{"id":1353,"date":"2013-04-15T11:09:17","date_gmt":"2013-04-15T17:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=1353"},"modified":"2013-04-15T11:12:28","modified_gmt":"2013-04-15T17:12:28","slug":"republicans-mangle-facts-to-attack-obamas-missile-defense-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/republicans-mangle-facts-to-attack-obamas-missile-defense-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"Republicans Mangle Facts to Attack Obama’s Missile Defense Budget"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Hayes Brown, Think Progress
\nclick here to read original article<\/a><\/p>\n

Republicans in Congress came out swinging against what they label as the Obama administration\u2019s cuts to military spending in its new budget, specifically citing the threat North Korea\u2019s missiles pose as a reason to preserve missile defense spending. A close read of the Pentagon\u2019s weapon procurement plans, however, show an\u00a0increase<\/em>\u00a0in spending to the missile defense programs most closely related to countering North Korea.<\/p>\n

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) made headlines on Thursday when he\u00a0inadvertently revealed<\/a>\u00a0a still secret Defense Intelligence Agency asessment of North Korea\u2019s nuclear weapons program. In one segment of the DIA\u2019s assessment, which was mistakenly labeled as unclassified in the copy provided to Congress, the Pentagon spy agency determined North Korea \u201chas nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles; however, the reliability will be low.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lamborn defended the disclosure after the meeting, as he was worried that the Obama administration\u00a0isn\u2019t doing enough<\/a>\u00a0to fund missile defense:<\/p>\n

\u201cMy whole goal in bringing this to light was to make sure we don\u2019t cut missile defense spending,\u201d the congressman said.\u00a0\u201cAt the worst possible time, the President\u2019s budget does exactly that.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Republicans like Rep. Howard \u201cBuck\u201d McKeon (R-CA), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA) also seized on the North Korean crisis to\u00a0attack<\/a>\u00a0the Obama administration\u2019s\u00a0proposed Fiscal Year 2014 budget<\/a>\u00a0on Friday \u2014 despite the fact that baseline spending\u00a0is actually up by $1 billion<\/a>. And while missile defense spending is cut\u00a0$550 million<\/a>\u00a0in the President\u2019s proposal, those cuts are primarily due to cancelling the Medium Extended Air Defense System, which the Pentagon has\u00a0said it doesn\u2019t want<\/a>. In fact, Lamborn\u2019s specific worry so far as it relates to North Korea is concerned is demonstrably false.<\/p>\n

According to the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller)\u2019s\u00a0FY 2014 Program Acquisition Costs by Weapon System<\/a>, requested spending for the programs related to protecting against North Korea has actually\u00a0increased<\/em>. The Department of Defense request for the AEGIS ballistic missile defense system was $1.51 billion, higher than the FY13 request of $1.38 billion. Likewise, funding for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system was bumped up to $850 million, an increase of $72.3 million dollars from the FY13 request. The well-known PATRIOT air and missile defense system was also slated for an increase in funding to finance an upgrade, at the rate of $609 million more than last year\u2019s request.<\/p>\n

Contrary to the Republican congressmen\u2019s hand-wringing, the Obama administration has done anything but cut missile defense spending related to North Korea since the crisis began earlier this year. Since March alone, the Pentagon has ordered not one, but two ships\u00a0equipped with missile defense technology<\/a>\u00a0to patrol the Korean peninsula\u2019s coasts. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel also announced the\u00a0revival of a battery<\/a>\u00a0of interceptors based in Alaska, as well as adding new sets to California, providing additional defense to the United States\u2019 West Coast, at the cost of around $1 billion. Deployment of the\u00a0THAAD<\/a>\u00a0system to Guam was ordered\u00a0ahead of schedule<\/a>as well, highlighting the gravity the Obama administration has given the situation.<\/p>\n

What remains up for debate, however, is just how reliable these various systems are against ballistic missiles. The THAAD program\u2019s\u00a0ability to target<\/a>\u00a0medium- and long-range missiles has been questioned and even the highly successful AEGIS system only boasts an\u00a082 percent<\/a>\u00a0success rate. In any event, the threat that\u00a0North Korea\u2019s missiles<\/a>pose to the mainland United States remains questionable at best, given the large number of failed tests its intercontinental ballistic missile program has seen.<\/p>\n

Likewise, DIA\u2019s assessment surrounding Pyongyang\u2019s state of nuclear technology remains the conclusion of just one intelligence agency and one with \u201cmoderate confidence\u201d in the finding at that. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Thursday\u00a0made that clear<\/a>\u00a0in a statement, saying \u201cthe statement read by [Lamborn] is not an Intelligence Community assessment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Hayes Brown, Think Progress click here to read original article Republicans in Congress came out swinging against what they label as the Obama administration\u2019s cuts to military spending in its new budget, specifically citing the threat North Korea\u2019s missiles pose as a reason to preserve missile defense spending. A close read of the Pentagon\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1359,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[165],"class_list":["post-1353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-missile-defense"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/decatur-aegis-300x2181.jpg?fit=300%2C218&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1353"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1360,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1353\/revisions\/1360"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}