Remember Reagan's Star War that helped to bankrupt Russia? Was he crazy?
Clinton seeks $7 bil for national missile
defense
05:46 p.m Jan 07, 1999 Eastern
By Charles Aldinger
WASHINGTON - Bowing to pressure from
Republicans in Congress, the Defence Department
announced on Thursday that President Bill Clinton
will propose spending $7 billion over the next six
years to build a U.S. national missile defence.
''It would protect the whole United States'' from
accidental or limited nuclear attack if a decision is
made to deploy such a system, Pentagon spokesman
Ken Bacon told reporters.
But he stressed that the programme would be far less
ambitious than a ''Star Wars'' defence proposed by
former President Ronald Reagan more than a decade
ago to protect American cities from massive Cold
War nuclear attack.
Bacon said the spending plan would be sent to
Congress next month as part of Clinton's fiscal year
2000 defence budget and that any decision to deploy
such a programme early in the next century would not
come until at least next year.
''No decision about deployment (of a national missile
defence) has been made. However, there will be
money included in the future-year (2000) defence
plan, approximately $7 billion, to give us the option of
moving toward deployment should that decision be
made,'' Bacon told reporters.
The spokesman was questioned about a report in
Thursday's New York Times that the money would
be proposed despite major technical problems in the
U.S. military's current efforts to simply protect troops
and bases from short- and medium-range ballistic
missile attack.
The military is working on both a theatre and a
national missile defence, but hitting missiles in flight -
compared to striking ''a bullet with a bullet'' - has
proved extremely difficult.
''Our basic programme is on track, which is to work
to develop a national missile defence system that has
the capability of providing defence against a relatively
small attack,'' Bacon said.
Unlike Reagan's ambitious Star Wars proposal, he
said, such a defence would protect American cities
against an accidental firing by another major nuclear
power or an intentional strike by a rogue state.
He stressed that no decision would be made until at
least 2000 on whether such a missile defence could
or should be deployed by 2003.
Congressional Republicans, noting that a growing
number of countries are developing both nuclear
capability and the ability to deliver such a weapon on
a missile, are pressing for deployment of not only
defences against ''tactical'' limited-range missiles, but
also against a long-range attack on America.
The Pentagon has spent more than $50 billion in the
past decade and concentrated -- with little success --
on developing anti-missile systems that might protect
U.S. troops and specific targets from attack.
That effort has been burdened by technological and
other problems, including five successive test failures
of the proposed theatre high-altitude missile defence
system (THAAD).
The budding national missile defence effort, already
being integrated by Boeing Co., faces a key test in
June when a dummy missile is to be fired from
Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. An
interceptor missile will be fired from Kwajalein Atoll
in the Marshall Islands in an attempt to strike the
dummy missile.
Clinton announced recently that he will seek an
additional $12 billion in overall U.S. defence spending
for 2000 as part of a $110 billion boost for the
Pentagon between then and 2005.
It would be the first major increase in U.S. defence
spending in more than a decade.
U.S. military chiefs have warned that Pentagon
budget cuts since the end of the Cold War have badly
compromised force readiness, adding that necessary
new weapons for the 21st century could not be built
without more money.
Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited. A |
