As the Pentagon casts a wary eye on a House proposal for a new missile-defense site on the U.S. East Coast, lawmakers are giving the plan mixed reviews.
The version of the fiscal year 2013 defense authorization bill the Republican-controlled House passed May 18 authorizes $100 million for planning an East Coast site after the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) crafts a proposal for it, and also requires the Pentagon to produce an environmental-impact statement on possible locations.
Yet Congress is far from unified behind implanting missile interceptors along the eastern seaboard, which would complement those already in California and Alaska.
The Democrat-led Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), which will negotiate a final Pentagon policy-setting authorization bill with the House, does not call for such a site. Panel Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) has said it is not needed, and Ranking Member John McCain (R-Ariz.) has expressed skepticism about it.
Republican leaders of the budget-setting House Appropriations Committee (HAC) also did not include any funding for planning East Coast interceptors in the FY ’13 defense appropriations bill they approved May 17.
HAC Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) said yesterday he has not looked into the East Coast site proposal.
“It’s something I have to take a look…if the House-passed (defense authorization) bill becomes law,” he told Defense Daily.
Rogers, whose panel writes the appropriations bill that is intended to set Pentagon funding but not policy, noted Congress is “nowhere near the end of the appropriations process” for FY ’13 budget bills including the Pentagon’s. The House has not taken up the HAC’s bill and the Senate Appropriations Committee has not yet crafted its version of the defense appropriations bill for FY ’13, which starts Oct. 1. Rogers, thus, said appropriators could in theory add funding for planning an East Coast site later this year after seeing if the authorization for it is in the final FY ’13 defense authorization bill.
“I think the authorization would have to come first on it,” Rogers said.
The White House, notably, has threatened to veto the House-passed authorization bill, and cited the East Coast missile site provision among its concerns (Defense Daily, May 16).
Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), the ranking member of the HAC’s Defense subcommittee (HAC-D), reserved judgment on the eastern missile site proposal yesterday.
“I want to see the justification before I comment on it; I haven’t seen that yet,” Dicks told reporters. He said the matter was not discussed when the HAC-D crafted its version of the defense appropriations bill.
The East Coast site was pushed by HASC Strategic Forces subcommittee Chairman Michael Turner (R-Ohio) and supported strongly by HASC Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) (Defense Daily, March 27).
Yet not all HASC Republicans have rallied behind it.
Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.), a senior committee member, said yesterday he doesn’t think East Coast interceptors would deflect weapons from Iran. He argued the nation, if and when it has the capability, would not launch a weapon from its soil toward the United States.
“They know we would detect it, they know that within 30 minutes they would be vaporized,” Bartlett told Defense Daily. “They are not suicidal.”
He added: “I don’t know the geometry, but I doubt that a single missile site could protect the whole coast.” Thus, he said positioning Navy Aegis cruisers near the U.S. East Coast might provide better protection from any incoming missiles Iran could potentially launch from locations other than its own soil.
Strategic Command chief Air Force Gen. Robert Kehler said in a speech Wednesday the Pentagon is looking at varied national missile defense options–as part of a hedging strategy it is crafting–including a potential East Coast interceptor location.
Pentagon spokesman Capt. John Kirby told reporters yesterday military officials “always look very seriously at the broad scope of our missile-defense capabilities and how to make them more robust and to improve them,” and the East Coast site is “certainly it’s something that’s in consideration.”
Yet he noted both Kehler and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Martin Dempsey have said they “don’t believe that we need that kind of a capability right now.”
“It’s not programmed for it in the budget we just submitted back in February,” Kirby said. “We don’t believe we need it right now. But, just as a matter of course, we constantly look at ways to improve our capabilities, particularly in a field as dynamic and technologically challenging as missile defense.”
He added that the Pentagon “will follow the law.” The East Coast location will only be in the final defense authorization bill if the Senate and President Barack Obama allow it.