A lawmaker behind the push for a missile defense site on the U.S. East Coast predicted yesterday congressional opposition will die down as more nations seek to build up missile stockpiles.
Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio) told a Capitol Hill crowd yesterday that “a number of people across the aisle” have told him in confidence that they support the proposal he put in the House-passed defense authorization bill to plan for ground-based interceptors (GBIs) on the eastern seaboard.
“I believe that those who probably oppose it will ultimately be those who are going to have to be voting to build one,” Turner, chairman of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee, said at a speech sponsored by the Air Force Association and National Defense University.
The House-passed authorization legislation for fiscal year 2013 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. The Democrat-controlled Senate Armed Services Committee’s (SASC) version of the same bill does not include any such provision, and no funding for one is in the House Appropriations Committee’s FY ’13 defense appropriations bill. Democrats in the House and Senate have decried the proposal to build the site, which Pentagon officials have said publicly is not needed.
Yet Turner said he believes more congressional backing exists than is evident, and that support will grow.
“Missile technology is proliferating,” he said. “Countries are spending massive amounts of dollars trying to seek and obtain not only missile technology but missile inventory. So it’s always amazing to me when there are people who say, ‘Well, you know, no one’s ever going to use these things.’ Because there is so much effort by other countries to build them, invest in them, and acquire them.”
Asked about testing failures with the current Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system in Alaska and California, Turner noted only one of the two types of interceptors there has encountered problems.
“We don’t specify in our bill what system would go there” on the East Coast, Turner said. “What we’ve specified is is that we need one and we need one there.”
Strategic Command chief Air Force Gen. Robert Kehler said in a speech last month 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. However, Pentagon spokesman Capt. John Kirby quickly reminded reporters both Kehler and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Martin Dempsey have said they don’t believe an East Coast missile defense site is needed now.
The SASC’s report on its FY ’13 defense authorization bill, which it filed this week in the Senate, notes that the Pentagon is evaluating the East Coast location.
“The (Defense) Department is evaluating the evolving threat (of possible intercontinental-ballistic missiles launched by North Korea or Iran) and considering (additional) potential hedging options, such as the advisability, feasibility, and affordability of deploying additional GBIs in the future, either in Alaska or possibly on the East Coast,” the SASC report says. “The committee recommends a provision that would require the Department to report on…homeland defense activities.”