the Heritage Foundation‘s Baker Spring and Peter Brookes led a forum on ballistic missile defense this afternoon. Spring has just authored a piece on the competing missile defense bills being considered in the House and Senate. His assessment:
Spring suggests that a great deal of progress has been made on missile defense since the 1980s–and not just in terms of improved technology and better prospects for success. One important development is that Democrats no longer reflexively oppose ballistic missile defense–a program which has long been perceived as a Republican effort. Instead, they show some support for it, but not enough to lead on deployment of an effective system, in fact, the support they give the program is just barely enough to conceal their reflexive opposition. That tepid support has led to authorization measures that look good, but contain serious defects, including a potentially fatal blow to Boeing’s Airborne Laser program that masquerades as a mere cutback and another funding cut that was covered here several weeks ago and which would allow for the deployment of sophisticated new radars to Eastern Europe but would block deployment of the actual interceptor missiles–Congress will let the Missile Defense Agency track missiles, it just doesn’t seem too keen on shooting them down. The general tone of today’s forum: to ensure that the U.S., its allies, and its interests are safe from missile attack by rogue states, Congress needs to come forward with legislation better than what’s on the table right now.
