Background Briefing
Kenneth H. Bacon, ASD (PA)
Attributable to: Senior Defense Official
Wednesday, Feb. 5, 1997 - 2 p.m.
The big change is in BMD. I'll show you what we've done there. This is probably a significant departure from where we were a year ago. Let me remind you, this is Secretary Perry's program. We built it under his tenure. Not Secretary Cohen's. I think Secretary Cohen feels that Secretary Perry did the right thing, but I will let Secretary Cohen speak himself as to his view on this.
Last year the THAAD program was out in 2006. At no time when we cut out dollars out of THAAD a year ago did we actually affect the development of the program. It was the fielding of the program that was affected by it. This brings forward the fielding to 2004. Because Brilliant Eyes, you need to bring that forward as well, in order to make it an optimal system, so that was accelerated as well.
We increased funding for the Navy upper tier. This is a challenging technological problem. I think we feel that we are pushing it as fast as money can really be pushed at it, but there are some real technical challenges associated with it. You're taking very sophisticated sensor systems and now trying to shrink them into very small real estate going on the top of an SM-2 booster head, so this is a non-trivial technical problem. But we did add some money in there to reduce risk. The NMD program is staying on course with no real change.
This is the funding, and it goes up, as you see, about $2.5 billion that we've added. We made about $2.5 billion in this area.
My guess is people who don't like BMD are going to cry foul because last year we got a plus-up from Congress, and our response is to add more money this year. I really honestly think what we're trying to do here is to meet the Congress halfway with their honest concerns about this. They put them in legislation and we don't feel that legislation is entirely executable, but we really did try to meet them. That's going to be part of the dialogue that will emerge in the opening days of our going up and defending this program.
... ... ...
Q: Can you reconcile your BMD chart that you just had up with what's in this book here? The THAAD programs particularly are showing an increase... It's in the .08... An increase in funding in FY98.
A: Could I ask you to get together with (senior budget official) right here? He'll do that with you. I'm sorry. If it's less than a billion, I don't track it. (Laughter) I'm actually under the weather with a cold...
Then it's wrong, because we have increased funding for THAAD. It's about, over the FYDP, about $750 million, I think. We'll come back to it.
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