Senators Question Climbing Missile Defense Budgets

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — While the U.S. Missile Defense Agency has projected significant budget increases through the end of the decade that could rise further if it decides to pursue new capabilities, a key senator yesterday warned that future missile defense funding by Congress was not likely to climb (see GSN, April 22).

“Funding for missile defenses may have reached its high-water mark in fiscal 2005,” said Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), chairing a Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing on missile defense.

“The administration is also contending with the global war on terror, [and] with all the competing priorities, resources are extremely limited,” he said.

The agency received $8.8 billion for fiscal 2005.

Stevens and other senators urged the agency to consider increased focus on systems the agency is developing and building for near-term deployment, rather than on multiple other technological approaches to missile interception it is considering for the future.

“Are we clearly focused on near-term priorities? It seems to me that as you want to balance the budget under these circumstances, that we probably should be looking more to the near-term deployment priorities,” he said, addressing Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Henry Obering and U.S. Strategic Command Commander Gen. James Cartwright.

“We’re trying desperately to reach that balance between the near-term priorities and the longer-term priorities that are involved in our development program,” Obering responded.

“We cannot give up on the future though,” he said.

Responding to Defense Department budget pressure, the Missile Defense Agency is planning a $1 billion cut from previous spending estimates for the upcoming fiscal 2006 — down to $7.8 billion. It projects, however, budgets subsequently climbing to more than $10 billion by fiscal 2009.

To address the near-term cut, officials disclosed this year they had delayed some work on two longer-term programs, for an Airborne Laser and a Kinetic Energy Interceptor. The agency also budgeted, though, for increased efforts to develop new miniature kill vehicles and a new plan to possibly develop space-based interceptors.

Stevens questioned an $80 million cut for fiscal 2006 to the agency’s most advanced development and deployment effort, Ground-based Midcourse Defense. 

Senator Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), meanwhile, questioned a $95 million cut to the agency’s most advanced medium-range missile defense system. The Aegis system is being deployed, but its development could be delayed a year by the cuts, Inouye said.

“Why are we setting aside such a successful program where the outcome is almost predictable and spending it on other riskier programs?” he said.

Similarly, Senator John Kyl (R-Ariz.), speaking at an event sponsored today by the National Defense University Foundation, said the agency should continue to pursue a “layered,” missile defense capability involving multiple systems.

He said, though, “we need to rethink the pursuit of new systems that at best will only marginally improve the capability provided by our existing systems and may drain critical funding for these existing systems.”

“I think because the resources are going to be constrained we’re going to have to prioritize more than we’ve done in the past,” Kyl said.

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