During a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday, Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) spoke about President Trump's proposal for anti-ballistic missile defense system called the Golden Dome.
00:00Thank you, Mr. Chair. As others have referenced, I want to thank all three of you for the incredible work in the Middle East, not only in terms of defending our ally, Israel, but obviously the strikes on Iran's nuclear capability.
00:19It is impossible to overstate the importance of what you did and the incredible skill with which you did it, and we can never take that for granted.
00:29It was absolutely unbelievable, and thank you to all of you and all of the men and women in uniform who executed it and continue to execute those missions across all services.
00:39It's absolutely remarkable.
00:42Secretary Mack, I want to thank you for a recent meeting we had.
00:45We covered a whole range of subjects, including talking about Golden Dome, which is an incredible undertaking.
00:52We actually have a de facto Golden Dome right now.
00:57It's called the Nuclear Triad.
00:58And it's been successful since World War II.
01:01Nobody has tried to strike us because they know that we have a nuclear arsenal that nobody can compare with.
01:10And we need to maintain that advantage.
01:12That's the whole idea with Sentinel and the other upgrades that we're making.
01:16You and I talked about that.
01:18We talked about staying on track with the funding and also with a concurrent approach.
01:22Now, I spoke at length with Deputy Secretary Feinberg yesterday.
01:26It sounds, after that conversation, like there are more changes coming to the program.
01:32Can you speak to that?
01:33And do we need to get together again and maybe even the skip to talk about additional changes coming?
01:39But it sounded like there were changes in the approach even beyond what you and I talked about when I visited with him yesterday.
01:45So, it would be happy to.
01:48And, yeah, there are probably some things that we should talk about in a different environment.
01:53And what I would say, though, is that part of the numicurity that came out of there, some of the recommendations came out of there were associated with requirements, stability requirements, understanding of those requirements between the operational and the acquisition groups.
02:04A lot of that, I think, wasn't the meaning, don't know for sure, but my guess would be a lot of that is what the Secretary was alluding to.
02:11We are still assessing the requirements to both ensure that we can keep the budgets under control but also to simplify and accelerate the schedule.
02:21That is, with the Minuteman 3, we want to make sure that we can deliver in line with the Minuteman 3 program.
02:31And any more details on that, Senator, we have to talk about in another room.
02:34But it's your assessment that his approach is in sync with what you and I talked about.
02:39Yes, Senator.
02:40I've spent quite a bit of time with the set-up on this.
02:43And I think the teams are working really well together.
02:48We have a pretty good approach, both organizationally and how we're going to handle the requirements.
02:53And I think that also could be alluded to.
02:54Is there some organizational focus we're trying to bring to that program and a number of other programs to ensure successful execution?
03:00Good.
03:01And then Senator Bozeman referenced something you and I talked about, too, is any proposals that any of you have on drone or counter-drone to help protect our bases, both in CONUS and overseas,
03:11we want those ideas and would want to act on them aggressively, any assistance we can provide.
03:18General Saltzman, in the 2026 budget, funding for the transport layer as part of SDA's tranche 2 launches, fully divest SDA of transport layer in tranche 3.
03:35Okay?
03:36So you reduce them in tranche 2 and you eliminate them in tranche 3.
03:40So how are you going to replace that SDA capability without that funding and that continued mission?
03:49Well, we're on track for the tranche 1 delivery, 126 vehicles for space data transport.
03:54As you mentioned, there's still some money in tranche 2 to continue to flush out that space data transport network.
04:04And now we have to look at what are the other avenues to deliver potentially a commercial proliferated low-Earth orbit constellation.
04:14And so we are simply looking at alternatives as we look to the future as to what's the best way to scale this up to the larger requirements for data transport.
04:22And I've talked to both the Secretary and you about not being entirely dependent on contractors.
04:28We depend on Air Force, Space Force, Department of Defense, and the other services.
04:33And we can't be dependent on private enterprise when it comes to fighting the war, right?
04:39Would you agree with that?
04:41Absolutely.
04:41We can't be dependent on it.
04:42Great.
04:43General Alvin, B-52, are we on track with the upgrades on the B-52?
04:49And then the other thing I thought was interesting, Senator Morin talked about the B-21 program,
04:54which is something I've worked very hard to get funding for, and more of them, which I'm a big fan of that idea.
05:01But reference both, updates on the B-52 and how you see the bomber fleet going forward in terms of having enough bombers.
05:07Thank you, Senator.
05:09And they are interlinked.
05:11Obviously, the B-52 will still be a big part of our inventory for years to come.
05:16And so there's two parts to that with the engine re-engineering program and then with the radar modernization.
05:20With the engineering program, we had an issue with some inlet distortion.
05:25We believe we've got some initial test data back that we think the fix, it's on the initial data shows we think we might have sorted that out.
05:32That's on the engine piece.
05:35On the radar modernization piece, we had some cost increases due to, you know, the cost of the object that we thought in 2021 is a little bit different than it is now.
05:44But both of those programs are moving forward.
05:46They both need to be synced together.
05:49So as we do that, it's going to be a challenge to ensure that when we do the integration and that modification,
05:53we have enough overall of our bomber fleet to ensure we can get to the B-21 in full production.
06:00So that will be something we'll manage in the years to come.
06:03Mr. Chair, if I could beg your indulgence for a quick follow-up.
06:07So given the B-52 is almost more like a truck versus the B-21,
06:13is there a difference in capability where you need both based on our global reach and missions?
06:21Absolutely.
06:22This is not only about, obviously the B-21 will be able to access places the B-52 can't even get close.
06:27The B-52 will also be able to move forward and provide mass for long-range munitions from a long-range bomber.
06:32So put them together and you continue to have that air dominance that the nation needs.
