The U.S. Congress might combine two prominent missile defense efforts and move a large chunk of Army funding to the Missile Defense Agency, Space & Missile reported today.

The House and Senate conference committee will decide this summer whether to merge the developing, multinational Medium Extended Air Defense program with the existing Patriot missile defense system.

Germany and Italy, which are developing the MEADS program with the United States, withheld reaction until a decision is made.

“It appears to us that the discussion in the U.S. has not really come to a close yet, so there is no official reaction as of now, but we do follow the debates very closely,” said Alexander Lambsdorff, a spokesman for the German embassy in Washington.

Under Pentagon plans, MEADS would begin replacing Patriot batteries in fiscal 2012.  The Senate Armed Services Committee, however, wants Patriot to continue service and the panel is pushing for technology developed under MEADS to be shifted into the Patriot program.  The committee also wants $276 million moved from MEADS to the Patriot effort.

“The committee is concerned that the parallel pursuit of PAC-3 spiral development and the MEADS development program does not represent a coherent approach to the further development of terminal phase ballistic missile defense,” the Senate panel said.

In its fiscal 2004 authorization, the committee cut $276 million from the Army’s MEADS development and $175 million from the Army’s Patriot development, and put $415 million into the MDA’s coffers for Patriot development.

The Bush administration opposed the move.

The transfer “would detract from MDA’s primary responsibility of ballistic missile defense and would impede progress in PAC-3 and MEADS, particularly for their roles in air defense,” the White House’s Office of Management and Budget said in a statement (Ann Roosevelt, Space & Missile, June 9).

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