King Presses Top Navy Officials on Shipbuilding Plans, “Hair On Fire” Hypersonic Missile Threat

Watch Senator King's remarks HERE, and download broadcast quality video HERE

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator Angus King (I-Maine) today emphasized the importance of multi-year contracts for Navy ships to support a strong industrial base and save taxpayer dollars in a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Specifically, Senator King highlighted that long-term planning allows shipyards like Bath Iron Works to marshal the resources and workforce required to meet their goals during his time questioning Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro and Admiral Michael Gilday, Chief of Naval Operations.

"I want to associate myself with Senator Hirono's comments about the 15-ship multi-year for destroyers," said Senator King. "And I know there's some discussion about whether the industrial base has the capacity to meet that. I think there's a bit of a circular argument. My experience working with Bath Iron Works is you give them the signal and they can meet it. If they don't get the signal of the longer-term multi-year then it makes it less likely that they'll meet it. So I don't think that should be a constraint. I think everyone realizes from this discussion that number one: multi-years are better for the taxpayers, better for the industrial base, and a longer multi-year sends a strong signal to the industrial base that the business will be there, that they can make the investments and meet the requirements."

As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Seapower Subcommittee, Senator King has long championed multi-year procurement agreements, and has repeatedly highlighted the necessity of these long-term contracts to Maine employers like BIW and PNSY. Last month, he urged multi-year contracts to support a capable workforce, arguing that "you can't turn these facilities on and off." In the 2022 NDAA, King secured language urging long-term funding for destroyers beginning in fiscal year 2023 to support the shipbuilding industrial base and expansion of the Navy battle force to congressionally mandated levels. In the 2022 NDAA, he also secured $3.7 billion for the procurement of 2 DDG-51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers in fiscal year 2022, which Bath Iron Works (BIW) can compete to build and $125 million to fund long lead material for a third FY23 DDG-51.

+++

During the hearing, Senator King also pressed Secretary Del Toro and Admiral Gilday on the importance of research and development funding into emerging technologies. He specifically emphasized the potential game-changing threat posed by hypersonic missiles, which he argued should be a "hair-on-fire issue at the Pentagon":

Sen. King: "Looking back through history, technology often wins wars or it certainly has an important influence on the outcome of wars. In World War II radar and of course the invention of the atomic weapon, which was pure R&D, ended World War II. Going back to the Battle of Agincourt was the long-bow and even the homely stirrup, many historians believe was the basis of Genghis Khan's ability to conquer the known world at that time because it provided stability to his archers on horseback. So, I want to thank you for that. Now, here's the question. I believe that the technological breakthrough of this moment in time is the hypersonic missile. My question is, are we dealing with that issue both from a defensive and an offensive capability point of view with the requisite sense of urgency? My concern is that our, for example, our forward presence in the Pacific is based upon aircraft carriers. And I realize this is an unclassified setting, but I want some assurance that this is a hair-on-fire issue at the Pentagon to deal with what could be a strategic game-changing technology, the hypersonic missile."

Sec. Del Toro: "Thank you for the question, Senator. And let me assure you wholeheartedly that this is a hair-on-fire type of investment in terms of developing the necessary, not just developing the R&D for it, but also as it applies to all our platforms, assuring that we can quickly acquire that technology from the R&D to capabilities that we can actually put into the hands of the warfighters across the board. And with regards to hypersonic, yes. We're making major investments in hypersonic. I feel quite confident that we're going to be seeing some of these tremendous capabilities, particularly CPS on zoom-wall class destroyers be deployed within the next couple of years. And we'll be aggressively deploying those ships in the Indo-Pacific where they will be most needed."

Sen. King: "Admiral Gilday, are you comfortable with our progress in dealing with the strategic location of hypersonic?"

ADM Gilday: "No, sir. I'm not, but I'll tell you what we're taking a look at with respect to terminal defense, layered terminal defense. Right now, we're deploying directed energy systems on some of our ships. We're testing it real-time against both swarming surface vessels as well as a ballistic missile defense system, which gets to your point about hyper sonics. High-powered microwave is another critical technology that we're investing in. A critical enabler for any of those terminal defense systems is going to have to be quantum computing, another area where the Secretary has us making additional advantages with respect to R&D. So in terms of giving us decision superiority over the adversary and understanding, applying both quantum computing with AI capabilities, helping us put a defensive weapon on a target like a fast moving hypersonic missile is going to be key. So those are some of the things we're working on right now, sir, inside of that R&D."

Sen. King: "I like it that you started your answer to my question with 'no' rather than bland assurances because that indicates to me that you recognize the seriousness of this issue."

As Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Subcommittee on Strategic Forces - which oversees the United States' nuclear arsenal and posture - Senator King has been an outspoken voice on the need to address the growing nuclear capacity of our adversaries. Senator King recently expressed concern about the emerging threats of Russia and China's development of "nightmare weapon" hypersonic missiles, which he has described as "strategic game-changers."

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.