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Sen. Trent Lott, Chair, Subcommittee on Strategic Forces

Ballistic Missile Defense
25 March 1996 - Senate Armed Services Committee
Subcommittee on Strategic Forces

The Strategic Forces Subcommittee meets today to receive testimony on U.S. ballistic missile defense programs and requirements. I would like to welcome Lieutenant General Malcolm R. O'Neill, Director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. General O'Neill, I understand that you will be retiring soon. I want to thank you for your service and your contribution to the BMD effort. I'm sure we will miss your leadership more than you will miss congressional hearings.

On March 6th, the Armed Services Committee held a hearing on the recent Ballistic Missile Defense Program Review with Dr. Paul Kaminski, who conducted the review. Quite frankly, that hearing raised more questions than it answered. I am personally very disappointed by many of the decisions that Dr. Kaminski made. He seems to have elevated budget-driven decision-making to a new level.

The decision to delay THAAD deployment by some five years, for example, takes a program that the Clinton Administration used to refer to as the centerpiece of its BMD effort, and makes it into an acquisition nightmare. From the date when THAAD could be ready for production, to the time when it is actually deployed, six to eight years will have expired. This is the opposite of sensible and efficient acquisition. It hardly deserves to be called acquisition at all. If we follow this course, we will waste money and time, and in the end probably kill this vital program.

I am also bewildered by the Administration's willingness to completely disregard the law. Dr. Kaminski's BMD review was conducted as if Public Law 104-106 did not exist. The Administration seems to have invented some new interpretation of the Constitution that allows them to only comply with those laws that they like. I don't know why the President even bothered to veto the Defense Authorization Bill last year if he was planning to ignore it anyway after it became law.

Since we will have an opportunity during the question period to explore in detail the implications of Dr. Kaminski's BMD review and the Fiscal Year 1997 BMDO budget request, I will not detail all my concerns at this time. Let me simply say that the Administration has now done to most of the TMD program what it did to the NMD program when it took office -- that is, completely derail it. Ignoring our experience in the Gulf war, the Administration has allowed a deficient defense budget to drive our strategy and most of our BMD programs into the ground.General O'Neill, I understand that these were not your decisions, and that you were hardly even involved in the process that supported Dr. Kaminski's decisions. I find that, in and of itself, very troubling. We set up an organization to be the advocate for BMD programs, then it is excluded from the most significant BMD decision of the year. Based on this, and many other factors, I cannot avoid the conclusion that the so-called "review" was little more than an exercise designed to rationalize deep cuts in the BMD program.

Before yielding to General O'Neill for his opening statement, let me turn to the Ranking Minority Member for any opening remarks he may have.