Congress’ scrutiny of President Barack Obama’s plans for cutting missile-defense funding will kick off in earnest today.
The House Armed Services Committee Strategic Forces subcommittee plans to question Pentagon officials about their proposed $9.7 billion missile-defense budget request for fiscal year 2013, which is down from $10.4 billion in the current FY ’12.
Republican pushback to the missile-defense cuts has been less vehement so far this year than it was in past years. Strategic Forces Chairman Michael Turner (R-Ohio), a harsh critic of Obama’s missile-defense and nuclear policies, has said he is “concerned” about the administration’s proposed missile-defense funding, but has not elaborated in depth.
Homeland missile defense could be a point of contention at today’s hearing, which will include Missile Defense Agency (MDA) Director Army Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly.
Strategic Forces subcommittee Vice Chairman Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) lamented to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta last month that the administration’s FY ’13 request for the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system is $250 million less than the FY ’12 funding level, which was a drop of $180 million from FY ’11. Boeing’s [BA] GMD system in Alaska and California is intended to protect the United States from long-range ballistic missiles.
“The budget cuts to these systems makes it very clear to me that the administration is willing to diminish…our only proven system that protects our homeland from long-range ballistic missiles,” Franks told Panetta at a Feb. 15 House Armed Services Committee (HASC) defense budget hearing.
Franks argued the Pentagon’s proposal to increase funding for several European Phased Adaptive Approach systems could, to the “casual observer,” “indicate that the administration has actually subordinated protecting the continental U.S. from ballistic missiles to that of protecting Europe.”
Franks argued the GMD funding decrease did not make sense, unless the administration “has assessed that the threat to our homeland from long-range ballistic missiles has declined such that GMD is no longer the critical system we all thought it was,” or unless “somehow the administration’s commitment to protecting the homeland has in some way declined.”
Panetta argued that even though the Pentagon is seeking less GMD funding, “the fact is that it meets our needs in terms of upgrading the missile system that we have.”
“Our missile system is in place,” he said. “It is ready to go. It is effective. We’re not going to reduce that effectiveness in any way here.”
The defense secretary said the “sole point here is to try to do what we can to, obviously, achieve some savings, but at the same time make sure that it doesn’t impact on our readiness.”
The MDA plans to have 30 Ground-Based Midcourse Defense Interceptor missiles (GBIs) in Alaska and California and additional interceptors for testing.
Pentagon officials have said the $9.7 billion missile-defense funding request for FY ’13, while less than in FY ’12, seeks to protect the investment in homeland missile defense–albeit with the reduced funding level–and the nascent ship-and-land based European system. The budget proposal would reduce funding for Lockheed Martin’s [LMT] Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors and scale back use of Raytheon’s [RTN] Sea-Based X-Band Radar to a limited support function.
The $9.7 billion missile-defense funding figure for FY ’13 includes funding beyond just the MDA.
O’Reilly will be joined at today’s HASC Strategic Forces subcommittee hearing by Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Portfolio Systems Acquisition David Ahern, Director of Operational Test and Evaluation Michael Gilmore, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and Missile Defense Policy Bradley Roberts.