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MDA’s track record justifies continued investment

The Missile Defense Agency’s $8.9 billion budget request for 2008 is $500 million less than 2007, the first decline since the initial Bush administration budget in 2002. Within a defense budget that has increased 9.3 percent over last year — from $440 billion to $481 billion — the MDA is one of the few agencies to have its funding reduced.

The 2007 budget priorities are organized into three strategic and, for the most part, sequential objectives: to “maintain and sustain an initial capability,” “close the gaps and improve this [initial] capability” and “develop options for the future.”

Deployment of missile defense assets in significant numbers is beginning. In 2006, five ground-based interceptors were placed in Alaska and California for a total of 15, with plans for up to 24 in 2007 and 30 by the end of 2008. At sea, additional Aegis ships and interceptors were added, with plans calling for 40 SM-3 interceptors deployed aboard 16 Aegis ships.

Improvements to the command, control, battle management and communications system are being fielded, as well as significant additional radar and communications assets.

Testing is a subject of considerable concern among friends and foes of missile defense. After restructuring its test program in 2005, the MDA had an impressive 13-for-14 record of successful flight tests in 2006. These tests included an Aegis SM-3 intercept of a separating warhead; a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense missile intercept of a unitary target; and, for the first time, an intercept of a threat-representative target with an operational ground-based interceptor using data from an operational early-warning radar along a likely threat trajectory.

In 2007, plans call for four Aegis flight tests, four THAAD flight tests, and tests of the Patriot and Israeli Arrow systems. The MDA has achieved 24 hit-to-kill intercepts since 2001.

Except for two years of Democratic control of the Senate — 2001-2002 — this is the first year the Bush administration has submitted a missile defense budget to a Congress controlled by Democrats. Close congressional scrutiny is anticipated.

The 2008 MDA budget reflects a commitment to consolidating gains, accelerating the delivery of capabilities that have progressed well, slowing down slightly those programs seen as far-term and maintaining options in the face of potential development setbacks and advances in the threat.

The greatest danger is that the budget increasingly strains the broader mission to develop a program balanced between current and future threats. Future spending is directed toward near-term activity.

In the end, many analysts predict that overall congressional reductions could amount to more than $1 billion. To prevent or minimize these cuts, the MDA will need to emphasize:

• Its improved testing record using increasingly realistic tests.

• Its demonstrated capabilities, including the ability to have activated a defense against the North Korean tests last summer.

• The need to maintain a careful balance between fielding current and near-term capabilities while continuing to anticipate various aspects of the growing ballistic missile threat.

It is this growing threat, embodied by recent advanced tests by North Korea, China and Iran, that will ultimately make the strongest case for sustained investment in missile defenses.

The writer is president of the George C. Marshall Institute, a Washington-based think tank.