Panetta pleads for missile defense dollars

[xiamiam]

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta urged lawmakers not to renege on their promises to fund NATO’s new missile defense system, saying such a decision could jeopardize US relations with its European allies.

MEADS (or Medium Extended Air and Missile Defense System) was to act as NATO’s new missile defense shield, designed to replace the Patriot air and missile defenses which form the backbone of the existing system. However, the congress ruled last year that deploying MEADS is impossibly expensive given the budget restraints and economic climate in the US. The funding of the project will stop after the “Proof of Concept” test phase ending in 2013. But even that may run short of cash. Three separate committees have already voted to cut the 400 million dollars from the 2013 US budget needed for the final stage of the project. Now it’s up to the Senate Appropriations Committee to decide on the matter. Panetta urged the Chairman of the Committee Daniel Inouye not to pull the plug on funding. It is the last chance to approve the funding without risking a White House veto on the decision.

MEADS is being jointly developed by the US, Germany, and Italy, with the US footing 58% of the bill. The system has been in development since the beginning of the 1990’s with a cumulative price tag of $4 billion.

However, the US congress has been frustrated by project overruns and high costs, spending money to develop a theoretical missile defense system that they can’t even afford to deploy


http://www.rt.com/news/cut-run-stop-missile-978/

We dont need to spend more money on war and weapons. It has already broken us and there is only one way to stop this cycle of madness..and that is to stop spending money on it. I used to like Panetta but that was about a million years ago when he was a very different person from the one I see today. Maybe I was just unaware because I can't even remember why I liked him.

[Kolesar]

1. Got another source?

I don't trust the Russian media on this topic.

[xiamiam]

5. that's funny..better news from RT than anything from the msm

I suggest you watch RT and then make that determination. I know you haven't watched because of the broad generalization re Russian media. Just a suggestion, do as you will.

[HereSince1628]

2. The US economy is perverted and it in turn perverts us.

Defense is one of the few places conservatives will spend money. Consequently, the defense budget smells a lot like ham and bacon stored in pork barrels.

But we need jobs, we need the government to be a consumer, what do politicians accept as legitimate spending? Military goods. So we consume, military goods.

And when you have a lot of military goods, every nation on earth sees you as both a threat and potentially a strong shouldered ally. Our military spending makes us imperial at the same time that it ensnares us with the promise of jobs back in our districts.

What is it that prevents us from investing in the rest of the commonwealth so that we have things that are worth the cost of defending?

[xiamiam]

3. what is worth defending is our humanity ..towards each other and the world

we've lost sight of that. You're right about the weapons industry being a huge source of employment although I can think of at least one million ways to better utilize those dollars which would also educate, and enlighten our citizens. Unfortunately, we're trapped in some very antiquated ideas of how to achieve peace by greedy dinosaurs who happen to control everything.

[Woody Woodpecker]

4. Request permanently denied.

Panetta needs to understand that the tools of death is not going to be made anymore - because we're spending assloads on these and prolonging an unnecessary war.

Furthermore, Obama needs to demote Department of Defense into a administrative position and eventually removed. We do not do empire building, and Department of Defense is not defending anything, but aggressively taking over third world countries and destroying their fragile infrastructure in the name of freedom.