An oversight hearing to examine the status of the Military Service Academies.
Senate Subcommittee on Personnel
2025-03-26
Source: Congress.gov
Summary
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Participants
Transcript
The Strategic Forces Subcommittee meets today to receive testimony on the posture of the United States Strategic Command and the United States Space Command. I want to begin by thanking our witnesses, General Cotton from STRATCOM and General Whiting from SPACECOM. General Cotton, this is likely one of the last times you'll be speaking before our committee. You have always been open and forthright with this committee, and I want to thank you for your service and dedication as you approach your final year as commander of STRATCOM. Today we face a threat environment more dangerous than we've seen since the Second World War. For the first time in history, the United States faces two adversary nuclear powers in Russia and China. Russia has nearly completed modernizing its nuclear triad and continues to expand and improve their tactical nuclear forces. China meanwhile, which used to be considered a lesser included case, is expanding its own arsenal at a breathtaking pace. China now has more ICBM launchers than the United States and is expected at least to triple its stockpile by 2035. I would also note that China has outpaced every previous estimate that we've made. General Cotton, as you well know, this is an extremely important time for STRATCOM. Each leg of our triad is undergoing a generational modernization. This includes the Columbia-class submarine to replace the Ohio-class, the B-21 bomber to replace the B-1 and B-2 bombers, and the Sentinel ICBM to replace the Minuteman III. Given the ages of the legacy programs, it is essential that these modernization efforts be prioritized and properly resourced to ensure we have capabilities fielded in time to meet the growing threat.
While it is the responsibility of the services to get these programs back on schedule, it is STRATCOM who must mitigate risk associated with any delays. I look forward to hearing more in the closed session about your plans to do so. Additionally, the Nuclear Armed Sea Launch Cruise Missile, or SLICM, remains a critical program to deter our adversaries from believing they can use tactical nuclear weapons. I look forward to hearing from you, General Cotton, on your work with the Navy on SLICM. I would be remiss if I did not also underscore the importance of NC3, what Senator King and I refer to as the fourth leg of the triad. NC3 underpins all aspects of nuclear deterrence. General Cotton, I appreciate the focus that you have given NC3 modernization during your time in command, and I will be eager to receive an update on the implementation of the NC3 roadmap. General Whiting, the space domain is now, as you point out in your opening statement, a highly contested strategic environment. China and Russia possess growing counter space capabilities that hold U.S. space assets at risk. Russia is developing the capability to place a nuclear weapon on orbit, while China is investing in maneuverable satellites that could target our satellites. And these are just the threats that we can discuss in this open setting. While I look forward to a more robust discussion on how we need to address these threats in a classified session, I'm eager to hear from you during this open session on your priorities for fiscal year 2026 and how we can leverage emerging technologies
to field more dynamic space-based systems. I am also eager to hear an update on how Space Comm is working with the other combatant commands, the services, and the intelligence community to ensure that we are developing the right capabilities, sharing information with war fighters in real time, and that the services and interagency partners are integrated appropriately. I will make one final point before I turn it over to Senator King for his opening statement. Both of your combatant commands rely on access to critical electromagnetic spectrum to carry out your missions. As we know, there are efforts underway to force DoD to vacate portions of those spectrum bans. Such an outcome would be detrimental to U.S. national security and result in significant costs as various DoD equities are forced to invest the resources to redesign procure and field new systems to operate in different spectrum bands, if that is even feasible. General Whiting and General Cotton, I look forward to hearing from both of you on the importance of spectrum to your missions. Before any decisions are made on whether to auction off DoD spectrum, the American people deserve to understand the risks there would be to national security. Again, thank you both for appearing before us today. I look forward to hearing your testimony. Senator King, you are recognized.
I want to first thank both of you for your service and for the incredible work that you've done, both in managing the assets that are in your purview, but also in thinking about how to move forward. This is a posture hearing. It's really a status report. It's a combination of a status report, where are we now, but where do we need to be? And what do we need in the way of resources in order to get there? General Cotton, deterrence is the keystone of our entire defense strategy. We often forget that. We get lost in counting tanks or airplanes or Navy ships.
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