[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 194 (Wednesday, November 29, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7391-S7392]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            MISSILE DEFENSE

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, for 20 years now, I have viewed the 
development and deployment of a layered ballistic missile defense 
shield as vital to our national security. The experience that we 
witnessed yesterday is something we have been talking about for a long 
time that was going to happen. Sometimes our DIA, or Defense 
Intelligence Agency, has said it is going to happen 5 years from now 
and then 4 years from now. The question is this: When will North Korea 
have the capability of a weapon and delivery system that would reach 
Washington, DC, or any of the States of the United States? The 
adversaries like North Korea are developing ballistic missiles with 
increasing range and accuracy. It is important for us in the Senate to 
communicate to the American people the credible, grave, and immediate 
threat that we face.
  Today the world is more dangerous than it has ever been before. I 
have said so many times in the past that I look wistfully back at the 
days of the Cold War when things were predictable. We had two 
superpowers. We knew what they had, and they knew what we had. It is 
not that way anymore. Every time we have someone coming in to our 
Defense Committee to testify, they talk about the fact that North Korea 
is not predictable. So we don't know what is going to happen and what 
they are capable of doing.
  I have been here on the floor on this issue in 2001, 2009, 2012, and 
this will be the third time this year. Over the last 30 years, we have 
witnessed our missile defense programs go through dramatic investment 
changes from administration to administration, depending on who is 
President. Remember how everyone ridiculed President Reagan about 
``Star Wars,'' hitting a bullet with a bullet. They felt that it was 
pretty funny at that time. Right now, everything he said that was going 
to happen is happening and happened yesterday.
  In 1993, they cut out of the Reagan budget and from the Bush budget 
the missile defense budget request for fiscal year 1994. They 
terminated the Reagan-Bush Strategic Defense Initiative Program and 
downgraded the national missile defense--this is all during the Clinton 
administration--to a research and development program only and cut 5 
years of missile defense funding by 54 percent, from $39 billion to $18 
billion.
  In 1996 they cut funding and slowed the development of the THAAD 
program--the THAAD program we are so dependent on right now to defend 
against an incoming missile in many parts of the world with our allies. 
They cut the Defense authorization bill, which required accelerated 
development.
  In 1999 they delayed by at least 2 years our Space-Based Infrared 
System satellites, designed to detect and track missile launches, 
necessary to coordinate with any effective national missile defense 
system.
  Then along came Bush. By the end of 2008, the Bush administration had 
succeeded in fielding a missile defense system that was capable of 
defending all 50 States. During that period of time, we had 44 ground-
based defense systems in the United States. The Obama administration 
cut that back down, but the Bush administration wanted a system that 
would take care of all 50 States.
  Here is the problem, though. All of our ground-based systems were on 
the west coast--in Alaska and California--so we didn't have anything 
else. At that time, they thought that was where the threat was going to 
be, but during the last years of the second Bush administration, we 
realized that we needed to do something about the rest of the country--
something about the east coast--and something about Western Europe.
  We made a deal with the Czech Republic and Poland to have a ground-
based system in the Czech Republic and Poland, along with the radar 
that was necessary to operate it. I remember that. I was there and had 
a conversation with Vaclav Klaus in the Czech Republic.
  He said to me: If we go along with building this system, we are going 
to incur the wrath of Russia, and it is going to be very difficult for 
us. So can you assure us, if we agree to do this, that you will not 
pull the rug out from under us?
  I said: Certainly, we will not do that. This is something that we are 
committed to doing.
  The problem is that the first thing that happened when the Obama 
administration came in was he pulled the rug out from under them. So we 
found ourselves vulnerable to, maybe, having one shot at a defense 
system in the eastern part of the United States and in Western Europe.
  Then, in April, there came the first of the Obama defense cuts, which 
began disarming America and dismantling our layered missile defense 
system. Additionally, due to President Obama's overall reduced budget 
request for defense, there were not enough Aegis ships or missiles to 
meet the demand that was there.
  Since Kim Jong Un took power in 2009, he has already conducted more 
than 80 ballistic missile tests. That is far more than his father and 
grandfather conducted. North Korea has conducted six nuclear tests of 
increasingly powerful weapons. The latest test was in September of this 
year. That bomb had an explosive yield estimated to be 100 kilotons, 
which is almost 7 times more powerful than the bomb that was dropped on 
Hiroshima and as much as 11 times more powerful than what North Korea 
tested in January of last year.
  In April of this year, at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing 
on Policy and Strategy in the Asia-Pacific, a panel of expert witnesses 
agreed with me that North Korea currently represents the most imminent 
threat to our national security. On July 4 of

[[Page S7392]]

this year, North Korea made a major breakthrough with its first 
successful ICBM launching. If it had been launched on a standard 
trajectory, the missile could likely have traveled up to 5,000 miles. 
That would have been enough to have reached Alaska. On July 28 of this 
year, North Korea tested another ICBM. This missile demonstrated the 
potential ability to reach mainland U.S. targets with a nuclear-armed 
ICBM.
  Yesterday was the big day. Yesterday, it finally happened. Yesterday, 
North Korea proved that it could reliably range the entire continental 
United States with a test of its latest developed and newest version of 
the ICBM. It is important to remember that all of this power is being 
wielded by the erratic despot Kim Jong Un. We don't have the luxury of 
time. He has stated that his goal--listen to this--is to attain a 
nuclear-capable ICBM that can annihilate the United States. Each and 
every day, he gets closer to this goal, and, yesterday, he proved that 
it could be done.
  Secretary Mattis confirmed the technical advances that were displayed 
in yesterday's test. The missile had 53 minutes of time in flight, and 
Mattis confirmed that it had gone higher than any previous shot they 
had ever taken.
  David Wright, an analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists, 
wrote that yesterday's test indicates that North Korea can now hold the 
United States well within missile range. Wright wrote: ``Such a missile 
would have been more than enough range to reach Washington, DC, and in 
fact any part of the continental United States.''
  When one talks about the real threats that are out there, we now know 
that even though people didn't believe it 20 years ago, 10 years ago, 5 
years ago, it finally happened yesterday. They have the range that 
could reach the continental United States, and they have proved that 
they have a missile that can do that. The only argument they use is 
that this may not have had a payload, that maybe they couldn't have 
done that with a payload. Actually, it had that kind of a range. That 
doesn't give me much comfort. I really think that we are to the point 
at which we have to recognize that we are in the most threatened 
position we have been in as a nation, and now it is a lot easier to 
believe that because we witnessed it yesterday.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lee). The Senator from Montana.

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