Washington This Week dives into the Supreme Court’s review of birthright citizenship, Trump’s pardon of Honduras’ cocaine-linked ex-leader, and Golden Dome—a $200–$250B missile defense system aiming for 2028 deployment. Experts debate its feasibility against China/Russia’s nuclear modernization while warning a one-year CR could cost DOD $1B/month. Meanwhile, AI regulation stalls as states like Colorado push transparency laws, clashing with the administration’s hands-off stance. The episode underscores urgent defense funding gaps and shifting priorities amid global threats. [Automatically generated summary]
Panel nine will begin in 10 minutes at this stage, and panel eight will begin in 10 minutes in the Presidential Learning Center.
You've been watching C-SPAN's day-long coverage of a conference hosted by the Reagan National Defense Forum from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Seni Valley, California.
In a short break now, next up, we expect a panel discussion on Space Force and missile defense issues.
Live coverage, where that starts, right here on C-SPAN.
A story on the Supreme Court and birthright citizenship was something that happened just as the week ended.
Here's Fox News reporting on it, saying that the court on Friday agreed to review the legality of the president's executive order to end birthright citizenship in the U.S.
A landmark case that stands to profoundly upend the lives of millions of Americans and lawful U.S. residents.
At the issue is the executive order the president issued on his first day back in office.
The order seeks to end birthright citizenship for nearly all persons born in the U.S. to undocumented parents or parents with lawful temporary status in the country, a seismic shift that critics note would break some 150 years of legal precedent.
Mr. Trump's order would reinterpret the 14th Amendment, which states, quote, all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside, a provision that the administration officials argued has been misinterpreted.
Again, this took place towards the tail end of the week.
You can talk about that as well.
The court also made some news with the decision taking a look at allowing Texas to resume its efforts to redraw its districting map, allowing that earlier this week.
This prompted a reaction that's reported today by the Hill by Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, saying that she warned in her dissenting opinion that the court's approval of Texas's congressional map could violate voters' rights enshrined in the Constitution in that dissent.
With fellow liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor and Katanji Brown Jackson, Justice Kagan wrote that the High Court intervening, quote, based on its perusal over a holiday weekend of a cold paper record.
She went on to say, today's order disrespects the work of a district court that did everything one could ask to carry out its charge, that put aside every consideration except getting the issue before it right.
Going on to say, and today's order disserves the millions of Texans whom the district court found were assigned to their new districts based on their race.
That's the Hill.
The president himself yesterday, when taking a look at the topic of childhood vaccinations, called for the CDC to investigate whether there are changes needed to that.
This is Politico, a story by Lauren Gardner, who, by the way, will join us later in the program to talk about this decision.
The story is saying that the president is all in on Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy's plan to scrutinize the list of vaccines American children get.
He directed Secretary Kennedy on Friday to review the childhood vaccination schedule and potentially revise it to align with those in other developed countries, most of which recommend fewer shots.
The directive in the form of an official presidential memo was issued hours after the federal vaccine advisors downgrade a decades-old guidance urging newborn immunization against hepatitis B, a virus that causes severe liver disease within the first day of life.
So those are just some of the stories that you can consider when you tell us your top story.
The price of admission is easy.
Pick the line that best represents you.
202748-8001 for Republicans, 202748-8000 for Democrats and Independents, 202748-8002.
And also be ready to tell us an actual story that you think is worthy of consideration as a top one.
This starts off with Andrew in Virginia, Democrats line.
Your top story of the week.
Andrew, go ahead.
unidentified
Good morning, Pedro.
The top story of the week, and I wish C-SPAN had properly covered it, probably made the entire one-hour show about this, because I really think it flew under the radar for whatever God knows reason.
My top story was that the Ford, that Donald Trump, pardon the former president of Honduras, who was found guilty of funneling transporting 500 tons of cocaine into the U.S. and was found guilty by a U.S. jury in New York and sentenced to 45 years in U.S. federal prison.
I thought Trump and Republicans were so concerned about the scourge of fentanyl and cocaine being brought in to this country by these so-called boats.
And here you have this president of Honduras dumping 500 tons of cocaine that was probably laced with fentanyl.
Can you imagine how many American lives will be taken because Trump decided he was going to pardon this clown?
Trump doesn't give a damn about MAGA Republicans.
He doesn't give a damn about this country.
All he cares about is enriching himself and making side deals for whatever reason to make money, enrich his family, whatever.
He's the worst thing that ever happened to this country.
Let's follow up with Paul, who joins us from Massachusetts, Independent line again.
unidentified
The Reagan National Defense Forum has resumed.
We return to live coverage on C-SPAN.
Well welcome everybody.
I am Kristen Fisher, and I am so honored to moderate such a distinguished panel.
To my right, we have Senator Deb Fisher of Nebraska.
Next to her, General Mike Goetline, the director of Golden Dome, the Honorable Troy Mink, Secretary of the Air Force, and Kathy Warden, the Chairwoman, CEO, and President of Northrop Grumman.
You know, I can't imagine a more fitting place to have this conversation than right here because, of course, it was President Reagan who first proposed the idea of a space-based missile defense system to protect the homeland.
And he called it the Strategic Defense Initiative.
I think most of us called it Star Wars.
And now here we are, 42 years later, talking about essentially the same thing, but with a different name.
So before we get into it, though, I just want to get a show of hands, okay?
How many of y'all have seen the new Netflix movie, A House of Dynamite?
Okay, it's a pretty good number.
I was expecting about that.
But for those of you that have not seen it, this is just a very small spoiler, okay?
The premise of this movie is that the U.S. detects an incoming nuclear missile, and we can't take it out.
Our defenses fail, and the president has about 15 minutes to decide what to do.
So, Secretary, let me start with you.
Did you see the movie?
If so, what did you think of it?
And how would you assess the United States' current ability to defend the homeland in a moment like that?
Well, thanks, Kristen.
Happy to be here.
Great venue.
This is the first time I've been here, so this is phenomenal.
So, I'm really enjoying it.
So, I did see the movie.
Okay.
It took me three times to watch it.
It's a little stressful.
I already said, you know, it took me a bit to get through it.
Felt a little bit too much like work sometimes, so I had to stop and take a break.
So I think it was a great story.
It was a really good story.
I think two things come out of it.
And I apologize for those of you who haven't seen it, but what really kind of set up the drama of the program was that we didn't know where the weapon was coming from.
And to do that, they kind of had to play space away.
They had to get rid of space because with the space systems we have, we would have known where the weapon's coming from.
So that just reinforces the importance of space power going forward and why we now have a space force is how important that is in giving the president and the national policymakers and understanding what's going on in the world, obviously, in this situation as well.
So I almost love the fact that they had to actually play away, right out the space systems to make the storyline work.
And the second part that I really take away from it is, and I'm not going to talk about how accurate or inaccurate the movie was, but we obviously need to give the president as many options and decision timeline as we can.
And to some degree, that's our job.
General Gutline, that's your job going forward.
And I think that's really what I took away from it.
We need to make sure that we give the president, national security infrastructure more time and more options in situations like this.
So General, this is the first time that you're speaking publicly since right after you were named the director of Golden Dome.
Can you explain in as much detail as you possibly can what Golden Dome is, what is the architecture, and how would it better prepare and defend the United States against a moment like the one that was put forward in that movie?
Yeah, thanks, Kristen.
It's a good question.
So Golden Dome is about building a layered defense capability for the nation to protect the nation against an attack against the homeland.
For years, century, not century, decades, we've relied on the oceans to keep us safe and to take the fight to the enemy.
And our adversaries have become very capable and very intent on holding us at risk in the homeland.
And unfortunately, we don't have a lot of capability to protect and defend ourselves, which makes deterrence by denial a challenge.
It makes it a challenge to have consequences for bad behavior.
And Golden Dome is about changing that equation, building a systems of systems architecture, collaborating with our industry partners and our national labs to come up with next generation technologies to build that layered defense capability to protect the homeland.
I have to ask, can you give any more details in terms of the architecture for Golden Dome?
I cannot.
Okay, I tried, guys.
I really tried.
So, Senator, there is a line in the movie, probably the most famous line in the movie, and I'm going to stop talking about the movie in just a second.
But the Secretary of Defense says $50 billion and the best we can do is a coin toss.
And I get that figure.
The stat and the price tag is fictional, controversial.
But with that in mind, you help write those checks in the real world.
What is your view on what the U.S. investment in missile defense has gotten us so far?
You know, just bluntly, it's like our nuclear triad.
It's kept our country safe.
You know, how do you measure the safety of this nation and what kind of price tag do you put on it?
I'm excited about Golden Dome and since we can't say any more about it, thank you very much for coming.
But it's extremely important to be able to have this.
And Kristen, you brought up President Reagan and Star Wars.
And in last year's NDAA, I was able to get a piece in that to be able to put in place a proposal that would allow for the department to study this and to be able to look at what is needed in order to have the sensors, the radars that we need for it to work.
And the problem, I think, before was there wasn't a sense of urgency about that.
I compliment President Trump for coming up with the name for what we did on the Armed Services Committee.
And he's called it Golden Dome, and we're moving ahead.
And we have bright, qualified people that are working on this to be able to have a system in place to identify, to discriminate incoming for the United States of America.
That's a deterrent in itself to our adversaries.
It protects the American people.
And I think equally important, it gives the President of the United States time to be able to make decisions in how to respond.
If you have a missile defense system that works in that way.
unidentified
So Kathy, Northrop Grumman is now poised to become one of the lead contractors of Golden Dome.
And the general can't give us more details on architecture, but he has said that it is on the order of magnitude of the Manhattan Project.
So from an industry standpoint, what is it going to take to actually build this?
Well, thank you for the question and for the confidence in the role that Northrop Grumman will play.
That will be up to the general.
And certainly it is going to take an all-of-industry effort for this capability to be fielded over a period of time.
And I told General Gutlin that I'd follow his lead.
So it is a layered defense against multispectral threats to our nation.
And that's about all I can say about the capability itself.
But what I can tell you is there are many capabilities that exist in our nation today that can be brought to bear to this problem.
There are tens of thousands of engineers, and this nation has the most innovative set of engineers in the world to go after a problem like this.
And there's an industrial base with companies of all sizes that are ready to get behind this mission and support it with investment in not only people, but also the capacity needed to build it out.
And with that in mind, I'm very confident that this industry has what it takes to field this capability for our nation.
Just as Senator Fisher has pointed out, we have done before as a nation with our strategic deterrent that has kept this nation safe now for over 50 years.
So General, for Golden Dome to work, it really hinges on a close partnership between industry and DOD.
But there has been some frustration that's been expressed about the secrecy.
Just not a lot of information, but there have been a lot of headlines.
What is your message to those in industry who feel like they're being asked to invest in the dark?
I think our industry partners have a pretty good insight into what we're doing.
We've been having a lot of one-on-ones.
I've met with well over 200 to 300 companies, 1v1, to explain to them what we're trying to do.
I want to go back to what Kathy was talking about.
If you look at what are our core competitive advantages of the United States over our adversaries, there's three of them.
And the amount of innovation coming out of our industrial base today is like never ever seen before.
So if you've heard me talk a little bit about Golden Dome when I was allowed to talk about it, I have told you that the technology exists.
This is not a technology problem.
We have proven all elements of the technology in one way or another.
The real challenge is how do I bring together capabilities that have never been integrated networked together into a system of systems type architecture?
And then how do I leverage the entire innovation industrial base of the United States?
And we had an acquisition system that kind of slowed us down from doing that.
And you just heard Secretary Hegseth a couple weeks ago roll out the new acquisition system, taking a lot of those handcuffs off.
Golden Dome is about partnering with industry in new and innovative ways to tap into the innovation and to do it in a partnership and to do it with transparency.
That transparency may not come in an industry symposium, but it is coming on 1v1s.
It's not coming in an industry symposium because you guys are not the only ones in the audience.
And there are people in that audience that I don't want to know what we're doing.
I don't want to tell what we're doing.
I don't want to give them a heads up.
But I do know that our competitive advantage, being our industrial partners, are all in on it and are supportive.
So they are pretty well informed to the maximum amount I can inform them today.
And we'll continue to do more.
Is there a point in time when you think the public, taxpayers, will learn a bit more?
And if so, do you have a timeframe for that?
Absolutely.
I'm hoping, hope's not a good strategy, but I'm still hoping that we can start opening up dialogue up in the new year.
We will have some things in place that allow us to start having those kind of conversations.
You started with the House of Dynamite.
I think House of Dynamite was a good place to start the dialogue.
It opens up the dialogue to the American public that we have to change the defense equation.
We have to provide decision space to the United States President so that we don't get ourselves boxed in.
We have to have a deterrent strategy.
Deterrent strategy means I have to have credible capabilities to deter the adversary.
That dialogue kind of started with that movie.
Regardless of how much that movie is actually based on reality and how much isn't, it is a movie.
It is built for Hollywood.
But it has at least started the dialogue that we need to have as a nation.
Senator, you have overseen missile defense oversight for over a decade now.
Are you satisfied with the level of transparency that you've received from DOD so far on this?
You know, I believe that the Armed Services Committee and specifically the Strategic Forces Subcommittee that I chair, we have a very good relationship in working with General Gootline, with the Department as a whole, working with industry members.
Kathy was just in Washington a few weeks ago to be able to update us on where we are.
So we're conducting our oversight responsibilities.
We are read in to what's needed and where we are in the process on this.
And as the general said, you know, it's going to be up to him and to the department to decide at what point they would be comfortable in making more information public.
We have major adversaries who are very interested in anything that we do in this country, and especially with regards to this.
And so we need to be very careful in holding a lot of this information close for the time being.
unidentified
Secretary, from your vantage point overseeing the Air Force and the Space Force, What do you see as the biggest hurdles in integrating all of these systems and sensors with the unified command and control, but everything that involves something as complicated and complex as this.
What's the biggest challenge that you see with pulling this off?
I think you actually kind of hit a little bit on the question, and that's integrating a lot of the technologies, well, sensors and the defensive systems together in a way that will meet the timelines.
Pretty tight timelines in some cases.
That's going to be a big challenge, but it's actually a challenge we see not only within Golden Dome, but really across everything we do in the department is how do we make sure that we're stitching everything together that we can accomplish the mission effectively and efficiently.
That's a big that allows a lot more efficiency as well.
I think the second thing is, the general mentioned the multi-layer, the challenge we have is everything from when we were about in a larger context, everywhere, everywhere, from cheap drones like we're seeing all over the world, all the way to advanced ICBMs like that was portrayed in the movie.
It's a pretty broad sweep of things we have to figure out how to deal with.
And again, it's not just in support of Golden Dome.
A lot of the systems, a lot of the capabilities we field everywhere in the world to protect our forces and protect our allies and partners working with them.
But that is a big part of it.
It's just in the question, how you integrate that all together.
Yeah, and Kristen, the challenge there, Secretary May said there's an integration technical challenge.
Yeah.
That has always been hard doing the system-to-system engineering aspect of it.
But the social engineering and organizational behavior challenge, because we are integrating capabilities across all services and agencies.
And in some cases, in the future, we might be integrating allies.
Each one of those comes with a different organization that we have to deal with, a different set of rule sets that we have to deal with, a different culture that we have to deal with.
Integrating all of that together is a social engineering challenge.
And the reason the Secretary stood up the direct report program manager concept is because it required a new set of authorities, a new set of authorities that I have to be able to integrate horizontally across the entire DOD and the interagency environment to bring to bear an integrated capability to protect the homeland.
That's where the real challenge is.
That's something we haven't done before.
That's a culture challenge, a behavior challenge, a process challenge, a policy challenge, in some cases a legal challenge.
And then we've got to somehow stitch all that together in new and innovative ways.
And that's the path that we're headed down.
That's really where the complexity is going to come in building out something the size of Golden Dome.
And do you feel like you have the authority that you need to do that to make that happen?
Absolutely.
I have the full support of the Secretary and the Deputy Secretary, as well as the President on down, and the trust and confidence of the Hill to move forward on this.
And can you share at all a rough timeline for what it would take to do something like that, to fully integrate?
The President has requested that we deliver this capability and operational capability in the summer of 2028.
And we are on that timeline to deliver an operational capability by 2028.
That will not be the final capability, but we will have the ability to protect and defend the nation against advanced threats by the summer of 2028.
That feels very ambitious.
What is your level of confidence that you can pull that off?
We believe we can get there.
Believe we have a solid plan that we have delivered to the secretary on how we're going to do that.
We are meeting all of our suspenses and our objectives to date.
So I think we're on a good trajectory.
But I will tell you it is not a give-me-putt.
It is an extremely complex thing that we're getting ready to do and there's a lot of risk in there that we're trying to get after and to mitigate.
I'm from Nebraska and we're pretty positive there and being able to work with the quality of people that are on this stage with me yes, I have faith in them.
unidentified
I'd like to spend a minute talking about SBIs space-based interceptors.
I hope I don't get myself into too much trouble here, but I think it's important because this is really where Golden Dome could help make Reagan's Star Wars a reality.
It's arguably one of the more ambitious and controversial pieces of Golden Dome.
Kathy, Northrop Brumman has signaled some interest in building SBIs.
How ready is your company, how ready is Northrop to do that, and not just to do it, but to do it at scale?
So Kristen, this is an area where our company has invested in capabilities and those can be brought to bear.
But I think the start of your question is absolutely right.
This is one of the aspects of Golden Dome and it's really an aspect of future capability, where more invention is required than other parts of the architecture where we already have mature, demonstrated and operating elements.
So this is going to take a whole of government and industry approach to define what is the right design for those systems and how can we aggressively not only field a few, but the real goal is here to field many, and so when we think about a problem set like this, the design has to not only be to develop a system, it has to be to develop a system that can scale, and scale affordably,
and so all of those parameters have to be considered when we think about something like space-based interceptors.
If I can jump in a little bit, as a much younger engineer, I worked on a number of the SDI programs, the space defense back in the Reagan days, and both on space-based laser and some of the brilliant pebbles and some of the other programs.
It was really challenging with the technology we had at the time right, which is why some of those systems never went into operation.
We are in a very different place now than we were.
I mean, think about what it would take to build a cell phone, you know, in the 80s versus where we are right now.
It is a very different world.
So the opportunities, not that it's easy by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a very different technology, technical environment.
Now that I think is enabling a lot of things that just really were not possible back then.
Yeah, if I can add on to that, you know a couple of examples, Samples of this.
We're developing the B-21, and we're doing that with digital modeling.
And the modeling that we're doing there makes it such that by the time we get to test, the aircraft in a physical environment is performing almost exactly to the models.
We didn't have that capability as an industry 15 years ago, but we do now, and we can bring it to advanced weapon systems.
And we also are focused on how do we move through, still with a focus on quality in development for product, but move through with a design process that thinks about manufacturability.
And that too can be modeled.
We think about manufacturing floors and the layout of those and modeling all of that before we even build a single footprint.
That kind of technology enablement is going to allow us to do things much faster in the future.
General, would you like to add anything to this conversation on SBIs, please?
I do.
So let's start with Reagan.
Brilliant Pebbles worked.
It wasn't scalable and it wasn't affordable, but it worked.
I went up to Livermore and actually got to see one, the very last one that still exists.
So the technology is there.
What was a challenge back then, based on the technology, as Secretary Mink talked about, is it wasn't mature enough where we could do it at scale and do it affordable, like Kathy talked about.
I think all that has changed today.
But what we're going to have to do is change our culture, our warfighting culture, because right now we demand the most exquisite kit.
And we have the most exquisite kit.
It doesn't miss.
It is highly effective, highly lethal, but it costs an enormous amount of money.
And as a result, we have a very small magazine depth of that kit.
When we start talking about things like space-based interceptor, I've got to flip that equation on its head.
I've got to have high magazine depth, low cost per shot.
How do I do that?
We're going to have to tap into the industry innovation to bring to bear into solving those problems.
It's not the technology itself, it's back to scalability and affordability.
So, Senator, it may be technically feasible.
Is it politically feasible to deploy SBIs?
And I mean, just to put a really fine point on it, we're talking about weapons in space, interceptors essentially mounted to satellites that are orbiting the Earth.
And so, what is your level of concern that this could lead to or accelerate an arms race in space?
And what is your level of concern that this could then be reversed by a future administration?
I think you've seen the majority buy in to what we're doing here.
We have very strong support of the National Defense Authorization Act.
It came out of the Armed Services Committee with only one no vote.
It passed by, I think, 80, 80 votes, and some votes in the Senate.
We're going to see what the final is going to be announced here in a day or so.
So, there's support for defense and national security in this country.
We heard that this morning with the survey results that was discussed at the opening panel.
Obviously, cost is a huge concern.
You have to be able to know what we need and prioritize that.
And I think those decisions are becoming clearer for those of us in Congress when we work with the Department and with the military and really get the information there.
So I think as long as we can have that open dialogue and continue to have the facts brought before us, when we know that technology is advancing at a remarkable speed and what that means,
when we're looking at changing acquisition rules, when we, you know, so things I think are moving really, really quickly that will make those decisions easier for us in the future.
The adversary has been holding space at risk for years now.
The Chinese have the ability to launch a missile at a satellite, take out a satellite.
The Chinese have the ability to have a robot in space kidnap another robot, another satellite and take it someplace else.
The Russians have nesting dolls in space as a satellite that spawns another satellite and spawns a kill vehicle.
So space is already contested.
We're not starting that discussion.
Well, and it seems like the public agrees.
The RNDF survey on this, they did a survey, and you have 68% strongly or somewhat supporting Golden Dome, 25% oppose.
Do you think that there is a world in which you will be able to share a bit more about the current threat environment to explain why to the public Golden Dome is so necessary?
That has been my mission for many, many years as a member of the Armed Services Committee to try and unclassify a lot of the information that we receive as senators and that we are then able to talk to the people of this country about the threats that we face.
So we can talk about that we have two peer competitors.
You know, we have two peer adversaries with Russia and China who have a nuclear triad and all the platforms as well and who the Russians have completed modernization and the Chinese are advancing at a breathtaking speed.
So we can explain in detail what's happening there because I believe the American people, when they fully understand the threats that we face, there's going to be even greater support for what we need as a country for our national security.
And so we don't see escalation.
unidentified
I think to understand the threat, you just need to watch the news.
We see massive raids going on against Ukraine on a regular basis.
It's like every handful of days or something we see a pretty significant raid.
And then with the Iran-Israel conflict, that was really what spurred it off is a large number of all sorts of media range and drone attacks on Israel.
So the threat, you just have to go to the actual real news, not even a movie like House of Dynamite.
It's happening all the time.
And we need to make sure that the homeland is protected from that.
We've talked a lot about kinetic weapons, the SBIs, space-based interceptors.
What about non-kinetic?
Because General, you've referenced that this is a layered defense system, cyber-directed energy.
That is a component of it too.
I don't know, Secretary or General, whoever would like to take this one, can you explain what some of the other layers other than SBIs are or could be?
So it's multi-domain.
So we have the air layer, we have the sea layer, we have the ground layer.
So it's everything from the seabed to space is going to be brought to bear.
You talked about kinetics.
Everything from seabed to space has kinetics.
Everything from seabed to space has a very small magazine depth, very exquisite capabilities, very high cost per shot.
In order to change that equation, we've got to start leveraging non-kinetics, directed energy, and left-to-launch capabilities.
And that's going to require us as a nation to invest in research and development, some next generational type of capabilities, to leverage all the innovation coming out of industry, but to also bring our national brain trust, be in our national labs, back to the table to have conversations about how can we do this different.
How can I drive up magazine depth?
How can I drive down cost per shot?
And how can I increase deterrence?
I mean, to do all this, it's going to take a very robust defense industrial base.
Kathy, we've heard a lot about two potential chokeholds or bottlenecks from your perspective, solid rocket motors, microchips, literally the engines and brains, essentially, of missile defense systems.
How is Northrop, what changes are you making to prepare for what you will need to do to scale up for Golden Dome in those two areas in particular, solid rocket motors and chips?
Yes.
So solid rocket motors range in size from supporting tactical missiles all the way to strategic launch, and those will be key in many aspects of the architecture that General Gootlin spoke of.
So we have been investing.
We've doubled capacity already in our factories for production of solid rocket motors and we're building out more capacity to further increase so that we can support the growing demand, not just for Golden Dome for America, but more broadly.
And as we think about what that looks like over time, we expect that this will also be global demand.
So we are incorporating not just U.S. need, but our global partners.
We are thinking about more commonality amongst solid rocket motors, getting qualification for one to support many.
We are looking at ways to re-engineer manufacturing floors so that we can build faster.
So all of that work is already underway and supports the expansion that's going to be necessary.
We're doing the same thing in microelectronics, building new factories, but building them smarter, moving more to automated feedlines for those.
We're even changing our foundries to be more innovative in how we produce and get through R ⁇ D in our foundries.
And by the way, we do produce in the U.S.
So you hear so much about microelectronics that come from outside of the U.S.
We have two foundries here in the U.S. where we are building from silicon to chip.
So we're able to do that today.
It's just a matter of scaling.
This isn't that we have to go build something new.
It's we have to scale what we have, which is a much simpler problem and we're throwing the resources at it to make it happen.
Secretary, you've repeatedly stressed the need for speed.
Do you see what Kathy was just talking about as one of the biggest bottlenecks here or something else?
I think it's really important.
I'm pretty certain Kathy and others would agree in the room, is one of the challenges we've had with the capacity of the industry base in the U.S. is we haven't had stability.
It's hard for them to scale both the people and the facilities to meet the demands unless the government is more consistent as a buyer, right?
Not just on the technology side, but really on the production side, which is where you do have some of the really long lead facilities, constructions, and everything else going on.
You got that a little bit this morning, right, from the discussion by senators, by both the senators and the congressmen.
That kind of multi-year procurement, that kind of stability is something we're all going to be having to drive for by the Secretary as well over lunch to enable that and scale up the production.
I see that as one of the biggest challenges we have is becoming a consistent and stable partner so that we can facilitize and get the production rates that we need.
Now, I am also that we have to do it affordably.
We can scale production all we want.
If it's not affordable, we're not going to get the magazine depth that we need across the board.
So those have to be worked together.
And then secondly, we really need to learn how to, we really need to improve how well we integrate technologies as it evolves, right?
How do we bring a new capability into these systems, new digital, but also how do we deal with parts obsolescence?
That's a big challenge, how we work with the contractors, how we manage that risk to do that sort of thing.
All those things have to be addressed for us to scale production that we need affordably.
And I will note, and Secretary Mink and I have talked about this, affordability comes with scaling.
So if you have a clear demand signal that the production needs to ramp to X quantity, you actually can drive affordability just through the scaling itself, the economies of scale that come.
And you have to have contracts made without a bunch of changes going forward too, because that only adds to cost and time.
unidentified
That's absolutely right.
Stability and consistency.
General, since we have Kathy here and so many other people in industry here, I'd like to just talk a little bit about the timeline for awards and contracts, if you can say anything on this.
I know that the first prototype IDIQ contracts have recently gone out, but when do you expect the first major production awards to follow?
So part of the Golden Dome concept is to be lean.
So we're actually leveraging the other services and the other agencies' contracts to acquire capability.
So we have already submitted our needs to the Department of War for munitions.
So Secretary Feinberg is working really, really hard to scale out the industrial base for all the reasons we just talked about and to expand our magazine depth on our weapons.
We have injected our requirements into that process.
So they are already moving out on acquiring the interceptors that we need for Golden Dome.
And you just mentioned we just issued five or five 15, 18, 18 OTAs last week for boost phase space base interceptor.
So that's now off and moving.
We have a team of industry partners working on the command and control and the fire control software already.
We're on ramping others into that.
So we have already moved out on our contracts and our contracting strategy going forward.
And what about satellites, like the very top of the dome, so to speak?
We are in discussions with the department on the need to acquire more transport capability, which is the ability to move data through space, more sensing capability, more missile warning, missile track capability.
We are waiting on those contracts to come in and to move forward on those, but we have given our needs to the department.
Okay.
So General Gutline and I talk a lot about those schedules.
I'm one of his providers.
I imagine you do.
I'd like to just take a minute since we have Kathy here and the general and the secretary to have just a mini therapy session, right?
Can the two of you just kind of say, in order for this to work, what does industry need from DOD and what does DOD need from industry?
And you guys can just speak to that.
I thought you were going to ask me to give him a hug.
Just plug it out.
So I'm not sure I'm going to hit it, but I'm going to tag in with what Kathy said.
Industry is delivering exactly the demand that I put upon them.
And that demand has been for those exquisite systems.
And because I'm not buying very many of them because they cost so much, they have sized the entire industrial base all the way down to the third and fourth, fifth level suppliers for efficiency, not for capacity.
Because I didn't demand capacity.
In order for us to change that equation, I have to change the demand signal on my side of the equation.
And that's what Secretary Feinberg has already kicked off in spades with munitions.
That's what Secretary Mink and the Space Force have done on the space side.
That's what we're going to do on the Golden Dome side.
And a lot of the reforms that you saw Secretary of War roll out two weeks ago were about how to change that demand signal and how to make it consistent across several years, not just one year at a time.
Kathy?
I don't need therapy anymore because when your customer knows exactly what you need and we are communicating and know what they need, that's when it works, right?
Acquisition transformation starts with us knowing what shared success looks like and both be working in that direction.
And I speak for all of industry here, that clear demand signal, consistency, the funding to support it, and clarity not just on technical capability, but what is the trade between cost, schedule, and capability that we are moving toward collectively.
And the fact that we're even having those conversations, that is the step in the right direction that we need.
Secretary or General, whoever wants to take this, people hear Golden Dome and you make the inevitable comparison to Iron Dome, but this, of course, is quite different.
Much larger territory that you are trying to defend clearly with the United States.
Can you just provide any specifics on what level of protection Golden Dome is aiming to provide?
I mean, is it truly 100% security across the entire United States or is it something more limited?
Golden Dome is, first of all, much bigger, as you said, than what Iron Dome is.
I actually worked with Israel on Iron Dome, and Iron Dome is actually three systems.
It gets named Iron Dome, but it's really Iron Dome, which is a lower tier, David Sling, middle tier, and Arrow, which is upper tier.
But even then, they are defending an area the size of New Jersey.
So we are defending a much greater area than what Israel is challenged with, with more advanced threats than what Israel is challenged with.
We, at the direction of the executive order from the President, are protecting the homeland against ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles, cruise missiles, and counter 345 UAS.
That's a size, larger size of UASs.
We will deliver that capability in 28 to protect the homeland.
And we are focused on the entire homeland to include Hawaii, Alaska, and Guam.
Now, we won't bring all that to bear immediately.
The Army is already working really diligently to protect Guam today.
When they have got that capability in place, it will become part of Golden Dome.
Until then, we're focusing on Hawaii and Alaska along the way as well.
But we are looking at all of the homeland, not just a subset of the homeland.
Senator, you have championed missile defense for over a decade in the Senate.
Hearing what the general is saying today, I mean, how hopeful are you that we're going to get to a place that you feel more confident that you have, that the U.S. can really do what is needed to be done in a moment of true crisis, like was displayed in that movie?
And as was explained earlier, just what we have available to protect this homeland currently is good.
It's going to take time to be able to protect, I think, to protect our country.
Just when you look at the size and how are we going to be able to do it.
But once again, I have confidence in this guy next to me here.
And I know that we have the capability, we have the people who are working on it, and we have to work on it.
You know, what do you want to do?
Do you want to just say, gosh, we can't get the whole country protected in a year?
So we just can't do it.
Well, instead, we're saying, no, we're going to get the whole country protected in a few years.
And we're going to provide the resources that we are going to be able to do this.
unidentified
So I'd like to open it up to some questions from the audience.
And I forgot to say at the opening, so I apologize.
My apologies.
But if any of you have any questions for our panelists, feel free to use your app to get them in.
But I've already got quite a few populating and kind of to that point.
One question from the audience.
Do I click on it and does it pop up?
No?
I'll just ask it.
The question is, instead of immediately aiming for a nationwide umbrella, 100% coverage, should we focus on deploying mini-domes, localized, agile defense systems to protect our most critical infrastructure?
Secretary, General, Senator, anybody want to take that?
So I would say I think that's exactly what we're doing.
I cannot deliver everything I need to deliver instantaneously on day one.
So we're going to incrementally deliver capability.
And we're going to incrementally deliver capability based on the lethality and the probability of the threat that we are trying to protect against.
So we will be incrementally building out that layered defense capability.
Okay.
And when you are, can you just talk in a bit more specifics, if you can, about what the things that you could actually do right now that you don't need to wait on?
We have proven in the Middle East in recent months that we have the ability to protect our troops against ballistics, some cases hypersonics, and some cases UASs.
That capability works today, and we can bring and will bring that capability to bear on protecting the homeland as needed.
I think there's been, particularly in the drone area, there's been a lot of innovation already, developing low-cost munitions that we can use within our fighters to shoot down the drones.
That has evolved very rapidly.
I've been really impressed with how innovative both industry was and the government was in bringing that and fielding that capability quickly.
So there's already a lot of progress being made there.
And of course, we have a series of air defense systems, the Army across the services that are very, very capable.
And this is some of the discussion the industry and others are hearing about scale.
How do you scale up those weapon systems that we already have today to the level that we need?
And then of course, SBI was mentioned, there are other weapons that don't exist today that we will have to develop.
But I think the key is we're not starting from scratch.
We do have pretty capable systems today, but in some ways it's a growth in more layers in the defense system.
One of the other big advancements obviously lately has been AI and machine learning.
Kathy, how is Northrop using that to enhance missile defense?
So we have for many years been looking at artificial intelligence and how we not only utilize it inside the company to support our design cycles and our manufacturing and even our back office, but also how do we embed it in weapon systems.
Autonomy at its core.
When you have an aircraft that's flying itself, the vehicle management system is an autonomous artificial intelligence system.
It can adapt without pilot intervention, meaning remote piloting, and fly itself and avoid and sense danger.
Those kinds of capabilities exist today in weapon systems.
The progression of artificial intelligence embedded into actual weapon systems though is an area that we need to have governance over so that we are looking at things like fire control differently than we look at flying an uncrewed system.
And so through partnership with the government, we are looking at ways to bring artificial intelligence into many different types of weapon systems, but in a very responsible way.
Here's a question.
Part of the Golden Dome's executive order involves a left-of-launch strategy in which the United States is seeking to develop capabilities that prevents a missile from launching.
This person says, what does that look like and what does that involve?
Can't talk about it.
It's always better when the audience is asking a question like that and not me, right?
Another question from the audience.
As an object orbits faster, the Earth, as an object orbits faster, the closer it gets to Earth, what are the current solutions to the coverage issues posed by space-based intercepts in low Earth orbit?
How many SBIs are needed to maintain the persistent coverage of a satellite in geosynchronous Earth orbit?
If I couldn't get the answers, I was leaving it to the audience to give it their best shot.
There are a large number of knobs that can be turned in solving that problem.
And that's why we've gone out to industry with such a broad look across industry to kind of get those different ideas, get those different options, so that we can do that kind of top-level system engineering, turn those knobs and figure out what's the most effective way to go after the problem.
So there is definitely not a one-size-fits-all approach to this, and that's what we're assessing out right now.
And that's why we try to go out so broad under General Gutland's direction, such a broad look across industry to kind of get the new innovative ideas in.
One final question from the audience, and then we're going to kind of wrap it up here.
And this question is about as this project diverts resources from other projects, how do you ensure that in seeking to develop Golden Dome that we maintain progress in other critical areas?
You know, we don't have the funding to move forward on every project that's out there.
And that's why you've seen every Secretary of Defense, every president has always said that our nuclear deterrent, our triad, it underpins everything else we do, and that is the number one priority for the security of this country.
Then you have to look at what's next.
Is it Golden Dome so that we have the missile defense?
Is it a lot of the new technology that's coming out and make more investments there?
And I think it just boils down to setting priorities with knowing what our adversaries have or having a good guess at what our adversaries have in order to combat what they may be using, while at the same time being able to develop a number of offensive weapons that we may have to employ in the future.
unidentified
Oh, go ahead, Kevin.
I would also add that I don't look at the technology base that's going to support Golden Dome for America in isolation from other missions.
The reason we have capabilities today that can be applied to Golden Dome for America is because that technology base has a lot of commonality.
And as I think about the future, 10, 15 years from now, this investment will lift all boats.
As we think about work that we need to do in not only space but other domains, this technology base will support that.
So it's not one or the other.
It is complementary when we invest in a mission because it will fund and develop technology for other missions as well.
Yeah, I think the chairman said earlier, Homeland Defense is national defense.
If you look at everything I'm building, it supports multiple co-comps.
I'm not just supporting Northcom.
Simultaneously, I'm supporting IndoPaycom, Stratcom, and Spacecom.
The satellites that we're putting on orbit, whether they be sensors, whether they be transport communicators, or whether they be SBIs, are simultaneously flying over every single combatant command that we have.
So they're simultaneously supporting every combatant command.
There is nothing that we are doing in support of the homeland that does not transfer to the other combatant commands.
We've talked quite a bit about the threat environment, but in our final minutes of this panel, I'd like to just spend a little bit of time asking each of you about the why, why Golden Dome, in its current, well, the architecture that we do know, this multi-layered approach, why it is so necessary.
And it appears to have broad public support.
But if each of you could maybe speak to what the why is right now with recent developments that China and Russia have made and the things that we have seen in the news, what is each of your whys for why Golden Dome is needed now?
My why would be to meet the threats that this country faces and be able to provide for the defense of the homeland.
And as General Gutlin just said as well, this transfers to providing for a safer world to be able to Serve our allies, our partners, the world as a whole.
And it is a deterrent.
It is a deterrent.
People, our adversaries need to think twice before ever taking any action against this country.
unidentified
In order to have a deterrence, there's got to be a credible capability behind it.
So we've got to build that credible capability to actually deter the bad and nefarious behavior that we are seeing today.
There's got to be consequences for that behavior.
We've had a lot of conversation in my lanes about strategic stability.
And although there's no set definition of strategic stability, I would argue there's two fundamentals that have got to happen.
One is I've got to have a stable arsenal of nuclear weapons across the United States and not growing, I mean across the world and not growing.
And the second thing is we have nobody rattling their sabers saying they're going to launch a nuke.
We've got both those today.
China and Russia are rapidly modernizing their nuclear weapons and building additional ones.
And Russia is threatening to use nukes against their adversaries.
So I don't have strategic stability today.
Well, what am I going to do to deter that bad behavior?
I need credible capability for deterrence, and Golden Dome brings to bear that credible deterrent capability.
Secretary?
Yeah, I started my career as a young officer in strategic air command, and our entire focus was deterring the Russians.
And it was a pretty stable set of deterrences that we had between them, between the two of us.
The problem is, as the general mentioned and as the senator mentioned, is a lot of those capabilities now proliferated to, and I would say even at the Russia case, to much more, less stable countries, right, that are more willing to use those.
And it's much more challenging to stabilize them in ways that we diplomatically have in the past, mad back from the Strategic Air Command days.
So since that is no longer an option, we have to have other options to protect ourselves.
I'm going to glad to walk through it.
We can't leave ourselves vulnerable just because the proliferation of these weapon systems that can strike us from afar with who knows what type of warhead on them you just can't allow your country to be in that situation, right?
And I think if anything, that's one of the things that the House of Dynamite really highlighted is the fact that you can't let yourself be in a situation to where you either have a very low chance of stopping it or you go full nuke in return, right?
You just, you can't let yourself get into that situation.
That's why we need this.
Avoid that at all costs.
Kathy?
I would say the why now is weapons can go further, they go faster, more countries possess those capabilities, and so the threat has advanced and we need our deterrence and our defenses to keep up with that.
You know, our Constitution provides for the common defense and I would say that for all of us there's no more important defense than of our own homeland.
I came into this industry following 9-11, 2001 because of an atrocious attack on our homeland that I thought I would never see in my lifetime.
And I certainly don't want that to ever happen again.
And that requires a strong deterrent and a defense, a layered defense against a wide variety of threats.
So I think that's why the moment is now.
All right.
Well, we are at time.
Thank you all so much for listening.
Thank you to all the panelists.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes panel nine.
Panel 11 will begin in 10 minutes at this stage.
And panel 10 will begin in 10 minutes in the Presidential Learning Center.
You've been watching C-SPAN's day-long coverage of a conference hosted by the Reagan National Defense Forum from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.
In a short break right now, next up, a conversation on the defense budget and global priorities.
Live coverage when that starts right here on C-SPAN.
Well, we seem to be, as of this morning, at the end of a chapter that began back in the middle of October.
If you think back to that moment, and I realize a lot has happened since then.
It seems like every week this year is about a year's worth of news.
The president had just succeeded in getting the living hostages out of Gaza.
He was giving a speech in Israel to the Knesset there.
And at around that same time, the current movement towards the most recent effort at peace in Ukraine was getting underway.
The president was contemplating giving Tomahawk missiles to the Ukrainians, was on the verge of issuing some pretty strong sanctions on some Russian oil companies.
And at around this time, he fields a call from President Putin, and a round of conversations picks up between Americans led by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and Russian representatives.
And over the course of October and into November, this proposal, you know, composed in 28 points, comes together.
It leaks towards the end of November, which creates an enormous media and diplomatic firestorm.
And at the same time, it's delivered to the Ukrainians as something close to an ultimatum.
I don't think it turns out not to have been an ultimatum, but at the moment it sort of felt like it.
The Ukrainians politely declined to accept these terms, which were pretty close to a request that they surrender.
That slightly overstates it, but only slightly.
A round of talks came past in Geneva, led by now by Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.
And then what we've seen this week is the revised proposal, which we don't actually know, it's not been reported precisely what's in the proposal as it currently stands.
That was taken to Moscow by Witkoff and Kushner.
They had long talks there with Putin and have been meeting for the last couple days with the Ukrainians in Florida.
That's where we stand.
We don't know exactly what the content of the new revised proposal is, except I think we can fairly infer that it's less radical than the 28 points that were delivered to the Ukrainians a couple of weeks ago.
It's been a kind of wild ride.
It's not clear to me we're closer to peace than we were six weeks ago.
And I think you see a lot of the tensions that are driving action in this administration sort of evident in the back and forth of the last six weeks.
They're just competing visions of what to do about Ukraine, what to do about this war, really what to do about the question of world order.
You have, most importantly, obviously, the president himself.
His priority is peace.
And his priority within that category is speed.
He wants the war to end.
He wants everyone involved doing business.
He especially wants America doing business.
He wants good deals for America, not bad deals.
He doesn't understand in some way.
This is what the vice president said about his views.
He doesn't understand why these two countries keep fighting.
Why can't they stop fighting and do business?
You have parties in and around the administration who are quite hostile to Ukraine, who see Ukraine as part of a complex of liberal powers like some of the European countries that are aligned with liberal forces in America that in some ways are their enemy and they would like Russia actually to have the upper hand over Ukraine and a conclusion of the war that's superior to Russia and a kind of vision of world order where the United States and Russia cooperate to set terms in that part of the world.
And then you have parties in and around the administration who have a much more traditional Republican view of this, much more favorable to Ukraine, want terms of the deal that are more favorable to Ukraine, even if they accept that this is also likely to end in some kind of negotiation.
So those are at least three of the forces.
There's more.
And those things are all kind of competing and in tension with one another.
And it explains, I think, some of the back and forth you see.
One of the statements that came out from that shuttle diplomacy that you speak of is with the United States and Ukraine.
They say this.
In recent days, both parties agree that real progress towards any agreement depends on Russia's readiness to show serious commitment to long-term peace, including steps towards de-escalation and cessation of killings.
If that's the lynchpin, what's the probability of that happening?
Yeah, the Russians seem to show no interest in that.
And look, I mean, I think that that's a pretty responsible formulation, and that does seem to sum up the pendulum seems to have swung back to a, in my view, slightly more responsible, slightly more pro-Ukraine vision of the situation.
But the problem is, the Russians are getting all kinds of signals that actually we're not really going to demand those things of them.
One, obviously, there's no way they can't have been encouraged by those 28 points and the fact that we were willing to deliver those 28 points to the Ukrainians.
That's one element of encouragement for them.
There's the National Security Strategy, which just came out, which has, it's itself a document that I think reflects a lot of these tensions I was talking about.
In its section on the Europeans, it is quite harsh and critical.
That's got to be encouraging to the Russians.
You also saw reports this week that the Pentagon, the Department of War, is communicating to our European allies that in two years, essentially, they want the United States's role in NATO to be significantly reduced in a variety of important ways.
If you're sitting there in Moscow watching all of this, why would you then conclude from all of these signals, oh gosh, we better come to some kind of deal or otherwise things are going to get worse from us?
I think they think exactly the opposite, and that seems to me to be a key flaw in how the administration is pursuing this.
In terms of shuttle diplomacy, besides the actual going back and forth, when you decide if this effort is really worthwhile, well, I think the view of the president is that any effort for peace is worthwhile so long as it's got a shot.
And so I think you're going to see more of this.
You're going to see more attempts.
What I would advise the administration is they had tremendous success in the Middle East.
Not only are things a little quieter than they were earlier this year in terms of ground combat, but critically, and frankly, I mean, really remarkably, they deserve nothing but praise for this.
They were able to get all the living hostages out of Gaza from Hamas.
That was an extraordinary diplomatic achievement.
They achieved it by largely aligning themselves with America's traditional ally in the region, Israel, keeping the pressure on Hamas and keeping support flowing to Israel.
What you see with regard to Ukraine is much more ambiguous and much more shifting.
And it doesn't seem to me that there's the same consistency or same embrace of the kind of strategy that was successful in the Middle East.
The Hudson Institute believes in American strength.
It believes in the importance of preserving our Republican experiment.
And it believes in understanding the nature of war and international political competition so as to advise administrations and policymakers of both parties about the path ahead, about what will work and what won't work.
It has its roots in thinking about difficult questions during the Cold War, about nuclear strategy and the nature of warfare there.
And those kinds of questions, even though the details have all changed, remain just as relevant today.
The nature of war is changing day by day, week by week, even as human nature and the fundamentals of international competition stay the same.
So we are here to help Washington policymakers understand what it is that they're dealing with and think through the best ways to defend America.
So that was from earlier, that was from earlier this week, what your assessment of how he thinks, especially this world-building and gathering of friends idea.
A lot of people are inspired by President Zelensky and the efforts of the Ukrainian people to defend themselves.
I'm inspired by those efforts.
This is one of the problems that this administration has when it prioritizes speed in terms of settling this war one way or the other.
If speed is your priority, at some point it's going to occur to you, as it obviously has to this administration a couple of times this year, that the fastest route in the face of Russian recalcitrance is going to be to put pressure on the party in the war that is dependent on you.
And in that case, that's obviously Ukraine.
So if speed is your priority, faster it's easier to go to the Ukrainians and say, guys, it's time for you to accept the deal that maybe you don't love to bring this to a conclusion.
But the problem is precisely this fact that people are inspired by President Zelensky.
I think a lot of Americans support the Ukrainian cause.
A lot of Republicans, despite all the tensions on the right about this stuff, are still very pro-Ukraine.
And I think on some level, this administration recognizes, the president recognizes, that a world in which some sort of de facto surrender, surrender on terms, is imposed on the Ukrainians, and or, frankly, more likely, we attempt to impose some sort of surrender on terms.
The Ukrainians essentially decline to accept it.
We, in a huff, say, we're out, you're on your own, which has been threatened a couple of times now.
That's a world in which I think Ukrainian battlefield losses start to accelerate in the absence of our support, where European unity, such as it is, already pretty tenuous, starts to fracture even more dramatically.
It's a world that starts to feel less safe pretty quickly in a world in which it seems, and there are some in the administration who reject this.
unidentified
Leaving this for more from the Reagan National Defense Forum and a conversation on the defense budget.
I'm so grateful to be joined by Congressman Ken Calvert, Chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, Congressman Pat Ryan, who's standing in for Senator Shaheen, who couldn't be here.
West Point Grad with two combat tours in Iraq and two bronze stars.
Started the Defense Modernization Caucus with Republican Congressman Rob Whitman.
So that is really nice to hear about something that's bipartisan.
And then, of course, Chris Brose, who served for years as the staff director for the Senate Armed Services Committee and is now president of Andrew, one of the hottest companies right now out there.
So let's just start with talk of the budget and what is different.
I want to go down the line and just what's different about this budget, the 2026, than previous budgets.
Is there a shift occurring in terms of strategy?
And what happens if we get another one-year CR?
Last year was the first time we had a full-year CR.
What is the impact?
You guys are the experts.
Chris?
unidentified
You're going to start with me?
Yes.
Oh, dangerous.
I generally view my role here as to bring down the level of integrity on this panel with the two honorable members of Congress.
I think a lot of the question for the forthcoming budget is really going to be in the hands of the two gentlemen to my right in terms of what the Congress is going to do, what the top line is going to be, what they'll appropriate and authorize.
You know, I think when you look at the budget request, you always have this in a transition year where an administration that just got in is more or less sending up a request that has been built by their predecessor and maybe they got a few of their thumbprints on it.
I think the question on the CR to me is the really kind of compelling one, right?
You know, when I was back in the Wayway Back machine working in the Senate, right, the prospect of CRs went from being something that was a forbidden thought to kind of a regular order.
And the notion of a full-year CR was always the thing like that, but which we'll never do.
I think now that we've done that, the concern is that we sort of define deviancy down and then it becomes a standing thing.
I think the Congress did a great job, you know, in the challenging environment that they had to work with to actually provide flexibility to the department inside of the constraints that a full-year CR provides.
I think the question is if we end up on another full-year CR, will that flexibility still be there?
Will it increase?
Will it actually be pulled back, which I think would be detrimental?
I think the big point that I would just offer, and we have a very different perspective on this at Andrew, right?
We're an eight-year-old company.
We've been doing a great job.
We've been succeeding, but like most of our success is still in the future.
Like CRs and full-year CRs are catastrophic for us in the sense that if there isn't that flexibility, right, it becomes very difficult for the department to identify new priorities, to move flexibly, to adapt, to move at the pace that technology is moving.
That becomes a very difficult challenge for young companies and even younger companies than us to be able to get through.
I have to have the attitude that a positive attitude that we're going to get through this.
We obviously went through a shutdown period which was not good.
And so we have till January 21st to get this right.
I'm hoping we can get some appropriation bills done before Christmas and get the rest of it done right after Christmas and get the appropriation for the Department of Defense.
We cannot continue to operate the Department of Defense, the largest enterprise on the planet under a CR.
It costs us probably a billion dollars a month to operate under a continuing resolution just because of the inefficiencies that are created throughout the enterprise and dealing with what we have to deal with.
So to me, that is not an option.
And I would hope that with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle that that is not an option.
So we're going to need to do what's necessary to get this done.
I agree with everybody.
And I think just to add from what I've heard today, and I think everybody in this room has been hearing this today, too, we have all the momentum, all the energy, all like of all the things in this country where we're not aligned and we're divided, this is one of the few places where we have real bipartisan, bicameral, even outside of the Congress and the government.
We've got alignment with industry, we've got alignment with markets.
We have to get this done.
I think it's a patriotic duty to get it done.
And I talked to so many companies today who said we're sharing specific examples of if this happens again, another even partial CR, we just keep losing momentum and our adversaries are just gaining on us each time.
So I know we're all kind of beating that drum, but I think that is, and I have great faith in the chairman to carry through on what he said.
So you say that there's bipartisan agreement that CRs are bad, but why do they keep happening?
unidentified
Well, we're under a lot of budget pressure, obviously.
And I was mentioning to you earlier, when I came to Congress 34 years ago, 70% of all outlay was discretionary.
30% of it was non-discretionary.
That is totally flipped.
70% of our outlays are mandatory spending.
And so we've squeezed the discretionary budget so hard that it causes pain all the way around.
So we have to now join the defense bill with Labor H in order to get the coalition of voters, I mean members of Congress and Senate, to go along with getting the bill done.
That's no great secret.
So it's tough.
And we don't have enough money in the Department of Defense right now.
So we need to increase the top line just to meet the obligations.
I also think we're asking the wrong question, right?
I think that we have become so focused on this environment of scarcity that defense has become that it's like, wow, we don't have enough food to feed both of our children.
I guess we need to let one of our children go.
It's like, no, you need to create more food.
Like, that's actually the right answer.
And, you know, when I go back and look at something like a lot of focus on weapons production, right?
When I was back on the Hill, under the leadership of Senator Chairman Calvert, other members at the time, we started increasing funding for weapons, right?
That had been a massive shortfall for a long time.
And if you look at it, we have increased funding for critical weapons over the past 10 years by 300%.
When you look at the increases in production we have got by individual weapon, by individual weapon, Patriot, SM6, El Razm, things that everybody knows by name now, production has moved 21, 23, 25%.
So we are spending more money and we are getting less capability for the money that we are spending.
We still need to spend that money.
I agree the top line needs to go up, but we need a model of military power where we actually use technology to generate abundance and capability, right?
So that we're not in this question of, you know, how do I do more with the military that Ronald Reagan created, as opposed to how do I create new capabilities using technology where I can do all of these things simultaneously because technology enables me to do it and I can afford it.
Like that to me is the right question.
And I think that is a function of industrial capacity, not necessarily one of picking and choosing at the level of strategy.
We've got to get out of those false choices.
Can I just very quickly add to that?
I agree.
And I think what's been encouraging that I've heard today in a few different dimensions is it's not just, it has to, of course, start with federal government spending, but we have to broaden the view of whether that's the objective or whatever our strategic objectives are, marshalling the fullness of our patriotic capital markets, whether that's what we've seen and heard from JP Morgan and bringing a massive amount of sort of private capital to match.
Seeing the deal flow on defense tech venture is going to reach $10 billion this year.
That's double what it was just a year ago.
So it's also what can we do at a policy level to reward, incentivize, and unleash that to be complementary and synergistic and enabling with what the direct federal spend is too.
One of the reasons we created this or reinvigorated DIU and FFIT and created the Office of Strategic Capital is to leverage more dollars into the defense realm.
Just what we did, what we're going to do in FY26, we will leverage about $200 billion along with the reconciliation money into the Office of Strategic Capital, which will go directly into these private companies, especially those who have dual-use capability.
And that's huge.
And so that's partly what Chris is talking about.
That's how we've kind of circumvented the existing procurement system because we had to.
Because the procurement system, I'm sure Pete Wilson would agree when he was in the Senate.
It was broken then.
It's really broken now.
And we've just got to, we don't have time to wait around to change it.
And what are some of the big, the two successes you like to tout from DIU?
unidentified
Well, I think there's a number of successes, especially in the missile world and counter-drone technology.
A number of companies have used it.
And I don't want to pick out one, but we've had, I think, at least 50 companies over the last number of years that have successfully gone through the DIU process and added another $2 billion of money that goes into those programs and have been very successful and have created alternatives to the primes.
And I realize some might not know DIU is the defense innovation unit, Silicon Valley basically taking commercial off-the-shelf technology for the military.
unidentified
Can I just, I will pick out one company.
And this is, you know, thanks to your leadership.
Because of the support you've provided to DIU and the support in funding that Chairman Calvert provided, I could name multiple programs that never would have happened that our company is doing that are now happening because that we were able to compete through a process that was fast at DIU.
There were resources there to do prototyping, and then transitions have happened.
I mean, I'll pick one.
The U.S. Air Force worked with DIU on a low-cost cruise missile program.
They had a one-paragraph requirement.
They went from requirement release to vendors on contract in a matter of months.
We are flying in six months after that.
We are now in a position where we're in conversations about turning this into a multi-billion dollar procurement program with exportability.
It has a massive success story if we're able to pull it all the way through.
And it never would have happened without the kind of support that DIU received and the funding that they received from Chairman Calvert to do exactly this, right?
To create a complementary alternative pathway around the department, through the department, whatever you want to call it, to get good ideas into prototyping, prove them out, and take them to scale quickly and having the resources to do that.
Congressman Ryan, the modernization caucus, what headwinds or problems are you facing?
Why did you feel you had to start this caucus?
unidentified
Yeah, and just I want to add to the compliments because I think it's important to say it was two or maybe it was three years ago, the prior administration's proposed budget for the Defense Innovation Unit was way too low.
Under the chairman's leadership and others, it was 10X.
For all those that, you know, Congress is far from perfect.
I'll take accountability for that.
That was an important moment of congressional bipartisan leadership sending direction to the Pentagon that we need to literally add an order of magnitude to our prioritization of innovation.
And that has then set the tone for a lot of continued momentum in that direction.
The House Defense Modernization Caucus, and there's a Senate component.
A lot of credit goes to Rod Whitman, who I know was on another panel today and has been a great leader in this, a great partner for me.
What we wanted to try to build was a place that I've only been here three years, sir, order of magnitude less than you.
And I came in and said, there's no single place where authorizers and appropriators from both parties that care about the country and want to figure out how do we work with the good guys, the right great innovative companies, help them get through all the hurdles and all the pain points, all the friction points, big and small, and how do we create that regular recurring dialogue and then be able to move quickly on it.
So for example, a year ago, we did a session.
We got a bunch of input from folks that all immediately went into a series of NDAA amendments that already had built-in bipartisan support.
We're able to get in on block, pass through.
One of the biggest pain points that I experienced in my prior life and a lot of others here is I'm a startup.
I'm trying to get SCIF accreditation to just actually get my product out there and tested.
That's one example that we're actually able to get through based on this caucus.
So I would invite everybody out there, if you're not already, to be engaged with us in that.
Let's talk about the national security strategy, the new one, and the shift towards the Western Hemisphere.
I'd like to get your thoughts on the new strategy.
Resources are obviously going to have to be shifted based on priorities shifting.
What are the trade-offs?
What are you going to get rid of?
How's this going to work?
And what are your concerns in looking at this new strategy?
unidentified
I'll plead guilty that I have not read every word of the national security strategy yet, but I have sort of read diagonally through it.
I think the emphasis on homeland defense in the Western Hemisphere has been a long time coming.
You know, if you go back and read national defense strategies prior and quadrennial defense reviews prior to that, homeland defense was always the first priority, right?
And it was generally a throwaway, right?
It was basically like homeland defense is a priority, large oceans, weak adversaries, yada, yada, yada.
I think that for the first time in a long time, we have adversaries with capability, conventional as well as nuclear, that can range and strike the homeland.
The prospect of fighting in a way game, which is what the U.S. military has traditionally done, now has the implication that we will have conventional attack against the United States if we decide to go fight in a way game the way we have always planned to do.
That's a paradigm shift.
So I think when you look at something like Golden Dome, that's a long time coming, right?
Our missile defense architecture is archaic.
These are programs that were put in place when I was in high school and college, which was actually a long time ago.
We need an updated approach to this.
And I think that's an example of a good idea that we need to get moving on.
And I've seen estimates thrown around in the think tank community, this is going to cost $200, $250 billion.
I literally have no idea how you could count that high.
I think this is going to be several billion dollars.
I think that it's something that can predominantly be fielded on this president's watch.
I think the country will be better off for it.
I don't think that this needs to come at the expense of a lot of other things that we are doing, because this is kind of my main point here, right?
It's like these trade-offs we keep being faced with is because of the scarcity that we have enabled or sort of allowed to be created inside of defense because of how archaic so much of our technology is.
But with new technology, particularly the emphasis on the space-based approach to Golden Dome, I think you can actually field these game-changing capabilities.
You can do it much faster, and you can do it at a fraction of the cost that people are assuming because they're assuming that, well, if I take the current architecture that I have and multiply it by 2,500, it costs $300 billion.
And it's like, I majored in philosophy, but I think that's a really bad way to cost estimate.
So just again and again and again, I think there's an opportunity to solve these problems differently with technology.
I think the homeland defense emphasis is a good idea and a long time coming.
And frankly, I welcome it.
Yeah, I think Homeland is, I agree with Chris, it's a long time coming.
But that's not what the national security strategy is not only about homeland defense.
unidentified
Not only, but predominantly.
I mean, that's ultimately what we're talking about.
It's a big part of it.
And look, when you have several hundred thousand people dying of fentanyl poisoning in the United States, and the Chinese actively sending the precursor chemicals to the cartels, cartels working with the Chinese to manufacture and distribute this drug, or poison, as I would call it, and help them launder their money through the banks in Central America and take their cut and fund their Belt and Road Initiative in Central and South America.
Why are we putting up with that?
Why as a nation are we putting up with that?
And so I think those days are over.
And I think it's important.
Golden Dome, I worry that we haven't defined what it is and whether it's a strategic system, a theater system, how are we going to deal with drones?
We've got the World Cup coming up and the Olympics.
And I know there's a lot of concern about drones and so forth that we're going to have to counter.
And so we need a national defense strategy that deals with the homeland.
How do we pay for it?
I mean, obviously, we have legacy systems that have to be looked at, but we have to at the same time replace those in an orderly fashion.
We can't just throw away something old, not have anything for a while, so we've got to be able to replace that.
And the only way we're going to do that is going to have more money.
I'm going to be honest with you.
That's why we're going to have to have a higher top line to build the weapon systems of the future to replace those that are outmolded.
I think it's been a long time coming that the Western Hemisphere has been de-emphasized, and I think that's an important macro thing, and there should be bipartisan agreement on that.
What that looks like in the national defense strategy and how much of that is a defense thing versus a law enforcement.
I mean, the Coast Guard today just picked up 20,000 pounds of cocaine.
It's the single biggest seizure by the Coast Guard in 20 years.
So let's look at all the elements within our larger national security means while we focus on, of course, interdicting fentanyl and other drugs.
The concern that I have paired with that, though, is that I do love the idea of resource unconstrained, but still live in the real world where there are trade-offs here.
So we have a carrier strike group now, an entire carrier strike group in the South Com AOR, and that comes at some cost.
Then you look in this national security strategy, and in a 29-page document, the first mention of China is on page 19.
So there's no mention of several of our key allies in the Indo-PACOM AOR.
The Philippines isn't even in there.
AUKUS is not at all, you know, barely mentioned.
Japan and South Korea are talked about as burdens on us when they've been incredible allies and partners and in co-investing with us.
So you put all that together and we get to a situation where I get very worried.
Like my theory is no greater friend, no worse enemy.
And then you read this national security strategy.
We're criticizing a lot of allies and some of it's merited, but that's now been said.
And I think, and going back to the Trump administration's first national security strategy, where China was number one on that list and they were very clear about both the interests and the values disagreement there, I just think we have to have a real serious debate about that that shouldn't be partisan, that that's a major change from a long-standing consensus, which I don't think the American people would actually agree that China shouldn't be our number one adversary.
Is the current budget serious about confronting China?
Is it looking towards deterrence or overmatch?
What are we buying for?
What are we preparing for?
The Secretary said today that we have the best relations with China that we've had in a while.
That confused me.
unidentified
It confused me, too.
The FY26 bill obviously is not adequate, but we pair that with reconciliation, and we're leveraging a considerable amount of money on what we're doing with DIU and with office strategic capital.
We're leveraging more dollars.
But as we get into FY27, those dollars, if we get to a top line, that we can start looking at our shipbuilding capability, planes, missiles, ammunition, we're low on everything.
And so we're going to have to plus up those numbers to get to where we have to be.
And that's to counter primarily China.
And we need our allies, no doubt.
China has a lot of advantages right now.
They have 360 ships to our 280 ships.
We're going to have to have our allies build more ships, whether it's in South Korea or Japan, the Philippines.
And they build 200 ships for every one ship that we build right now.
unidentified
Yeah.
You can take every public shipyard in the United States and private shipyard, it'll fit in one shipyard in China, and there's about 15 that size.
So I agree with all of this.
I guess like the complementary point I would make is it took us 40 years to get into this problem, right?
It turns out if you de-industrialize for 40 years while your major strategic competitor is hyper-industrializing, you're going to end up with the kinds of disparities that we're talking about, a 200-to-1 shipbuilding capacity disparity.
As much as we try to grow back, you know, kind of traditional-looking industrial base, I think we have to create a new industrial base, right?
Like we need a lot of different ships.
We need autonomous surface vessels and autonomous undersea vessels.
In every war game we've run since I've ever paid attention to this, we all run out of critical munitions in the first nine days of the war.
And that's not because there's some confounding problem here.
It's because we didn't plan to actually have protracted conflict, which we will.
And we've believed that we can get away with the military equivalent of luxury goods when it comes to the way in which we're going to fight.
And I think we just see in all of the recent conflicts, Ukraine and the Middle East and everywhere, you have to have mass, right?
That's how we won World War II.
And the mass that we can deploy and the capacity we can create to build it is going to look very different than a lot of the military capabilities that we have here.
That will require increased funding, but it will get us an enormous amount of additional capability for a relatively less amount of money.
We have a really good question that's come in from the audience.
It says, understanding that we can't fund anything, one could argue that Ukraine's devastation of the Russian army has made our country safer.
Why is continuing to fund their resistance a partisan issue and not just a national security one?
Congressman Calvert.
unidentified
I think there's always been a vein of isolationism, especially within the Republican ranks.
It's been around for a long time.
And with this feeling that we have the oceans to protect us and that we don't need to involve ourselves in this.
But we don't live in an isolated world.
And Russia is an adversary.
And I think we have to look at them that way.
And the war that they're engaged in with Ukraine is something that is destabilizing all of Europe and it can destabilize the world.
And China is funding that.
They're buying oil and long-term contracts to stabilize the ruble.
And so China's kind of behind all of this and weakening Europe and weakening the United States at the same time.
So, yeah, obviously Russia's lost a lot of people.
But I don't think they should, at the end of the day, I hope we can work out a reasonable peace agreement because this is costing too many people's lives.
But in terms of cost, if you have a trillion-dollar defense budget, why don't you have enough money to provide weapons to Ukraine when they're doing the fighting against one of your main adversaries?
unidentified
We don't produce weapons on scale rapidly enough.
And as was mentioned, our industrial capacity to build weapons in large numbers isn't there right now.
And to tie together the points on the new national security strategy and the budget piece of this, one of the most concerning lines to me in that document was something to the effect of the way they characterized Russia was, there are some European countries that think Russia's bad.
That was like, I mean, we're at the Reagan National Defense Forum.
Can you imagine what Ronald Reagan would have said had he heard that or seen that line written into the United States National Security Strategy?
And so thinking about exactly as that smart question phrased it, there's an opportunity, as we've been doing to great effect for the last several years, and Andrew's been doing it too, and a lot of our great commercial partners, to see this as an opportunity to not only stand with a crucial ally where we're aligned on values and interests, but to learn a tremendous amount about the future nature of warfare, to iterate on our own capabilities that will keep Americans safe,
and to do it at a fraction of the cost of what it would cost us in blood and treasure if, God forbid, we had to do it.
Just 30 seconds.
The thing that I'm concerned about is I don't think we've actually learned the lessons of Ukraine and the United States.
Unfortunately, I think Russia has.
I think it got its ass kicked for the first two years, and then it started to change.
And it has reindustrialized, and it has basically built a war economy that I do not think is going to stop looking for problems if and when, God willing, the war in Ukraine ends.
They have built a hammer in that country, and they're going to go looking for nails in Europe.
So if we think that all of this is going to stop and Europe is going to become stable in the aftermath of some type of resolution to the conflict, I think we're fooling ourselves.
I think this is going to continue to go because it is the only thing sustaining their economy at this point.
And if you could get rid of one program, everybody has to come up with one program that you get rid of that would save money because we never get rid of anything.
I made a remark at an AEI conference a couple of years ago where I said, we ought to take a look at aircraft carriers because if you shoot 100 hypersonic missiles at one, what happens?
And I think half the United States Navy had a heart attack.
But I think every weapon system has to be looked at.
I think weapons of today are not necessarily the weapons of tomorrow.
And so everything that we have needs to be reevaluated, especially now what we've seen in Ukraine, what we've seen in Israel, autonomous weapon systems.
That's where we're going.
And we have to be honest with ourselves, what is survivable in modern warfare?
So we are probably heading towards more robotics, but you can't really forget the primes have kind of been, you know, as this conference has evolved over 12 years, started off with the primes as sponsors, now you have Andrew, Palantir, all these other new startups that didn't even exist when the conference started.
What's the balance between the old legacy systems that you still need?
We still had B-2 bombers that took out the Iranian nuclear sites.
It can't all be robotics.
unidentified
No, of course not.
I think, you know, and this kind of gets back to your last question, right?
When I was on the Hill, we always got this question of, you know, why won't the Hill let us retire this, that, or the other thing?
And I actually think we were looking at the problem through the wrong end of the telescope.
It was not the Hill's desire to hang on to legacy things for the sake of doing it.
It was because the new things never showed up.
And the Hill is very smart and they're very serious and they believe, at least when I was there, I'm pretty sure it's still true, that I'm not going to take a tool away from someone who has it if I'm not going to give them a better tool.
And the prospect from the Pentagon was always, we're going to eliminate this thing today, kill it entirely, eliminate all the jobs and the bases, what have you, and then like in five to seven and maybe to 12 years, this new thing is going to show up.
I think the emphasis needs to be on fielding new things quickly.
I think if you do that, you can then have a far more nuanced conversation about getting rid of old things.
Look, most of our military, Ronald Reagan would recognize.
That's a problem.
I think the question of balance is the right question, right?
Like, I am not here.
I'm sitting here as the president of Andrew.
We need Virginia-class submarines.
We need B-21s.
We need F-47s.
I would get rid of the F-35.
I would move to F-47 and FAXX to end the long national nightmare of 5th Gen and get to the next iteration.
We can do it quickly.
We need to do it quickly.
I would collaborate those systems with robotic systems because that's the right idea, right?
How do you do a real high-low mix?
You need to do it across the entirety of the joint force.
Like, our weapon systems are archaic.
We need to complement legacy weapons with new weapons that can be cheaply built and mass-produced.
This is not hard.
America can do this.
We can do this in a short period of time for not a lot of money.
When it comes to the general approach of the Trump administration, artificial intelligence, how would you describe that as far as regulation is concerned?
unidentified
The Trump administration is extremely proactive on encouraging AI innovation.
The method they have chosen to approach that is to try to curtail as much regulation on AI as possible.
So we've seen that twice now that there's been text introduced into bipartisan bills that really need to be passed.
First, it was the Big Beautiful Bill.
Recently, it was the NDAA.
And this text would have imposed a moratorium on states.
And that means that it would have prevented states from being able to pass any laws regulating AI for 10 years.
Their argument for that is that if they pause regulation on AI, it allows for unfettered innovation.
It'll let us get an edge on the AI race.
I disagree with that approach, but it's also failed twice in the two attempts so far.
And the most recent that we've heard is that because it has failed to pass through regulatory methods, President Trump is considering an executive order that would do the same.
When you see that state approach, what general direction does that approach look like?
And has it, you know, chilled innovation when it comes to the technology itself?
unidentified
The approach typically operates along consumer protection lines.
So it's just things like saying your AI has to actually do what you're claiming it can do.
You have to have audits.
You have to have tests.
You have to make sure that people are able to opt out.
You have to explain how your system comes to its conclusions, or someone has to have liability if those conclusions are wrong or discriminatory or deny people jobs, deny people housing.
It falls along the lines of most Attorney General consumer protection, but I have yet to see it stifling any innovation.
And frankly, in most spaces, I don't think that regulation stifles innovation.