“…We are coming up on three years from the final wakeup call after October 7th, 2023, that conventionally armed ballistic missiles are the premier threat to critical capabilities ashore and at sea.
In the U.S. at least, though production was minimal and inventories allowed to be too small, we at least had the technology to meet the threat from Medium, Intermediate, and Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles.
At sea, which will be our focus today, we just made it across the finish line in time with the RIM-161 SM-3, which built off the success of the iterative development of the SM-2 for decades.
This work has paid off via the exceptional performance of our Arleigh Burke Class destroyers off Israel, and in defending our fleet from the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea against Iran and her proxies.
With each engagement, our software gets better…the next update to our missiles gets better, and, more importantly, it has yanked the Lotus off the dinner plate of our defense establishment to expand production and inventories.
Bravo Zulu to those people who fought, mostly nameless and unseen, for decades to ensure we did not take our eye off the need to be able to meet the threat from ballistic missiles.
Here’s the issue. We’re alone here, and our European allies just don’t seem to get it…”
