Opening Statement

Chairman Ellen Tauscher

Hearing on United States Strategic Posture

and the

Fiscal Year 2009 Budget Request for Strategic Programs

Subcommittee on Strategic Forces

House Armed Services Committee

February 27, 2008

Good afternoon.  This hearing of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee will come to order. 

The purpose of today's hearing is to examine the United States strategic posture and the fiscal year 2009 budget request for strategic programs --including nuclear weapons, missile defense, intelligence and military space assets.

Our committee has jurisdiction over each of these areas, tracking closely with the reach of the U.S. Strategic Command, or STRATCOM.  Therefore, I want to thank General Kevin Chilton, Commander of STRATCOM, for being here today. 

The Committee also charges the National Nuclear Security Administration with developing and maintaining the nuclear warheads that support our strategic deterrent.  For that reason, I want to thank Mr. Tom D'Agostino, the Undersecretary of Energy for Nuclear Security and Administrator of the NNSA, for appearing here today.

Finally, I want to welcome Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Vickers, whose portfolio - Special Operations, Low-Intensity Conflict and Interdependent Capabilities - includes establishing the strategic policies General Chilton is charged with executing. 

We asked each of you to be here because of your inter-connected roles.  I believe that to examine the strategic posture of the United States each of you are needed to help paint a full picture.

Highlighted through an OPED authored by former Defense Secretary Bill Perry, former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Schultz, and former Senator Sam Nunn - there is a growing bipartisan chorus of statesmen and experts calling for the U.S. to adopt a policy designed to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons. 

In response this subcommittee has called for a larger national discussion of this issue and the Congress has acted.   

The National Defense Authorization Act establishes a bipartisan commission to examine U.S. strategic posture and recommend an appropriate policy for the 21^st Century

The goal of the commission will be to determine the proper balance between our nuclear and conventional forces and review the roles of our nation's nonproliferation and missile defense programs.   

I hope that each of you here today can assure the subcommittee that the Administration will fully support this bipartisan commission. 

We would also like your input on what key questions the commission should consider. 

What do you think has changed in our security environment since the last Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) that should be explored? 

And how has the concept of strategic deterrence shifted since the end of the Cold War?

Since we have both the head of STRATCOM and the NNSA with us, I would ask that both parties give us a sense of how the administration is looking at RRW this year as well as complex transformation from both a programmatic and strategic perspective. 

During the past year we have had vigorous discussions here and abroad over the U.S. proposal to install missile defense interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic. 

I have traveled to Europe several times over the past year to show our European allies how seriously we take our shared security interests.

 I have urged the Administration to work through NATO to establish a joint U.S.-European missile defense capability.

I have urged them to "NATO-ize" this shield and focus on the threat posed by short and medium range missiles pointed at Europe.

One key concern about missile defense is that the Bush administration's budget request appears to delay the use of two very important systems for defeating short and medium range missiles - specifically THAAD and PAC-3. 

In that regard, we are particularly interested in the war fighter's perspective on the requirements for these and other systems designed to defeat the threat posed by short and medium range missiles.

Finally, one year ago we dealt with an ill-advised and dangerous Chinese anti-satellite test. 

Just last week we witnessed the U.S. successfully intercept a failed satellite on the verge of reentering the atmosphere and threatening populated areas with a thousand pounds of hydrazine fuel.

The missile we used to intercept this satellite was part of our Aegis ballistic missile defense system.

I applaud the open manner in which our military has explained and executed this mission.  As I see it, our nation took responsibility for eliminating a risk we created ourselves. 

General Chilton, you and General Cartwright as well as your whole team should be commended for a job well done. 

I also see this event as a sign that the U.S. must establish more thoughtful international protocols for space-faring nations.  

As a nation critically dependent on space assets such steps are vital to our national security interests. 

Today, I would ask you to address the following concerns about our space assets: What is our national and military policy if our space assets are attacked? 

Do we have contingency plans for closing the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance gaps that our war fighters would experience?  

And finally, what are the merits and drawbacks of establishing "rules of the road" in space?

While we are all acutely aware of the stress six and a half years of war have placed on our military, I want to be clear:  the United States faces pressing strategic challenges beyond Afghanistan and Iraq. 

This subcommittee takes these issues seriously, and we intend to advance the discussion and chart the right path forward for the United States.