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Rumsfeld Opposes Missile Defense Budget Cut
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in a July 24 letter to U.S. lawmakers expressed his opposition to a $56 million congressional reduction to the fiscal 2007 missile defense budget, Inside the Army reported yesterday (see GSN, July 21). The proposed cut would eliminate plans funding to establish a missile interceptor site in Europe, a move Rumsfeld called “particularly damaging.” “In light of current world events, the department strongly opposes the proposed reduction in the missile defense program which would delay the fielding of critical defensive capabilities,” Rumsfeld stated in the letter to the heads of the House and Senate armed services committees. The “heartburn appeal” addresses White House concerns about defense authorization spending plans moving through Congress. The reduction is expected to cause a 12- to 18-month delay “in deploying a defense capability for the United States against longer-range ballistic missile threats from Iran as well as protect our European friends and allies, and our U.S. forward deployed forces, from Iranian medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missile threats,” Rumsfeld wrote (Jason Sherman, Inside the Army, July 31).
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