as tom said my name is ken todorov i'm the deputy director of the missile defense agency.e here today and include this dialogue with you, dr. hamre through for the invitation, tom, thanks for your work on getting everyone here. on behalf of the 8,000 or so employees of the missile defense agency and my boss vice admiral jim searing thank you for allowing mda to be here and talk about our priorities, about the work that we're doing, the very important work that we're doing near term and into the future to advance the course and the cause for missile defense. what i intend to do today is give you an operational perspective on the world of missile defense because i'm oon operator. i'm sort of a unique animal i'm not an engineer, we've got a lot of hugely bright people who are engineering neer's, i'm not an ak acquisition officer, which i'm glad i'm not an acquisition officer some days given the difficulties of that enterprise. but i am an operator. i come from an operations background and i'm a pilot and in 2009 i came to the united states northern command headquarters in col

as tom said, my name is ken todorov, the deputy director of the missile defense agency. it is an honor to be here today and continue this dialogue with you. dr. hamre thank you for the invitation. todd thank you for getting everyone here. on behalf of the 8,000 or so employees and my boss, thank you for allowing mda to be here and talk about our priorities, talk about the work that we're doing the very important work we're doing near term and into the future to advanced the course and the cause for missile defense. what i intend to do today is give you an operational perspective. i'm an operator. i'm a unique animal. we have a lot of hugely bright people that are engineers working on these problems. i'm not an acquisition officer. given the difficulties of that enterprise but i am an operator. i come from an operations background. i'm a pilot. in 2009 i came to colorado springs, and that's where i got into missile defense. i was the deputy director of operations there. that officer's job is to really be the point man or point woman. that's really where i cut my teeth in