During a House Armed Serves Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) spoke about the creation of a missile defense system in the United States similar to the Iron Dome in Israel.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00The gentleman yields. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Van Orden.
00:06Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to clear up a couple things here. This is the Missile Defense
00:11and Missile Defeat Programmatic Updates hearing. So we're here to talk about these, right? I took
00:19the liberty of having my crack graphics team draw up some of these. We're here to talk about
00:25this stuff, right? So if this happens and we don't stop it, this is going to happen, right?
00:32Mushroom cloud. No more America. So we're not here to talk about these, correct?
00:37Okay, I'm a retired Navy SEAL senior chief. We know how to take care of boats.
00:41All right. General Guillaume, I just want to clear that up.
00:46When was the Iron Dome first developed?
00:51Congressman, I'm not exactly sure, but it's been a couple of decades.
00:55Okay. Has it been improving, would you say?
00:58The Iron Dome, the Israeli system? Yes. Yes, it has been improving.
01:02Okay. So it started, they started without a missile defense system, and they had an idea,
01:09and then they started building on it, and then they got to IOC, and now they're continuing
01:14to improve it. So could we logically say, like, we could extend our thoughts, just like, do a
01:20thought experiment here, like an Einstein thought experiment? Could we say that we, as the United
01:26States of America, has been intimately involved in the development of the Iron Dome system? Could
01:31we say that maybe we could apply that here in the United States, and that it will work?
01:37Sir, we have been involved with the development of the Iron Dome. I think General Collins could
01:42could attest to that. The first, I want to confirm you. Yes, sir. So we have been partnered
01:52with Israel Missile Defense for two decades, and we actually were not part of the development
01:56of Iron Dome. We helped co-produce that, but we have their upper tiers, David Sling and Arrow,
02:02we have co-developed with them. And so we've helped partner, design their architecture, and
02:06are intimately integrated. Our system and their system are integrated together to work.
02:10Yes, sir. Okay, so we could say that there's a functioning, a pretty darn, General Bacon
02:15pointed out, you know, 99% of these things. That's functioning in Israel right now. We
02:19have a larger industrial base than Israel. We have greater GDP than Israel, and we have
02:26a larger population than Israel. So can we say that if we applied the same type of thought
02:31process, the development of Iron Dome, and we put it here in the United States and we called
02:36it, like, Golden Dome or something, could we reasonably assume that that will function
02:40at some point in the future to protect the United States of America against these threats?
02:46Yes, sir. Okay. Well, I'm glad we cleared that up. Now, listen, I am not of the mind that
02:55we should be shaping our defense policy on whether or not it's going to provoke Russia. I think
03:03that is a straw man argument, and I think that it is a politically derived argument that potentially
03:09puts the United States of America in jeopardy. So what we need to do is make sure that we robustly,
03:16and I trust you guys to do this. How long have you been doing this job, General?
03:19You know?
03:20I've been the commander since...
03:21No, I mean, like, the Air Force.
03:23Oh, 36 years, sir.
03:2436 years. General Collins, how long have you been doing this?
03:2732.
03:28General Ganey?
03:3034.
03:31Ma'am, they've all been doing their job longer than you've been alive.
03:33Just saying. How long have you been in this, in the defense position like this?
03:40In this position for a few months, I've been in the OSD for 15 years.
03:43Okay. So we got, what, 100 and some years of whatever experience of, like, dealing with
03:49defense policy and anti-missile machinery equipment policy deployment, right? Okay. That means
03:58that you guys are a table full of subject matter experts, and because we sit behind this dais
04:04with a microphone doesn't make us experts in these types of fields. And so I would just
04:09want to make sure that we are leaning heavily on the experts and understand that you've done
04:13this before. We're using integrated anti-missile defense systems in Israel, and that they can
04:19work. And this is the last thing before my time expires. I represent Volk Field and also
04:25Fort McCoy. I'm giving you an open invitation to, when this Golden Dome gets done, I'd like
04:31a battery of whatever it's going to look like at Volk Field or Fort McCoy in the state of
04:36Wisconsin to help protect the upper Midwest. That is an open invitation. If you guys haven't
04:40been there, I want to invite you. I'll give you some cheese curds. But I want your
04:43soldiers and airmen and Space Force people or whatever, their guardians, at some point
04:48in my district to help protect the United States of America. So thank you very much.
04:51And with that, I yield back.