More GMD Money?

During a June 11 Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing on the Missile Defense Agency's fiscal year 2015 budget request, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) asked MDA Director Vice Adm. James Syring about the agency's planned Ground-based Midcourse Defense intercept test scheduled for this month:

MURKOWSKI: The recommendation for the GMD testing -- you're coming out of the various committees here in the Senate -- have recommended additional funding for maintenance and reliability upgrades that are not included in your FY '15 budget request. It appears, looking at what these -- what the various committees have advanced that the amount needed to address the maintenance and the reliability concerns is in the range of $30 [million] to $50 million.

Based on your assessment of what needs to happen with the maintenance and the reliability requirements, how much additional funding do you actually think you need in the FY '15 to make sure that we are to that point, that we can ascertain that we have what we need for the maintenance and reliability?

SYRING: I would -- I would answer it in two ways, ma'am. Inwardly, within the agency, there's amounts that can be made available through below-threshold reprogramming in FY '14, and we're certainly actively pursuing that within my authority.

The other part would be to work through the department on a request above the budget request and to gain acceptance and really concurrence on the needed and necessary improvements in the program. And I'm working that today with the department.

MURKOWSKI: OK, well, Mr. Chairman, I've requested an additional $250 million in the appropriations request that I had advanced for additional GMD upgrades. You know, certainly that is higher than we're talking about here, and I recognize, given the budget environment -- certainly willing to work to scale that back, but I do think that it is necessary to work to maintain the reliability of this system. So as we look to determine what that right number is, I would hope that we would have a good discussion on that.

Murkowski's recommendation came in a May 2 letter to subcommittee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Ranking Member Thad Cochran (R-MS), where she wrote:

I fully support robust funding for Missile Defense Agency Ground-based Midcourse Defense and continued improvement of the exoatmospheric kill vehicle. In this age of global instability and emergence of numerous potential adversaries, strong, reliable homeland missile defense is an absolutely critical element of deterrence to aggressors and assurance for American citizens.