Obama administration slashes ballistic missile defense funds
In early January, the outgoing Bush administration awarded Boeing a $400 million contract for Ground-based Midcourse Defense interceptors; we wrote at the time that it was “probably the last large ballistic missile defense contract, as both Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress have shown little interest in the program”; we were right: the Obama administrations proposes deep cuts in funding for the more esoteric BMD technologies
Twenty-six years ago, in March 1983, President Ronald Reagan announced his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, aka Star Wars), aiming to make nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete” by erecting a robust defense against the ballistic missiles that carry them. A quarter of a century and nearly $150 billion later, the Obama administration is scaling back some of the more exotic ballistic missile defense projects amid thorny technological problems.
New Scientist reports that the new plan, announced by U.S. defense secretary Robert Gates last week, includes cuts in funding for an aircraft-mounted laser to heat and destroy missiles. It has been difficult to build a laser powerful enough for the job yet light enough to fly (see 1 December 2008 HS Daily Wire). All work would also cease on an advanced interceptor missile that releases multiple kill vehicles to stop a missile and any decoys it may have released. The idea is to have sufficient interceptors to destroy all the incoming objects, but critics point out that it would be easy to overwhelm simply by increasing the number of decoys.
Note that in early January, the Bush administration awarded Boeing a $400 million contract for Ground-based Midcourse Defense interceptors. We said at the time that it was probably the last large ballistic missile defense contract, as both Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress have shown little interest in the program (see 5 January 2009 HS Daily Wire).
Laura Grego of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Massachusetts, welcomes the cuts, but would like to see the missile defense program curtailed further. Given its severe technical problems, it is unlikely to be reliable, she says. “You don’t want a missile defense that gives you a false sense of security.” The plan awaits approval by Congress.
