“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, from a sunny Northern California day, right off Sand Hill Road, up in Woodside, California. I’m Riki Ellison. I am the Founder and Chairman of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance. This area brings back fond memories of 40 years ago with Ronald Reagan and my introduction to missile defense. So it’s a really pleasure speaking to you from here.  

We’ve just come from Tokyo and spent some time at Yokota Air Base. We spent three days, last week, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, in the island of Guam and had the opportunity to tour and visit and brief site A, which is the U.S. Army’s composite battalion that they are building for ADA. And the Aegis Guam site on Anderson Air Base, the spectacular constructions that I’ve witnessed since I haven’t been back there since 2021, but it was phenomenal on the activity and the depth of what we’ve done since 2021. We were also there with the Governor, Governor Lou Guerrero, in honoring our Missile Defenders of the Year at Guam and also in Japan on that.

When we look at this discussion we’re going to have today on Guam, we need to stand back a little bit and look at the strategic purpose before we get down into the details. And I think the strategic purpose, and we recognize this, four of our past four U.S. Combatant Commanders from INDOPACOM have told us, that there is a window between now and 2030 that China may challenge, it may go to war with us over Taiwan. And we have to do everything we can to deter that decision by China. And one of the critical things to do is to defend the island of Guam for that specific reason, to deter China, to have a gapless missile defense capability that questions their ability to try to do this. So that’s number one.  

I think number two is our Army Air Defense are developing this new composite battalion of air defense. Our air defense is legacy systems built, I think the first intercept was 91. So, they have moved to create a much more efficient, effective capability and reorganize their composite battalion. And they’re doing that in Guam. So that’s happening in Guam.  

And I think the third point is this Aegis Guam opportunity. It is not Aegis ashore in Romania or Poland. It is a variant that is there. And the sole reason why we’re doing this in Guam is to release our $2 billion ships that are on tether that should be doing other missions. And we do two, you multiply that by three or four more for that. So that’s what we’re doing here. We are trying to make the world safer with what we’re doing.” 

–Mr. Riki Ellison, MDAA Founder and Chairman

Speakers:

Jeannie Sommer

Army Program Director, Integrated Fires Directorate for the PEO for Missiles and Space ​

COL Christopher Hill

Project Manager, Integrated Fires Mission Command (IBCS and PATRIOT C2)

LTG (Ret.) Jamie Jarrard 

Former Deputy Commanding General for the U.S. Army Pacific

Paul Mann

Former Missile Defense Agency’s Program Executive for Aegis-Based Defense

RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery​

Former Director of Operations, U.S. Pacific Command

Riki Ellison

MDAA Founder and Chair

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