President Obama Allocates 10.7 Billion for Missile Defense
PR Newswire
February 17, 2011
Riki Ellison, Chairman and Founder of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance (MDAA), www.missiledefenseadvocacy.org, has released a statement on the release of the presidents’ 2012 budget request in regard to missile defense. Ellison is one of the top experts in the world in the field of missile defense. . His comments follow below:
“The President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense released the 2012 Department of Defense Budget Monday. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated in testimony to the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that ‘the overall budget for missile defense is going from $10.2 billion to $10.7 billion…we are putting another $500 million into it.’
“Secretary Gates further stated that:
“‘Part of the half billion dollar increase is to implement the phased adaptive array missile defense that we have agreed to in Europe, but also, frankly, to increase our ability to defend our ships and our troops against theater level threats, missile threats. Hezbollah alone has 40,000 rockets and missiles at this point including anti-ship cruise missiles that have a range of 65 miles. So we are putting more money into Aegis capable ships. We will have 41 of these by the end of 2016, 28 by the end of 2012. They defend our ships. They defend- have the potential to defend our ground troops.’
“The aggregate missile defense budget is a balance consisting of procurement funds to deploy capability to our nation’s combat commanders, along with research and development money to ensure the continuing viability and technological advancement of missile defense. Both areas of the budget are equally important as the threat continues to proliferate in numbers, accuracy and sophistication.
“The 2012 budget rightfully addresses missile defense procurement, adhering to the combat commanders’ immediate needs of defending their operating areas in the Pacific, the Middle East and European theaters. These needs will be met with the procurement of regional interceptor and sensor systems including Patriot, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), AN/TPY-2 radars, Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IA/IB and Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) systems. …
