The United States should cut funding for the Ground-based Missile Defense program that aims to take down long-range incoming enemy missiles, focusing instead of systems that counter short- and medium-range enemy weapons, a powerful and prominent congressional leader argued.
Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), who chairs the House Armed Services Committee strategic forces subcommittee, stated her position in a letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
Her letter appeared as the Obama administration is putting finishing touches on its federal government budget proposal for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2010, which will fund missile defense and other programs.
Tauscher argued that the United States faces a far more prevalent threat from short- and medium-range enemy missiles than it does from long-range missiles, and therefore more funds should be directed to programs developing defenses against the latter.
The Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) program led by The Boeing Co. [BA] currently is the only U.S. system capable of countering incoming long- range or intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Cuts to programs effective against long-range threats may need to be reduced, she wrote.
Aside from the GMD program, the United States in future years may gain a defense against long-range threats from the Airborne Laser system, also by Boeing, which still is in development.
Rather than focus on those programs, she urged more funding for interceptors such as the Standard Missile-3 (Raytheon Co. [RTN]) that pairs with the sea-based Aegis weapon control system (Lockheed Martin Corp. [LMT]), which she said should be redeveloped as a land-based defense, and interceptors in the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, also by Lockheed.
Those systems already have been developed and proven, she stated.