[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 69 (Wednesday, May 6, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H5279-H5286]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            MISSILE DEFENSE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Akin) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. AKIN. It's a pleasure to be able to join you this nice spring 
afternoon. On a somewhat different subject than we have talked about in 
the last several weeks, the subject we're going to be dealing with for 
the next hour is the subject of missile defense.
  It's a rather interesting story. It involves some history. It also 
involves some very interesting sort of political wheeling and dealing 
between various nations, and it is of particular interest to us because 
it is the subject of defending our homeland and our lives.
  The story starts, at least as my memory allows, going back some 
years, back to a thing called the Antiballistic Missile, the ABM Treaty 
of 1972. That was an agreement between a number of

[[Page H5280]]

different nations not to develop a missile defense.
  Now what does that mean exactly? What it means is different nations 
were putting together two pieces of technology. The first was the 
ability to make missiles. That was started at my old alma mater, 
actually, by a guy by the name of Robert Goddard, who was an 
experimenter, and he was doing experiments like you might see kids do 
to make model rockets and things.
  So people started to realize that you could put a weapon on the end 
of a missile and could shoot it at your enemy.

                              {time}  1645

  That idea had been done with skyrockets before that with just black 
powder. The Chinese did that, to some degree, and they even used them 
on Fort McHenry. But this was a new development, and this was coupled 
with the idea of these nuclear warheads.
  The nuclear warhead put a whole new different meaning on things, 
because it was such a powerful weapon that if you could put a nuclear 
warhead onto a missile and then shoot that at your enemy, you didn't 
even have to be too accurate, even, and it would cause tremendous 
damage.
  So as I was just graduating from engineering school, what was going 
on was that we had negotiated a treaty with the Soviet Union called the 
ABM treaty in 1972, and what it said was that we were not going to 
defend ourselves from nuclear missiles.
  Now, that is kind of a crazy idea in a way, because the job of a 
nation is to defend their own populace. The main job that we have in 
Congress, if you were to say, what is your main job? One of the main 
things needs to be to defend America, to defend our homeland. Yet this 
treaty said: We agree that we are not going to defend ourselves. In 
fact, the whole thing was called MAD, and indeed it was mad, Mutually 
Assured Destruction. If you shoot a nuclear weapon at us, we'll shoot 
one back at you. Everybody melts down and everybody loses.
  So the theory is that that will create stability. Well, it was not so 
clear it was going to create stability, because if one guy could shoot 
first and take the other guy down, then it was not such a good thing 
not to be able to defend yourself.
  And so it was that we went through a number of decades from the early 
seventies with this philosophy of mutually assured destruction. And it 
was really challenged in 1983 by Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan started 
doing some thinking and saying there has got to be a better way to do 
this thing than to have the Soviets and the Chinese aiming all these 
missiles at us, and they could melt down our different cities. So he 
came up with the idea of what was called SDI, Strategic Defense 
Initiative. He spoke at some length and did a very good job selling the 
idea that America should be looking at defending ourselves from these 
weapons.
  One of the things that most people didn't know and that he educated 
the American public on was the fact that a foreign nation could shoot a 
missile from one continent to the other. We could see it on the radar 
coming in. We would say: New York City, you have half an hour before 
you're turned into dust, into a nuclear cinder, and there wasn't a 
thing we could do about it.
  So Ronald Reagan said, there has got to be a better way to skin the 
cat than that and so he came up with the Strategic Defense Initiative. 
His detractors called it Star Wars, which actually didn't hurt from a 
marketing point of view. So Ronald Reagan talked about the different 
technologies that could be deployed in order to try to stop one of 
these incoming missiles.
  That became kind of a hallmark of one of the things that Republicans 
stood for was missile defense, and it was one of the things that the 
Democrats decided they were against. They didn't like missile defense. 
Well, why was it they didn't like it? They had two reasons: One, it 
wouldn't work. And, two, it was too expensive. Also, they said it would 
destabilize relations between the countries, as though they were so 
stable during the Cold War period.
  So that is what happened in 1983. Ronald Reagan made that proposal. 
It wasn't until actually many years later when I got to Congress, in 
2002, that President Bush decided that it was time to move forward on 
this thing and protect our country. So he proposed and actually 
initiated the changes to give notice to the different countries that 
were involved in the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and said: You've got 
your 6 months' notice. We're going to start developing missile defense.
  Now, that gives us a little bit of the background. I am joined here 
today and I am greatly honored to be able to have one of the 
outstanding experts in the U.S. Congress here on missile defense 
joining me on the floor, and that is my good friend, Trent Franks from 
Arizona.
  We are going to hear what Trent has to say and kind of get into this 
subject. We are going to be joined by other Congressmen talking about 
something that is so fundamentally simple that it is very hard for me 
to understand how anybody could be opposed to our government defending 
our citizens from nuclear weapons.
  I would now yield time to my friend from Arizona, Congressman Franks. 
Thank you for joining us.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. It is my honor to join you, Congressman Akin. 
I thank my friend from Missouri for the work that you do not only on 
this area but so many others. You are a man committed to doing what is 
right for America and making sure that future generations have a little 
more time to walk in the sunlight of freedom. I have a great deal of 
respect and appreciation for all that you do and for who you are. It is 
my honor to be here with you.
  I think that you stated so many things so effectively that it is hard 
for me to add to the fundamental premise. But as you said, there was 
once a time not so many years ago when America and the free world faced 
a Soviet Union that was armed with massive stockpiles of weapons that 
are the most dangerous weapons that have ever really entered the 
arsenal of mankind, ballistic missiles that can travel several thousand 
miles an hour and can deliver warheads that can decimate an entire city 
or even potentially interrupt the electrical systems of entire nations.
  It is a very daunting challenge indeed. And you again laid out so 
well that we adopted this strategy of mutually assured destruction not 
because we really wanted to, but because we didn't have much 
alternative. We really embraced this grim equation that if the Soviet 
Union launched their missiles and killed our men, women, and children 
across our cities, that we could launch a counterstrike almost 
simultaneously, even before their missiles landed, that would do the 
same thing to their nation. And that was something that was so 
repugnant and so horrifying to all of us that it created this grim kind 
of an understanding between us that we wouldn't shoot each other 
because we knew that it meant sudden and horrifying death to both of 
our nations.
  I suppose one could say, given the fact that we didn't blow each 
other to atoms, that there was some efficacy to the strategy. And, 
ironically, it still is the centerpiece of our own strategy to deter 
aggression on our homeland. A nation that knows that if they attack the 
United States with nuclear missiles, that we can calculate that 
trajectory. We know where they live and that we have a response 
capability second to none, and that we can respond in ways that are 
totally unacceptable to them. It is such an important subject.
  Mr. AKIN. Let me just interrupt a second because you've brought up a 
couple of really interesting points.
  The first one, I remember starting to have some interest in politics, 
and I was really skeptical of the idea of even negotiating that treaty, 
because what we found was the Soviet Union cheated on all of their 
treaties. As we look now, as the Soviet Union has collapsed, we find 
they were busy cheating on this thing all the way along. So we were 
kind of really out there, weren't we, with this ABM treaty not having 
any defensive capability.
  The second thing I would just mention is, now, the equation has 
changed, hasn't it? It is not just one or two nations. Now we are 
starting to look at a different scenario, aren't we?
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. We really are. What has changed it so 
dramatically the fundamental aspect that Ronald Reagan put forward, 
that it is much better to defend our citizens than to avenge them. But 
what has changed so much, Congressman Akin, is that now

[[Page H5281]]

we are in a world where the coincidence of Jihadist terrorism and 
nuclear proliferation could change the concept of our freedom and of 
every calculation that we have made for homeland security, because they 
can no longer be deterred.
  When we were dealing with the Soviet Union, we placed our security to 
some degree in their sanity. We recognized that they wanted to live, 
they wanted their nation to continue. And that was a tremendous impetus 
on their part to try to work with us, to try to keep it safe.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, they had a nation-state; and they knew 
that if they launched at us, the thing was, we might launch back at 
them.
  But now you're talking about a terrorist that may not have a nation-
state. That is a different formula. Isn't it?
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. It is absolutely a different formula. Not only 
do we have rogue states and, really, non-state players, as you say, 
that don't have that risk that a nation-state does, but we have a 
different mindset. That is the part that frightens me the most. A 
terrorist that will cut someone's head off, while they are tied down in 
front of a television camera while the victim screams for mercy, with a 
hacksaw blade, we had better be very thankful that that hacksaw blade 
is not a nuclear capability. Because that kind of intent, that kind of 
a mindset that literally has been demonstrated to be willing to kill 
their own children in order to kill our children is the thing that 
frightens me the most, that intent.
  Mr. AKIN. So what you are talking about is we are not only dealing 
with something that is not a nation-state, but we are also dealing with 
a different frame of mind, a different calculus on the value of life. 
You are talking about, if nuclear weapons fall into the hands of people 
that have this mindset, this whole thing is really a game changer.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. It really is, Congressman, because the reality 
is that this mindset cannot be deterred. This whole notion of mutually 
assured destruction was a deterrence strategy, and I am not sure that 
Jihad can be deterred.
  There are really two factors to every threat to individuals or to 
nations, and that is the intent of your enemy and the capacity of your 
enemy. In this case, the Soviet Union had tremendous capacity, but 
their intent was tempered by their desire to survive themselves. You 
could even say that many of the Soviet people had a desire to see 
people live and let live. Their government wasn't quite of that 
mindset. But now we face an enemy that is committed to the destruction 
of the western world. And if they gain the capacity to proceed, I am 
afraid that my children and yours will potentially see the day of 
nuclear terrorism.
  Mr. AKIN. Then is the only threat sort of the radical Islamic threat? 
Because it seems to me that North Korea also poses a threat.
  Am I mistaken on that?
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. North Korea, in my judgment, is the least free 
nation on Earth. This is a nation that has just a completely inhumane 
mindset in their government, and I am not sure that we recognize just 
how dangerous that country is.
  Ironically, the Soviets--well, not the Soviets now. The Russians--I 
have to be careful; a lot has changed--the Soviet Union collapsed on 
itself. But there is still some remnants of that Cold War mentality. 
They assured America that it would be 20 years before Iran could launch 
an ICBM capability, and they assured us many years ago that North Korea 
was far from being able to produce a nuclear capability. But that 
happened much more quickly than we realized. And, as you know, North 
Korea just launched an additional test that went twice as far as their 
first one did. They have nuclear warheads now.
  Mr. AKIN. You are giving us a lot of valuable information. You are 
saying North Korea now has conducted missile tests. The missile, of 
course, is a delivery system. And the most recent test that they shot 
just a couple weeks ago went all the way over Japan and went some 
considerable distance, twice as far as their previous test. So the 
range of their missiles is going farther. Not only that, they are 
equipping the missile, or they can equip the missile, with a nuclear 
warhead, and our understanding is that they are busy developing that 
nuclear capability. Is that correct, to the best of our intelligence?
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. You have got it exactly correct. One of the 
key technical challenges of an ICBM is the ability to keep the missile 
stable during staging, where one stage drops off, and the missile can 
become unstable in that situation. In this last test, North Korea 
demonstrated that capability, and that to me from a technical 
perspective was the most frightening aspect of it.
  I will say this on the floor of the House of Representatives. I 
believe that North Korea represents a potential threat to the homeland 
of the United States and that when the next missile from North Korea 
gets over international waters, that the United States and its allies 
should do what they can to shoot that missile down for a couple of 
reasons: To demonstrate our resolve. But, more importantly, to keep 
them from being able to demonstrate to their potential customers that 
they now have perfected missile technology that they can sell to 
potential nations or even rogue states or just groups like al Qaeda 
that could use this in a way that would be very devastating to the 
country.
  I am very concerned about that. We must not let them demonstrate to 
the world that kind of capacity. They have already shown that they are 
willing to sell this technology. They were the ones primarily who gave 
Iran their missile technology. Iran now has surpassed North Korea in 
missile capability, and yet they probably would not have been anywhere 
close to where they are had it not been for North Korea.
  Mr. AKIN. So North Korea sold some of the technology to Iran. But 
Iran has then been able to develop it more rapidly even than North 
Korea, perhaps because they have more money to put into the project. I 
don't know.
  So now you have got North Korea and Iran both that we consider that 
the leadership is highly unstable in those countries, and they have the 
capability, or are rapidly developing the capability, of projecting a 
missile either into Europe or even potentially onto the continental 
United States with a nuclear warhead on it.

                              {time}  1700

  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Well, that is correct. I believe that there is 
no greater danger to the peace of the human family today than a nuclear 
Iran--I think they are even more dangerous than North Korea. And 
ironically, if North Korea was able to give Iran missile technology, 
how is it that we would forget that they could certainly give them 
warhead technology if they need it, or even a warhead?
  So I am really concerned that the world in general must recognize the 
danger that we face, both with a nuclear North Korea--which is already 
de facto now, this has happened--and with an Iran that is working with 
missile technology that, before long, they are working with solid 
propellants. And I believe that they can range parts of the United 
States even now. And I believe that an Iranian missile poses a profound 
threat to the country and to the world.
  But even more so, probably the point I would make most strenuously is 
that an Iranian nuclear program means that an Islamist nation now has 
their finger on the nuclear button. And they have that technology in 
their hands where they could pass it along to terrorist groups where 
they don't even need a missile, where all they need is a Volkswagen to 
carry it across our border, or a small aircraft, anything. There is a 
lot of danger there.
  Mr. AKIN. That is a scary thought. Thank you. And we will get back to 
the Congressman, as the expert.
  We are also joined by some other wonderful patriots and people who 
have been paying some attention to this subject as well.
  Congressman Coffman from Colorado, I would be happy to yield you some 
time. What is your thought on this? I want you to be part of our 
conversation here this afternoon.
  Mr. COFFMAN of Colorado. Thank you, Congressman Akin.
  I was just in a discussion with the Armed Services Committee, which 
we both sit on. And it is interesting that the discussion today was on 
missile defense, and that those who were opposed

[[Page H5282]]

to saying that missile defense is a strategy, wish to rely on the Cold 
War strategy of mutually assured destruction.
  I think the problem with that strategy----
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, I want to be very direct here. This has 
really been a very partisan debate, hasn't it?
  Mr. COFFMAN of Colorado. Yes. And it surprises me. I am not sure why 
or the origins of the partisanship.
  Mr. AKIN. I think it was a Ronald Reagan thing. But this has been a 
straight Democrats one way, Republicans the other for many, many years. 
But that is starting to change some, isn't it?
  Mr. COFFMAN of Colorado. Well, there is some thawing of that, some 
signals of change. But certainly the majority still fall, 
unfortunately, on the other side of this issue. And the thinking is 
that nation states will behave rationally and that they will not attack 
the United States because the United States could in fact retaliate in 
kind, and that their nation would be destroyed.
  The difficulty, I think, with that is if we look at a nation state 
like Iran gaining nuclear weapons capability, if we look at Pakistan, 
should the government be destabilized and fall into radical Islamist 
hands, will those nation states behave in a rational way? Will North 
Korea continue to behave in a rational way?
  Mr. AKIN. It is hard to understand that mindset for me after 
September 11 to say that somebody is going to behave rationally, that 
you are going to assume, you are going to bet your city that somebody 
is going to behave rationally. And that is an interesting question.
  We are also joined by a good friend of mine, Congressman Bishop, who 
wants to be part of the conversation as well, from Utah. And I want to 
include you in the conversation, too.
  Thank you for your good work on these questions and willingness to 
take on some areas that some people don't want to think about or debate 
or discuss, just want to say it won't work and these people will never 
be mean to us, they will never go after one of our cities. I yield 
time.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I thank the gentleman from Missouri for allowing 
me to be part of this.
  I am probably the oldest guy here right now; I've got the white hair. 
I grew up in the era when our missile defense was ``duck and cover.'' I 
was one of those elementary kids that had to hide under the desk, 
except I only lived a block and a half away from the school, so I got 
to run home as long as I could run home soon enough. And I was dumb 
enough to realize I should have just filled out my time so I could go 
play, but I didn't, I actually ran home.
  Somehow, I think we have moved past the idea that our defense of this 
country is merely hiding under a desk. This is the defense of this 
country, as has been mentioned by my good friends from Colorado and 
Arizona, who know a whole lot more about this. And you have probably 
said some of the things I am going to say, so if I am repeating it, 
just nod your head and I will move on, but just know I am reinforcing 
and agreeing with the comments that happen to be here.
  It is significant that the commission with former Defense Secretary 
Schlesinger and Perry both said the same thing, we still need a strong 
military defense for what North Korea can do. If Iran is already 
testing the ability of exploding something at the apex of the 
trajectory, we know we need some kind of defense system against that. 
It is common sense that we have. And for us to really talk about 
cutting $1.4 billion from this defense system is a frightening concept.
  Let me just go into the weeds with one last area. In my area, we do 
the solid rocket motors for the ICBM. This is the last year for the 
Minuteman III propulsion system that they will make any more solid 
rocket motors. There will still be some maintenance to it, but it is 
the last time we do anything that is associated with that large-scale 
fleet.
  This becomes a very specialized manufacturing line. Now, one of the 
problems is, as soon as you let go of that line, we no longer have the 
expertise if we wanted to bring it back. And the biggest problem we 
face in this country, especially with defense, is in our manufacturing 
base. In the sixties, when we started doing the F-16s and these 
missiles, and a whole bunch of other things, and our NASA space 
program, we had some exciting new things this country was doing that 
brought the best and the brightest into our manufacturing sector that 
thought these things through. If we only build one airplane every 20 
years, if we decide not to try and improve on our system and simply 
maintain what we have, where are the best and the brightest going to go 
and where will that expertise and creativity when we need it take 
place? Because what we are doing is not for today. If the North Koreans 
attacked us, we have a defense today. I am talking about 15 years from 
now and 20 years from now. You don't just restart up again. Twenty 
years from now, our defense and our diplomacy options will be defined 
by the decisions we make today, this year in this bill with this 
particular area.

  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, you are talking about the fact that we 
are going to be cutting missile defense. There are going to be cuts to 
this program. And the question is, is that a good strategy given the 
light of what's going on? Now, if the only people you are dealing with 
is the Soviet Union or the former Soviet Union, that is, Russia and 
China, that is one thing. But we are not dealing with that anymore.
  I appreciate your perspective. I hope you will stick with us a little 
bit.
  What I would like to do is get back to our technical expert here, 
Congressman Franks. And I would like to get into the weeds just a 
little bit further because people need to understand that every missile 
is not a missile, they have different ranges and they require a 
different response. And so when we start taking a look at our modern 
missile defense system, it basically is done in pieces and layers.
  I would like to turn to my good friend from Arizona, and let's talk a 
little bit about the first way we break things down, which is the boost 
phase; the midcourse is that the missile is actually at times up in 
space; and then the reentry as it is coming down. And we treat those 
differently because there are different vulnerabilities. And we have 
actually started to build weapons that work--even though people said 
you can't do it and it won't work, we have these two missiles that have 
the capability now, which we have tested, where they are coming 
together, going 15,000 miles an hour closing velocity. And we don't 
just have one missile hitting another missile, we have one missile 
hitting a spot on another missile.
  One of those missiles is pictured here to my left. This is called the 
ground-based missile. This is our longest, most powerful missile. And 
it can stop a missile launch from another continent from more than 
10,000 miles away. It can see it coming--not this missile, but the 
system that goes with it--see the missile coming, has time to casually 
get up to speed, go out across the ocean, and intercept that missile 
with no explosion whatsoever, closing velocities of 15,000 miles an 
hour. Now, some of you might consider what it's like to have a car 
accident; two cars going 100 miles an hour coming down a highway and 
hitting head to head. Now, that's a nasty car wreck. But that is just 
one-twentieth or less than what we are talking about here.
  I would like to call my friend from Arizona to give us the logic of 
how these things work.
  Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Would the gentleman yield?
  Mr. AKIN. I would yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Thank you.
  I couldn't help but overhear some of the comments that have been made 
here. And I am compelled to respond in support of the strength that we 
must continue to have in the air, on the ground, our ground troops, our 
naval, our cyberspace efforts, which have, by the way, not been as--we 
continue to have our systems penetrated by folks who are not authorized 
to do so. And so that is going to be a fight that we have to continue.
  And lastly, but not least, the Star Wars issue, missile defense. I 
hear folks often mention that there is no need for certain things 
because the Cold War is over. A lot of folks really want that to be the 
case, but unfortunately in the

[[Page H5283]]

annals of human history thus far, we have always had to prepare for 
Attila the Hun or someone who wants to take over the whole world and do 
it by force. America cannot assume that there will never be another 
Cold War or another situation like December 7, 1941, sneak attack that 
we weren't quite ready for.
  And so I fully support our efforts to continue to engage in research 
and development because we have got to continue to be, for our freedom, 
as a Nation--we would be shirking our responsibilities.
  Mr. AKIN. Well, reclaiming my time, I appreciate that common sense. 
We have just seen people who are too willing to use terrorism as a tool 
for us to assume that we can just relax and not defend ourselves. It 
just doesn't seem to make any common sense.
  And I completely agree with your comments. But I had yielded to the 
gentleman from Arizona to try to get a little bit of the technical 
thing. And we will also hear from a good friend of mine, Congressman 
Lamborn, who is great on this subject, also, from Colorado. But I want 
to go to my friend from Arizona first just to get the mechanisms of how 
this works.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Well, I appreciate, first of all, the 
gentleman's comments about history. Ever since mankind took up weapons 
against his fellow human beings, there has always been a defensive 
response to an offensive capability, whether it was the spear and the 
shield or whether it was bullets and armor; I mean, it has always 
happened that way. And yet there are those today that would debate 
whether we need a defense against the most dangerous weapon that has 
ever come into the arsenal of mankind, which is a ballistic nuclear 
missile.
  As Mr. Akin said, the primary divisions of missile defense are as 
follows; we have the boost phase, which is where potential enemy 
missile is coming off of the launch pad--or it doesn't have to be a 
launch pad, it is just where it is beginning its flight. This is the 
most vulnerable stage for an enemy missile. And this is, in my 
judgment, where we need to do everything that we can to make sure that 
we have the capability.
  One of the tragic things about the defense budget--that looks like it 
is going to be put forth here, Mr. Akin--is that they are cutting one 
of our main boost-phase systems, the airborne laser. I believe laser 
will some day be to missile defense what the computer chip was to the 
computer industry because it travels at Mach 870,000. It is very, very 
fast. It can reach anywhere on the globe, if the reflections are 
properly made, in a second.
  Mr. AKIN. So just reclaiming my time, what you are talking about--and 
I am a little bit of one of these Popular Science-type guys, it is sort 
of interesting--one of the strategies that uses what I described, you 
shoot a missile at a missile, and both of them are traveling, and you 
have to wait until your missile gets there to do something. And the 
trouble with that is it takes time. And what you are talking about is 
boost phase. How many seconds is boost phase typically?
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Well, boost phase can be several seconds. To 
give you an example: Say a missile left--well, let's say Russia now, 
because they have the largest arsenal of missiles. I don't suggest that 
they are going to be our biggest danger. It would probably take 
somewhere between 28 and 31 minutes for that missile to arrive. And its 
longest stage is the boost stage. And this is the opportunity that if 
we have the airborne laser or if we have what we call the kinetic 
energy interceptor or, in some cases, in the future, where we are 
coming up with faster missiles that could even be shot off of our 
ships, so we could potentially catch those missiles in their boost 
phase. With airborne laser, it could get six inches off the platform 
and we could destroy it.
  Mr. AKIN. You are getting to the point. A laser is like a flashlight; 
if you could aim it at the right thing and hit it, you don't have to 
wait for anything; whereas a missile, even if it's a fast one, you 
still have to wait for it.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Right. And the characteristics of the laser 
are that it has exactly parallel sides, and it can be a directed energy 
that you can increase almost without bound, depending on the focus of 
the energy.

                              {time}  1715

  Mr. AKIN. So then if you catch it in boost phase. The other thing is 
it's really fragile, isn't it? I mean, it's got all of these gadgets 
and tanks of pressurized fuel. You don't have to do much to it, and it 
gets it all confused. It just literally blows right over the enemy's 
territory and they get to do the cleanup.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. That's right. What you do is you use the fuel 
of the missile to blow it up.
  Of course, there are other ways. Even if you're not shooting at a 
fuel tank on a missile, if you hit it with laser and damage the outer 
casing of the missile, you can cause it to become aerodynamically 
unstable and fly to pieces at that speed.
  Mr. AKIN. So, now, that's the boost phase. But I want to jump over to 
the gentleman from Colorado here.
  Congressman Lamborn, I appreciate your work on this and also your 
concern for our country. Please jump in.
  Mr. LAMBORN. Thank you, Mr. Akin. I really appreciate what 
Representative Franks and what Representatives Coffman and Bishop have 
also contributed to this important dialogue. Thank you for your 
leadership in setting up this time.
  And I like what our friend across the aisle, Representative Johnson, 
was saying as well. We really have to use this technology in this day 
and age more than ever, and it's of a great concern to all of us here, 
I'm sure, that the Obama administration is proposing a $1.4 billion cut 
in missile defense funding for the next fiscal year. And as 
Representative Franks has mentioned, airborne laser is one of the 
things that's on the chopping block. Two other things that are on the 
chopping block: one is the Multiple Re-Entry Kill Vehicle. That's where 
we send up a missile that has multiple kinetic interceptors on it that 
could take out even a decoy or several decoys if they're using 
countermeasures and take out multiple incoming rounds and get the 
warhead that's hidden among a number. That's the Multiple Kill Vehicle. 
And to cut the funding for the research of that right now when we know 
that the bad guys are developing this capability is really a bad 
decision.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, let's develop that a little bit and go 
back over to some of our other experts here on this.
  The first thing is the airborne laser, and let's describe that a 
little bit. First of all, I actually was onboard the plane that's going 
to be the first plane that carries it. It's like Air Force One. It's a 
huge aircraft with these multiple, multiple tires on the landing gear 
and everything, and it's full of some very high-tech equipment. And the 
purpose of this thing is to shoot a laser, as I understand it, and it 
hits that fragile missile on the boost phase.
  Now, Congressman Franks, is it true that that's what is being 
targeted in the budget that we are going to get rid of that thing that 
we've spent all of this money on? We're supposed to fire it for the 
first time this summer. Are they really going to cut that thing?
  I yield.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. The airborne laser program is more than one 
aircraft, but they're doing everything they can to decimate the budget 
there. It is potentially possible even under the Obama administration 
budget that we will be able to maintain the one aircraft, which is a 
747-400B aircraft with a chemical iodine laser aboard. And it has three 
different lasers. One's an aiming laser, one's a compensating laser, 
and one is a kill laser. And this is one of the most advanced 
mechanisms that we have in our entire arsenal, and it will do so much 
to build the entire technology if we can show that it's effective.
  Mr. AKIN. Could you imagine if we had a bunch of those planes 
traveling around? Any nutcase that wants to shoot a missile with a 
nuclear device on it, we just poke a hole in it and plop it and it will 
just fall down. I mean, we could protect incredible numbers of human 
beings with that kind of technology. I don't understand why we would 
want to cut that.
  But the gentleman from Colorado would like to jump in.
  Mr. COFFMAN of Colorado. Thank you, Congressman Akin. I think that 
Congressman Franks is right in discussing that this administration is 
de-emphasizing missile defense at the

[[Page H5284]]

very time when we need it the most in the uncertain age, international 
environment, security environment that we're coming into. And I think 
to say that, well, if we develop it anyway, they will develop the 
capability to overwhelm the system I think presupposes that we're not 
going to be able to continue to improve technology as we always have 
been.
  Mr. AKIN. We've heard that before, that you can't do it, and it 
turned out you can do it.
  Congressman Bishop.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I appreciate everything that has been said. And, 
Mr. Akin, I appreciate your using this time especially with the 
expertise of those on the subcommittee to try to explain to the House 
exactly the details of what we are talking about because too often we 
slosh over this. I know I don't know the details as much as I can. What 
I do know, of course, is that Russia, even though it may not be our 
biggest threat, is driving much of our decisions and they're totally 
revamping their ICBM program: by 2016, 80 percent new missiles.
  And the key element here by everything is still the concept of the 
deterrent. There are a lot of people asking why are we investing in 
this kind of stuff when we might not ever use it. And that's the wrong 
question. The right question is, When is that deterrent used? And the 
answer to that is, every day, whether we actually fire anything or not.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, that is an incredibly important point 
you just made. People are asking the wrong question. It's not whether 
we're using it because, as a deterrent, every day we protect ourselves, 
we are using it. Is that what you said?
  I yield.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Akin, I appreciate that and I can't claim 
credit. I stole that line from the commission, who gave their report 
today. That is what they have said. A deterrent if it's effective is in 
use every day, and that's still important. I wish I could claim credit 
for having come up with it, but I stole it. It's still true.

  Mr. AKIN. I am going to yield to my friend from Colorado, Congressman 
Lamborn.
  Mr. LAMBORN. Mr. Akin, the other thing that's proposed to be cut by 
this $1.4 billion slashing of our missile defense program by the Obama 
administration, unless Congress stands up and restores that funding, 
and I think we're going to work to try to get both sides of the aisle 
hopefully to accomplish that, but that is we are going to cut the 
number of interceptors. We're going to just stop where they're at now.
  We have a couple of dozen interceptors in Alaska and California. And 
North Korea is testing intercontinental missiles they say for the 
purpose of putting up satellites, but no one believes them. And right 
when they're developing that capability, this is the wrong time to say 
we've made our last interceptor, we're not going to build any more. The 
timing is bad. And yet that's what this Obama budget cut will result 
in.
  Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, I am concerned at a number of different 
things as it relates to missile defense that the current administration 
is doing. One thing we are doing is cutting the airborne laser. Another 
thing is this multiple warhead re-entry situation where we basically 
gave or sold the Chinese the technology of being able to send a missile 
up and then have the warhead split into parts and those parts targeting 
different things. So that's a more complicated target to stop, and 
we're giving up the technology to do that. But then we're also, in some 
sort of a diplomacy thing, going over to Putin and telling him we're 
not going to deploy missile defense in Europe to protect Europe and the 
eastern seaboard. That doesn't make sense to me either.
  And I would like to go back to my friend from Arizona. Help us out 
with some of these things because this just doesn't add up, my friend.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. You mentioned two key things. Congressman 
Lamborn mentioned the GBI, the Ground-Based Interceptors, with our GMD, 
our Ground-Based Midcourse system. This was meant to have 44 
interceptors. The Obama administration said we will build no more than 
30. And, of course, at that point then the system could atrophy and we 
may not even sustain it. But it is the only system that we have. I want 
to emphasize this. GMD is the only system that we have in the United 
States capable of defending us against incoming ICBMs.
  Mr. AKIN. That's this missile right here. Am I correct in that?
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Yes, that's the GBI.
  Mr. AKIN. We have how many silver bullets like this right now?
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Right now we're scheduled to build a total of 
30. We have around, I think the Congressman is correct, around 26 or 28 
in the ground now.
  Mr. AKIN. I thought I remembered 24 but----
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. But we're saying that we will build no more 
than----
  Mr. AKIN. So that's it. We have got 26 or 28 silver bullets here, but 
that's about all we've got in case somebody shoots an intercontinental. 
That means more than 10,000 miles. It means it's going up pretty high. 
You have got to have a big missile to stop a big missile
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Those are not only fast missiles and not only 
do they have a very complex DACS, they call it, which essentially what 
we do here is we take our sensors and we run them directly into the 
incoming missile and the kinetic energy destroys the incoming missile.
  But the reality is that in many cases we would want to shoot more 
than one of our interceptors at an incoming missile to make sure that 
we have the best chance of hitting it. Sometimes it can be two or three 
to one or even more. So this is a capability of maybe stopping as many 
as 10 or 12 incoming missiles. And that's not that many. We have a 
limited capability against a growing threat, and GMD is the only thing 
that we have that will protect our homeland against ICBMs at this time.
  Mr. AKIN. I really appreciate having you here just to clarify and 
give us the detail on some of these points, Congressman Franks.
  Congressman Bishop, I thought I remembered that you were a little 
tight on time, and I would yield to you if you would like to clarify 
some points that you were making.
  You were saying that some of these solid rocket motors are actually 
made in your district and that we're basically losing our industrial 
base capability to try to continue building some of these things, and 
that's, of course, worrisome as well.
  I yield.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. You're exactly right. They were made in our 
district. We are done with that phase right now. The problem is what do 
we do for the future?
  And I actually would like to ask any of my colleagues right here, 
when Secretary Gates announced his blueprint for this budget, that was 
the very day that North Korea fired another long-range missile test 
that endangered Japan. And I would like somebody to express is this a 
legitimate fear for us. Is that something for which we should be 
concerned? And what approach is the best for this kind of future threat 
that comes from North Korea?
  Mr. AKIN. I would go back to our resident expert, Congressman Franks.
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. Well, in all the ways in the past, what we 
have tried to do is to say what is the capacity of our enemy, what is 
the intent? When we are talking about enemies like North Korea and 
enemies like Iran, we're not completely clear of their intent. Some of 
their goals are rather irrational and sometimes they've acted very 
irrationally. So the only wise thing for us to do for our people is to 
make sure that we have the capacity to meet that threat. They are now 
gaining the capacity to have missiles that can range the United States, 
and we need to make sure that we can meet that threat. We have a 
limited capability now, but if we back away now, we could be in a 
situation in the future where we will not have the ability to meet that 
threat.
  Mr. AKIN. We're also joined by another good friend of mine, 
Congressman Turner from Ohio.
  I would like you to have a chance to be a part of our conversation 
and discussion because this is something that affects all Americans and 
it's something that apparently has not been given a high priority 
budget-wise; so we want to talk a little bit about that.

[[Page H5285]]

And I think we could get into the budget a little bit and where we have 
been spending money if people want to do that.
  But I yield to my friend Congressman Turner, a fine Congressman and 
great reputation too in the House.
  Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Akin. I appreciate your leadership on this 
and your leadership on the Armed Services Committee, and I want to 
thank you for doing this this evening. This is such an important issue.
  And, Congressman Franks, I appreciate his leadership in trying to 
highlight where we have been, what we've accomplished, and, of course, 
the threats that we have in front of us.
  Many people are not necessarily aware that we have missile defense 
currently deployed to protect portions of the United States and to 
respond to some of the threats. It's not a complete shield for the 
area, and it's certainly something that we moved quickly to deploy in 
the face of the issue of the threats of North Korea. Our system 
currently has 26 Ground-Based Interceptors in Alaska and California, 18 
Aegis Missile Defense ships, 13 Patriot battalions, and five Ground-
Based Radars all supported by satellite-based systems and command and 
control systems.
  The issue here is that this is deployed initially to respond to 
emerging threats, but it's an incomplete system. It's one we have not 
fully yet assembled, and it certainly is technology that is emerging. 
The more that we work with this, the more that we learn, the greater 
ingenuity that we have and the ability to respond to what are real 
threats to our country.
  As we all look to what Iran is doing and what North Korea is doing, 
we know that there is a real threat to our country, a real threat to 
our allies, and a real threat to our interests. So we have to preserve 
in this budget round our ability to fund the deployment of these 
systems, the maintenance, the upgrade, the research and development 
that will help us look to the future as to how do we protect our 
country and our allies. This is a very important function, and I really 
appreciate your bringing this to light and all those who are 
participating.

                              {time}  1730

  Mr. AKIN. Well, I appreciate your joining us here and recognizing 
what we have got going on. You have also mentioned quite a number of 
other missiles.
  And just for some of our colleagues that are involved watching our 
discussion, and I started at the beginning, there is all different 
kinds of missiles an enemy can shoot at you. Some of them are little 
ones, some of them are medium-sized, some of them are big ones, and 
some of them are really big.
  They all have different trajectories. And so depending on the 
trajectory, we match that with whatever size missile that we need to be 
cost effective to try to stop something coming.
  The picture that we had before is a ground base. This is the big 
daddy. This is the one for the missiles that are coming over 10,000 
miles, but there are a lot of other kinds of missiles. Some of them are 
more in the 3,000- to 5,000-mile range, and that's where you have our 
ships, our Aegis-class cruisers and our Arleigh Burke destroyers, with 
missiles inside these destroyers that they can direct at what's called 
a ballistic missile, but not an intercontinental ballistic. That's sort 
of the 3,000 to 5,000 range.
  And then you have got your Patriots, that literally we have 
batteries, those defending a particular area or something like in South 
Korea, where there is a military base. You have Patriot missiles just 
defending against short-range North Korea.
  So there is quite a range of these different missiles, and I 
appreciate your bringing that very important point out, and also the 
fact that this technology is moving and we need to be putting money 
into it and keeping ahead of the power curve on this; otherwise, we are 
going to see some one of our cities paying a big price on this kind of 
thing.
  I want to go back to my friend from Colorado, Congressman Lamborn.
  Mr. LAMBORN. Yes, if I could just step back a couple of steps and 
look at defense spending in general. It's the only department where 
there are massive cuts being proposed. Everything else in the budget is 
going up. Social programs are going up, entitlement programs are going 
up.
  Anything you can shake a stick at in our budget is going up, except 
for defense, and we are living in an increasingly more dangerous world. 
It's the wrong time to be cutting defense.
  We are cutting F-22s. After this next year, we are going to build a 
few more and they are done, even though the Air Force would love to 
have many more than the roughly 200 that would be built by then. They 
wanted close to 400. I know they are expensive per unit, and yet they 
don't get shot down because they are so much more advanced than 
anything else existing in the rest of the world.
  We can't decide what to do on tankers. Our heavy lift capability is 
being questioned. Some of our naval ships, classes of naval ships are 
just being zeroed out completely.
  So we have some major defense cuts that are being proposed when 
everything else is going up in the budget. I don't understand that 
priority.
  The first responsibility of a government is to protect the safety of 
the citizens living within its territory. So the first responsibility 
of the U.S. is the defense of our country, and yet we are slashing 
defense budgets and yet everything else is going up. I just don't 
understand that way of thinking. It's hard to understand that.
  Mr. AKIN. I don't understand it either, but I have got a chart. 
Unfortunately the printer was down so I couldn't put it up on the 
board, but I could just read some numbers off of it.
  You go back to 1965, and in 1965 our entitlement spending was between 
2 and 3 percent of the budget, of the gross domestic product. It was 2 
or 3 percent of gross domestic product was entitlement.
  Now that entitlement has gone from the high 2s to 8.4 percent in 
2007. So it has gone from a little over 2 to 8.4 percent. That's the 
entitlement growth. And yet the defense spending, at about '68 or so, 
was almost 10 percent of GDP, and that's gone all the way down to 4 
percent.
  So what you are saying in terms of numbers is absolutely true, and 
that is we have been slashing defense spending over a period of a 
number of decades and increasing entitlement. Now, maybe there is a 
good reason to have entitlement spending, but the one thing is sure: If 
our country gets hit with nuclear weapons, there isn't any security at 
all if you don't have military security.
  I wanted to defer to my friend from Utah, Congressman Bishop.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I do just want to add one thing, and I am so 
appreciative of what the last comment by Mr. Lamborn was, and what you 
have simply said. We have been talking a great deal in this Congress 
about jobs. Every one of these programs creates jobs. It creates a work 
line. It creates the knowledge that we need. Everything Mr. Lamborn was 
talking about are jobs. These are critical jobs for our country, and we 
need to do it.
  I appreciate so much the experts here, the ranking member on the 
committee, Mr. Franks, who knows so much about it, your input into this 
thing, because as I said originally, when I was growing up, our defense 
was duck and cover. I don't want to have to go back to that.
  And if we are not ready to build this program and to multiply and 
expand what we are doing, I am back to going under desks. And you can 
see there are only four desks in this room and there are 435 of us, and 
I am big. There is not enough room for my cover right here. This is 
essential and important.
  Mr. AKIN. That duck and cover and the idea that somehow you can kind 
of stick your head in a hole like some sort of an ostrich and hope that 
thing isn't going to land on you, that sort of thing just doesn't work 
when you start to talk about nuclear weapons.
  So I think we have gotten into a little bit of this question about 
funding. And I find it somehow a little bit cynical when in the first 5 
weeks that we met in this Chamber this year we passed this bill to 
spend $840 billion, you put that in defense spending, that's equivalent 
of the average cost of an aircraft carrier. We have 11 aircraft 
carriers. That would be like building 250 aircraft carriers end to end.
  That's how much money we spent in the first 5 weeks, and we are 
saying that we can't defend ourselves against

[[Page H5286]]

these kinds of missiles that are being developed by rogue nations. 
That, somehow, just doesn't seem to make sense.
  And when you see that we have the capability of putting one of these 
systems into the air like this, and we can basically buy the lives of 
millions of people in a city for this kind of investment.
  Now, I am going to ask my friend from Arizona here, you know, is this 
a big part of the defense? My understanding is we are only talking 
about 2 percent of the defense budget to be able to do this to protect 
our citizens. That doesn't seem like too much. Am I about right on the 
numbers?
  Mr. FRANKS of Arizona. No, you are essentially correct. The budget 
was about $9.4 billion. It is being cut about a $1.5 billion and then 
some of the other systems are being moved around to where the total 
effective cuts are about $1.8 billion.

  But here's the bottom line. All of the money that we have spent on 
missile defense is just a little over $100 billion since we started 25 
years ago. And it took almost that much just to clean up after 9/11 hit 
New York, and 9/11 cost our economy about $2 trillion.
  So if we are talking about being cost-effective here, we should 
remember that if that attack on New York that morning had been an ICBM 
with, say, 100-kilo ton warhead, it would have killed maybe 120,000 
people instantaneously and half a million more within a couple or 3 
weeks.
  I am just astonished that we are so shortsighted that now, in this 
kind of an age that we live in, that we would cut missile defense. And 
I pray that we don't have to, in some future date, look back on this 
debate and say how could we have forgotten? If we build a system and we 
don't need it, then it must have worked.
  And I would just say in closing that I will be glad to apologize if 
we build one that we don't have to use, but I don't want to stand 
before the Nation and have to apologize to them for failing to building 
a system that could have protected them.
  Mr. AKIN. My good friend from Ohio, Congressman Turner, please fill 
in some more of the details here, because you are the person in the 
committee that's really paying attention to this and we really 
appreciate your leadership on this.
  This is so important, a lot of times I am sure your constituents are 
on you to do all kinds of things, and they probably don't realize how 
much time and attention you have to give to some of these issues. But 
we appreciate you and we are very thankful that the people of Ohio send 
you here.
  Mr. TURNER. Again, I want to thank you for your focus on this because 
there is an information gap, I think, between our capability of what we 
are able to do and what the American people know that we can do. So 
many times when people talk about missile defense, they remember the 
past criticisms, that this is a system that would not work, it's an 
impossible task.
  Well, this is a system that not only works, it's deployed. And many 
people are not aware that we actually have missile defense systems that 
are deployed for the purposes of protecting the United States from the 
threat of North Korea. Again, as you and I were discussing, it's an 
incomplete system in that we have not fully deployed all of the system 
that's necessary to protect the United States. But, again, this is a 
system that has not only been tested fully, responds to some of the 
threats that we have, but it's actually deployed.
  Now, it is just the first phase of a system. We have to continue our 
research, continue the American ingenuity that is so great. The 
missiles that you have behind you that are able to intercept are so 
important, again, and technology that people said would not work.
  We have other technologies that we need to explore; for example, the 
airborne laser, being able to take high directed energy and actually 
apply them to some of the missiles that threaten us. That's the 
technology that's so important to pursue.
  Because as we pursue research and development, as we pursue testing 
and find out the ways in which we can utilize this, these technologies 
to protect ourselves, we are going to perfect it. We are going to find 
the American ingenuity that we all know and apply it in ways that 
protect our families and our communities and our cities.
  Mr. AKIN. There is one thing I promised that I was going to toss in 
here, and this is something that I don't think people understand. We 
need to answer this question, and that is, if somebody could smuggle a 
nuclear weapon into our country, why do we care so much about something 
on a missile?
  And the answer is that when a nuclear weapon is exploded high over a 
city, the amount of damage it does is hundreds of times what would 
happen if it were on the ground.
  And I think that's something that people forget, that it's a 
combination of the missile getting the altitude and no problems with 
security, and then all of a sudden you have this tremendous burst in 
the air over a city, just wreaks absolute havoc and kills millions of 
people. I want to make sure you hit that point, because people say, oh, 
this is a waste because somebody could just bring it in a suitcase. Not 
so simple. Please talk to that point.
  Mr. TURNER. I think the real easy answer as to why we should have 
missile defense is because our adversaries are so interested in funding 
missiles, and they obviously see that missiles are a way that they put 
us at risk because they are investing so heavily in it, in research and 
technology. And we are seeing in the rogue nations, now North Korea and 
Iran and their capabilities, the fact that they are reaching for these 
shows that we need to reach for the defense.
  One area that I wanted to raise and that I know that we need 
investment in is in the area of intelligence and our space capabilities 
that give us the eyes and ears and the ability to understand what some 
of the threats are, to be able see them, to be able to respond.
  It is good to bring this information to light for the public, because 
people need to know what's out there, what we are capable of, but also 
what is left to do.
  Mr. AKIN. It is such a treat for me tonight to be able to share this 
time with my colleagues, people who are patriots, good friends of mine, 
people who love this country, want to see our cities and our citizens 
defended, people who continue in the tradition of Ronald Reagan.
  I am a little bit surprised that we want to be cutting these 
programs. I don't think it's the right thing to do.
  I don't think if the American public knew about our vulnerability, 
knew about the development of North Korea being able to fire missiles 
from North Korea and actually hit parts of America, this is not 
something that we want to play around with. We want to have a robust 
capability, and we need to make that investment, and the idea that we 
don't have enough money is absolute foolishness.

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