ChairwomanGranger

April 4, 2017

Page 3

April4, 2017

The Honorable Kay Granger

Chairwoman, Subcommittee on Defense

Committee on Appropriations

H-405 The Capitol

Washington, DC 20515

DearChairwoman Granger:

As Members of the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, we have responsibilityfor reviewing and authorizing programs and activities related to nuclear deterrence, national security space, and missile defense. While we believe President Trump’s budget blueprint for these most critical national capabilities is strong, we’d like to highlight several individual programs and areas of interest for you and your subcommittee.

Nuclear deterrence

The Committee on Armed Services spent much of the Obama Administration building a broad, bipartisan consensus on the need to sustain and modernize our nuclear triad and its supporting infrastructure. The recapitalization of these systems has been put off for decades and is now urgent. We welcome President Trump’s focus on rebuilding our nuclear deterrent. This course of action is based on the professional military advice of our senior-most military leaders, including the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Paul Selva, who told the committee last month:

“There is no higher priority for the Joint Force than fielding all of the components of an effective nuclear deterrent and we are emphasizing the nuclear mission over all other modernization programs when faced with that choice…we in the Joint Force put our nuclear deterrent as the number one priority for modernization and recapitalization.”

A reliable and credible U.S. nuclear deterrent is a cornerstone of national security and global stability—deterring aggression from potential adversaries while preventing dangerous and unpredictable cascades of proliferation.We therefore request that you fully support all nuclear deterrence programs and capabilities within the Department of Defense in FY2018—including all aspects of the nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) system and key modernization programs like the Long-Range Standoff (LRSO) cruise missile and the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) program.

National security space

Over the past several years, we have heard an increasing concern from Intelligence Community and Defense Department officials regarding the serious and growing foreign threat to our national security space systems. For instance, earlier this year, General John Hyten, Commander of U.S. Strategic Command stated:

“We have adversaries that are building weapons in low earth orbit and weapons in geosynchronous orbit. Weapons that will deploy from the ground to low earth orbit and from the ground to geosynchronous orbit....In the not too distant future they’ll be able to use that capability to threaten every spacecraft that we have in space.”

We have much to lose if we cannot defend our space systems, which are currently not resilient enough to survive a high-end conflict that extends to space. Therefore, we request that you fully support all activities and programs that ensure our warfighters are able to protect and defend our national security space systems.

Separately, the Department has been transitioning from a legacy weather satellite program called Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) to a new program called Weather Satellite Follow-On (WSF). Unfortunately, the initial plan for WSF did not address the related top two priority Defense Department requirements, which are cloud characterization and theater weather imagery. At this point, we understand that the Department is working on a revised plan, and we request that you ensure the necessary funds are appropriated to meet these top two weather satellite requirements.

Lastly, the Department spends roughly $1 billion a year on commercial satellite communication leases. Regrettably, the Department makes these purchases in a short-term manner which has disadvantages for the warfighter, the taxpayers, and industry. Officials in the Air Force and the Defense Department recognize this concern and are working on innovative contracting methods through “pathfinder” and “pilot” programs. We therefore urge you to support not less than $40 million for “pathfinder” and $40 million for “pilot” programs.

Missile defense

For more than eight years, the previous Administration consistently underfunded critical investments in the U.S. ballistic missile defense system (BMDS). From almost $10 billion in FY2009 to barely $7.5 billion in FY2017, we have been reducing funding for procurement and research and development in the BMDS while countries like North Korea and Iran have been rapidly growing their ballistic missile arsenals and Russia and China are developing new hypersonic glide vehicles to target the United States and our deployed forces.

We therefore urge you to support not less than $9 billion in investments in the BMDS in FY2018. We also urge you to support the following specific programs:

  • To comply with the direction of the Congress in the FY2016 National Defense Authorization Act (section 1681) we urge you to support not less than $100 million for the Multi-Object Kill Vehicle (MOKV) program (PE 0604894C), which will be essential to counter advanced ballistic missile threats that are developing faster than previously projected.
  • Further, to comply with the direction of the Congress in the FY2016 National Defense Authorization Act (section 1680) we urge that you support not less than $100 million for Weapons Technology (PE 0603178C) activities to support directed energy investments in boost phase missile defense.
  • To ensure the modernization of current homeland missile defense, we urge not less than $471 million, a $150 million increase, above the amount projected in the FY17 FYDP for Improved Homeland Defense Interceptors (PE 0604874C) to ensure the Redesigned Kill Vehicle and C3 ground-based interceptor booster development are accelerated to meet critical threat developments.
  • Lastly, we urge that you appropriate not less than $100 million for the development of advanced space-based ballistic missile sensors in MDA classified programs and other areas of missile defense activity.

We also plan to support full-funding of Israeli ballistic missile defense cooperation with the United States, including for the Iron Dome, David’s Sling, Arrow Improvement and Arrow 3 systems, and we urge you to do the same. It is imperative that both authorizers and appropriators make these critical investments without reducing funding for investment in U.S. ballistic missile defenses.

We strongly encourage you to fully support the nation’s strategic forces in the coming FY2018 authorization and appropriations cycle.Thank you for your consideration and continued leadership in support ofthe nation’s defense.

Sincerely,

Mike Rogers

Chairman

Subcommittee on Strategic Forces