Wayne Allard: “I rise to comment on an event that may have understandably escaped the attention of my colleagues because our plate is…”

“I rise to comment on an event that may have understandably escaped the attention of my colleagues because our plate is full and the schedule is tight. I want to underscore the importance of what occurred on Tuesday night, December 13, shortly after 10 p.m. Washington time. It signaled a month of great achievement in our Nation's Missile Defense Program. While many of us were turning on the late news that night, an operationally configured, ground-based interceptor missile, of the kind now emplaced in both Alaska and California, was launched out of its silo in the Marshall Islands and successfully completed all its major test objectives. It demonstrated smooth execution of the launch sequence, separation of the booster-kill vehicle, cryogenic cooling of the sensor, and positioning of the kill vehicle, among many other complex actions. For this test, there was a simulated target using data from previous launches. The interceptor successfully flew through its impact point, and had the target been real, it would have been destroyed. This test was the latest in an extraordinary month. National attention had been focused on setbacks to our defense against long- range hostile ballistic missiles. However, this has been a month of successes for current and future elements of the Ballistic Missile Defense System that can provide a defense against both long-range and short-range threats.…”