“This has been a significant month, historically, in the missile defense history of the world. There have been three different campaigns happen at tremendous levels, starting with June 1st when the Ukrainians took out the Russian bombers. A left of launch capability and Ukraine had to withstand the counterattack from Russia, which the highest ever in one day, over 500, with both ballistic missiles, drones, and so forth.
Then on June 13th, Israel did a magnificent left of launch again with special forces to go after Iran. They were able to withstand everything Iran had because they had a significant missile defense capability that has been built by us with them over the past 20, 30 years, and then here we go. Probably the biggest strike the United States of America has done. You can go all the way back on that, and the political will to do that, and our ability to defend against their counterattack, that happened.
This is the new way of warfare right now that’s happening. We have to be able to get much better at defending our homeland and our bases forward and make that deterrent as strong as it is. That’s a big stick deterrent. That stick, for some of us, has been wound back since 1978 with the Iran hostage crisis that elected Ronald Reagan. We swung that stick and we swung it hard and we hit a grand slam for deterrence around the world. That bat hit that ball and everyone understood what that was.
We were able to cover our first base, which was our bases forward closest to Iran with the Patriot units that the chairman so eloquently praised, the 44, I think, Patriots over in Qatar. We’ve been there. We’ve had Defenders of the Year there, but a magnificent part of that, that they were one of many Patriot and THAAD units on that first baseline directly across from Iran that were ready to go to defeat and defend from that. We had our second base covered, and that was our Aegis ships, our BMD ships in the eastern Med., the four that we’ve been assigned to it, and the European phase adapted approach that we put forward, and the Romania site for southern Europe with SM-3s.
They were all poised, ready to play because Iran had the capability to strike U.S. bases in Europe. Then our third base coverage, which was the northern part of Europe with the Poland site, PAA, and our ships possibly in the North Sea, and our radars in Fylingdales and Iceland, all the way back to the U.S. homeland. We’re all engaged, ready to play.
It was a team effort to make that deterrent so powerful and the message so powerful that the world is safer, and the United States sure is safer than it was a week ago, today. It’s significant, but we have to defend our homeland. The Golden Dome that was announced three months ago has to happen with urgency and with authorities to get our homeland defenses strong because Iran didn’t have the ability to strike us through missiles and cruise missiles to the U.S. homeland. Next two or three years, other countries can and maybe will. That’s why we have to do as much as we can to do this. As my good friend, General John Hyten, has always said on deterrents is you have to have political will. You have to deliver a knockout punch that they can’t stop, no matter what, and you got to be able to defend against everything they got. That’s called deterrence, and we did it. So, I’d like to start off the conversation with an expert, our board member, an expert on what exactly happened on the offensive side of bringing that knockout punch.”
Closing Remarks:
“You can see the tension in our country and the different viewpoints and having this come out to what everybody has agreed upon, that our deterrence has enhanced tremendously from this. The key thing on this is, we don’t know what’s going to happen the next three years that can threaten the United States, from which country and which kind of way to do it.
The urgency for Golden Dome to get it together and get it going—it’s crazy that that president’s directive was in January, and we still don’t have this thing going. We’re losing time, and time’s not on our side. We have to have a defensive capability for our infrastructure, for our cities, for our counter value, counterforce. We have to have that in three years.”
Mr. Riki Ellison, MDAA Founder and Chairman
Speakers:
Maj Gen (Ret.) Charles Corcoran
Former Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff Operations U.S. Air Force
Gen. (Ret.) Charles Flynn
Former commanding general of U.S. Army Pacific
Mr. JD Gainey
MDAA Board Member
Rear Admiral (Ret.) Mark Montgomery
MDAA Board Member
Mr. Riki Ellison
MDAA Founder and Chairman
