Jeff Sessions

The program is fragile, and any funding reductions at this point could pose unacceptable risk to the health of the nuclear enterprise.

Last year, our interest on the debt was $220 billion, which is a lot of money.

I guess I'm saying to you, those represent fairly serious delays in the important programs that we've focused on, would you not agree?

This is somewhat of a dangerous trend, it seems to me.

I've never been comfortable with where our money is spent and how we've managed it.

Imagine that we might just ask France to do this for us, and I suspect it would be cheaper.

I think all of us believe that we need a modernized nuclear force, that we're past due for that.

What missile defense capabilities might be useful as part of a potential military response to Russian aggression in Crimea?

The redesigned EKV (RKV) will improve EKV reliability and performance.

We will make a mistake if we get far away from that, in my opinion.

It's something I hope we can be successful on. I know we can if we work on that.

We're not pretending that we have the capability to protect Europe or the United States from a massive Russian launch.

We don't doubt that they eventually have the capability to make that a successful missile if left to their own devices?

There is no more cuts if we stay on the Budget Control Act (BCA) numbers.

Let me just tell you, you're going to be looking at $521 billion. Is that sequestration or not?

To help Congress and others know that we're getting accurate testing, realistic testing, on the kind of situations we might face.

I couldn't agree more.

I think it's important that the Americans and our adversaries know that we have very effective missile systems that will work, but we have some testing to do.

The concept is proven and we're doing it in others. But our GMD system is the one that's the most lacking and problematic at this time?

Having a credible missile defense system is so fundamentally important, and it's less than 5 percent of our total defense budget.

The President made a commitment at the time of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) that we would be involved in this.

In March of last year, Secretary Hagel announced steps to strengthen homeland missile defense, including the deployment of 14 more ground-based interceptors (GBI) in Alaska.

With sequestration and the way current law expects spending to be, DOD will spend $521 billion this year.

I think I am correct--and I will just wrap up here--to say that we were, I think, at $554 billion for budget function defense.

We have seen some progress in competition, and it has saved the taxpayers some money.