During a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-CA) questioned military officials about the need for the ‘Golden Dome,’ an air defense system designed to protect against inbound missile attacks.
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00:00The gentleman yields back.
00:02The chair now recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. Carbajal.
00:06Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to all the witnesses being here today.
00:11We hear a lot about Golden Dome, but there doesn't really seem to be a whole lot of clarity on what the point is.
00:20You know, it reminds me of that commercial, that Wendy's commercial, where's the beef?
00:23And so it seems that, you know, a concept has been thought of, which has been thought of before in the past,
00:32and it seems that we're going about it in a way, backwards way, to fill this system eventually.
00:39General Guillaume, Collins and Gainley, how is the concept of Golden Dome different than our current missile defense architecture?
00:46And did any plans exist to develop space-based capabilities for both missile tracking and missile interception prior to January 2025?
00:58Congressman, I think the big difference that you'll see is Golden Dome takes all of the existing requirements that we had,
01:05but for the first time integrates multiple layers into one system that allows us to detect, track, and defeat multiple types of threats
01:15that affect us in different domains with one system.
01:20So while a lot of the components and the requirements were there in the past,
01:23this is the first time that it's all tied together in one system.
01:27And, yes, there were certainly space-based ability to detect and track prior to this.
01:35Congressman, to build on General Guillaume's response,
01:41the architecture plan that a missile defense agency had before January of 2025 included a space layer for hypersonics
01:50and ballistic missile tracking and discrimination as we move forward,
01:54and most of the other components and pieces, parts of what the executive order included,
02:01were part of the architecture plan that we were going to get after.
02:05I think maybe the biggest impact of this activity is it will accelerate many of those options.
02:13Quicker resources, the schedule was pretty long to get to some of these activities.
02:17The space-based interceptor piece was not in the architecture plan as we were before January 25.
02:23Great.
02:24And, Congressman, the only point I will add that wasn't covered by General Guillaume
02:29and General Collins is the executive order also called out left-of-launch missile defeat.
02:35I think that's an important aspect of missile defense that has been neglected to date,
02:40and focusing capabilities and efforts towards the trading of a missile force prior to launch
02:47is an important aspect of the holistic missile defeat program.
02:51General Collins, can you give us an update on the hypersonic and ballistic space sensor HBTSSS program
02:59and what we have learned from the prototype demonstrations?
03:02What is the current plan to develop an operational constellation beyond the prototype stage?
03:07And how do adversaries' growing counter-space capabilities influence MDA's view of the appropriate mix
03:17of space-based and ground-based sensors and missile defense?
03:21Thank you, Congressman.
03:23So first off, HBTSSS, it was launched in February last year on Valentine's Day.
03:29We quickly had our first hypersonic testbed test in June, and then we had one later in the year,
03:38and both of those were very successful.
03:40The three main objectives of the HBTSSS prototyping were to show that we could have the appropriate sensitivity in orbit
03:48to see a hypersonic vehicle throughout its entire flight,
03:53to be able to have the quality of service, the accuracy of a track,
03:57to be able to close a fire control loop,
04:00and for that data to come down and enter the command and control system fast enough, so latency.
04:06And we have had two hypersonic testbed flights,
04:11as well, coincident with another flight test that we did just a month and a half ago,
04:17taking a look at SM6, we also had HBTSSS in view,
04:21and it tracked that new hypersonic target that was used in that test very well.
04:27And so we have proved out the capability to get after the accuracy, get after the latency.
04:34We are tweaking the algorithms to improve our quality of service,
04:37but we see it as a very successful demonstration of that capability.
04:41We have been partnered with the Space Development Agency all along.
04:45They have been tracking and part of our HBTSSS development,
04:48and they have our requirements and plan to integrate that capability,
04:54that level of requirement and tech into the proliferative warfighter space architecture
04:57and build that up over the coming tranches
05:02to give us eventually a global capability to track hypersonic weapons.
05:06Your last question, sir, was?
05:11I'm out of time.
05:12If you could answer that for the record, that would be great.
05:15Afterwards.
05:15Will do, Congressman.