U.S. Representative Doug Lamborn (R-CO), Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, delivered the following opening statement at a hearing on national security space programs.
Rep. Lamborn's remarks as prepared for delivery:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I can appreciate wanting to spend as much time as you can in Colorado Springs. It was great seeing you on Monday at Space Symposium. I would like to extend a warm welcome to our panel of witnesses. Thank you all for your service to our nation and for being here today. I want to particularly welcome Dr. Plumb and Lt. Gen. Guetlein to their new positions. I'm excited to finally see the space positions filling out with permanent folks. We have a lot of work to do, and our adversaries are moving quickly to blunt the national security advantages we enjoy because of our space systems.
The threats we see from China and Russia have only increased since we had this hearing last year. China has demonstrated on orbit the ability to grapple with another satellite and drag it to another orbit. Russia has demonstrated a ground launched anti-satellite weapon against one of its own satellites resulting in a dangerous field of debris that the world is still dealing with.
These are just the public examples of China and Russia pushing for dominance in space. Their efforts in space are especially concerning when considering the provocative actions they are taking in other domains. Top of mind for all of us is Russia's unprovoked war with Ukraine that has resulted in the indiscriminate deaths of thousands of civilians.
These are the actions of countries that only respond to hard power. In space that means not only increasing resiliency of future systems but also having a plan to defend our space assets currently on orbit. Let's speak plainly, China and Russia have already weaponized space. The question left to us is, what are we going to do about it?
More than ten thousand military and civilian space professionals from around the world are gathered in Colorado Springs this week, the epicenter of global space operations. These experts are trying to answer that question for us, and they need our policy support.
I would love to hear from you all today how we are planning to get to this resilient architecture. How you are all working together to make sure that we have a whole of government approach when it comes to national security space. How we are designing deterrence for space in the hopes of maintaining peace. I hope you are thinking about it differently than we have in the past, including how demonstrated rapid reconstitution and reusable space vehicles could support deterrence.
But hope is not a plan. And it is time we move beyond hope.
I was pleased to see that the new National Defense Strategy continues to highlight the importance of space as a warfighting domain. We must move past these strategy documents into programs of record, get systems on orbit, and take responsibility for the area of space we depend on so greatly.
With that Mr. Chairman, I yield back and look forward to our discussions.
