Riki Ellison, Chairman and Founder of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance (MDAA), www.missiledefenseadvocacy.org has reviewed the FY2011 Missile Defense Budget released on February 1st by the Department of Defense which offers a substantial increase to the total budget for missile defense. This increase recovers close to half the amount that was cut by the President and Secretary Robert Gates a year ago. Ellison is one of the top lay experts in the world on the topic of missile defense. His comments and observations include the following:

“Early this week, President Barack Obama’s administration and the Department of Defense announced a substantial increase to the 2011 Missile Defense Budget. The amount, $9.42 billion, equals a 6.13 percent increase from the 2010 budget. This increase, $577 million, recovers close to half the amount that was cut by the President and Secretary Robert Gates a year ago. ” [Defence Pros]

People that follow missile defense probably all remember that just back in April the widely publicized cuts in missile defense were announced.  However, the budget was cut, but I did like Secretary Gates strategy of focusing funding on missile defense systems that currently work.

With this new announcement the focusing of money on missile defense that currently works is only continuing:

Among the highlights of the 2011 Missile Defense Budget Request are:

• Increase of development funding of $359 million for the Ground Based Interceptors.
- Plans to construct 38 GBI silos and to buy 56 GBIs.
- A significant reversal from the 30 silos and 44 GBIs from last years request.

• Increase of 249 THAAD (142) and AEGIS SM3 (107) land and sea-based regional missile defense interceptors for a total of 867 by 2015.

• Upgrades of 3 additional Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense Ships.

• Addition of three new Missile Defense programs:
- $256 million for the Land-Based SM3 program that will go to over a $1.0 Billion by 2015.
- $99 million to Directed Energy Programs.
- $67 million for a future space based satellite sensor constellation called Precision Tracking Space System (PTSS) that will go to $1.2 Billion by 2015.

• Increase to $1.47 billion (up $31 million) for the AEGIS program.

• Increase to $1.0 billion (up $52 million) for the Patriot Terminal Defense interceptors and systems.

• Increase to $1.11 billion (up $290 million) for missile defense testing and targets.

• Increase to $319 million (up $63 million) for co-development with Japan on the Sea Based SM3-BlockIIa interceptor.

The increased funding into GMD is significant which is interesting considering the failure of the last fight test due to an issue with the SBX sensor.  However, the technology and capability of the GMD program is impressive for those familiar with it and I believe with more testing this can become a more reliable program.  Apparently the President now thinks so as well.

THAAD live fire at the Pacific Missile Range Facility In Hawaii.

What I am most excited about is to see more money being put into the THAAD and AEGIS SM-3 programs.  These are both very successful systems.  Also it was good to see money being poured into the land-based SM-3 program that will allow the missile to deployed in areas that an AEGIS ship cannot access.  Finally considering the failure of the last THAAD flight test due to a target issue it is good to see that more money is being poured into testing and targets.

All in all I continue to believe a solid missile defense strategy is in place by Secretary Gates and President Obama.

Some of the nation’s largest defense contractors, labor unions and trade groups are banding together to argue that the Obama administration is putting 100,000 or more jobs at risk by proposing deep cuts in weapons programs.

The defense industry and its supporters argue that the proposals by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates will increase unemployment during a historic economic crisis. Why, they ask, would President Obama push hundreds of billions in stimulus spending to create jobs only to propose weapons cuts that would eliminate tens of thousands of them?

“It doesn’t make sense that our government is looking at trying to save or create jobs at the same time it’s talking about cutting something like this,” said Jeff Goen, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers chapter in Marietta, Ga., where Lockheed Martin does final assembly on the F-22 Raptor fighter jet, which is slated to be cut.

Lockheed and other contractors predict that up to 95,000 direct and indirect jobs are at risk because of Gates’s plan to halt production of the F-22, which is built and assembled across 48 states but which has never been used in combat. Boeing says thousands more positions could be lost if the Pentagon halts production on other programs such as the C-17 cargo plane, which is assembled at a 5,000-worker plant in Long Beach, Calif.

The clash poses a nettlesome political challenge for Obama, who relied heavily on Democratic union support during his presidential campaign but who is backing the ambitious efforts of his GOP defense secretary to remake the Pentagon budget. Opposition on Capitol Hill is being led by Republicans who hope to enlist the support of union-friendly Democrats to quash many of the proposed cuts.

Gates and other Obama administration officials argue that job-loss fears are overstated, and note that the Pentagon’s overall budget would increase by $20 billion, to $534 billion, under the plan released this month. Proclaiming the need to “reshape the priorities of America’s defense establishment,” Gates called for halting or cutting a host of programs that have been plagued by delays, cost overruns or performance problems, including the F-22, the C-17, a fleet of new presidential helicopters and the Future Combat Systems program.

But Gates and his generals have also tailored the budget to include growth in other programs that may lower the intensity of opposition, and has successfully brought Air Force generals in line on cutting back the F-22 and other programs that the service has historically championed. Although Maine would lose some jobs with the shuttering of the F-22 program, for example, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) praised Gates for planning to build three DDG-1000 destroyers at General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works.

“A lot of people are ascribing real cleverness to Gates in the way he has structured this,” said Loren B. Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute think tank. “He has spread things out in a way aimed at dividing and weakening opposition.”

The approach has already muffled criticism from Lockheed, the nation’s largest defense contractor. The Bethesda-based company would gain from an expanded order for F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters that would help make up for the end of production on the F-22. Bruce Tanner, Lockheed’s chief financial officer, told Wall Street investors last week that, on the F-22 at least, the company has accepted defeat.

“We’ve had our chance to lobby this matter,” Tanner said.

The defense sector is a major Washington powerbroker, giving nearly $26 million to congressional candidates last year and spending $150 million on lobbying, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Even before Gates’s final proposal came out, the machinists’ union joined forces with Lockheed, Boeing and 11 other contractors to produce a slick Web site and ad campaign asserting that the F-22 program “provides jobs, a paycheck and economic security.” Boeing is running full-color newspaper ads extolling the virtues of the C-17, which Obama singles out for praise on the White House Web site, even though it is one of the biggest targets on Gates’s list.  [Washington Post]

You can read why I like Secretary Gates spending priorities here.