The hearing today is to receive testimony on the 2020 budget request for missile defense and to discuss the implementation of the 2019 Missile Defense Review.

Congress mandated that MDA conduct an SM-3 Block IIA intercept against an ICBM-range target by 2021, which is outside of the systems designed threat space.

Can you please provide the committee a summary of how DOT&E is working with MDA to ensure both operational and developmental systems are being tested against cyber threats?

I thank the ranking member.

As I was saying, this is 2019, we should be able to get this right.

I have rarely heard of a competitive bid situation in which one bidder is twice as expensive as the other bidder, and yet there is such enthusiasm for bidding--awarding the bid to the by far, the highest bidder.

We are here to do the best possible job for the taxpayer and when it involves nuclear, that usually means zero defects.

It seems like this decision is really not being presented to Congress as a decision, but more as a fait accompli.

I think the public wants to see the best that we can possibly do is the best that can be done by human beings.

The MOX facility cancellation and subsequent repurposing for plutonium pit production has been done without a competitive bid process.

Our taxpayers back home are concerned about their life cycle, and we are spending a lot of their money, sometimes for very little result.

So I would find it more useful for the subcommittee for all the members to try to make a decision on that instead of being forced into a decision.

Mr. Hamilton, in your testimony you noted that the four waste drums at the Idaho Advanced Retrieval Project which exploded were a 'near miss,' and that there was 'some degree of luck that nobody was there to get hurt.'

I would find it more useful for the subcommittee for all the members to try to make a decision on that instead of being forced into a decision.

I believe our military has the capability to walk and chew gum at the same time. I think we can handle multiple priorities simultaneously and do them right and do them well.

Sir, can I add just in a few seconds, of all of the work we have ahead of us, the most important work we do right now is stand up the new combatant commander, because that normalizes the business of warfighting going forward.

I would like to ask unanimous consent that opening statements be inserted for the record.

There are few more important topics than this for this Congress, so I appreciate your weighing in.

I would like to ask our unusual unanimous consent so that members of the full committee, like Mr. Lamborn, are also able to participate in the subcommittee questioning.

I think the only major topic that hasn't been touched on is the space force.

The subcommittee will come to order.

The subcommittee will come to order.

My final question is whether the State Department today is even staffed adequately to negotiate some of these new agreements.

The press has reported that the President is interested in perhaps winning a Nobel Prize for his work with North Korea.

We are fortunate today in the first hearing of the subcommittee to have three very distinguished witnesses.