Still-Developing Missile Defense Programs May Be Cut In Half, Franks Cautions
Such Deep Cuts Would Echo Attempts To Eviscerate ABL, KEI, EMD Programs In Budgets; Hearing Set For Wednesday
As President Obama continues preparing his first federal budget, and some Democrats in Congress search for programs to reduce, outlays for U.S. ballistic missile defense may be cut deeply, according to Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC).
Franks spoke in a Defense Daily/Access Intelligence Webinar hosted by Dave Ahearn, senior editor of Space & Missile Defense Report, sister publication of Defense Daily.
“I now think that’s going to be in the neighborhood of $3 billion, is what we’re looking at as far as the cuts. And I’m obviously very concerned about that,” said Franks, who is co-chairman of the Congressional Missile Defense Caucus.
But, he added, he hopes that Obama will move away from such a deep, one-third cut in a $9.6 billion multi-layered missile defense effort, once the president is briefed on the growing missile threat to the United States and its allies posed by rogue nations wielding increasingly long-range missiles.
Getting into detail on where those cuts will fall, Franks said that funding for missile defense systems still in development might be slashed roughly 50 percent, while more advanced or operational systems would fare far better.
“Far-term projects, far-term technologies — that bottom line could be cut in half,” Franks said.
Two years ago, the HASC strategic forces subcommittee, on which Franks sits, was led, then as now, by Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), who called for taking authorizations from programs still in development and shifting them to missile defense systems already operational, or at least more advanced.
Funding for the Airborne Laser (ABL), a plane with a laser that can kill enemy missiles shortly after they launch, was cut from a requested $548 million to $148 million in the subcommittee. Eventually, however, the ABL received more than $500 million when the budget emerged from Congress. The Kinetic Energy Interceptor also was reduced greatly, and Congress imposed a ban on using any funds for building the European Missile Defense System.
More funds were injected into the sea-based missile defense system involving the Aegis weapon control system and the Standard Missile interceptors.
According to Franks, a similar budget slashing may await many missile defense programs in upcoming congressional authorization and appropriation work.
On Wednesday, Tauscher will convene a subcommittee hearing on the missile defense programs, with two panels of witnesses. The first panel will include Army Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly, the newly-installed Missile Defense Agency director, Charles E. McQueary, director of operational test and evaluation, and Army Maj. Gen. Roger Nadeau, commanding general of the Army test and evaluation command.
After they have finished testifying, the subcommittee will hear from another panel, including a critic of some missile defense programs, Philip E. Coyle, a former director of test and evaluation. For example, Coyle previously testified before the subcommittee that the Airborne Laser missile defense system wouldn’t work if an enemy missile were painted white, because the white paint would reflect the laser light. In fact, in a test, a laser blasted a large hole in a missile body painted white. (For a picture of the destroyed missile body and accompanying story, please see Space & Missile Defense Report, Monday, April 21, 2008.)
Also testifying at the hearing Wednesday will be Paul L. Francis with the Government Accountability Office, and Daniel C. Mitchell, chief engineer for ballistic missile defense with the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University.
Their comments will come as President Obama begins laying out the first outlines of his federal budget plans for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2010. Obama may make some general comments about spending in a televised address to Congress tomorrow night that will be similar to a State of the Union address. Then, on Thursday, his administration will provide some general information in some pre-budget documents. The detailed budget, with hundreds of pages filled with line-item specific numbers, won’t be released for weeks, perhaps in April.
If funding for missile shields still in development are halved, that would be “a very serious cut,” Franks said, and it would represent “a danger to the nation” as work is slowed or stopped on programs to erect shields against burgeoning enemy missile threats.
He noted that those more-advanced or operational systems just a few years ago were themselves in development.
And at that time, intelligence estimates predicted that North Korea wouldn’t pose a missile threat for years. “We considered that a far-term threat,” he recalled.
But the upgraded Aegis system able to kill enemy missiles was developed, in the face of skepticism that a bullet could hit a bullet, and ultimately the Aegis program “a demonstration to the world that we were capable of doing things that only a few years ago were thought impossible.”
More recently, he noted, a modified Aegis/Standard Missile system was employed to knock down an out-of-control U.S. intelligence satellite.
Franks expressed incredulity that some arguments for cutting missile defense programs rest on the complaint that there aren’t enough target missiles for testing programs.
He also expressed grave concern over potential cuts in the European Missile Defense (EMD) program, which would use a two-stage version of the three-stage interceptor in the existing Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system emplaced in Alaska and California.
EMD would be a shield against missiles fired from Middle Eastern nations such as Iran, a nation that has put a satellite into orbit, while also producing nuclear materials which Western leaders fear will be used to construct nuclear weapons that might be mounted on long-range missiles.
Franks fears that is just where Iran is headed, and also voiced concern that once Iran develops an atomic bomb, nuclear weapons will be proliferated to terrorist groups.
“The only thing really that we have of [defensive systems] to dissuade Iran, other than our own nuclear arsenal, is the European site,” he said.
The EMD would cause Iranian leaders to lose interest in developing nuclear-tipped missiles, because they could be defeated by the EMD, Franks noted.
“It devalues their program,” Franks said, while adding a key qualification: EMD will do that if the EMD installation of a radar in the Czech Republic and interceptors in ground silos in Poland can be completed in a timely way.
Once EMD is installed, then “Iran has less ability to threaten Europe, to threaten our forward-deployed troops, or certainly to threaten the United States” with a nuclear- tipped ICBM.
Aside from hastening construction of the EMD, Franks also urged preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
“A nuclear arsenal in their hands would be an unthinkable situation,” he said.
Military analysts have speculated that Israel or the United States would have difficulty using air strikes to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities, because they are buried deep underground.
While some observers see Iranian nuclear ambitions as just one more nation seeking to join the nuclear club, Franks said Iran is led by irrational people who are bent on destroying Israel.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said Israel should be wiped from the map, and that Israel soon shall cease to exist. He also has said he envisions a world without the United States.
Iran must be barred from practicing nuclear blackmail and holding Europe at risk of being struck by atomic bombs, and “the European site is vital in that regard,” Franks said.
Aside from Obama being poised to cut missile defense funding, some in Congress are prepared to use a knife on those programs.
Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he would “love to see missile defense cuts,” noted Mackenzie Eaglen, senior policy analyst with The Heritage Foundation and a presenter in the Webinar.
Missile defense programs, and the Missile Defense Agency, constitute just one facet of an immense military funding crisis, Franks said, explaining that in Pentagon weapons procurement programs generally, there is a $100 billion shortfall between projected costs and planned funding, and “that’s a big deal.”
He, Eaglen and Dan Goure, vice president of The Lexington Institute, a think tank near the Pentagon focusing on defense and other issues, detailed, program by program, what they expect in defense funding during the Obama years.
(Please see separate, full story in this issue.)