Meanwhile, Top Russian, Chinese Leaders Assail U.S. Plan For European Missile Defense System

Rep. Franks Says U.S. Funding Cuts In European Missile Defense Confuse Czechs, Poles, Who Are Asked To Approve The System

The House rejected a proposal to reverse a total $719 million in cuts to ballistic missile defense (BMD) programs, but also rejected an opposing plan to slash $966 million from BMD efforts, as the House passed (384 to 23) the defense authorization bill for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2009.

The House action included a $372 million cut to plans for the United States to install a European Missile Defense system in the Czech Republic (radar) and Poland (interceptors in silos), a move that a key legislator said will confuse Europeans as to whether the United States really wants to provide the system that would protect Europe from missiles fired by Iran or other Middle Eastern nations.

Meanwhile, although Russia recently has been muted in its criticism of the European Missile Defense (EMD) system, just a day after the House vote, a newly emboldened Russia joined with China to excoriate the EMD plan.

Top leaders of those nations – recently inaugurated Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao — assailed the EMD plan as destabilizing.

"The creation of global missile defense systems and their deployment in some regions of the world [doesn’t help to] maintain strategic balance and stability and [could] hamper international efforts in arms control and nuclear nonproliferation," according to a statement by the two officials.

They may have been spurred to attack the EMD system by the House move to cut funding for it, according to Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), co-chairman of the bipartisan 60-member Congressional Missile Defense Caucus, who spoke on C-Span. He also is a member of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), and its strategic forces subcommittee that has oversight of missile defense programs.

He said leaders in the Czech Republic and Poland may be confused by U.S. entreaties for them to provide sites for the EMD system specifically authorized by their legislatures, at the same time that the U.S. legislature is cutting funds for that very same system.

Those in Congress voting to cut missile defense, especially the EMD system, are ignoring the rising threat posed by Iran, he said.

In the past two years, Iran has fired multiple missiles in a test salvo; launched a missile from a submerged submarine; and announced plans for a space program that would involve technologies little different from those required for intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs.

As well, Iran refuses to stop producing nuclear materials, which Western experts fear will be used to build nuclear weapons. And Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said Israel should be wiped from the map. Iran is building capabilities that threaten both Europe and Israel, and yet some in Congress seem oblivious to the danger, Franks said.

"The greatest danger to the (EMD) is in the United States Congress," he said.

Iran will go nuclear to coerce its neighbors, or even to attack its neighbors, he added, saying a nuclear Iran would be one of the greatest dangers on Earth.

Franks commented after he had offered an amendment to restore all $719 million that had been cut from missile defense programs such as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, program. Those subcommittee-authored cuts to EMD, THAAD and other missile defense programs were made in an earlier full HASC session that produced the overall defense authorization bill.

While the House refused to restore funds cut from missile defense programs as Franks proposed, the House also rejected a proposal by Rep. John F. Tierney (D-Mass.), to whack $966 million from missile defense programs, voting that down by a resounding 292 to 122.

Tierney, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee national security and foreign affairs subcommittee, has held multiple hearings in which missile defense programs have been assailed as costly, or in which critics have alleged they won’t work to take down enemy missiles aimed at the United States, despite repeated successful ballistic missile shoot-down tests. (Please see Space & Missile Defense Report, Monday, April 21, 2008.)

Franks rejected out of hand the assertion by Hu and Medvedev that U.S. missile defense programs are somehow destabilizing or threatening.

"The notion that America is out to dominate the world" is wrong, Franks said. And, he added, look who’s talking: Russia and "Red China crush their neighbors."

Russia has lashed out at rebels in Chechnya, while China has smashed resistance in Tibet, and threatened to invade Taiwan.

U.S. missile defense programs are just that, defensive, rather than being some threatening, offensive systems, Franks noted.

From the viewpoint of China and Russia, however, "I can understand why they are hesitant [with the reality that] America could defend itself against their nuclear strikes," the congressman said.

Russia has updated its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), which number in the hundreds. Also, China has brought forth a land-based nuclear-tipped ICBM that can strike targets in the United States. As well, Beijing has introduced the nuclear-powered Jin Class submarines that carry nuclear-tipped missiles with ranges of almost 5,000 miles. And China has aimed more than 1,300 short- and medium-range missiles toward Taiwan, so that no U.S. aircraft carrier group could enter the Taiwan Strait safely until U.S. air power knocked out all those missiles.

While the immense armory of Russian ICBMs would overpower the nascent U.S. multi-layered missile defense shield, that wouldn’t be true with belligerent North Korea, Franks indicated.

There is more than a 90 percent chance that any missile or missiles that North Korea would launch toward the United States would be knocked down by U.S. missile defense systems, he said.

While North Korea is engaged in "an inexorable march toward success" of its developing long-range missile capabilities, the United States nonetheless has a good chance of defeating such an attack, he said.