“Good afternoon from a spectacular fall day here in Alexandria, Virginia. Just want to shout out a little bit to the Golden Dome dominance and defense of the Golden Dome, the one in South Bend, Indiana. I’m going to give a little love for that. We’re here today. I’m Riki Ellison. I am the founder and chairman of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance. Our mission is to advocate and educate and push as hard as we can on the evolution, the development and deployment of missile defenses around the world and certainly in this nation as we go forward with Golden Dome to make the world safer, to make our nation safer. We’ve been engaged with this since 1980. MDAA formed about 20 plus years ago on it. This is our 86th virtual congressional roundtable. What is IBCS? We have some really great experts, balanced viewpoints on this upcoming discussion that we’re having.
I want to just start off with, I’ve had some discussions with the Department of War over the past week here in DC, and I’m pretty confident that the Secretary of Defense, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and even the President of the United States is revolutionizing our acquisition reform to change the way we spend and how we get weapons into the warfighters’ hands across all our weapons systems, all our services. That is a central critical point.
One of the major programs that’s going to be a lead for that, a pathway for that is the Golden Dome. The Golden Dome and its requirements to have capabilities up in three years is forcing this function. The Golden Dome has that unique opportunity of having these older legacy systems, which are going to make up maybe 50 percent or more of the current capabilities, and integrating them into the new way of innovation, the new way of moving fast to stay ahead of the threat. That’s a balance that’s going to be put forward. We’re heading in that direction.
IBCS is a program that came together in 2004, the first requirements of it, and brought upon, and we’ll have Charlie speak about that history, but it took close to 20 years, 2023, before it became an IOC, and there are two of the units for sure. I visited one in Germany last month that are going through the first stages of the operations of it. It took 19 years. It took $7 billion U.S. tax dollars, and it’s going to spend another $7 or $6 billion by 2030 to integrate all the systems that the Army has. In the world today, you are seeing that any sensor, any shooter, and any C2 is happening at lightning speed. Look at Ukraine. Look at what they’ve done with integrating sensors and shooters.
This is a major stepping stone to go forward to understand what is good about IBCS, but why did it take 20 years? Why did we spend this kind of money, and how can that, IBCS, still contribute to Golden Dome? I think this is a serious discussion, but it’s a discussion we’re going to have counter views, pro views, and con views.
That’s how you get the truth out. You have a conversation from different perspectives from the best people that we can get that can speak to this that don’t have an agenda for IBCS.”
–Mr. Riki Ellison, MDAA Founder and Chairman
Speakers:
GEN (Ret.) Charles Flynn
Former Commanding General of U.S. Army Pacific
JD Gainey
Former Senior Analyst, USINDOPACOM
COL (Ret.) Anthony Behrens
Former Executive Director for the Guam Defense System Joint Program Office
RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery
Former Director of Operations, U.S. Pacific Command
Riki Ellison
MDAA Founder and Chairman
Winners Associate with Winners to Win!
