Thank you, and I'd like to thank you both for being here today, whether virtually or in person. It's unfortunate that Professor Doran had to depart, but he brought up a good point, and I want to talk a little about the surveillance question.
He mentioned that two Russian Bear bombers came within 40 miles of northern California before they could be intercepted by two fighter jets. Interestingly enough, this happened on July 4, 2015. I'm assuming that on July 4 we had a heightened level of alert because it was in fact July 4.
Earlier in the day these same two bombers from Russia flew over Alaska and were intercepted by two F-22s. My question is this. We have ground interceptors. We have satellites and so on and so forth. How could it be that two fighters were able to come with 40 miles of the U.S. coast? The reaction was to scramble jets. We knew that they had flown over Alaska. Now they flew down the western seaboard, went down to northern California, and two other jets were scrambled.
We heard from a witness that in terms of the radar satellites that are going to be deployed in 2018, we're planning on putting in three, and we had heard from a witness that we might require actually five. I'm curious. I know we've talked about ballistic missile defence, but we had planes that came within 40 miles. What is your reaction to that, and what are your recommendations in terms of our surveillance capabilities?