Findings; sense of the Senate

(a) Findings (1) Missile Defense review Congress finds that the 2022 Missile Defense Review found the following: (A) Since the release of the 2019 Missile Defense Review, missile-related threats have rapidly expanded in quantity, diversity, and sophistication. (B) United States national security interests are increasingly at risk from wide-ranging missile arsenals that include offensive ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic weapons. (C) In support of the homeland missile defense mission, continued modernization and expansion of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system will remain an essential element of our comprehensive missile defeat approach. In addition, the United States will also continue to improve defensive capabilities to address the threat of evolving cruise missile strikes by any adversary against the homeland. (D) The continued evolution and progress of missiles as a principal means by which adversaries seek to project conventional or nuclear military power makes missile defense a core deterrence-by-denial component of an integrated deterrence strategy. (E) Missile defense capabilities add resilience and undermine adversary confidence in missile use by introducing doubt and uncertainty into strike planning and execution, reducing the incentive to conduct small-scale coercive attacks, decreasing the probability of attack success, and raising the threshold of conflict. (2) Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States Congress finds that, in its October 2023 report, the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States recommended the following: (A) The United States should develop and field homeland integrated air and missile defense (IAMD) that can deter and defeat coercive attacks by Russia and China, and determine the capabilities needed to stay ahead of the North Korean threat. (B) The Secretary of Defense should direct research, development, test and evaluation into advanced integrated air and missile defense capabilities leveraging all domains, including land, sea, air, and space. These activities should focus on sensor architectures, integrated command and control, interceptors, cruise and hypersonic missile defenses, and area or point defenses. The Department of Defense should urgently pursue deployment of any capabilities that prove feasible. (C) The Secretary and the military departments should transfer operations and sustainment responsibility for missile defense to the appropriate military departments by October 1, 2024, to allow the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) to focus on research, development, prototyping, and testing. (3) Commission on the National Defense Strategy Congress finds the following: (A) In its July 2024 report, the Commission on the National Defense Strategy found the following: (i) There is an increasing threat from expanding ability of China, Russia, and North Korea to deliver nuclear weapons against the United States, including the territories of the United States. (ii) The military planners of the Department of Defense and United States Northern Command need to prepare for a worst-case scenario in which nuclear and other strikes are launched against the United States, which could be done in large numbers with specialized delivery systems. (B) In the report described in subparagraph (A), the Commission shared the same threat assessment about missile attacks as the Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States and agreed with the recommendation that the United States should enhance missile defense for the homeland. (4) Policy Congress finds that it is the policy of the Federal Government that — (A) the Federal Government will provide for the common defense of the citizens of the United States and the United States by deploying and maintaining a next-generation missile defense shield; (B) the Federal Government will deter and defend the citizens and critical infrastructure of the United States against any foreign attack on the United States homeland; and (C) the Federal Government will guarantee the secure second-strike capability of the Federal Government. (b) Sense of the Senate It is the sense of the Senate that— (1) the threat of attack by ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missiles remains a catastrophic threat facing the United States and defense against it is a form of both national security and border security; (2) China is rapidly expanding and modernizing its conventional forces to include ballistic missile systems posing an increasing threat to citizens, forces, and allies of the United States; (3) over the past 40 years, rather than lessening, the threat from next-generation strategic weapons, including hypersonic, has become more complex with the development of next-generation delivery systems by adversaries of the United States; (4) notwithstanding this increasing threat, homeland missile defense policy of the United States has been severely limited to staying ahead of rogue nation threats and accidental or unauthorized missile launches; (5) by empowering the United States with a second-strike capability, the Iron Dome will deter adversaries from attacks on the homeland; (6) the midcourse defense system is the primary system capable of defending the United States homeland from long-range ballistic missile threats and is critical to our national security; (7) the Next Generation Interceptor is a top priority for the Missile Defense Agency and a critical element to increasing system reliability to build warfighter competence; and (8) the United States must gain and maintain total domain awareness to provide early warning and defeat of missile threats from both the northern and southern hemispheres and from outer space.