“This organization was built over 20 years ago. Our whole mission is to advocate for missile defense because we believe that makes our nation and our world a safer place. We’ve had some big things happen, and we’re on the tipping point of a tremendous surge for missile defense.
There’s only been three of these in our lifetimes. If you go back, if you look at when we moved to actually have a limited capability, not limited, a capability that was put in Grand Forks in the early 70s where we actually had a missile defensive system for the entire country, that was in place, was in place long. We withdrew from that.
Then we went to the 80s where we decided to take another surge at taking out these nuclear weapons and making the world safer through the use of missile defense. That got us a little bit further, but did not get into space, did not get the full capability in play. It was really a research and development part.
Then we went to the early 2000s when 9-11 happened. Then we decided to deploy a missile defense capability to defend against a very limited threat of North Korea. We did that in remarkable time and under three years.
Now, the shift has come with an executive order by the president to do a surge like never before, like never before, to be able to defend our nation with the Golden Dome and put forward a full executive order with policies and authorities and everything to go forward. We’re on the cusp of that happening. It’s going to happen probably next week or the week after, but it is happening.
I wanted this discussion here to get to some of the ground truth. Get to some of the ground truth on what lessons learned on what we shouldn’t do. Open up some of our scabs of the last 20, even 40 years so we don’t go down that path again.
We don’t need to go down paths and waste resources and not get to where we need to get. That’s a key point here that we want to look at before we jump into the next phase. We want to look at the Army’s role and Army’s phenomenal history with missile defense and air defense and how it plays itself.”
Mr. Riki Ellison MDAA Founder and Chairman
“I don’t know exactly why, but I mean, again, back to the very early part of the problem that the Army has with this particular topic is the effectors are so expensive. And we’re so far behind on the production, right? And that’s organic industrial base, the defense industry.”
“There’s kind of three parts to it. There’s the concept. Let’s say the OV-1 is the concept, and then you need the organizations that are going to support it. What are they? 94th AAMDC, okay? A surface action group with Aegis. If you’ve got Aegis for sure, what about your sensing network? I mean, the formations that actually support it. Then you need the technology. You need those technologies brought out there so that, and we put it in the hands of those commanders and those units, and let them discover, learn, achieve successes, but also fail. Because you have to fail out there. You have to make some things. You have to stress test some things where they don’t work so you can get feedback to industry. Now, I’m going to jump on PEOs, PMs, and acquisition guys.”
“They can’t make those corrections in Washington DC or Huntsville, Alabama or pick another. They got to get out forward with those systems and see those things in play to get that feedback. That intellectual gap between where the test community and where the program executives sit versus where the operational force is actually employing the systems, it’s too big. It’s too wide. The gap is too far. We have to shorten that. Why? Because industry will come. Industry will come, but industry won’t go forward unless everybody else is forward.”
Gen. (Ret.) Charles Flynn Former commanding general of U.S. Army Pacific
“That’s a major problem in and of itself. Then we’re on the wrong side of the cost curve. But yet the Army is making investments in non-lethal means to also take things out of the sky. And there’s a number of them, and they’re really good. And we ought to be sinking more money into those kinds of things. Again, back to ground terminals, there’s ground effects that are coming from space or there’s space effects that are coming from ground terminals.”
“And then the positioning of all these things, right? This is where you want land forces to be able to get access and placement and then be able to put sensors so you can see, sense, and make sense of actually what’s going on. Now you just opened up a whole other area in the terrestrial layer. And I’ll say this particularly out in the Pacific that we haven’t really deeply invested in in years. Years. There’s plenty of sensors out there on the surface of the ocean.”
“Well, we need some sensors on the ground too. And ground terminal development is going to be an important part of what we’re doing here.”
Gen. (Ret.) Charles Flynn Former commanding general of U.S. Army Pacific
“Make this movement for the four-star invincible.”
Mr. Riki Ellison MDAA Founder and Chairman
Winners Associate With Winners!
Speakers:
Gen. (Ret.) Charles Flynn
Former commanding general of U.S. Army Pacific
Mr. Riki Ellison
MDAA Founder and Chairman
