Nominee to be Under Secretary of the Air Force Testifies at Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing

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WASHINGTON - During a Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) hearing on Tuesday, members heard testimony from Melissa G. Dalton, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Hemispheric Affairs, regarding her nomination to be the Under Secretary of the Air Force. If confirmed, Dalton would be the second-highest ranking civilian official in the United States Air Force and would serve directly under the Secretary of the Air Force, Frank Kendall.

During the hearing, U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) mentioned his visit on Monday night to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he met with the family of Chief Warrant Officer 4 Garrett Illerbrunn, a North Dakota native and U.S. Army Pilot. Illerbrunn was injured in a drone attack on Christmas Day while serving in Iraq. Senator Cramer stressed the importance of creating appropriate countermeasures for drone strikes like the one that injured CW4 Illerbrunn.

Senator Cramer also questioned Secretary Dalton about her response to a previous question in the hearing regarding the Chinese spy balloon. He asked Dalton when she first heard about the spy balloon and about her initial advice to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Dalton said she learned of the People's Republic of China's (PRC) spy balloon on January 27, the same day Secretary Austin first learned about it.

"My initial advice was that we absolutely needed to understand what capabilities were on the PRC high altitude balloon (HAB). NORAD and NORTHCOM was tracking it and characterizing it. But we needed to get to the bottom of what it was doing, what its intentions were," Dalton said.

Cramer asked Dalton why she did not initiate a review of all the policies, processes, and the siloing of the various intelligence agencies that contributed to the incomplete assessment and slow action to take down the balloon.

"In the absence of that, we did it. This committee put in the NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act], a review. Did it ever occur to you, 'this is something we should dig into it a little bit and see where the failings are?'" asked Cramer.

Secretary Dalton said they have incorporated the review in the development of the homeland defense policy guidance over the last year, and it was signed by Secretary Austin in December. Dalton said the department has benefited from the lessons learned from the PRC HAB and there are ample lessons to be learned in terms of what is needed for the air in the homeland in terms of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) modernization.

"My point isn't that you didn't benefit tremendously from the review that was initiated by this committee and put into law. Why wasn't it instinctive to do that?" asked Cramer. "Now that you've had the review, now that you've seen the review, now that you've thought about this and been challenged, what would you do differently if you knew on that date what you know now? What mistakes were made that you made perhaps in your counsel to the to the Secretary that you would improve on?"

Dalton explained the benefit of having investments to come in NORAD modernization which would allow them to better characterize these types of threats earlier and develop options for policymakers, the Secretary of Defense, and the President.

"The other big lesson learned for me is that as soon as we have threats that are actionable, policy decisions before they are made public, or any other DoD activities that we owe oversight answers to Congress that we need to provide that in a timely fashion. So, I understand that we have fallen short, based on what I've heard from members today, and we will incorporate that into our responses going forward," Dalton concluded.

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