if what we are trying to do with North Korea to get them to stop the nuclear program and to stop proliferation and all of those things, we need a quid pro quo for that.

Politics often gets in the way, does it not?

Secretary Crouch, will the President's planned deployment of the national missile defense system in Alaska go ahead by the end of fiscal year 2004 regardless of the actual readiness of the system or could that time line be adjusted to…

When would you estimate that you would do a test of the space-based?

How far along are we in the testing of the airborne laser?

With some of the rockets that we are going to go to Mars with, we can do it with that.

General, with regard to the boost phase systems, the boost phase interceptor has to be very fast or it has to get very close in order to be effective.

If you get to the time period of 2008 to 2012 that you talked about and start to deploy space-based assets, if we were to ever have a policy decision that you wanted to have them removed from space so that space would not be weaponized, is…

General Kadish, the GMD interceptor is supposed to get in-flight targeting update messages to steer it towards the target.

Secretary Crouch, if the administration launches space-based weapons such as the space-based boost phase interceptor test satellites, is it administration policy that such satellites should be capable of being removed from space after they…

Mr. Chairman, assured access to space is another issue...