Click here or on the photo above to view and download video from today’s hearing
WASHINGTON, D.C. – During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing today, U.S. Senator Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, delivered questions to NORTHCOM Commander, General Lori Robinson, on the Russian cruise missile threat and U.S. ballistic missile defense.
Specifically, Fischer asked if General Robinson was confident in the ability of our country’s Gound-based Midcourse Defense’s (GMD) ability to defend the U.S. from an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) attack from North Korea. In response, General Robinson said she is “100 percent confidence in [her] ability to defend the United States of America.”
A transcript of Fischer’s exchange with Gen. Robinson is below.
Senator Fischer: General Robinson, your opening statement discusses the increasing capabilities of Russian cruise missiles, to hold targets in the homeland at risk specifically you state, “These systems present an increasing threat to North America due to their long range, low radar cross section, and the limited indications and warnings likely to be seen prior to a combat launch.” Can you elaborate and characterize this threat in further detail, and how much does it concern you?
General Robinson: … When I sit back and look at that I look at their capability, what they are capable of, I look at their capacity as they continue to train, both their bomber pilots and submarine pilots. I look at intent in the air domain as the commander of NORAD, I know from an intent perspective, their intentions, I don’t see that. But that doesn’t mean that, from a strategic long term perspective, as we talked about in the National Defense Strategy, what Russia is out there doing. But I have to tell you that one of the things that we’re doing is a Northern Approach Surveillance analysis of alternatives with Canada to understand what’s coming across the northern approaches, both Canada and Alaska, because I look across the entire part as the commander of NORAD, and what I have said to everybody is that I want to be able to detect, ID, track, and engage if necessary, at ranges, to defend our homeland. Those are the things that I think about, when I think about Russia.
…
Senator Fischer: I happen to believe that our missile defense system provides really an immense capability and the expansion of that system is going to help us to continue to defend the homeland as this threat increases. Yet, over the weekend, General, we saw the New York Times editorial board publish a column titled, “Dangerous Illusion of Missile Defense”. In it, they described our homeland defense system as, “riddled with flaws”, and repeated what I consider an old tired claim that tests were not conducted under realistic conditions. To be clear, do you have confidence in the ability of the GMD System to defend the United States from a North Korean ballistic missile attack today?
General Robinson: Ma’am I have one hundred percent confident in my ability to defend the United States of America.
Senator Fischer: Do you believe actions taken by Congress and this administration to expand the system’s capacity and improve discrimination will enhance NORTHCOM’s ability to defend the homeland from a ballistic missile attack in the future.
General Robison: Ma’am I would tell you I appreciate the above threshold reprogramming for the capacity that we gave. I think that is helpful as we look at adding on to that the redesign kill vehicle, in addition to continued work which we need to do with discriminating radars. Between all of those three things, I think that we continue to outpace everybody and it gives me more and more confidence, continued confidence, in our ability to defend the United States.
