Wow. Do I have more than four minutes?
It's a brilliant question. It really gets to the heart of why we are talking procurement. We're talking procurement because we have a new geopolitical security environment.
Traditionally, we've mainly needed this shield because that was the essence of deterrence. As long as the Soviet Union knew that we would know when they launched the missiles—so the Americans could then launch their missiles and we could all die in mutual suicide—the deterrent of...actual nuclear war was stopped. Once the bomber threat faded and we moved into the missile age, we needed the shield. That's why we had the emphasis on the DEW line and then subsequently on the north warning system.
We now need the sword because we are dealing with systems that are directed towards tactical nuclear war. They are of a speed and a stealth capability that simply letting the Russians know that we know that they have one of their Tupolev Tu-95s armed with a nuclear-tipped Kinzhal hypersonic missile that is ready to fire is no longer deterrent enough. We need to convince the Russians, and I suspect the Chinese going into the longer term, that we can in fact shoot them down.
That's where we need both the shield and the sword in this context. We need that surveillance. We need all that we talked about earlier, including RADARSAT, over-the-horizon radar and these satellite assets with our American allies, but we will also need the capability of what the F-35s—with refuellers—will bring us to be able to shoot down incoming threats.
We haven't even talked about the maritime side, but that's the next hour, I suppose. At the same time, when the Russians sell their Sarmat ICBMs, we need to be able to say, “Okay, we know you fired them, so let's commit mutual suicide”.
All of that is expensive. It's difficult to actually comprehend, but it's about deterring and deterring by being able to fight. That's something new in terms of our thinking about procurement.