It’s about to get hot in Washington, D.C. — and that’s not just
because we’re getting closer to the start of pool season. With
lawmakers returning from their Easter break to tackle the FY 2013
budget, the fight over our nation’s fiscal future is entering the
next round.
In a departure from previous years, defense spending — an area
that has in the past largely escaped fiscal scrutiny — has entered
the national discourse. Against the backdrop of unprecedented and
unsustainable government spending levels, fiscal responsibility
warrants that no area of the budget should be off limits; even more
so, as it is a well-documented fact that the Department of Defense
(DoD), whose budget has dramatically increased since 1998, is
plagued with a history of cost overruns and wasteful spending.
Due to the critical nature of DoD’s mission and the parochial
nature of defense spending, however, striking the precarious
balance between appropriate levels of service and fiscal prudence
in the realm of defense is a particularly delicate matter. Recent
international developments — among them increased hostility on the
part of Iran, which
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta states may be only two or
three years away from nuclear action against the U.S. — make
navigating these waters an even more delicate task.
As a recent
Rasmussen poll shows, a majority of Americans believe that a
missile attack on the U.S. is likely to occur in the near future,
and favor the installation of a U.S. anti-missile defense system,
which certainly carries a hefty price tag.
However, action taken by Congress last year shows that even in
the defense budget, finding compromise without compromising is
possible — or, as Mark Pfeifle, former Deputy National Security
Advisor for Communications and Global Outreach,
phrased it: “if recent events serve as a blueprint, Congress
has some guidance in how it can achieve the necessary spending cuts
without sacrificing the missile shield that is needed to protect
our national security.”
At present, our regional missile defenses center on the Aegis
weapons system, a comprehensive ship-based platform operated by the
U.S. Navy. It is responsible for tracking, intercepting, and
destroying targets ranging from aircraft to ships and ballistic and
cruise missiles. As part of a U.S. and NATO-supported “Phased
Adaptive Approach,” the Aegis system currently relies on the
Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) version “Block IA.”
This missile constitutes the first of four planned phases of
increasingly complex missile development, the overall conclusion of
which will extend to protecting the U.S. homeland into the 2020s.
While stage three of the program, centered on a variant called SM-3
Block IIA, is a non-controversial co-development effort between the
U.S. and Japan to be completed by 2018, a funding controversy is
brewing over the other two variants: the SM-3 Block IB, which is on
track for deployment in 2015, and the SM-3 Block IIB, which at this
point is not even fully conceptualized, and would by no means be
operational before 2020.
Conscious of the evolving nature of external threats —
including Iran’s saber-rattling, which may put our defenses to the
test sooner than anyone would hope — while at the same time
acknowledging our dire fiscal straits, Congress last year decided
that we need to focus on first things first, and struck funding for
the development of the futuristic SM-3 Block IIB.
Instead, it applied those funds towards the production of the
SM-3 Block IB, a move supported by
military experts and
fiscal watchdogs alike — for good reasons. This next SM-3
variant builds on the successful technology of Block IA, which has
been on time and on budget, while outperforming expectations on
various occasions. Block IA has a proven track record to take out
ballistic missiles, including intermediate range missiles. With
increased capabilities, including better target discrimination,
experts say the SM-3 Block IB will even be able to counter both
long-range missiles and intercontinental ballistic missiles by 2015
— a welcome and timely development Americans overwhelming
support.
Unfortunately, the President’s FY 2013 budget ignores the wishes
of Congress and the American people and reinstates funding for the
“PowerPoint” SM-3 Block IIB missile program, while slashing
resources for the completion of the next logical phase in our
missile defense system — the Block IB missile.
As the budget fight heats up, Congress should correct this
mistake. Funding experimental projects rather than focusing limited
fiscal resources on proven technologies to counter near-term
threats is not only akin to putting the cart before the proverbial
horse — it is a potentially dangerous gamble we as taxpayers, and
as a nation, cannot afford to take.
