WASHINGTON – The United States Senate today agreed to Sen. Jeff Sessions’s amendment to the 2007 defense bill that would increase missile defense spending by $45 million.
“Congressional support for this amendment will send a strong message to any nation, particularly North Korea or Iran, that we will be constantly ready, 24/7, to knock down and destroy any missile that would be directed at the United States,” Sessions said during floor debate of his amendment. “The prospect of a long-range ballistic missile launch from North Korea coupled with Iran’s continuing efforts to develop longer-range ballistic missiles demonstrates that the near-term threat to the U.S. homeland from ballistic missiles is real.”
As chairman of the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, Sessions had increased the authorization level for the $2.88 billion ground-based missile defense program – headquartered at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville – by $200 million.
Sessions’s amendment to the Fiscal Year 2007 defense authorization bill, approved by a 98 - 0 vote today, would add an additional $45 million to the program. The money would be used to increase testing and operations of the ground-based midcourse defense system.
The U.S. missile defense system is limited and still undergoing full testing. But it is being deployed and could be utilized now to intercept a long-range missile from North Korea in an emergency, according to Defense Department officials.
The current ground-based midcourse defense system, designed to protect the U.S. against long-range missiles, can operate in either a test or operational mode. However, when operating in the test mode, it requires a certain amount of time to switch to alert mode.
The $45 million included in Sessions’s amendment would permit the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) to accelerate the ability to conduct concurrent test and operations, thereby permitting the system to stay on alert through testing events. Although MDA had planned to fund this ability in Fiscal Year 2007, which begins Oct. 1, internal budget reductions to the missile defense program pushed those efforts into FY 2008.
The Senate later passed the FY 2007 defense authorization bill by a 96 - 0 vote.
