Briefing on Missile Defense

LTG OBERING: I have just a few slides that would I think provide good context for what I'm describing and it will obviously spark some questions on your part so I'd like to go through those if they're available and ready.

[Discussion about slides.]

I'll tell you what, let me start and then when they catch up we'll do that.

Why are we doing this? Obvious question. Why are we doing this? It's very straightforward.

First of all we have seen an evolving threat from ballistic missiles that has occurred over the last several years, primarily focused from North Korea and from Iran. Those are the two countries that we are the most concerned about. And we have seen a very aggressive program, particularly on the part of Iran, in a ballistic missile defense development as well as a flight test program. Unfortunately, missile defense is such that you cannot wait until a country has exhibited this capability and then start to do something about it because it's way too late at that point. It takes time to build these missile defenses. It takes time to develop this capability. So we think it's prudent to try to stay ahead of this threat. Let me give you an example.

Back in 1998 there were many experts around the world that said that the North Koreans were years away from developing any missile that could have any type of range at all, other than just short range missiles. The next month they launched the Taepo Dong I and demonstrated all of the key technologies for an ICBM. That is staging, being able to control a missile through staging, and the type of guidance that you need to be able to do that. So it surprised us and surprised most of the experts around the world.

We know there's been ongoing collaboration between North Korea and Iran. We know that. And so it's hard to predict. When somebody states well, there's not a threat today from Iran, that is correct. There is not a threat to the majority of European nations or to the United States from Iran today. Can that change tomorrow? Yes. Is it going to change in the near future? You can almost count on it based on what we see happening in that country and what they themselves are stating in terms of being able to establish a space launch capability and they demonstrate all of the building blocks that you need for an intercontinental ballistic missile as well.

The United States has been developing and is now fielding a ballistic missile system that is not just a single component system. You don't have just one interceptor and one sensor. We have a multiple layer of capabilities that is focused on North Korea. That's where we initially were concerned about, and we work very closely with our allies in Japan to take steps to move against that. That's what we have been doing since 2004 when we began the initial deployments of interceptors in Alaska and in California. We placed a radar capable of tracking both long range as well as short range missiles in Japan. They were gracious enough to host that for the United States, and to provide security for themselves as well.

We have modified ten Aegis ships to be able to provide tracking capability against ballistic missiles. I'm sorry, 16 of those ships. Seven of those are also capable of launching a sea-based interceptor which can handle the shorter range missiles but not the very long range missiles.

We have 14 interceptors today in Alaska. We have two in California, for a total of 16, to be able to address the long range threat. That again is primarily concern from North Korea.

We've modified a radar in Alaska. We've modified a radar in California to do the tracking as well, and we have put command and control suites in Hawaii, in Colorado, in Nebraska, in Washington and in Alaska.

We have a very powerful sea-based radar, we call it the Sea-Based X-Band Radar. That has been successfully transited from Hawaii up to Alaska. It had a very successful move and we tracked, during the move, tracked satellites. It encountered some very harsh conditions and it performed beautifully in those harsh conditions so we're very pleased with that.

Now we're turning our attention, and the reason we're here is we're turning our attention to the Iranian threat that we see proceeding. The first step in that, of course, is to modify the radar in Fatingdales, United Kingdom, which we have been doing for several years and are in the final stages of testing that and integrating that into a system. And we are beginning work on a radar in Thule, Greenland with the help of the Danish government and the home rule government there that has been very cooperative in that work.

But that does not help the Europeans because that protects the United States but it does not offer protection to the Europeans. To do that we have to place interceptors in the European region because of range needed by the interceptors. We also need to place a radar here because we need more precise tracking information than we can get to provide the coverage area that we have for that.

So the primary purpose of this site is to extend our coverage to our European allies and our friends and at the same time it does provide redundant coverage to the United States, not all of the United States but a portion of the United States. So we consider this to be a win/win situation when you have the overlap of U.S. interest and our allies' interest in the same vein.

You have heard and it's been reported that the system doesn't work. I am telling you that is outdated and ill-informed information.

If you look back, let me explain our test program. First of all, we have now had 24 successful hit to kill intercepts since 2001. Twenty-four. That is with our short range, our medium range, and the long range system.

With the long range system we had successful intercepts, four of five attempts in 2000 and 2001. That's why -- It was so successful, by the way, that we decided to stop that test program and to go into what we call the operational configuration of the vehicle. We had a prototype of the kill vehicle we were flying that was very successful and we had a booster that we used for the test program only. We decided to stop that program because it was so successful, and go into the operational configuration. That means to take the kill vehicle and make it more producible, more manufacturable, and to put it on a more powerful booster.

We flew that booster in 2003 successfully. Then we put that together and began to deploy those because of the urgency that we saw emerging from North Korea, and thank God we did because last summer what we saw happening was the North Korean activities, and we actually had a system that we could turn on that I can tell you with confidence we believe would have been able to protect the United States from that threat.

Since that time we've now conducted 14 or 16 tests successfully in the last, since the last 12 to 14 months, and that includes a period last summer in which we had a successful Patriot test in the low atmosphere, a successful intercept in the upper atmosphere by our Terminal High Altitude Area Defense or THAAD system, with our sea-based system in space and with the long range interceptor in space as well. That was all done in a 90 day period.

The test that we conducted on the 1^st of September was as close as you can get to realistic in terms of we launched a target out of Kodiak, Alaska; we launched an interceptor out of Vandenberg. That was an operational interceptor, it was an operational radar that we flew across California at Beale. We used operational fire control software and hardware. We had soldiers manning all the positions on the console and we affected the intercept.

So this system does work and what we are doing is just doing it differently. We are testing as we need to and move along, and we are continuing to expand and improve it over time.

If I look at the key components for a European [system] there are three. We are planning to put up to ten interceptors in a missile field in Poland, and that is the request that we made with the Polish government that we are starting to begin discussions with. Let me give you an idea of size. You could put all ten of these interceptors in a soccer field, in a football field. So that gives you an idea of the size of this.

The radar that we proposed to put in the Czech Republic is currently operating, or has been operating in the South Pacific in the Quadulane Islands and it has been operating successfully for many years. What we're going to do is dismantle that radar, we're going to refurbish it and upgrade the components and the processors, et cetera, and then we will move that into the Czech Republic.

The final piece of it is a radar that is very similar if not exactly identical to the radar we've deployed in Japan that we would propose be moved closer forward into the Caucasus region . That would give us an early acquisition track to pass that into the system so that the radar in the Czech Republic could pick that up, could focus in and do much more precise tracking and then pass that information off to the interceptor field.

So we see this as a major step in protection in establishing a stronger security environment for Europe, for our European allies. That's the purpose of my trip here this week is to explain this system. I briefed the NATO Council, the North Atlantic Council back in November. I briefed the NATO-Russia Council back in November. I have briefed the NATO-Russia Council this week. And I have continued to have discussions with many of our partners and allies to answer their questions and to explain more and more of the system so that we can try to dissipate some of the misinformation that's been out there recently.

Let me show you just a couple of things then we'll answer questions.

I've covered most of this. One thing I want to note. When we signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 1972 with the Soviet Union there were only eight countries around the world that had ballistic missiles or their technologies and most of those countries were friendly to the United States and were allies. Today that number's grown to more than 20 and many of those countries are hostile to the United States or our allies. So when we were in the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union this proliferation was going on around the world and nations such as North Korea and Iran were building up their capabilities, so we had to do something to address that.

I've talked about the rogue nations being North Korea and Iran that we're worried about. One key point here is that they don't have to even use these missiles for them to be effective. If they can take these missiles and threaten our allies and try to hold nations hostage or cities hostage, they can change geopolitical interest and geopolitical relationships. So we have to be able to take that away. We want to make sure that if they threaten the use of these missiles there's a concrete step we can take to prevent them from using that threat in an effective manner. We have seen the North Koreans proliferate these missiles, both the North Koreans and the Iranians, and in the case of the Iranians, to non-state actors as well.

Next slide, please.

We've had surprises in the past. Many of you know this. One thing I want to point out here is what was really, I think one of the big lessons learned from September 11^th, it was a terrible tragedy and loss of life but what that showed more than anything was the will of a group of people to slaughter thousands of innocent people. That is something that means they will try to achieve whatever means they can at their disposal to achieve that. So I think that was the big take-away from September 11^th.

Of course we saw the Taepo Dong one that I mentioned in 1998, the North Korean missile launches last summer.

We saw what happened in Lebanon, in Israel this summer when you had a nation like Israel that was unprepared for those rocket attacks. There were thousands of rockets launched into northern Israel and a very effective Israeli Defense Force could not do anything about that. Once those rockets were launched they were launched and they made impact. So that's an example of what happens when nations are not prepared for the threats they may face. What we don't want to happen is for that to happen on a European scale and not be prepared for that threat.

Next slide.

These are some of the ranges of missiles coming out of Iran. In many cases with demonstrated flight capabilities like the Shahab-3 that they've demonstrated in a video. They can already reach some of our NATO partners. We know they're looking for a space-launched vehicle for the future. And the consensus of most of the intelligence community is they're going to have something before 2015 that could threaten the United States or the farther reaches of Europe with a long range, intermediate, or intercontinental ballistic missile capability.

Next slide.

This is a video taken right off of the Iranian television. This shows the Shahab-1, short range ballistic missile being launched. This is a Shahab-3, a medium range ballistic missile there. The next one is a salvo launching of their Zilza class missiles, short range missiles. And from obviously a different perspective. They are clearly interested in continuing this development and expanding this development

Next slide.

This is the policy and the direction and the mission that I've been given. Again, this goes back to 2002. It says, "Missile defense cooperation will be a key feature of our relations with our close and long-standing allies and it will protect not only the United States and our deployed forces but our friends and allies." That was taken directly from the direction that we got from the President. And we're to develop a single program that integrates and layers this capability to again defend not just the United States and our deployed forces but our allies and friends from ballistic missiles of all ranges and in all phases of their flight.

Very quickly, the next slide.

This is the program of record. So we are building capabilities. Whenever you have an enemy missile launch it has three distinct phases -- a boost phase, a mid-course phase, and a terminal phase. Today, and I was asked this question by the Russians earlier, by the Russian television. Today they said why don't you put these interceptors in Turkey or put these interceptors closer? We don't have that capability. I wish we did. But the only capabilities we have to intercept in the boost phase are still in development. The airborne laser we're developing has been a successful program so far but that's years away from being available operationally. And a kinetic energy interceptor is also years and years away from being available operationally.

The two programs we do have, the ground-based mid-course defense that we deployed to Alaska and California and the Aegis sea-based, this is for the longer range threats. These are for the shorter range threats. Are the ones capable of intercepting in the mid course.

One other thing to note here, except for the very short-range rockets that were fired, for example, at Israel last summer, almost all other threat missiles, the Shahab-3 and others, this mid-course segment is spent in space. It's in outer space. So we have to go up there to be able to intercept and defeat those missiles.

The Patriot capability, the PAC-3 and the THAAD, the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense that I've talked about. This operates in the low atmosphere, this operates in the upper atmosphere. These operate in space, as I said. So you see how we layer this capability. These again address the shorter range threats. The only capability we have today against the long range threats are the interceptors that we would propose to put in Poland, for example.

All of these are supported by a family of radars and sensors, upgrading existing radars as well as developing new ones. That's our program.

Next slide.

This is a very complicated slide. All I want to do is tell you this. This is what we mean by integration. We're taking forward deployed radars and tying them into the system such as in this case the ground-based mid-course in Alaska. We're doing the same thing by being able to tie forward deployed radars into ship-based interceptors. So what this does it expands the detection and the engagement capabilities of these systems. So instead of just developing a loose formation of programs we're actually developing the ability to tie all of these together to give us an integrated capability. We think this is necessary to defeat a possible attack, for example, from North Korea that could be launching short-range missiles, medium range missiles and long range missiles all at the same time and we'd have to be able to defeat those.

Next slide.

This is the system today. I walked through all of this with you just a few minutes ago. We've been very aggressive in trying to roll this out because we do believe there's an urgency to the threat. We began this in the summer of '04 in putting the first interceptor in the ground in Alaska and beginning the first modification of the ships, and we will continue to move this out to the point where we have 24 interceptors by the end of this year and about 21 of the sea-based interceptors to support the overall system.

Next slide.

These are just some photographs. This is Fort Greely, Alaska. This is an interceptor similar to the ones that would go in the ground in Poland. This is about 60 feet long, about 56 inches wide. This is the control facility there at Fort Greely.

This is a good shot of the interceptor. That's another thing. These are not threatening missiles. These are not offensive missiles. These are defensive missiles. There's no explosives on these missiles. There's no warhead on these missiles. What the kill vehicle consists of is about right here forward. If you see that, just past the white tanks. This is basically seeker and propellant tanks. That's it. That's all there is to it. That's all it needs to be. Because when we actually hit these warheads we're colliding at speeds of up to eight to ten kilometers a second or higher so it totally destroys this.

You'll see in some of the video clips the warhead. It stands about, the kill vehicle itself stands about that high. It's about that big around. It's not very big.

One other point, it's not designed to reenter the atmosphere. So if for some reason you miss, most of that burns up in re-entering the atmosphere. It's not designed for reentry like the shuttle is.

Next slide.

This is our Aegis destroyers that we've modified for engagement and track. There's an example of one of the cruisers. In this case that's a Shiloh firing one of the missiles in our test flight and you'll see that.

Next slide.

This is the radar that we've located in Japan. This was a snapshot taken in California while it was being tested. That's a snapshot taken in Japan on the ground there. Again, we've been very pleased with the cooperation of our Japanese allies and partners.

By the way, they are investing more than a billion dollars a year in missile defense because they also see the urgency, being as close as they are to North Korea and seeing what the North Koreans have been doing.

Next slide.

These are the radars in [Culperdane], Alaska; Beale, California; Bollingdale, United Kingdom; and Thule, Greenland. Again, some of the existing radars that we are modifying and upgrading.

Next slide.

This is the sea-based X-Band radar I talked about. To give you an example of size, this is a self-propelled platform. It has two pontoons that are self propelled. Each one of these pontoons is the size of a Trident submarine. That's how big it is. It's 30 stories high. The radar itself, as you see here, weighs 4.5 million pounds.

This is when it's underway. It operates at about the speed of a World War II submarine. This is when it's ballasted down in position, for example, and partially submerged.

To give you an idea of the sensitivity of this radar, it operates out of Alaska and we can move it around. In fact it's being moved now from Alaska down to off the coast of California. But if we were to put this in the Thames River we could track and discriminate a baseball size object over Tehran. That's the type of power that we think we need when we start looking to the future with respect to complex threats that could be coming out of North Korea or Iran.

Next slide.

Our test program. I've talked about the four of five long-range intercepts that we did in 2000, 2001 timeframe. We had three successful Aegis. We had one of two Aegis short-range intercepts in that timeframe. We had one failure. And we learned from that. We now have repeated many many successes since then.

We had successful Patriot intercepts during Iraqi Freedom and we had the long-range booster launches that were failures back in December of '04 and February of '05, were nothing but technical glitches. So when you talk about a glitch-plagued program, all it meant was those two launches were failures because of very simple problems that we went to fix that had, in one case, has nothing to do with the operational configuration of the booster. It had to do with a test configuration of the actual silo. We're beyond that now. We've had successful launches since then, and as I said, the successful intercept.

Next slide.

I said 14 of 15. The one no-test we had was a failure of a target in one of our THAAD tests. It was not a failure of the interceptor.

Coming up, and also this past year we've had, in November of '05 and June of '06 we had successful intercepts with Aegis. We had successful intercepts with THAAD in July and January, and successful intercepts of the long-range system in September. We've got a total of nine tests coming up in 2007 to include two more intercept tests of the long-range system and as I said, 24 successful hit to kills in 2001.

Let me show you some of those. This is the PAC-3 test in '05, September of '05. Here you'll see a ripple fire of the interceptors. This is a unit that's out at White Sands, New Mexico. We used soldiers as part of this, they're part of the test. They control and operate the machinery. There's the radar face and the launch tube.

Next you'll see the fly-out of the interceptor from the tubes. There's the first launch and there's the second launch. Then you'll see both of the interceptors at target.

Over the desert floor. We like the desert floor because we can recover pieces, we can measure pieces, see what has been the result of that. There's a target, there's the intercept. And there's another perspective here of the target and the intercept.

The next one is our Aegis sea-based. This one's a little harder to see, but this is -- In this case what we do is we actually are able to see what the kill vehicle is seeing. So we can look out the kill vehicle and we can see as it's coming in where exactly it hits the target. In this case it was a separating target meaning there was a warhead that separate from the booster and we went after the warhead. You'll see that.

Go ahead.

First of all you'll see the target launch from Hawaii. This is a medium-ranged target that we launched from Hawaii. It's a little grainy, I apologize for that. This is the camera mounted on the target looking aft. We also use infrared so we can measure what we call the chuffing of the propeller.

Here's the interceptor coming out of the ship and you'll see a break-away, far-away shot of the ship, of the intercept being launched from the Shiloh. We had third stage rocket motor pulsing here. It's jus a way that we can adjust the pulse that we need.

Here's the RV, the reentry vehicle, and the kinetic warhead. There's the intercept. Again, there's no explosives in this at all. That's all pure kinetic energy. There's the destruction of the target.

Now what you're going to see is what I just said. The kill vehicle is going to get the target here, bring it into the center of the seeker. So we're seeing what the kill vehicle is seeing in real time, and I'll tell you, there's got to be a better way to make a living because that would drive you crazy in the middle of the control room as you're watching this in real time in terms of the testing. That is the warhead. In this case it was spinning as we were closing in on the target.

It takes a little while to develop here but you can see, you can get an evaluation for how far away we acquire the target as we are driving the interceptor into it. It's a little fuzzy, but you can see the warhead just before we hit it.

Next.

This next one, this is a THAAD. This is at White Sands. This was done in Hawaii, the first time we had taken this system to Hawaii. The first thing you'll see here is a snapshot of what the interceptor looked like. There's the interceptor launch from the tube. Next you'll see a high speed, slow motion. There's the interceptor exiting the tube. This operates in the upper reaches of the atmosphere as well as just outside. Here's a far-away shot coming off the beach there in Hawaii, going up for the target.

The next thing you'll see, you see a camera from the ground that's focused on the kill vehicle, so you'll see the rocket firings from the kill vehicle that's making the adjustments just before the intercept. The target's going to be coming in from the left hand side. It was a SCUD-like target for this intercept test and you'll be able to clearly see that.

There's the kill vehicle. You can see the rocket firings and it's making the adjustment just before the intercept. There's the target coming in. This was an offset angle kill. Again the infrared, you can see the energy released from this kill.

Next.

Last but not least, this is the long-range test that we did in September. This is an example of what we hope to put in the ground in Poland.

Here's the target launched form Hawaii, a very threat realistic target in terms of times of flight, altitude and velocity of the target. Next you'll see California, an interceptor coming out of the silo. There's the silo. We have clam shell doors over the silo just like we have in Alaska. You'll see the exit of the interceptor from the silo. For those of you that have been to California in this time of year, September, right into a fog bank.

We pick it up above the fog bank with a high flying aircraft. You begin to see this pick up. The next thing you'll see is the staging of the booster.

This occurs very very high in space in terms of the intercept and that's important because the higher you can get these warheads you minimize any affects on the ground. That's why it's important to have also a long-range interceptor that's capable of doing that.

The terminal phase is okay when you're talking about deployed forces and you're talking about a last chance effort, but what you want to do, there's the staging of the first stage. You want to get it as high as you can and get it as far forward as you possibly can.

Next you'll see we have a Gulfstream-5 flying at 45,000 feet to show the intercept. The first perspective is the normal perspective through the camera on that aircraft. So you'll see an arrow come up. You look at the arrow, you'll see the intercept there. WE also have a closeup of that that we show first of all in real time. There's the in real time, and the destruction, and then we show it again in slow motion.

Next slide, please.

This is where we're headed for 2011. Forty-four interceptors in the United States. By that time we'll have hopefully three of the ten interceptors in place in Europe. We will have moved in place the X-Band radar in the Czech Republic. We'll be filling out more of our shorter range defenses with the Aegis destroyers and the THAAD system along with a Navy sea-based terminal capability that gives you a very small footprint but protects the fleet. Then we'll have three more radars available like the one we have in Japan for deployment.

Next slide.

As I said, we do not have the capability for long-range protection of the European theater. That's why we're moving here. That's why it's important. And as I said, the lead times for doing this are significant. So we can't wait until Iran shows the capability, we have to do it before time otherwise we'll be caught unprotected.

Next slide.

These are the elements of a European defense as I mentioned to you before.

Next slide.

This is the coverage that that would provide. Like I said, we can cover the United States without this. What this does is it adds this layer of protection. For those countries here that would not be protected against Iran, they're too close for a long-range threat missile anyway. So you can handle those threats with a Patriot or a sea-based Aegis or something like that, or something NATO may develop as part of their active layered theater ballistic missile defense program. So it shows you how this can layer together between the long-range protection and the shorter-range protection for those nations.

Next slide.

I think I've talked about why Poland and the Czech Republic. What we did is we took a look at all possible trajectories from Iran into Europe and from Iran into the United States. We went through an analysis that said what would give us the best radar coverage, what would give us the best interceptor coverage of those trajectories, and that's how we came up with Poland and the Czech Republic. It was an analysis based on the physics and the geography.

The Russian reaction and engagement. We were very surprised by the Russian reaction because we have been engaged with them for over a year in this. We told them of our plans to do this and I can't speculate on their thinking or their motives, but I can tell you that we did engage with them over a year ago. I have personally been to Moscow and talked to General Baluyevsky their Chief of General Staff, and I've talked to Defense Minister Ivanov. We will continue those discussions. I will go back hopefully in the coming months. We are scheduling additional meetings that were going to follow through with. We want to be very open and transparent.

We have told the Russians that they have a standing invitation to any of our missile defense sites in Alaska, in California. They're more than welcome to come see that and see for themselves what we're doing.

Another topic we get a lot of is debris. Wait a minute. You're going to be raining debris down on Europe just to protect the United States. That is absolutely wrong.

First of all, as I said before, we can protect the United States without having these installations. But let me give you an example of why you might want to think about having a protection here.

Let's assume we don't have a missile defense site. Let's assume we don't do that. Let's assume that Europe opts out, they don't want this. They don't want to be involved in United States relations. And God forbid, let's say that there is a conflict that develops between Iran and the United States and Iran starts launching missiles at the United States. You know what? Not all those missiles are going to make it to the United States. That's one of the other lessons learned from the experience last summer. A certain percentage of those rockets fired at Israel fell way short. You're going to have the same thing happen here. You could have missile falling on European territory or on Russian territory for that matter that were not intended to fall there and you can't do anything about it so you have to just suffer the impact of that warhead on your territory. That's not a good position to be in.

You should have the ability to protect yourself even against an accidental or a failure of a missile that is intended for somebody else. So we think it's prudent to go ahead and build this.

In terms of debris, you saw some of the videos. We know from the very precise radars that we use in some of our testing, what we call the range radars, that very very small pieces are left out of these interceptors. Very small. The probability of any casualty on the ground from these intercepts is very low. It's like one in a thousand to one in 2.4 million, depending on the population density in the area of where the debris may come down in, and it is a very small footprint, only tiny dots in terms of that coverage. So debris is not a major issue with respect to these intercepts. What is more of an issue is if you have a warhead impact you're going to have thousands of lives lost potentially and billions if not trillions of dollars in terms of damage. That's what we're concerned about.

I've gotten asked about the relationship between NATO and the missile defense efforts. We thought it would be prudent to move out on this because we have been given the direction of the mission to do so. In the classic sense we know that NATO member nations always, or historically, have developed the physical capability and contributed that to a NATO response or a NATO capability. This could be viewed as a U.S., a Polish and a Czech Republic contribution to a missile defense capability for NATO in general and it certainly complements what could be coming out of a NATO missile defense program on its own.

Finally, we have seen tremendous international involvement in missile defense. We co-host a conference, an international conference every year. We've been doing this for the past 14 or 15 years. It's been hosted in Japan, it's been hosted in Germany, in England, Italy, et cetera, and in the Netherlands. We have seen a tremendous up-turn in interest. We have seen, for example the last conference that we held in London there were more than 1,000 delegates to the conference from more than 24 countries. We're getting a very broad spectrum of interest.

Next slide.

This gives you an example. We have agreements that we signed with framework partners here. All of these we have existing agreements in place, what we call a framework memorandum of understanding that we're moving out on. We have continuing activity with the Israelis, with the Germans, with the Netherlands and with NATO. We supply, the U.S. supplies the program management for the active layer, theater missile defense. We provide the Deputy Program Manager to that office. We also provide some of the oversight personnel that are involved in the committee that manages that.

We have new relations with Spain, Poland, the Czech Republic obviously. Ukraine, India. We have an ongoing theater missile defense exercise program with Russia. We're exploring interest with France with respect to some type of potential collaboration there.

So we have a strong international interest in what we're doing and I think people around the world increasingly, governments around the world are increasingly understanding that we do need this.

That's it, I think.

My summary slide. I think I've said most of that.

I'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have.