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House Committee Softens Blow to Laser Program By Jon Fox WASHINGTON — The House Armed Services Committee yesterday restored $150 million to the fiscal 2008 budget for the Airborne Laser program, lessening a dramatic cut included in an earlier version of a funding bill (see GSN, May 3). Lawmakers blunted the program’s budget cut in the House version of the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill after further consultations with the Missile Defense Agency, according to Representative Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the panel’s Strategic Forces Subcommittee. Tauscher’s subcommittee had originally cut $400 million from the administration’s proposed $549 million budget for the research program, which aims to equip Boeing 747 aircraft with chemical lasers powerful enough to blast a ballistic missile out of the sky as it launches. The laser program is expected to cost slightly more than $5.1 billion through 2009 to develop and is slated for a shoot-down test in 2009. The system underwent full-power ground testing in 2005 and is undergoing aiming and beam control testing this year (see related GSN story, today). Lawmakers last year approved the full fiscal 2007 program budget request of $630 million. However, as late as December 2005 the White House budget office designated the Airborne Laser a “high-risk” project and suggested it could be eliminated from the budget altogether (see GSN, Sept. 28, 2006). “In ballistic missile defense programs, the mark reflects our support for addressing real, near-term missile threats facing the warfighter — short- and medium-range missiles — and making only prudent investments in high-risk, immature programs,” Tauscher said last week of the subcommittee version of the bill before some of the funds were returned. A $400 million reduction could “cripple or terminate” the program, Boeing Vice President Greg Hyslop told the Los Angeles Daily News this week. The move to return $150 million to the laser program was one of four amendments to the earlier version of the bill approved as a block by the Armed Services Committee yesterday and the most significant in dollar figures. The subcommittee’s initial bill cut $760 million from the $8.9 billion Missile Defense Agency budget request. The $760 million in cuts remain but have been shifted to affect different programs. Concerns about cuts to the airborne laser program were first brought to her by Representative Rick Larsen (D-Wash.), Tauscher said. Boeing was originally incorporated in “Based on those concerns we further consulted with the Missile Defense Agency,” Tauscher said during a markup hearing yesterday. “During those discussions, MDA offered new information about some of their programs and identified their funding priorities.” The limited restoration of funding to the laser program is intended to “maintain the program’s viability as demonstrator of key laser technologies” and keep open the possibility of a shoot-down test sometime in the future, according to Tauscher. Other increases included: — $38 million to the Multiple Kill Vehicle which the Missile Defense Agency has as the best way to solve the problem of dealing with warhead decoys; — $10 million to the Space Tracking and Surveillance System to buy additional target to be tracked by the system’s satellites; and — $12 million to enhance the ability of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system to discriminate between targets. To accommodate the increases, the committee pulled $50 million from the Kinetic Energy Interceptor program, $120 million from unidentified MDA “special programs” and $40 million from ballistic missile defense sensors.
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