Sessions Worried About Missile Defense Cuts
By John M. Doyle
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) is concerned about the Obama administration’s plans to cut Missile Defense Agency spending by $1.4 billion, but he doesn’t see trimming the planned increase in Army and Marine Corps end strength as a tradeoff.
Sessions complained about planned cuts in missile defense at a National Defense University Foundation gathering on Capitol Hill. He noted that Defense Secretary Robert Gates was ending the Multiple Kill Vehicle program and drastically cutting the Airborne Laser program, while focusing on theater missile defense programs such as the Aegis shipborne system and the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system. That won’t be enough to protect the U.S. from long-range ballistic missile strikes, Sessions said.
But he wouldn’t trade the increase in ground forces end strength to pay for continuing some missile defense programs. “I supported the end strength increase,” said Sessions, senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee strategic forces subcommittee. But, he complained, “when you get nondefense discretionary spending increased at 9 percent on top of an $800 billion untargeted stimulus package, and can’t find more than 3 percent to maintain programs we’ve invested so much in, we’re not thinking wisely.”
Sessions isn’t the only Republican on Capitol Hill unwilling to trim Army and Marine Corps end strength to keep some programs funded. “End strength cannot be grown overnight,” Rep. John McHugh (R-N.Y.), senior Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said in an op-ed piece in Roll Call, a newspaper that covers Congress and politics. “It would be a grave error in judgment” to cut the size of the services, McHugh says.
Photo: DoD
