we can bring one down tomorrow. >> sir, i share your concern. i share a lot of frustration. i am more than willing to continue working with the department to try to get better. >> if they don't have the authority they can do it on an emergency basis. just send that capability to the ocean, to the beach. because they are coming in every day. figure out which one it is and bring them down. then, retrieve it. my friend congresswoman bella talk us said the thing with the balloon was mind-boggling. over our bases and we didn't see that that was the threat? this is a serious threat. if you could, please get dod to share that capability. maybe homeland has it, maybe you have it somewhere, i know dod has it. thank you.

>> gentlemen's time has expired. i thank the witnesses for your valuable testimony, being here today, for the members and your questions. we will now dismiss this first panel. take a brief two to three minute recess while we arrange for the second panel of witnesses. thank you. [gavel falls]

[gavel falls] >> the committee will come the order. i'm pleased to have the second panel of witnesses before us on this important topic. please, rise and raise your right hand. do you solemnly swear that the testimony you will go before the committee of homeland security for the u.s. house of representatives will be the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth so help you god? let the record reflect the witnesses answered in the affirmative. mr. jeffrey baumgartner serves as the vice president for national security and resilience of berkshire hathaway energy. dr. paul schwennesen is my classmate at the united states air force academy class of 2000. we will now recognize mr. baumgartner for your opening statement five minutes.

mr. baumgartner: thank you for inviting me to testify. my name is jeffrey baumgartner and i'm the vice president of national security and resilience policy at berkshire hathaway energy. i wanted to discuss how unmanned aerial systems threaten vertical infrastructure. berkshire hathaway energy businesses provide reliable, secure, low-cost energy to more than 13 million customers in the u.s., great britain, and canada. our commitment to our customers requires us to secure our infrastructure from all threats, including those posed by unmanned aerial systems. critical infrastructure is the backbone of our economy and security and get energy sector infrastructure and the transportation communications and water sector infrastructure we rely on face increasing threats from uas, and the threats for ensuring security cannot be higher. you asked energy become more

accessible and advanced. these innovations offered immense potential like enabling faster damage assessments of energy infrastructure. they also empower malicious actors. adversaries can use uas to surveilled facilities, deliver hazardous payloads, disrupt operations, even conduct cyber intrusions. the department of homeland security's homeland threat assessments highlights uas as a growing risk to infrastructure. this warning is not hypothetical. last month federal agents arrested an individual planning to use a uas to attack and electric substation. i hope we can proactively address the uas threat before a significant incident occurs. despite the pervasiveness of the threat, existing federal laws and regulations have not kept pace with the rapid proliferation of uas technology. current frameworks address safety and air force management but lack robust provisions to counter malicious uas activities

leaving critical infrastructure companies vulnerable to increasingly sophisticated threats. to address these risks, we must modernize our defenses while balancing security measures with civil liberties. a conference of strategy that incorporates technology innovation, appropriate legal frameworks, and public-private collaboration is essential. i hope we can prioritize the following actions. number one, grant critical infrastructure companies limited authority to deploy advanced section and counter uas technologies. investments in counter uas will ensure we address threats effectively. two, identify formal mechanisms for sharing actionable information about uas threats and enable law enforcement at all levels with the tools and legal authorities to address uas threats effectively. the third is advanced research and development. collaborative r&d will improve the ability to neutralize uas

threats without collateral damage. the fourth and final, develop a conference of strategy to align regulatory, technological, operational efforts at federal, state, local levels while addressing privacy concerns and establishing clear legal parameters for ua us operations. protecting these assets is a collaborative effort. the national security memorandum on critical infrastructure security and resilience rightly emphasizes this partnership. however, existing counter uas authorities for dhs and the department of justice are set to expire soon. failing to renew and expand current authorities risks leaving critical infrastructure defenseless against the evolving uas threat. the window of opportunity to address these challenges is closing. by modernizing our defenses, updating our legal frameworks,

and fostering collaboration, we can safeguard critical infrastructure, protect public safety, and maintain our leadership in security and innovation. we are ready to work alongside this committee, a coalition of infrastructure companies, and relevant stakeholders to protect our services against the evolving uas threat or thank you for holding this hearing and i look forward to your questions. >> the chair now recognizes mr. paul schwennesen for his opening statement. [indiscernible] -- i have rearranged my remarks in the back hoping to give yourself something more tangible to work with so that we are not just repeating and risking constant repetition of the problem. i think we acknowledged the problem. we have a real train wreck. i think it goes a little and said i think we lack a lot of

technical know-how on how to deal with this, how to assess and neutralize these threats. there is someone who does know. that is the ukrainians. having recently observed firsthand the astonishing evolution of drone operations in purse, unmanned systems are not just an iteration. they are indeed a revolution in the application of lethal force. the world's most advanced weapons and tactics are being deployed at scale in the ukraine-russian front at remarkably low cost without central direction. these facts hold radical implications for the next major shooting war between powers. we need to learn from the ukrainians. the united states is rapidly losing its strategic military advantage in this new technical environment. there can be little doubt that china, north korea, iran, and emerging powers are eagerly sending observers and technicians to the front lines in occupied ukraine to carefully note the revolution in weapons delivery into doctrines that

seek to invert military strengths of their larger, better equipped, better trained western geopolitical adversaries. we need to learn from ukraine. in short, the rules of the arms race has been fundamentally rewritten to favor small, cheap, easily mastered weapons systems. more important, these disproportionate advantages are not a one-time effect. they amplify in a positive feedback loop through each iteration cycle. new tech gets better exponentially faster and is deployed faster than legacy countermeasures. in ukraine, the source of this immense reservoir is the highly adaptable diffused engineering base of ukrainian technicians. uncountable tech workers routinely work full days in their civilian capacity and then leave their jobs to go work in pop up tech facilities until late at night. the whole country is on deck. they have created an ecosystem of invention, loosely core

needed through administration. advances in hardware and software that they produce is channeled into robust decentralized training facilities. in less than three weeks, an fpv drone operator can be mission ready. operators with no previous battlefield experience have been credited with as many as 1500 confirmed kills. the disproportionality is vast. this is perhaps the main take away in a total wore peer-to-peer scenario. if technology allows one side to have extra nerd damage on the exquisite, difficult, hard to master weapons systems of their adversary at a fraction of the cost expended by their enemy, it doesn't require an economist to see where that leads. it is easy to be a critic, but i'm convinced the united states and nato allies have a window of opportunity that is narrowed to address this shift of comparative advantage. operations in ukraine have shown what a scrappy innovative force can do to a military machine. it would be well to take note.

in some of the scenarios looking forward, i think that the most likely is the u.s. will fall behind the leading edge of uas development and deployment and will only respond in the aftermath of the crisis. we are seeing some of that already in new jersey. we don't need a pearl harbor or 9/11 to wake us up. we are already awake. we need to deal with this now. the best case is possibly, conceivably, that we can avoid this kind of depressing scenario through a well orchestrated demonstration. historical examples like a sinking shows that it is possible to break entrenched paradigms by publicly demonstrating public systems' vulnerability. these demonstrations can shift doctrine development and tactical development in new ways, preferably before the lessons are learned the hard way. we need to learn from ukraine. it is time to get a task force to mop up information, go out there and sponge this stuff up, and learn from what they are

doing, and learning this information from in theater and get up to speed as soon as possible. thank you. chair green: thank you, dr. franson. we had a third expert on the panel. from the national football league. unfortunately, she was unable to join today. however, the chair asks unanimous consent to enter her testimony into the record. without objection, so ordered. i now recognize myself or five minutes of questioning, as we did prior. i would like to focus on something here. policy versus technology. what is our issue right now? not enough technology? not keeping up with the technology, as you mentioned? maybe we are being outmaneuvered in a lot of cases by the russians and ukrainians may have information that we can learn

from. or is it a policy issue as we protect the homeland, or is it both? dr. schwennesen: both, a combination of the two. we created a policy on bureaucracy that stifles the innovation space. i think that we have a technical know-how problem. at least we know for a fact that ukrainians have a technical know-how solution. i think it we are able to reduce some of the bureaucratic barriers to innovation, allow people to tinker and experiment and learn at the operational military level, this needs to happen, like, yesterday. we can't do the same old business of doing it 2.5 year request for proposal and wait for things to come back. we just can't do business as usual. we don't have that time. chair green: you listen to testimony, we have uas's over new jersey. we heard from mr. smith in new jersey they were flying over coast guard vessels last night. how is this possible?

what do we need to do and what actions need to be taken? dr. schwennesen: that is difficult to answer. i have a suspicion that people are frozen with fear of what would happen in an administrative situation. they took action and were punished for doing so. they shot down a drone, god forbid, and the debris hit someone's house and now all of a sudden they are on front page. people are acting out of a sense of self-restraint, which is being promoted by our policy environment. rep. pfluger: when it comes to technology, we need to focus on our offensive technology, lessons and ukrainian conflict where they are leveraging uas systems. we need to focus on counter uas technology to counter it and give authorities that we need while protecting the privacy of citizens here? dr. schwennesen: i would say so. absolutely. mr. baumgartner, what is the

most catastrophic event the energy industry article infrastructure that we need to be thinking about and planning for to prevent? mr. baumgartner: luckily we haven't seen a significant incident. i think from an imagination perspective, certainly something with payload, like the gentleman from tennessee who was planning an incident to drop a payload into a substation, you can imagine that at a larger scale and impacting or identifying more critical infrastructure from generation to substations, or even on the pipeline side of liquid natural gas import export facility. rep. pfluger: the permian basin, 6 million barrels per day needs to be protected and the authorities in some cases as you recommended in your testimony should be delegated to private companies to identify and mitigate if needed? mr. baumgartner: i think the

energy of the structure in your district should be considered to be protected. how that gets to a place where we can view that as the private sector, there are probably steps to get there. we have great relationships with local, state, federal law enforcement and are happy to take an intermediary step to work with them to ensure that we understand the technology, the appropriate technology is in place, and we can implement that technology at a future state. rep. pfluger: we will go back to the services for a second in the race for technology. let's focus on the air force, our alma mater come the air force academy. how would you characterize the responses we are seeing out of the dod, specifically the air force. are they doing it fast? is it just average?

dr. schwennesen: i think it is below average and it gives me no pleasure to say that. i think we aren't taking it seriously enough. it is as if everyone sees the train coming, everyone agrees the train is coming, but no one is taking steps to get out of the way. everyone is assuming someone else is doing it and there is no sense of emergency or coherent activity to address this issue. that is easy for me to say, easy for me to throw spears from the sidelines, but i think that one of the things that we can do is leverage our good relationships that we have with ukraine. we've given them a lot of resources and they are willing and eager to give us something back in return. we should be mopping that information up. we should be sending people there right now. rep. pfluger: i recognize the ranking for his questions. >> thank you, chairman. thank you both. dr. schwennesen, i want to begin

by commending you and thanking you for your assistance to the ukrainians. i have to remind some of my colleagues from time to time that vladimir putin is not our friend. that the cause of the ukrainians is the cause of freedom and democracy and russia continues to pose a threat not just to ukraine but to american interests all over the world. i just want to thank you for the work that you are doing over there. that is the frontline line of freedom today. i was interested in your written testimony when you expressed skepticism at the effectiveness of signal-jamming technology to mitigate risks from uas on the battlefield. i was wondering if you could expand on that. why are you skeptical about the effectiveness or promise of signal jamming and other counter uas technology on the battlefield and writ large? dr. schwennesen: i claim no engineering expertise in drone

warfare, but all i can do is say what i've seen. in the world's most intense battle space, the ukrainian-russian front at the moment, it is an electronic warfare chaos. what people used to think about the ability to jam drones, what some of the speakers we had here were talking about, two years old come at this point is effectively a century old, obsolete information, jamming doesn't work the way we think it does. there are so many new, developing technologies on countering the counters, right. they have gone multiple layers ahead of us. they are doing ai pixel lock technology that doesn't have any rf frequency whatsoever. they are doing ambush technology where they are not needing to have any communication between operator and drone. again, i don't know the specifics beyond what i've seen, the tip of the iceberg, which is

the jamming solution is not a one-size-fits-all, silver bullet. it might be a piece of a sweet, but only a piece. rep. magaziner: i recognize you've thought about this in the dod space more perhaps than homeland domestic law enforcement etc., but i imagine that the lessons are transferable. what do we need to do specifically in order to go from being laggards to leaders on this? you referenced procurement issues and speeding that up. you referenced bringing a spirit of inventiveness and innovation. is there training that we should look at deploying across the federa government? is there a specific workaround to procurement rules you would recommend? what are the nuts and bolts of what we should be doing to take back the advantage? dr. schwennesen: i do think yankee -- yankee

ingenuity is one of our comparative strengths and we should take advantage. this is not an especially sexy solution, and i say that with apologies in advance, but one example of an idea is to come at the dod level, get drones down to the absolute operational level of units so they can begin to tinker. as elon musk says, move fast and break things. you need to learn on the fly in the trenches how these things are operated. it isn't enough to do this from centrally managed top-don't approach in which we are going to go through this entire typical desktop-don't approach in which we are going to go through this entire typical cycle and deliver it to the war fighter wrapped in a ribbon. we have to give it to them and let them develop it on the fly. rep. magaziner: how are the people on the front lines to innovate? i only have a minute left, but i

wanted to explore the importance of the cooperation between private industry and particularly state and local law enforcement. what are the best practices that you have noticed and what are things that we can do to support those kinds of collaborations? mr. baumgartner: we work hard to establish and maintain those relationships in states and localities that we serve. it does become about manpower and hours spent in doing that collaboration. there are certain challenges to maintaining that, but i think that fusion centers are a great opportunity to engage in a wide variety of state and local efforts at one location. i think there are other similar opportunities, like, in our sector we have the electricity information sharing and analysis center. it also convenes those state and local partners in a regional

fashion. we are able to effectively have those conversations and maintain those relationships in that form as well. rep. magaziner: thank you both. rep. pfluger: i will recognize myself or five minutes. i'm not going to take five minutes, but mr. schwennesen, i agree we have a problem in the united states dealing with these systems. not only for warfare, but for protecting the homeland. i would think that part of the problem is you have $500,000 in the fbi, 500 thousand dollars in some other agency, all of these agencies working on the same issue and it is not centralized. there is no planning, etc. maybe the airports are trying to do their thing and the fbi is trying to do their thing, customs and border protection are trying to do their thing. would it be beneficial to put this together and focus on the

unmanned aerial system threat in the homeland? dr. schwennesen: i lean that way. i hate to beat a dead horse but -- >> we will hear from president-elect donald trump's secretary of state nominee marco rubio. his confirmation hearing is being held before the senate foreign relations committee the republican lawmaker has served in the u.s. senate since 20 11 and was previously vice chair of the senate intelligence committee and he ran as a presidential candidate in 2016 but lost the republican nomination to donald trump. you are watching live coverage on c-span3.

>> live coverage from capitol hill, expecting the senate foreign relations committee to gavel in soon for secretary of state nominee marco rubio's confirmation hearing. a little information about the committee with republicans holding the majority in the senate, james risch of idaho chairs the panel. the top democrat is jeanne shaheen of new hampshire. there are 20 additional members,

including two women. senators tammy duckworth and jacky rosen. a handful of other confirmation hearings are happening today. we will cover president-elect robb's pick for attorney general pam bondi before the judiciary committee and the intelligence committee hosts cia nominee john ratcliff. we will have those hearings and others live on c-span now our free mobile video app and later in our schedule. president biden will give his farewell address to the nation tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span. on c-span3 we are waiting for the secretary of state confirmation hearing to get underway.

[quiet indiscernible background conversations] >> live coverage from capitol hill expecting the senate foreign relations committee to gaveling in.

the top democrat on the committee is jeanne shaheen of new hampshire. there are 20 additional members, including two women, senators tammy duckworth and jacky rosen. a handful of other confirmation hearings are also happening today. we will cover president-elect trump's pick for attorney general, pam bondi, who is appearing before the judiciary committee. the intelligence committee hosts cia nominee john ratcliff. we will host those on c-span now, our free mobile video app, and later in our schedule. president biden will give his farewell address to the nation tonight live at 8:00 eastern on c-span. here on c-span3, just waiting for the secretary of state confirmation hearing to get underway.