Missile Defense Defense

Defense Secretary Robert Gates this week embarked on a barnstorming tour of several military bases across the country to further sell his multibillion-dollar changes to the fiscal year 2010 budget. During a press conference at Ft. Rucker, AL, on Tuesday, Gates defended his $1.4 billion cut to the Missile Defense Agency's proposed budget for fiscal year 2010, as well as the cancellation of the Multiple Kill Vehicle program and the second Airborne Laser aircraft.

The secretary also wants the president and the Congress to shift hundreds of millions of dollars to fund more theater missile defense systems, including Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense as well as Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense. When asked about it on Tuesday, Gates elaborated a bit on the BMD effort:

My view is that we kept in place and strengthened programs having to do with each aspect of missile defense. Terminal defense, we've added money for both THAAD and SM-3, Standard Missile-3, a significant amount of money to maximize production there. For mid-course, we will sustain the 30 interceptors in Alaska and California and, as I said, robustly fund continuing R&D so that those capabilities can continue to improve. And we have a number of programs, some of them classified, that deal with the boost phase.

I've kept alive the Airborne Laser. It's clear that that program doesn't make any sense to go to a full procurement, but we are keeping alive the first 747 research vehicle and we will continue to put money into that program because we think high energy or directed energy has some real potential for that.

He then attempted to assuage the fears of missile defense proponents:

So I think we -- for those who think we've slashed missile defense and so on, I think we have kept robustly funded each of the three elements of missile defense that makes sense. I would say that we have shifted emphasis perhaps somewhat in keeping the ground-based interceptor program where it is with additional funds for research and development, but we have put substantial funds into the terminal phase, into THAAD and SM-3, in no small part because they provide significant additional protection for our troops in the theater and that are deployed, the same thing with the six destroyers that we will convert to having an Aegis missile defense capability.

So anybody who thinks that we're not taking missile defense seriously, that we do not take seriously the North Korean launch and what North Korean capabilities are developing, I think has not looked carefully enough at the program.