Hawkish lawmakers who want more information on President Barack Obama’s nascent European missile defense setup are blocking an Army budgeting request as a bargaining ploy.

House Armed Services Committee Strategic Forces subcommittee Chairman Michael Turner (R-Ohio) lamented to Pentagon officials recently that he and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) have not received information they requested from the Pentagon on Obama’s ship-and-land-based European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA) to missile defense.

Turner noted, at a missile-defense hearing of his subcommittee, that the Government Accountability Office has said “the limited visibility into the costs and schedule for EPAA…reflect the oversight challenges with the acquisition of missile defense capabilities that we have previously reported.”

He questioned the Obama administration’s decision to “continue with the EPAA without delay” while proposing cuts to national missile defense.

As Turner waits for the EPAA data, he, with the support of committee Republicans, has placed a hold on an unrelated request from the Army to reprogram funds within its coffers, according to Strategic Forces subcommittee Ranking Member Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.).

This bargaining move is not sitting well with her.

“While I agree that the cost information is important and I understand that Chairman Turner and Sen. Sessions are waiting for a broader response to their request…I’m concerned that prolonging this hold will further withhold approval of the Army’s intent to build barracks for our United States soldiers in Turkey,” Sanchez said.

She maintained the House Armed Services Committee could address Turner and Sessions’ concerns in the fiscal year 2013 defense authorization bill it will craft this spring.

Yet Turner argued he needs the data he is seeking, from the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) office, in the near future.

He and Sessions, who is the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee, asked acting Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall for EPAA military construction prices and estimates for the lifecycle costs of the architecture.

They were told last month the Pentagon will develop a cost assessment for them. Turner said recently he does not want to wait until July for the data.

“We need these costs because if we look ahead to the budget, we have to understand how we’re helping the administration deliver on what it says it is the No. 1 priority, which is the defense of the homeland,” he said.

“I’m not sure how we’re…going about doing that in this budget,” he added.

He complained that the Pentagon’s FY ’13 budget request seeks $900 million for the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) national missile defense system, which is roughly $260 million less than in FY ’12, when GMD funding was also reduced from the previous year. He further noted the GMD system has had two test failures, forthcoming tests have been delayed, and the Pentagon wants to scale back use of Raytheon’s [RTN] Sea-Based X-Band Radar to a limited support function.

The Pentagon is almost ready to brief lawmakers on a so-called hedging strategy for homeland missile defense.

“I trust that this strategy will answer this committee’s concern, but I note that there is no money in the budget request to do anything approximating a real hedge,” Turner argued. He noted the request does not include funds to deploy additional ground-based interceptors beyond the test articles being purchased this year, nor does it have monies for digging more missile interceptor silos in Alaska or California, and calls for reducing the number of silos now being maintained.

“Now, I don’t think we should have to choose between regional missile defense and national missile defense, but I don’t think it’s a good idea, as apparently the president does, to gut our GMD system or for the president to cut his own missile defense budget by $3.2 billion over the next several years or to underfund missile defense by $2 billion this year alone based on the level of funding that the Bush administration had projected that we would need to fund missile defense,” Turner argued.