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President Biden’s nominee for second-highest civilian place within the U.S. Air Force was grilled by Congress on Tuesday concerning the Department of Defense’s selling off of border wall components, in addition to the dealing with of the Chinese spy balloon, amongst different points impacting nationwide safety.
Melissa Dalton, who has served because the Pentagon’s Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Hemispheric Affairs since 2022, appeared earlier than the Senate Committee on Armed Services on Tuesday as she’s being thought of for a second time for the position of Under Secretary of the Air Force. Biden nominated her for the Air Force’s No. 2 civilian position in September, however as a result of the Senate did not act earlier than the tip of the yr, the White House renominated Dalton this month.
In his opening assertion, Ranking Member Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., raised concern that Dalton “has virtually no experience with the Air Force.”
“Ms. Dalton, the Air Force and Space Force both possess insufficient capacity and capability to meet their growing mission sets. This is the case even as we march toward a state of maximum vulnerability in the Pacific. The last confirmed appointee to the post that Ms. Dalton has been appointed for was not focused on this challenge. She created division in our military instead of prioritizing readiness and modernization,” he mentioned. “If Ms. Dalton is confirmed, I hope that she will not do the same. Regrettably, her performance in her current position gives me pause.”
While Dalton has been at her publish, Wicker charged, the “Department of Defense was caught flat-footed as a Chinese surveillance balloon traversed the continental United States and flew over military sites,” and “when Congress sought more information, she, along with others at the Department, evaded Constitutionally-authorized oversight.”
Wicker additionally raised concern over Dalton’s dealing with of the Pentagon’s tasks on the southwestern border.
“At one point, the Department of Defense was spending $130,000 every single day to store, instead of use, border wall construction materials,” he mentioned. “They were already manufactured, they were ready, and yet we were spending $130,000 to store them. Meanwhile, illegal migration broke records. Later, we found out that the Department of Defense had initiated a process in which these panels would be auctioned for pennies on the dollar — a clear effort to circumvent emerging Congressional intent as the FINISH IT Act was being added to the NDAA. That act was added to the NDAA; it is now the law of the land.”
Melissa G. Dalton, nominee to be underneath secretary of the Air Force, testifies throughout her Senate Armed Services Committee affirmation listening to on Jan. 23, 2024. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc through Getty Images)
Specifically, Wicker took subject with Dalton failing to ship the Homeland Defense Planning Guidance till the tip of 2023 — over a yr after the discharge of the National Defense Strategy.
“This track record casts a shadow on this nomination,” he mentioned.
Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., was additionally among the many Republicans to problem Dalton concerning the border, in addition to the Chinese spy balloon, which entered U.S. airspace over Alaska, crossed by Canada after which over the continental United States, reportedly gathering key intelligence about U.S. army websites, earlier than it was shot down off the coast of South Carolina.
“This was under your watch. Were you in the direct chain of command in regards to the decision not to shoot the balloon down until after it had left American airspace?” Rounds demanded.
Dalton admitted she was one of the officers advising Austin, including that “the best military advice to not shoot down over U.S. territory came from our U.S. senior military officials.”
Assistant Secretary of Defense Melissa Dalton arrives for a closed-door, labeled briefing for senators on the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 14, 2023 in Washington, DC, after the U.S. army shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Noting that on the time Dalton’s nomination to carry her present position handed the identical committee in 2022, she was “not controversial,” Rounds mentioned that since then, “two items have happened that now call into question that confidence.”
Regarding the spy balloon, Rounds warned, “This is an area you will be challenged on this particular one because it’s a question of judgment and recommendations being made. I think that between now and the time that a vote is held on your nomination, I think you’ve got some work to do to regain the confidence of a lot of the members on this committee.”
Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., additionally pressed Dalton on when she first was made conscious of the spy balloon.
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Hemispheric Affairs, Melissa Dalton, testifies earlier than a Senate Appropriations Committee subcommittee on Defense listening to on the Chinese spy balloon on Feb. 9, 2023. (JIM WATSON/AFP through Getty Images)
Dalton testified she first heard of the balloon on Jan. 27, 2023, the identical day as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
“My initial advice was that we absolutely needed to understand what capabilities were on the PRC high altitude balloon. NORAD NORTHCOM was tracking it and characterizing it, but we needed to get to the bottom of what it was doing, what its intentions were,” she mentioned.
Cramer pressed Dalton on why it was not “instinctive” for her to ever provoke an inner evaluation of all of the insurance policies and processes, together with the siloing of varied intelligence companies, within the aftermath of the incident, including that it took the Senate Armed Service Committee to take action.
“Did it ever occur to you, ‘Gee, this is something we should maybe dig into a little bit and see where our failings are’?” Cramer posed.
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After insisting the division had included the “lessons learned” within the growth of the homeland protection coverage steerage during the last yr that was signed by Austin in December, Dalton was once more grilled on what she would have executed otherwise within the occasion of the disaster itself.
“We as a community could have had better national level integration at the local level — what I saw in the early days of the PRC HAB was that we were very well wired for responding to hurricanes, to wildfires, and that is the day-to-day existence for defense supported civil authorities, but it hadn’t been since World War II that we had has an incursion over U.S. territory from a foreign adversary, and so getting that national to federal to state and local integration happened, but I think in real time we could have been more expeditious about it, and we will do so going forward,” she mentioned.
“It’s OK to have been wrong,” Cramer instructed Dalton. “A correction is what we’re looking for.”
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