Down to the Wire

It looks like 2010 will pass without a decision by the U.S. government on the Medium Extended Air Defense System. Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter's staff fired off an e-mail to German and Italian defense officials earlier this week, we're told, telling them Defense Secretary Robert Gates still had not made a final call on whether he was willing to ask Congress for an extra $600 million required for the program.

Gates is putting the finishing touches on the fiscal year 2012 program objective memorandum -- probably his last -- before it gets rolled into the administration's budget submission in early February. The MEADS decision now is expected some time in January, presumably in the earlier part of the month.

Carter had told the two partner nations in the trinational project a few months ago that a U.S. decision on the way ahead with MEADS would be made by the end of the year. All three countries would have to put up extra money to plug a funding shortfall of about $1 billion for the program's development phase. A new round of negotiations likely would be required either way, we're told.