Duncan Hunter

Meeting the Coast Guard maritime safety, search and rescue, fishery law enforcement, oil spill response in the Arctic, does that require a military vessel?

you could save a couple hundred million dollars, possibly, say $200 million, build two

I just asked you four things, the four things that an icebreaker has to do, and you said it doesn't take a military ship to do any of them.

You did the analysis, but failed to make a determination.

But you need a CIWS on this, or--what--do you need to shoot rockets or missiles off its surface?

Are we willing to do that today?

OK. Would you also provide us with not just drafting assistance for the leased vessels, but how we would change the language to do a block buy?

To provide an Arctic research platform, does that require a military vessel?

I guess the biggest question is--which we have all talked about--the gap, 3- to 6-year gap.

Does it take a military vessel to break out the McMurdo Station? That is a yes or no answer, Admiral.

We need icebreakers. We will make that decision.

But I am talking timewise. Would it be done in time to fill the gap----

It seems clear that Islamic extremists aspire to carry out a radiological or nuclear attack, so this is a threat that we obviously need to take seriously.

Nobody wants a TSA in our ports, right?

I am just trying to balance out the outcome of a weapon of mass destruction going off versus what they--how much time they spend on this.

It will take billions of dollars, and they are going to try to be able to find everything from weapons to cocaine to weapons of mass destruction.

That is an easy fix. That is a quick, easy fix, fixing that.

I think that is important, because then the Coast Guard could look at what they are doing and say, 'Hey, maybe we should spend more time on this.'

With terrorism and Islamic extremism where it is now, and the ability for nonstate actors to get ahold of nuclear weapons...

I think we probably have a 5- to 10-year window, and then we need to have something where we check everything, because it only takes once, right?

You want to talk to Gene Ray in San Diego. They have a neutrino system that I have seen tested.

I think what the Coast Guard is going to do, and what DHS is going to do, is try to get the 100-percent perfect solution, which will take them a decade.

It is kind of funny. We were talking about privateering, actually, when James Madison--and how he gave--he basically deputized American merchant mariners to go protect America's shores and ocean.

We are trying to shape what we feel is going to be probably the most dangerous thing that we can encounter as a country, which is a nuclear device on American soil.

I think that raises the stakes. Like Ms. McSally said, when you put in--when you combine terrorists with weapons of mass destruction, it is a whole new ball game.