Fenced Off

Lawmakers last week included language in the fiscal year 2010 defense authorization bill that could turn out to be a technical obstacle to realizing Bush-era basing plans for a European missile defense system in the near term.

In a statement, House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee Chairwoman Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) said her committee had contributed a provision to the bill that would "make permanent" an existing statutory requirement that interceptors intended for the European site first be considered operationally effective before moving ahead with the plan.

The FY-09 National Defense Authorization Act already contains language to that effect.

Section 233 of the act prohibits the Pentagon from using FY-09 money for acquisitions related to the European site, or the deployment of operational missiles there, until the defense secretary, with advice from the director of operational test an evaluation, certifies the interceptors as having a "high probability of working in an operationally effective manner."

The Missile Defense Agency has yet to begin test flights of the interceptors eyed for the European system.

Meanwhile, the No. 1 Republican on Tauscher's panel, Michael Turner (D-OH), has introduced legislation that would guarantee MDA $500 million over fiscal years 2011 and 2012 to do exactly what the NDAA language seeks to forbid.

The "NATO First Act" would enable MDA to spend the money on "research, development, test, and evaluation, procurement, site activation, construction, preparation of, equipment for, or deployment of" the envisioned sites in Poland and the Czech Republic.