U.S. Representative Doug Lamborn (R-CO), Chairman of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, delivered the following opening remarks at a hearing on policies, programs, and priorities related to the Department of Defense's strategic forces.
Rep. Lamborn's remarks as prepared for delivery:
Good afternoon, everyone.
As this is the first Strategic Forces subcommittee hearing of the 118th Congress, I'm going to take a Chairman's prerogative to lay out my agenda and priorities.
I would like to start by acknowledging the new Ranking Member of this subcommittee, Mr. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts. Just from our short time working together in our new capacities I am already confident that we will continue the strong bipartisan tradition of this subcommittee. I am pleased for us to officially start our work together today.
I would like to welcome the new members of the subcommittee as well – Mr. Bacon of Nebraska, Mr. Banks of Indiana, Mr. Strong of Alabama, Mr. Norcross of New Jersey, Ms. Houlahan of Pennsylvania, and Mr. Vasquez of New Mexico.
I am honored to be the Chairman of this subcommittee and privileged to be the first person from Colorado to hold this position. I have been working on these issues for decades, as they are integral to the fabric of my district as well as to our national defense.
I have big shoes to fill – recently retired Jim Cooper, Mike Turner, Mike Rogers, Ellen Tauscher, are among those who have served so capably in this position while I have been in Congress. Thank you to our witnesses for appearing today to discuss our nation's strategic forces. I wish we had the President's Budget to inform our discussion which was due last month, but it seems we are one day too early.
Regardless, there are a lot of strategic issues that we can dig into today. Russia's unjustified invasion of Ukraine, which just passed its year mark, has been punctuated by attempts at nuclear coercion, and now Putin has suspended Russia's participation in the New START Treaty. I understand that Russia has ceased providing the U.S. with treaty notifications, yet we continue to provide them to Russia. It is curious that we provide Russia with this benefit under the treaty when Russia is no longer reciprocating. Given Russia's suspension and their false declaration that the U.S. is in material breach, the Joint Staff, with the help of STRATCOM, needs to accelerate contingency planning, should Russia begin rapidly uploading warheads on its strategic delivery systems.
China is also building up its nuclear arsenal at an unanticipated and rapid pace, and is pursuing aggressive activities in all domains. Most notably there is public reporting that Russia's state-owned nuclear energy corporation – Rosatom – is helping China acquire enough weapons grade plutonium to fuel its strategic nuclear breakout. I'm hopeful that we will see a comprehensive strategy from the administration to break this relationship – and ideally shatter Rosatom.
Now that China has surpassed the United States in the number of intercontinental ballistic missile launchers, STRATCOM has additional targets to hold at risk. I'm sure we'll hear from General Cotton about how that complicates his targeting efforts and challenges his ability to deter two near-peer nuclear adversaries simultaneously.
We also can't forget that North Korea has an ICBM program that is proceeding apace, and Iran has multiple Space Launched Vehicle programs giving cover for the development of an Iranian ICBM.
Given all these threats, my priorities for the Subcommittee include the following: we must accelerate and timely field hypersonic weapon systems for all three services; adjust our nuclear modernization program to deter both Russia and China simultaneously; and ensure our missile defenses can outpace the North Korean and forthcoming Iranian ICBM threats – this includes ensuring that the Department of Defense maintains the necessary spectrum to discriminate targets at range in the atmosphere at all times. I will also continue to push the department to develop a space policy we can debate in public, take a hard look at classification and continue to push for changes in how we do space acquisitions.
Finally, I want to highlight that last year on a bipartisan basis Congress authorized and appropriated funds to the Navy and the National Nuclear Security Administration for research and development of the nuclear sea-launched cruise missile, or SLCM-N. The restriction in the NDAA only applied to production work and was not meant to constrain research and development work in any way. I also hope to hear how the Department is progressing on the Hard and Deeply Buried Target Study.
With that I'll turn it over to Ranking Member Moulton for any remarks he would like to make
