House Panel Backs Funding For Lower Risk Space, Missile Defense Programs
A House Armed Services Committee subcommittee approved $51.5 billion for the U.S. Department of Defense‘s space and missile defense programs for fiscal 2007, shifting some dollars away from high-risk systems to more proven technologies.
“The subcommittee is concerned with striking the right balance between technical risks and providing increased capability for the warfighter,” Rep. Terry Everett (R-Ala.), chairman of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, said. “Accordingly, this mark shifts funds to several programs with a more near-term capability for the warfighter and makes reductions to several programs that are less mature.”
The subcommittee made its recommendations as part of its markup of the 2007 defense authorization bill. The full House Armed Services Committee will weight the panel’s guidance when it drafts final legislation.
The $51.5 billion bill includes $7.9 billion for procurement, $29.1 billion for research and development and $14.1 billion for U.S. Department of Energy national security programs. The panel provides about $142 million below the Pentagon’s budget request.
Lawmakers cut $80 million from the $867 million Transformational Communications Satellite program and $30 million from the $266 million Space Based Radar program. Everett said the subcommittee supports both programs but did not believe their 2007 budgets were “executable.”
Lawmakers also included a provision in the bill that would require the Pentagon to create a special office to develop low-cost, rapid-launch space systems to meet joint military needs. The panel provided $20 million to establish the Office of Operationally Responsive Space under the Department of Defense Executive Agent for Space.
Separately House lawmakers will take up legislation this week that would give the National Intelligence Director’s office a greater role in overseeing various technology programs pursued by spy agencies.
The House is expected to take up its version of the 2007 defense intelligence authorization bill that sets policy guidelines and funding levels for the intelligence community. The bill is classified but intelligence experts expect funding to be set at $40 billion, including billions for spy satellite and other information gathering technologies.
A committee spokesman told Satellite News sister publication Defense Daily that the bill likely will not face opposition in the House.
The real challenge may come in the Senate, where’s last year’s intelligence authorization bill died over controversial amendments related to secret CIA prisons and information in the president’s daily intelligence report. The Senate Intelligence Committee has yet to mark up its 2007 bill.
The House Intelligence Committee unanimously passed the bill earlier this month that sought to rein in the costs of satellites and provide an overarching technology plan for the intelligence community.
House lawmakers have been critical of several intelligence program contractors, especially satellites builders, for paying little attention to cost or schedule in the pursuit of new technologies. One of their concerns is that the programs have not been centrally managed to avoid duplicate efforts.
The bill would beef up the role of the director of science and technology in the office of the national intelligence director by making that official responsible for creating a strategic blueprint for all intelligence agency technology programs.
According to the bill report, filed earlier this month, the technology chief would send a report to Congress by next June that would outline how the intelligence agencies would develop and use technologies through 2021 and identify possible gaps in intelligence gathering that could be filled by technology.
Additionally, the report would list all current research programs by type (basic, applied or advanced), projected funding levels and scheduled completion dates.
The bill gave the intelligence director the option of making the report classified.
–George Cahlink