WASHINGTON, DC - Today, Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), ranking member of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, made the following remarks, as prepared for delivery, on the Subcommittee's FY21 Strategic Forces posture hearing:
"Thank you Mr. Chairman. I would also like to extend a warm welcome to Dr. Anderson, General Raymond, and Admiral Richard. Thank you all for your service to our nation and for being here today.
"The budget request for fiscal year 2021 continues to support our nation’s ability to compete and win against our near-peer adversaries. And as the Secretary of Defense testified yesterday, supporting our nuclear modernization efforts remains the number one priority of the Department of Defense.
"The budget request for fiscal year 2021 invests approximately $72 billion across the nuclear, missile defense, and space enterprises. It supports the modernization of all of three legs of the nuclear triad, nuclear command and control, and the National Nuclear Security Administrations defense programs. And while it supports development of a Next Generation Interceptor for our homeland missile defense system, I must express my displeasure with the failed Redesigned Kill Vehicle Program, which ultimately cost taxpayers $1.2 billion and delayed a capability critical to protecting our nation by up to 10 years.
"The budget request invests in near-term modifications to existing systems to ensure that we have a sufficient underlay to protect our homeland from North Korean and Iranian ballistic missiles. And for the first time, this year’s budget request presents a Space Force budget which clearly identifies specific space related programs to support our realization of space as a warfighting domain.
"While we continue to modernize our strategic forces, we continue to observe Russia’s alarming increase in their development of provocative delivery systems for nuclear weapons. This past year Russia operationally deployed their Avangard strategic hypersonic weapon system that is capable of delivery a nuclear weapon to our homeland. They continue to develop Sarmat, a new road mobile intercontinental ballistic missile; Poseideon, a nuclear powered torpedo; the Burevestik, a nuclear powered cruise missile, and several other variants of hypersonic weapons. Russia maintains several low-yield nuclear weapons that are not accountable under the New START Treaty. And remains in violation of their obligations under the Open Skies Treaty. Everything here that Russia is signaling to us, indicates that Russia is building more and increasingly diverse nuclear weapons for offensive employment in accordance with their 'escalate to de-escalate' doctrine.
"Similarly, China continues down a path to field its own nuclear triad, with the development of a nuclear-capable strategic bomber, road mobile ICBMs, sub-launched ballistic missiles. China also continues to build and deploy intermediate range ballistic missiles outpacing the United States. And China’s investments and subsequent development of hypersonic weapons continues at an alarming pace. China has never been subject to the limits and transparency required by an arms control treaty that provides an effective verifiable arms control regimen.
"First, let me start with our robust support of the nuclear modernization efforts both within DoD and in partnership with NNSA. I have already heard criticisms that our nuclear modernization efforts are too expensive, are too large of a proportion of our budget, or are driving an arms race. This is wrong. This year’s budget request is consistent with previous funding profiles for our nuclear modernization efforts. We know that this funding profile will increase until the mid-2030’s when it peaks out at less than 7% of the total DoD budget. Which is still less than the 10% we spent in the last recapitalization in the 1980’s.
"As previous Secretary of Defense Mattis said – America can afford survival. Admiral Richard I’m particularly interested in your perspectives on whether this year’s budget request is sufficient to support the modernization activities this year. And I’m interested in hearing what you believe the consequences are if we fail to sustain our political will in supporting nuclear modernization.
"On missile defense. There remain a lot of policy and programmatic questions about how we ensure that our homeland is protected against ballistic missiles from North Korea and Iran. We will have a separate hearing on the missile defense budget in March. But the policy implications of decreased confidence in our homeland missile defense system are particularly concerning and drive architectural considerations that need to be discussed. I’m particularly disappointed that the Department has zero’ed out all funding for boost phase directed energy. And I believe the Department owes Congress an explanation about where the hypersonic and ballistic tracking sensor ended up in this budget cycle, given that the FY20 NDAA directed SecDef to assign the Director of Missile Defense Agency with principal responsibility for payload development but that was also zero’ed out of MDA’s budget. Mr. Anderson, I’m particularly interested in your perspectives on the Department’s policy related to these missile defense issues.
"Lastly, on August 29, 2019 the Department re-established United States Space Command as a geographic combatant command. While General Raymond is dual-hatted as Chief of Space Operations under Space Force, I understand you are here in your Commander of U.S. Space Command role. In that capacity I’d like to better understand what U.S. Space Command is doing to support the fight here on earth today, and what you envision U.S. Space Command doing in the future to support conflict that might start or operate through space."
To all the witnesses thank you again for being with us today. I look forward to your testimony.