“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, from a very muggy, hot, humid day here in Alexandria, Virginia. I am Riki Ellison. I am your host today. I am the founder and chairman of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance. We have one sole purpose of making our world and our nation a safer place through the deployment, the evolution, and development of missile defenses. This is our 81st virtual here, and it’s on the Air Force in the Golden Dome.
We have, over the previous two or three weeks, have focused on the service’s contributions to the Golden Dome. We did a virtual with the Army to begin this. We did one with the Navy in the Golden Dome about a week ago, and we are now going to look to the Air Force and what their role is and have a great discussion on what they can and can’t do or what is the best that we think they could provide to this overall architecture that’s going to go forward on that.
I’ve just come from 40 miles from the Russian border in Poland at a training site and also the same trip over in Honolulu, Hawaii, meeting with INDOPACOM. So, there’s been great perspectives from our component commands outside of the United States and how they want to contribute to the Golden Dome and how the Golden Dome can contribute to them. We have a great panel today.
I do want to mention that our guest that we announced, Gus Guastella, is unable to make the broadcast today. So, we’ve got one of our great wingmen, one of my favorite wingmen of all time, Charles Corcoran, is going to participate on behalf of him. We have three stunning, powerful guests here today, starting off with the previous NORTHCOM commander, Glen VanHerck.
And Glen is responsible, from my perspective, of really shaping the requirements and the push to get a Golden Dome as an executive order. His advocacy while he was in command to understand the command and control aspect of the Golden Dome and the lack of it and to be pushing as hard as he did, this is a result of that. So, it’s going to be great to get a reflection from a NORTHCOM combatant commander. And by the way, that is the number one command for Golden Dome, obviously, and that is where Mike Guetlein first visited once he got confirmed. He went right to Gooey, to NORTHCOM, to discuss that. That is the customer.
So, we’re going to have a great perspective from Glen on this and obviously the role of the Air Force. We have Corky, who has had, I think, 450 combat hours in the F-15 and F-22. So, he’s done air-to-air combat. He was the deputy commander for Air Force Ops, so he understands this mission clearly. His expertise has been all over the world. He has been in Israel many times during the fights that we’ve seen, air-to-air fights, taking out cruise missiles. Corkys been there in Israel. He’s been there in Ukraine on their air-to-air capabilities. So, his expertise will be phenomenal.
And then we have Mark Montgomery. And Mark, of all of us, it’s 1 a.m. in Taiwan. Mark’s in Taiwan tonight, participating in this discussion. And Mark’s well aware of the Air and U.S. Air Force from his days on the Hill, from his expertise in the Pacific, in Taiwan, with the Navy aspects to it. So, I think this is a great discussion, and it’s an education. And it’s an education of what Air Force can do, what they can’t do, and how maybe they should fit in the architecture, if the architecture, because we have to have cruise missile defense.
And just to start it off, it is a daunting problem to cover the airspace of this continent against cruise missile defense. Just ridiculous. So, this needs to be scoped the best we can. So, with that, I would like to—and I’m going to give Glen a few—he is a Kansas City Chief fan, big time. So, I’m going to give him that credit for that. He’s given us a call from Missouri. So, welcome to the broadcast today, Glen.”
Closing Remarks:
“Thank you, Mark. Thank you, everyone. Thank you Glen, Corky. You hit the mark. You hit it. We’ve educated correctly on this. I would just add, I mean, I’m 100% behind all that, but it doesn’t seem we have tapped the Air Force’s genius, the Air Force’s talent in doing that defensive warfare against offensive threats. We haven’t tapped into that. And maybe it’s because MDA has been focused on other stuff, but that needs to be tapped in because that’s the best we’ve got in the country. I don’t think it’s the Army from air-to-air stuff. It is the Air Force and that needs to be a good set of focus point and funding and introduction to be a major player in the Golden Dome. The Air Force has to be. So thanks everybody for taking your time today. Really appreciate the insight. Thank you.”
Mr. Riki Ellison, MDAA Founder and Chairman
Speakers:
General (Retired) Glen VanHerck
Former Commander of the United States Northern Command
Major General (Retired) Charles “Corky” Corcoran
Former Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff Operations, U.S. Air Force
Rear Admiral (Retired) Mark Montgomery
MDAA Board Member
Mr. Riki Ellison
MDAA Founder and Chairman
