On the recordFebruary 10, 2022
I come to the floor today to support three extraordinarily qualified Department of Defense nominees: Melissa Dalton, to be Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Hemispheric Affairs; Dr. David Honey, to be Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering; and Dr. Celeste Wallander, to be Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. These three individuals have been nominated to serve in critical national security positions, and they are tasked with confronting those challenges of national security and securing U.S. interests at home and abroad. As a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, I attended the committee nomination hearings for all three nominees, and I came away convinced that all three were qualified for their positions and deserving of swift confirmation. Melissa Dalton previously served as a career civil servant in various positions at the Department of Defense--for a decade--under both President Bush and President Obama. So she had bipartisan support, clearly, in that position. She also was a senior fellow and director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. If confirmed, one of Ms. Dalton's core responsibilities as Assistant Secretary for Homeland Defense would be overseeing the Department's ability to operate through impacts to critical infrastructure, an area in which we have increasingly seen our adversaries are trying to exploit, particularly through cyber attacks.…
