White House has asked the Pentagon to cut nearly $2 billion from missile defense

[bigtree]

Fri Feb 13, 2009

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House has asked the Pentagon to cut nearly $2 billion, or up to roughly 20 percent, from missile defense in its fiscal 2010 budget, a prominent advocate of the costliest U.S. weapons development effort said on Friday.

Boeing Co's Airborne Laser, a modified 747 being designed to zap ballistic missiles moments after liftoff, was in "very serious jeopardy of being taken out," said Riki Ellison, head of the industry-supported Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance.

Ellison said also vulnerable to cuts were Lockheed Martin Corp's Multiple Kill Vehicle and the Space-Based Surveillance and Tracking System being developed by Northrop Grumman Corp and Raytheon Co.

Other cuts could slow the expansion of the Boeing-managed long-range missile defense, which includes interceptors in underground silos in Alaska and California.

Ellison, citing lawmakers and officials involved in the matter, said the White House Office of Management and Budget had pushed to cut $1.9 billion from the emerging shield put in place by former President George W. Bush.

Last year, Congress provided about $9.4 billion for the layered defense being built by the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency.

report: http://uk.reuters.com/article/burningIssues/idUKTRE51C74720090213?sp=true


. . . nice to see this, but I'm sorry to see that they just can't bring themselves to advocate an end the entire Reagan-era boondoggle that Rumsfeld revived before becoming Bush's Defense chief.

[CrispyQ]

1. Our military budget is out of control.

Cut the Military Budget
by Barney Frank

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090302/frank/print

snip...

snip...

I am a great believer in freedom of expression and am proud of those times when I have been one of a few members of Congress to oppose censorship. I still hold close to an absolutist position, but I have been tempted recently to make an exception, not by banning speech but by requiring it. I would be very happy if there was some way to make it a misdemeanor for people to talk about reducing the budget deficit without including a recommendation that we substantially cut military spending.

Sadly, self-described centrist and even liberal organizations often talk about the need to curtail deficits by cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs that have a benign social purpose, but they fail to talk about one area where substantial budget reductions would have the doubly beneficial effect of cutting the deficit and diminishing expenditures that often do more harm than good. Obviously people should be concerned about the $700 billion Congress voted for this past fall to deal with the credit crisis. But even if none of that money were to be paid back--and most of it will be--it would involve a smaller drain on taxpayer dollars than the Iraq War will have cost us by the time it is concluded, and it is roughly equivalent to the $651 billion we will spend on all defense in this fiscal year.

When I am challenged by people--not all of them conservative--who tell me that they agree, for example, that we should enact comprehensive universal healthcare but wonder how to pay for it, my answer is that I do not know immediately where to get the funding but I know whom I should ask. I was in Congress on September 10, 2001, and I know there was no money in the budget at that time for a war in Iraq. So my answer is that I will go to the people who found the money for that war and ask them if they could find some for healthcare.

[surrealAmerican]

2. It's a small step in the right direction.

I guess that's the best we can hope for right now.

[bigtree]

4. it's encouraging

The money is what drives the entire initiative.

[carnie_sf]

3. We should cut defense

by 50 % right now. That would pay for almost half of the stimulus bill immediately.

[hack89]

5. That's a lot of unemployed people. nt

[bigtree]

8. we need to base the defense budget on the actual need or 'threat'

. . . not on some Congress person's district or state's employment needs.

Deciding where to appropriate some of the defense funds is certainly appropriate, but contract considerations should be made on merit and with competitive bids.

[DCKit]

12. Building the "Smart Grid" to cut our energy use and coal burning ways...

would be right up their alley.

These arguments about repurposing these jobs into a green economy, or an economy simply based on plowshares (positive, recurring returns) instead of swords (no return), are getting tiresome.

We can do better, we need to do better, we have to do better.

[hack89]

14. But the companies have to make money doing those things

for it to be viable. I can see it happening with massive subsidies - can't see it magically happening simply by cutting the defense budget and doing nothing else.

[TBF]

13. If they are skilled enough to build missile defense, we can have them

build more useful things. Work on alternative energy r&d, space program, etc... No reason to keep giving a blank check to the DOD.

[shanti]

6. Asked??

:eyes: who's in charge?!

[bigtree]

7. that's the same thing here

. . . as ordered.

[malaise]

9. Yes we can

GObama!!

[creeksneakers2]

10. That's a good start

There's no logical reason to have any missile defense at all though.

It sounds like Obama will also hinder the science-fiction-style zap-anything-on-the-planet-in-a-second project that the military plans to spend hundreds of billions on for decades to come. Its all being developed for threats that don't even exist.

They can get rid of all of it. Nobody is going to attack us. Nobody can and nobody wants to.

[Dappleganger]

11. It's time to take back carte blanche from the military.