“Welcome. I want to thank General Brown. This is an energy changer. It is a momentum changer. It is what is required in this continent to get on top of IAMD. And it is all of you. It is all 80 countries, it is unity. And to C.D.’s points, it’s trust. Number one. And the only way you’re going to get trust is through action. Not words. Not charts. Not promises. Action. And that’s his leadership in creating the Eastern flank Deterrent Line is action. This is not World War II. You can’t refer back to the last 30 years of missile defense. This is not your daddy’s or mama’s missile defense.
In the last month, three incidences changed our view on deterrence. Nuclear or nuclear nations that do not use nuclear weapons, we’ve had a tremendous challenge in deterring that fight. But last month, we changed the game in deterrence. We enhanced our deterrence by what Ukraine did to Russia. And that is mixing offense with defense, no doubt. That is left-of-launch, no doubt. And Israel to Iran. Iran to Israel. Then the United States to Iran.
Deterrence is three things only. Political will is number one. We haven’t had political will to do what we did to Iran—that should have been done back in 1978. Political will. You have it now. The second thing is you have to have your offensive capability to get through anything they’ve got. And hit them no matter what they’ve got. And the third thing is you better be able to defend yourself from counterattack. Each of those situations had those three elements. Today, we don’t. Europe does not have the ability to defend against a counterattack. Not one nation, not one forward operating base, not one maneuvering force could handle one night.
You go back to July 7th, 728, by Russia, drones and missiles. Only twenty of them were ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. The rest of them were Shahed-3s. That should tell you something. Shahed-3 is the best bang for the buck for the Russians. And they’re beating us on the cost curve. We have to address this. And this has to be done, and it’s being done. The European, excuse me, the Eastern Flank Deterrent Line, data is the backbone of that concept. Data is the backbone of the Golden Dome. This is Europe’s Golden Dome. And as C.D. said, the land sharing of open data is as equally as important now as the space sharing of data.
Which we will be doing in the United States for the Golden Dome. The exercise of Fly-Trap last month by the 5th Corps, Colonel Matt Davis, demonstrated that a non-business, non-company was able to, Dene Farrell of the 18th Air Corps, was able to take his Ukrainian acoustic sensor and put it in eight C2 systems, eight in unclassified data, and converted it into eight systems—from strategic to tactical, from joint, from, partners, from coalition, and distribute that live. Didn’t take 20 years, didn’t take 3 years, didn’t take all the bureaucracy and the rules of the game.
It took about a week, and we have to start there. We don’t need to keep doing specials, we can do special stuff, but we better learn how to do blocking and tackling at the lowest level. Which means open architecture to commercial level sector, not classified, to put this out and share it, because nobody shares, obviously, bilateral, secret is very difficult. So, the premise of the Eastern flank deterrent line is to share open data across all those European countries. And we’re going to use the acoustic sensor to start and the data, which is much more important, on being able to move that information to everybody. We’re going to start, as you heard from C.D., in Estonia, in the Baltics. We’re going to start there. And you’re going to be able—industries are going to be able to add on to this. This is just one layer that’s going to be easy to do and have IOC in two months.
We can play. We have to play. We cannot not do this because we can’t deter a world war because we don’t have a defense to protect any counterattack. It’s a challenge. It’s frustrating going to see mounted and dismounted capabilities for—our maneuvering force can’t go forward. You’ve got fiber optic drones that are unbeatable right now.
And just from the U.S. perspective, we only have 50 Patriot batteries. We have three SHORAD battalions and eight THAAD batteries for three co-coms. You only got—Curt’s only got one battalion here. And you got the Golden Dome in the U.S. probably trying to pull some of that stuff back to the U.S. You gotta, you gotta play—that’s why that 5% is up. And certainly, you should really be thinking about spending that 5% or that increase of 3 or 4% on being able to defend your infrastructure, your bases, and we can do this as a team, not as an individual country to do this. So, we’re at an inflection point, and I know C.D. is a man of action, and we’re going forward with what we got. And it’s just awesome to see some of the guys he’s already picked on his team. Curt, who’s going to be the military person over it.
We’ve got Dene Farrell, who’s going to be the 18th, who’s going to be the data, in charge of the technical part of it. And we’ve got Colonel Hill, PEO Missiles and Space, Frank Lozano, gave Colonel Hill to C.D. for the American-U.S. involvement of program of record capabilities. It’s an exciting time, and it is about winning a world championship, and we have to do it together. Thank you.”
Closing Remarks:
“Two other critical points here. In the executive order, the President of the United States put forward our ability to track, sense, intercept in space. That is now policy. That’s not a hurdle anymore. You have to understand that. That has happened. That’s a tremendous shift from what we’ve been doing in NATO. So, we’re going to warfight in space, starting with the Golden Dome on that.
The second thing is policy. Look at NATO. We built stuff that was directly not allowed to face Russia. You don’t have any radars facing Russia. You weren’t allowed to do that. You’ve got an upper-tier system basically focused to Iran. You are hopefully shifting that integration to IAMD for all threats, but it’s not been done. You need stuff facing Russia. And I don’t know where the policy is yet with NATO, but I’m pretty sure it’s going in that direction because we’re not where we were 20 years ago, we got a real threat and if there’s a settlement Russia and if there’s gonna be a settlement Ukraine, they’re coming Putin’s not gonna stop so you’re gonna have to deal with this, and you’re gonna have to spend money on missile defense capabilities to make Europe safe.
I think you’ve got to find a way to be part of the Eastern Flank Deterrent Line. That’s the winning team, find a way to get in there in any way possible to be part of that growth. It’s really at the infant stage right now and contributing to that and creating trust, with each other, joint, combined, and partners. That’s how you win. The momentum is with us. Become invincible.”
Mr. Riki Ellison, MDAA Founder and Chairman
Moderator:
Ms. Seanna Senior
Senior Vice President, Product, Govini
Panelists:
Brigadier General Curtis W. King
Commanding General, 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command, United States Army
Major General (Retired) John George
United States Army Retired, Vice President, Army Strategic Account Executive, Leidos
Dr. Alexey Boyarsky
Special Advisor to the Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine
Mr. Riki Ellison
MDAA Founder and Chairman
