The following is a condensed and edited version of testimony that Air Force Gen. John Hyten, the U.S. strategic commander in charge of America’s nuclear forces, gave the Senate Armed Services Committee last Tuesday. The questions asked by senators have been paraphrased while Hyten’s answers are verbatim, edited only for clarity and length.
Q: Can you explain the threat from hypersonic glide weapons, which can change course midflight and are currently under development by Russia and China?
Hyten: If you look at the way a hypersonic missile works, the first phase is ballistic, but it’s a fairly short phase. That phase we will see. We will see the launch. We’ll be able to characterize and understand if it came from Russia or it came from China. But then it basically disappears, and we don’t see it until the effect is delivered.
Q: How fast would a hypersonic missile reach the U.S. from a potential adversary?
Hyten: It’s a shorter period of time. A ballistic missile takes roughly 30 minutes. A hypersonic weapon, depending on the design, could be half that, depending on where it’s launched from. It could be even less than that.
Q: How to you defeat that kind of threat?
Hyten: Our defense against hypersonic is our nuclear deterrent. If somebody attacks us with a nuclear hypersonic capability, we have the ability to respond. We also need to build sensors to be able to understand exactly where those things are going so we can better defend ourselves. You can’t defend yourself if you can’t see it. We have to go to space. And we can go to space now in an affordable way, with distributed constellations [of satellites] that can look down and characterize that threat in a global perspective, so we can see them wherever they come from. That’s the direction we need to go.
Q: Do you agree with President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty?
Hyten: Russia has violated the INF Treaty for five years now, and despite our best efforts, we have not been able to bring them into compliance. We all want Russia in that treaty, we want them to participate, but if they won’t, we’re tying our own hands to deal with adversaries in the world, including China, who is not part of that treaty.
Q: Should the U.S. stay in the New START treaty, which expires in February of 2021?
Hyten: I want Russia in every treaty. I want Russia in the INF Treaty, I want Russia in the New START Treaty. I support those treaties, but they have to be parties to those treaties. It takes two to participate in a treaty, at least.
Q: What is the value of arms control treaties in a world of multipolar threats?
Hyten: No treaty is perfect and New START is certainly not perfect. But what it gives me at STRATCOM is two very important things. No. 1, it puts a limit on the basics of their strategic force so I understand what their limits are and I can position my force accordingly so I can always be ready to respond. And maybe as important, it also gives me insight through the verification process of exactly what they’re doing and what those pieces are. Having that insight is unbelievably important for me to understand what Russia is doing.
Q: The latest estimate from the Congressional Budget Office is that it will cost $1.2 trillion over the next 30 years to modernize all three legs of the triad. Why spend so much money on weapons that hopefully will never be used?
Hyten: We use them every day. When people that say that, I actually find that a little bit insulting, because the men and women who go to work every day, underneath the water, underneath the ground, in the air, that provide that strategic deterrent, they are doing the mission every day. When you send a nuclear submarine out with 160 sailors on board, do you think they’re thinking of themselves as a passive functional mission? No, they are an active war-fighting mission.
