John Boehner’s op-ed in the Chicago Tribune continues the trend of Republicans criticizing the Obama/Gates decision to reduce the missile defense budget by $1.2 billion. Missile defense is always a contentious issue but his characterization is not quite right. Written in the context of North Korea being Obama’s “3 a.m moment” he says:
I urge the president to reverse his opposition to a national missile-defense system . . .I have been disappointed by his decision to gut missile defense funding in his Defense Department budget proposal. Instead of supporting a “national” missile defense system that would protect our citizens from a potential attack, the administration proposes a “theater” system that would protect just the troops in a given part of the world, leaving our shores vulnerable. That’s the national-security equivalent of bringing a knife to a gunfight and it puts us in greater danger should North Korea continue building its nuclear program.
Gates’ decided not to increase the 30 ground-based interceptors but as he told the SASC on 14 May that is capable to deal with the North Korea threat:
The advice that I got is, first of all, that system really is only capable against North Korea. And the 30 interceptors at the level of capability that North Korea has now and is likely to have for some years to come, 30 interceptors, in fact, provide a strong defense against North Korea in this respect. And that budget also includes robust funding for continued development and improvement of those ground-based interceptors.
Post-test press had Gates being quoted as saying
If there were a launch from a rogue state such as North Korea, I have good confidence that we would be able to deal with it
and outgoing independent testing offical Charles McQueary saying the U.S. had a “reasonable chance” of intercepting a North Korean rocket.
The new defense budget has recalibrated the focus of missile defense towards some of the more regional programs because they are showing promise whereas the Air Borne Laser was not but that hardly constitutes “opposition to a national-defense system.” It is not a black and white choice between theater or national defense and to characterize it as such obscures an in-depth discussion about how many resources to allocate to each of the various programs within the missile defense portfolio.