Hearing of the Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee - Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (CWMD) Strategy and the Fiscal Year 2016 Budget Request for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the Chemical Biological Defense Program

Hearing

"I am pleased to welcome everyone here today for this very important and timely hearing on Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Fiscal Year 2016 Budget Request for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the Chemical Biological Defense Program.

The proliferation and potential use of Weapons of Mass Destruction remain a grave and enduring threat. Indeed, as the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, in his recent Worldwide Threat Assessment before the Congress said, 'The time when only a few states had access to the most dangerous technologies is past. Biological and chemical materials and technologies, almost always dual-use, move easily in the globalized economy, as do personnel with the scientific expertise to design them.'

And today as we sit for this hearing, I am reminded that the unfortunate recent and continued use of chemical weapons in Syria shows us that State sponsors of WMD not only seek these capabilities, but also use these capabilities.

The entire Department of Defense Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction enterprise has played a central and critical role in our national defense over the past year, from the destruction of more than 650 tons of Syrian and Libyan chemical weapons and precursors, to the mitigation of the Ebola outbreak which began in the remote areas of Africa, and even the clean-up and destruction of our own chemical weapons stockpiles, in accordance with our Treaty obligations.

Despite these successes, we remain increasingly concerned about the interconnections between terrorism, non-state actors and Weapons of Mass Destruction technologies and capabilities. Degrading, disrupting and mitigating these WMD pathways and capabilities at their point of origin, further upstream -- and far, far away from American shores and our fellow citizens -- must be our central strategic aim. And while I am pleased to see that the 2014 Department of Defense Strategy for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction places emphasis on this upstream approach, I remain concerned that we have not properly resourced the Department and indeed the entire interagency amidst dwindling budgets, competing priorities and the pressures of Defense Sequestration.

So today we look forward to discussing the priorities for the Department of Defense to counter Weapons of Mass Destruction for fiscal year 2016.

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