of our improve acquisition and oversight of the contracts will award over the next eighteen months i am also signing memorandum of agreement with the services institutionalize the missile defense agency and services roles and responsibilities additionally its ability to be operationally deployed without dramatic changes to our military infrastructure and significant reduction of our firepower affordability and government requirements  audigy and then you undertake a budget as a ranking member mchugh said it looks as if that this is a budget that that it's only common theme is if it's one of the top line that you will have a budget and under which we're constructing strategy and that's a great deal of concern when the issue of missile defense is so important and goes right to the issue of our national security every day in the news the public is more and more aware of what the  actors of rogue nations and other nations are doing to be able to get greater reach and greater precision greater ability to impact the united states and our allies and as you look at the capabilities that we've accomplished  and that you know when we're advancing in technical areas and then we we step away from funding of the research and development where we're losing the concept of what is the next generation of innovation that could be in front of us so many people have questions about how this this budget distance but decision are being made and why and whether or not this is prudent the department appears to be making profound missile defense program budget decisions prior to the administration's completion of its missile defense policy  strategy review we don't as a committee seem to have any information in front of us that would justify the switches that are occurring in each of the programs one one such which is the issue of the  switch from long range missiles focus and we don't have intelligence service mission here that would indicate that people are not trying to get greater reach to impact our  country questions i want to ask you about specific programs and i know that the members on this side of the aisle have specific questions about them but could you talk first a moment about the issue of how this budget is put together because although you have  budget was a participatory problem our participatory involvement senior decision makers and especially the combatant commanders the joint chiefs and the services in order to have the strategy that you referred to today and those analysis versus the strategy before was based primarily on technical judgments by the missile defense agency without the greater involvement so number one i don't believe it's so much of a strategy change as a process change this process has now come to fruition there was more involvement by cocom commanders and the war fighters that i've seen before there also was a an intense involvement by senior leadership and the analysis the analysts that work to support them than has been in the past so this is a process that was started several years ago and i believe this is the first budget which was produced from that process as the missile defense executive board chaired by the undersecretary defense acquisition and logistics and technology chaired that  most comprehensive that i've ever seen in the missile defense area aspects number one is the programs we're referring to are aimed at one percent of the threat whereas we are very concerned also about the other ninety nine percent of the threat that we are concerned about the research and development that is going to counter that more deployed more advanced threat as far as a operationally ready than they are today so we believe this actually enhances billeted by focusing on those thirty building of refer process and so forth for the missiles that didn't exist before but primarily the committee embers were a little concerned as to how exactly the processes that are taken to go from forty five to thirty i don't think we have from you analysis that would analysis for the forty four put us into a position where there was an operational risk assessment and the operational risk assessment was deemed to be love for the fact that how many simultaneous missiles would have to engage in any one time now or over the next decade and what would be the intelligence indicators that there was a growth due to the fact that it takes so long to build one of these launch justify forty four it's just thirty i understand your position that the forty four was arbitrary but again we're seeing increasing threats in this area not decreasing and yet we're seeing decreasing investment on may thirteenth the secretary of defense the overview was in the area of the ground system telling the development or the deployment of the ground system however at the same time we are expanding the research and development as i said for the entire communications and secure which is necessary but that we also have funded refurbishment program to take the old interceptors out replace them with new ones also to upgrade those development and we are continuing to expand the command and control and the algorithms necessary to meet the war requirements for better command and control of the system during it and then also to multiple kill vehicle my understanding is that the emphasis on the mission has changed rather substantially in our strategy the multiple kill would have done on page twenty  five instead of the initial purpose of the integrate into midcourse interceptors we're now assessing the feasibility of destroying threat missiles early in flight before countermeasures can be deployed as a hedge against  success against the rogue missile threats exist today against the vast majority the ninety nine percent i was referring to yes against the longest range chairman before we start the questions i would have to make an unfortunate announcement yesterday the first female air force academy graduate to die in combat was killed by an i e d near f y ten followed by the missile defense agency issuing a stop work order on the program likewise it is troubling that these decisions to immediately halt the program and disallow the rest of the zero nine funding in multi layered missile defense structure and one of the programs that we've invested a lot over the years because of my background and directed energy that had a real interest in airborne laser which i think give all of your life to it and sometimes literally give your life for it and we're the most noble people we have in our society and oftentimes i think it's a probably the most manifest in that you take whatever we do imprudent or not and you do the very best you can to protect this country and i'm very grateful to you have to do a little baby some more grateful than i've ever been to what you do because what you do today certainly in generations to impeded progress on the european site and i continue to believe that a missile defense and especially related european site could potentially have the ability to devalue a nuclear program in iran and help some of the other ancillary let me direct my first question to you sir pretty pretty basic question do you believe that the threat from the range missiles has increased or decreased in the last six months as it relates to the homeland  studies that you reference in your testimony would that be possible to give that to the committee thank you let me shift gears here on i think probably related to g b i there's been a lot of questions that i won't repeat but the manufacturing line that industrial base continues to be a great concern in any situation that we face when does the line go cold for the second and third tier suppliers and how will it affect your schedule overrun and so forth and i know general can respond to that better but we're trying to narrow the requirements so that delivers exactly what we need in a manner that is proven technology for that that we can't quite get our arms around at this point we need to go deliberately we need our block building approach and we need to pull in those things that make the most that we don't want to help you make those mistakes as well the best i can tell it was a judgment based on where the threat would be today driven by how many rogue nation intercontinental ballistic missiles could be launched at one time in this timeframe and of course it's very hard to understand your interest in the intercept or not i like that idea out of don't understand why we would diminish value level or layer of our current capability while we're waiting on that i think exciting technology space becomes more crowded all the time we look at over nine hundred thousand objects that we actively on orbit hundreds certainly thousands perhaps perhaps even more than that more  increases that we've asked for for situational awareness because of program overruns there not because of the difficulties that we're having we're looking to target that  investment and being able to use our existing sensors and that means being able to understand the data collect more data from the existing sensors put it together better put it to better  use in the meantime as we're working our way down the road we are increasing our computing capability as well as the number of human beings who are analysts who can look at the data and decide better and give human beings some better understanding of what they need to do and how they need to go about ok thank you gen reilly the budget request includes only fifty one million dollars for a european capability developing the software so that these radars can operate in one function or the other and they're interchangeable so this concern the concern that they don't see a radar match to a particular battery we chair general riley earlier you just mentioned briefly the complexity of the era of three m this was a really want to be one of my questions but i was somewhat fascinated that potentially it has the potential to have some paradigm shift in missile defense capability and i understand that there is at least an effort to make sure that that process stays alive to see if they make their knowledge points because the israelis you know are certainly have shown the ability to shock the world many times and hoping that we can make sure that if that is to happen again it can be good for the united states and for israel so i'm glad to see that there's still an effort there to see how they do with the arrow three the committee in fact you cited the joint staff joint capability to the study conclusion that twice the number of pages and  review those exact studies so that we have army input we participate with the army and we make joint decisions the programs you mentioned are all army programs and that's how we work through the army force development process  y staff to determine what are the force structure requirements for the army and again without pressing you too hard are there copies of that would be available to the committee that would give us some clarification as to what the rationale was in many of those cases i will have to go back and look at that but i will go back to the army and make that request i would i would appreciate general sure would  me shift gears again you know there's been least one study that examined alternatives to the proposed missile defense system in europe and the into an independent assessment conducted by the institute for defense analysis year for an upper tier defense which is what was proposed upper tier against long range threats we haven't seen a proposal that is less costly than that protection for europe but it wouldn't provide protection for that for the homeland and i just want to make sure you know that the protection united states is still a necessary criterion for the administration's plans for the european site is that still your of sustaining flight test according to budget requests ten of the remaining fourteen g b i is not deployed will be used for test assets assuming two flights per year and perhaps a salvo test the expectation is that you'd run out of tests before the end of the fight one tend to be used up do you see the need for further g m t flight testing and then the context in which is information's been been highlighted is the issue d other types of testing to ensure that it's operational if you're going to run out of these it does seem that there are perhaps should be an effort to sustain the our industrial  you are now proposing a decrease in the issue of picking that number of people have concern as to what data if you do have an ability to look back at that and give us some comparative we would appreciate your thoughts on the issue of number of issues that we have a lot of jurisdiction over so we thank you very much and the hearing