[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 8]
[House]
[Page 10733]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                            MISSILE DEFENSE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thought I would take the well and talk a 
little bit about the hearing that we held today in the Subcommittee on 
Military Research and Development of the House Committee on Armed 
Services concerning the issue of missile defense.
  What we did today, Democrats and Republicans, is talk to General 
Kadish, who heads the missile defense program for this administration, 
for this Nation; and we talked specifically about tests: where are we, 
what have we done, what works, what does not work, and where do we need 
to go.
  One thing that General Kadish led with, which I thought was very 
important for Americans to understand, is that we have made progress 
and that we have accomplished some very important things for America. 
The first one goes back to the killing of 28 Americans in the Desert 
Storm operation when Iraqi scud missiles, which are ballistic missiles, 
they go about 50 percent faster than a 30.06 bullet, came in and hit a 
concentration of American troops, resulting in 28 deaths. We fired back 
as much as we could with the then Patriot missile system. At the end of 
that conflict, we had MIT come in and analyze whether or not we had 
gotten any of those missiles. One of the experts from MIT said he did 
not think we got any. The Army said they thought we got about 80 
percent, they were not sure, but that we did have some problems.
  Well, since that time, since the early 1990s, during Desert Storm, we 
have developed a missile defense system, now called PAC-3, the Patriot 
3 missile defense system, which can shoot down on a regular basis, on a 
consistent basis, on a reliable basis, those incoming scud ballistic 
missiles. We have now had eight tests, and every one of those eight 
tests has intercepted.
  I hear a lot of folks talking about whether or not we can hit a 
bullet with a bullet, because it sounds so impossible. Well, a bullet 
from one of our Capitol Hill policemen, a 38 bullet, for example, goes 
about 1,200, 1,400 feet per second. A scud missile goes maybe 7,000 
feet per second. That is a scud ballistic missile. So it goes as much 
as four to five times as fast as some bullets. And even if we take a 
very high velocity bullet, a big-game rifle or a rifle that one would 
use on the battlefield, like a 30.06 that goes about 3,000 feet per 
second, a scud missile even goes about twice as fast as that bullet.

                              {time}  1430

  And the Patriot missile system that we fire at that thing, goes in 
excess of 4,000 feet per second. So both the target missile, that is 
the ballistic missile, and the missile that we shoot up to knock it 
down, go faster than a bullet. And eight times in our tests, we have 
successfully hit a bullet with a bullet.
  What does that mean. Well, it means to Americans who are thinking, as 
they sit around the breakfast table with their family and child who may 
join the armed services and be stationed in the Middle East or on the 
Korean peninsula, it means that this country, in response to the 
missile threat, working as hard as it can in developing technology as 
quickly as possible, has developed a defense, at least against these 
scud missiles that are being proliferated around the world, which we 
are apt to see in a conflict in the near future.
  It means when you have a base camp with a Marine expeditionary unit 
filled with 19- and 20-year-old kids from all of the farms and cities 
of this country or a part of the 101st Air Mobile Brigade out of Fort 
Campbell, Kentucky or an Air Force unit stationed somewhere enforcing 
the no-fly zone, it means if our adversaries launch a ballistic 
missile, that is a pretty slow ballistic missile as they go, but still 
as fast as a bullet, if they launch a scud missile attack at that 
contingent, our PAC-3, our Patriot 3 system which we are now in the 
business of fielding, we have tested it, would be able to handle that 
attack and allow our young men and women to come home alive.
  So we established that. Now, General Kadish, having established that, 
showed the members of the Committee on Armed Services the footage of a 
number of tests that we have made. He said, We have missed some; and we 
have hit some. He laid out a program that we need to undertake in the 
next 5-10 years to develop a capability that is better and better. We 
are moving ahead. We are going to have robust testing. We are going to 
defend America.

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