When House and Senate negotiators meet starting next Wednesday to craft a compromise defense authorization bill, they will weigh whether to keep, scale back, or eliminate a directive for the Pentagon to plan for a missile-defense site on the U.S. East Coast.
That House-backed proposal is largely supported by Republicans yet rejected by Democrats, including Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) and one of the top negotiators who will craft a final Pentagon policy bill to send President Barack Obama.
Levin would not explicitly rule out allowing a more-modest plan for an East Coast site–to protect from potential missiles from Iran–in the final House-Senate compromise bill. Yet he balked at the plan in the defense bill the House passed in May. That legislation would authorize $100 million for planning an East Coast site, after the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) crafts a plan to deploy it by the end of 2015, and direct the Pentagon to produce an environmental-impact statement on possible locations by the end of 2013. The Senate’s defense bill, passed Tuesday, is silent on East Coast interceptors.
“Looking at options is one thing,” Levin told reporters Wednesday night. “Going beyond that could be a total waste of money, since there’s no military requirement. The military (leaders) have said so in testimony in front of our committees, that there is no military requirement. So the question is how much money do you want to spend on a plan which has got no requirement for it.”
Asked if there is any “wiggle room” with the House on allowing a scaled-back version of its East Coast site proposal, Levin replied: “If you want to call that wiggle room, you can call that wiggle room.”
House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) has touted the East Coast interceptor provision, crafted by HASC Strategic Forces Chairman Michael Turner (R-Ohio). HASC spokesman Claude Chafin declined to comment specifically on the East Coast interceptor provision in advance of the conference committee talks.
“Obviously, the chairman supports the House version of the (National Defense Authorization Act) NDAA–it is solid policy that passed with broad bi-partisan support,” Chafin said yesterday, when the House was not in session.
Republican supporters of the East Coast site point to Iran’s work to develop an ICBM, a threat Democratic skeptics say is overblown.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Martin Dempsey and Strategic Command chief Air Force Gen. Robert Kehler are among the Pentagon leaders who have said an East Coast missile defense site is not needed now. Still, Kehler said in a May 30 speech that the Pentagon was looking at varied national missile defense options–as part of a hedging strategy it is crafting–including a potential East Coast interceptor location.
The congressional conference committee on the defense authorization bill is scheduled to meet for the first time next Wednesday, after the House officially names its conferees next Tuesday. The Senate already named the entire SASC to the conference. The House and Senate negotiators have many clashing proposals to reconcile beyond the East Coast missile site–including provisions on military detainees, Pentagon biofuels development, and the Global Hawk Block 30 unmanned aircraft program. Levin predicted conferees will craft a final bill by Dec. 17.
HASC Democrats fought against the East Coast missile-defense language when the committee marked up the authorization bill on May 9, before the House passed it May 18. Yet an amendment from Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) to strike the entire provision was struck down by the panel’s Republican majority.
Conversely, Republicans who are in the minority in the Senate tried unsuccessfully to add language supporting an East Coast site to the defense authorization bill in their chamber last week.
SASC member Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) crafted an amendment, which she opted against offering on the Senate floor, that called for the Pentagon to evaluate three possible East Coast locations selected by the MDA director and prepare an environmental-impact statement for each of them.
She argued some analysis supports an additional missile-defense site in the eastern United States, including a recommendation from the National Research Council this year.
“I think this is deeply troubling. We should be developing that capacity to make sure our country is fully protected,” Ayotte said Nov. 29 on the Senate floor.
Detractors such as ASC Strategic Forces subcommittee Ranking Member Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) maintain the Iranian missile threat is not as imminent as Republicans portray and point to the Pentagon’s stated opposition to an East Coast site.