“This is our 75th congressional roundtable. We couldn’t have picked a better topic than what happened yesterday. This is the game changer that happened yesterday on the Golden Dome for America.
A historic day in the history of missile defense. That announcement surpasses any announcement made on missile defense, though it wasn’t as smooth and articulate as President Reagan’s one 40 years ago. It was the most powerful statement by a President or a head of any nation on the movement and decision to defend the nation against the current threats that we are undefended from.
From ballistic missiles, hyper glide vehicles, from fractional orbital bombardment systems, from cruise missiles. That announcement stated that we will create a system, the best system ever created, to defend against all of those threats. And this is about reshaping our deterrent.
This is not about replacing mutually assured destruction. This is not about replacing the triad. This is adding to deterrence that we are unable to deter through our current deterrent capabilities in our strategic forces to be able to see what’s going on in the world today.
The view and the power of this is his selection of one person, completely unanimous, as you heard him say, the best the nation has, of a four-star General, Mike Guetlein, to command this system, the development of this system, to put it in place. And this is the type of leadership that our country has turned to from our great presidents in the past to people like Oppenheimer and Groves, like Schriever, like Rickover. This is going to be the hardest, most complex engineering, system of engineering, challenge that this nation has ever done.
And let’s think through what that is, because the backbone, the core of this whole thing is being able to collect data. And share that data. Collecting data from any launch point from anywhere in the world that would have those threats we listed coming into or near or at the United States of America. That has to be collected and it has to be shared amongst our joint services. We don’t have a very good joint all domain command and control. This is the background, the backbone of Golden Dome. And that requires space, that requires thousands of satellites, collecting that data. And both the LEO, MEO, GEO, near space, all the way down to our terrestrial and put all that together. And then to be able to share that data.
That is where we’re at this level of doing that. So with that, you would have layers of defensive capability. But the key here is to detect this stuff as far away as possible from the United States of America. That’s the key. And the only way you can do that is through space. The capabilities in space. And then we would layer that back down into, all the way back down, to the terminal aspect of it. So, it’s a daunting task. It’s one that obviously our technology is able to do… much more… As the President said, that was 40 years ago, SDI. It is affordable. It is, as the President said, $175 billion.
And they’re going to get it done in three years. And let’s just put that in perspective. You’re not going to have a full operating system against everything in three years. You will have a step-by-step, year after year, integrating capabilities that you will demonstrate to take out each of those systems and bring them together. By three years, you’ll have a blueprint and a plan to go forward.
So it’s a historic moment for everyone. It’s going to change; I think it’s going to change the world to make it a much more stable and safer place because of this.”
“This is momentous. This is invincibility. It’s taken 40 years.
It’s taken 40 years of lessons learned to get this where it is today. We have invincible movement with this. It’s only going to become stronger and stronger. It’s the way to win. We’ll figure out a way to win on this. And it is leadership. It is leadership on the top of this. Yeah, you can put all the new technologies, what you want underneath it. But if you don’t have that right, you’re not going to get it done. And we haven’t got it done those last 40 years.
We are in the best position as a nation to make this happen for real. And it’s going to happen. The momentum is unstoppable. And it’s so fun to be on a team like this. This is what you live for, to be on teams that are invincible, that are world champions. And we’re going to be the world champion. So, thank you for all of you for joining us today and communicating what happened yesterday to the public, to the movement on that.”
Mr. Riki Ellison, MDAA Founder and Chairman
Speakers:
Mr. John Rood
Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
General (Ret.) Charles Flynn
Former commanding general of U.S. Army Pacific
Rear Admiral (Ret.) Mark Montgomery
MDAA Board of Directors
Mr. Riki Ellison
MDAA Founder and Chairman
