U.S. Missile Defense Gets Extra Funding

By Jon Fox, Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — House and Senate negotiators last week gave the U.S. Defense Department’s missile defense program $110 million more than requested for the fiscal 2007 budget (see GSN, Sept. 12).

Congressional appropriators set the overall funding mark for ballistic missile defense at $9.4 billion for fiscal 2007 — $1.6 billion more than allocated in this budget year.  The funds were part of a voluminous $447.6 billion defense appropriations bill that covers every aspect of armed forces spending. 

Funding is directed to research and development of missile interceptor technology as well as purchasing and deploying existing antimissile systems. 

The legislation that emerged from the bicameral conference committee includes $32.8 million for the proposed missile defense site in Europe, $24 million less than requested by the Pentagon (see GSN, Sept. 14). 

Lawmakers also expressed confidence in the Airborne Laser program, urging the Defense Department to rush into operations the technology designed to bring down missiles in their boost phase.  The committee designated $630 million for the program in fiscal 2007, the level requested.

As late as December 2005, the White House budget office designated the Airborne Laser a “high-risk” project and suggested the program could be eliminated in the fiscal 2007 budget.  The high-powered laser, which would be fired from a 5-foot-telescope perched in the nose of a modified 747, is expected to cost slightly more than $5.1 billion through 2009 to develop.

Budget negotiators were encouraged by the recent test firing of the laser while on the ground and flight testing of a beam control system, they wrote in a conference report released this week (see GSN, June 28).  They objected to a two-year delay proposed by the Missile Defense Agency in the development of an operational laser, which has been designated as the primary boost-phase defense

If the Missile Defense Agency is successful in its goal of using the Airborne Laser to down a test missile within two years, the agency should rush the defense system into operation as quickly as possible, congressional appropriators wrote (see GSN, March 2).

Recommendations for funding of the European missile defense site were polarized; the House of Representatives included no funding for the site in its version of the defense appropriations bill, while the Senate fully met the more than $55 million Defense Department request.

The conference version contains $32.8 million for the to-be-determined site, most of which the Defense Department says it needs for design and development.  Poland and the Czech Republic are reportedly being considered as possible locations for the base.

The Pentagon this month sent an appeal to Congress, arguing that the European site was integral to protecting the United States against a future Iranian long-range missile threat (see GSN, Sept. 15).  The base would also contribute to European defense against intermediate- and medium-range Iranian missiles, defense officials wrote.

Officials in Moscow recently said they reserve the right to employ tactical nuclear weapons to neutralize potential European missile defense sites that could mitigate the effectiveness of Russia’s strategic missiles (see GSN, Sept. 22).

The defense funding bill also includes funding for nonproliferation programs here and abroad.

It provides $1.2 billion for disposal of U.S. chemical weapons, including $111 million for “chemical stockpile emergency preparedness.”  More than half of that — $70 million — is to be made available to as grants to state and local governments.

The “Chemical and Biological Defense Initiative” saw an increase of $25 million.  Those funds are allocated at will by the defense secretary among “the programs that yield the greatest gain in our chem-bio defensive posture,” according to the conference report.

Congressional appropriators backed the full $372 million request for assisting former Soviet republics in eliminating weapons of mass destruction.  That includes establishing nonproliferation programs and helping former weapons sector employees find alternative employment.

Those funds — a nearly $40 million decrease from fiscal 2006 — will be available through September 2009.   Of that, $15 million is earmarked for dismantlement and disposal of nuclear submarines and submarine reactor components, and for security enhancements for the transport and storage of nuclear warheads in the Russian Far East.

The House passed the conference version of the defense spending bill this week, but debate over potential amendments to the appropriations legislation has stalled passage in the Senate.

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