Dear Members and Friends
In the forefront of the Chinese three stage ICBM demonstration from mainland China (Hainan) into international waters of the Pacific near Tahiti and French Polynesia, with a payload capable of 2,500kgs carrying 10 nuclear MIRVS, a deliberate action to set conditions to the United States that last was done over 40 years ago by China in 1980. To the backdrop of the release sept 23 by the NYTs and WSJ of a bipartisan congressional appointed Commission on the National Defense Strategy report that led with “The threats the United States faces are the most serious and most challenging the nation has encountered since 1945 and include the potential for near-term major war.” The United States “is not prepared today.”. We MDAA held our 61st Congressional Roundtable on Sept 20th on “What the heck is going on with the Defense of Guam” in relevance and urgency for our nation be best prepared, best deterred and best defended against China.
Mr. Riki Ellison: Chairman and Founder, Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance
“The Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance is 22 years old as of September 22nd, so we’re celebrating that, but our sole mission is to make this world and our nation safe from missiles and you can see the world as we see it today and the proliferation of that threat continues to evolve and we must evolve with that. This is our 61st Congressional virtual Round Table. We’re debuting our newest member, JD Gainey, on this and we have a phenomenal topic it is about Guam and “What the heck is going on in Guam”. I’m from the Pacific and my grandfather was the chief medical officer for the Pacific for the British Empire under King George 5th and King George the 6th, he received the Order of the British Empire for his service there by Queen Elizabeth. my great- great-grandfather was the chief of the Ngāi Tahu Tribe in New Zealand the largest tribe in New Zealand the majority probably 89% of the South Island. I’m embedded from the Pacific for an open free Pacific. We are being challenged today, yesterday, tomorrow, by China in its tactics not to make the Pacific free not to make the Pacific open and has been going after islands in the Pacific and just most notably the Philippines their bullying tactics their intimidation their influence and that may be the tripwire more so than what’s going on in Taiwan and Taiwan is being intimidated every single day. So, the point, the deterrent for the United States in the Pacific is its furthest territory in the Pacific it’s Guam and that’s where we are able to project force from our airstrip there from our Port there from our submarine base there for stability for open and free Pacific.
There’s no doubt that Guam has to be defended it has to be defended to ensure that we continue to have status quo the way it is today, to do that, Guam has to be defended against China, it has to be. We’ve been part of this movement, and we go back to April 13th, 2013 when we were leading the advocacy we’re a do-tank we got in there on the 13th of April 2013 to put our first THAAD battery in place on Guam which was a fight for against North Korea. We’ve held six missile Defender the Year events in Guam over those years and in 2016-17Harry Harris, the former commander of indopacom or Pacom, moved the direction from North Korea to a China defense ask and that came up through the Pacific Defense Initiative and it’s so fortunate JD was part of that movement and Mark Montgomery was in under Senator McCain’s senate arm service committee that began to put forward that advocacy and got it in play and Tom Goffus replaced Mark to a $4 billion infrastructure build for the defense of Guam. That was in I think 2018-2019 and JD you’ll clear that up on top of that. But here we are and I was on the hill couple days ago and ran into the to the milcom subcommittee and they’re telling me Riki that they said the bill for Guam is now $60 billion and I know we have a hurricane repair but that is a far jump from $4 billion and I know so we got to get a little grasp on what is going on here because that bill does not look to go down is only going to look to group and we can’t walk we’re not going to walk away from this we have to have the defense there.
So we got to look at this and it might not be the best picture but we got to come to terms with this and figure out how best we can do it we’ve heard the head of China, Xi [Jinping] say he is ready he wants his military force to be ready by 2027 to take Taiwan. Last week we saw a Mach 9 missile that was undefended going right into Israel. And that technology is coming from China.
There has to be capabilities to defend against the best threats that China is developing. Our Congress, we’re not even funding a Hypersonic Glide defense or completing a Hypersonic Glide defense until the mid-30s so we’re building architecture without that right now. I know you got to start places but there’s a lot of things here that are concerning and that we got to get on the right track. So this is about Clarity of what’s happening in Guam by probably two of the best experts in the world on this particular subject that we have today.”
Speakers:
Mr. Riki Ellison:
Chairman and Founder, Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance
Rear Admiral (Ret.) Mark Montgomery:
MDAA Board of Directors Member, Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies Former Director of Operations, U.S. Pacific Command
Mr. JD Gainey:
MDAA Board of Directors Member, Former Senior Analyst, USINDOPACOM and National Security Affairs and Advanced Technologies
