Opening Statements

Today, Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), ranking member of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, made the following remarks, as prepared for delivery, at the Subcommittee's markup of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021:

"Thank you very much, Chairman Cooper. First, I want to commend you and your staff for the bipartisan approach you took in developing this mark.

"I'd like all members to know we looked at the metrics, and nearly half of provisions in this mark were requested by both Republicans and Democrats, indicating that this year, we agree on a lot of issues under this subcommittee's jurisdiction.

"When we can't agree, we should defer those issues to the full committee mark where we can have a substantive debate, providing all members the opportunity to be heard on such issues and to offer amendments as necessary. I am grateful we have taken this deliberative approach this year.

"While this mark is active in all areas of the subcommittee's jurisdiction, I'd like to highlight a few key issues in this mark that I believe are particularly important.

"First, I appreciate the inclusion of a provision I requested requiring the Department of Defense to enter into a contract with a federally funded research and development center to conduct a study on the nuclear weapons programs of specific foreign countries using open source data. It is critically important that the American people have the information they need to understand the dangerous Nuclear Weapons development activities of our strategic competitors and rogue regimes.

"Second, it's extremely important that we continue to provide oversight of the quickly evolving nature of foreign ballistic missile and hypersonic weapons threats, and our development of capabilities to defeat them. We must continue to develop capabilities to defend the homeland, and to provide regional defense against advance capabilities to protect our forces wherever they may deploy. There are a number of provisions in this mark that do exactly that.

"Lastly, this mark makes great progress in ensuring the Nuclear Weapons enterprise can develop and maintain the capabilities we require to ensure a safe, effective and reliable nuclear deterrent. For too long, much-needed modernization of the Triad has been neglected and simply, we have run out of time. Senior officials from both the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy have validated the urgency of these undertakings before our Subcommittee as well as the Full Committee in several hearings and briefings this year. Therefore, we must ensure that the National Nuclear Security Agency and DoD have the authorities and funding needed to ensure critical nuclear weapons modernization programs are delivered on time to meet the STRATCOM commander's requirements.

"While we must provide the resources they need, we must simultaneously maintain rigorous oversight. We'll certainly debate the funding and requirements in the full committee mark, but this mark contains several provisions that advance the committee's ability to provide that oversight.

"Mr. Chairman, thank you again for the bipartisan process, and I look forward to the subcommittee adopting this mark, and sending it to the full committee for consideration.

"I yield back."