U.S. Department of Defense:
WASHINGTON, March 22, 2018 —
The fiscal year 2019 budget request for ballistic missile defense seeks to ensure the United States stays ahead of adversaries that are advancing their capabilities, defense officials said on Capitol Hill today.
The United States military remains the strongest in the world, but its advantage is eroding as adversaries modernize and build up conventional and nuclear forces, John C. Rood, undersecretary of defense for policy, said at a Senate Armed Services Committee strategic forces subcommittee hearing on ballistic missile defense policies and programs and the fiscal year 2019 budget request.
Adversaries, Rood said, are “fielding a broad and expanding arsenal of new and more advanced missiles capable of threatening the U.S., our forces abroad and its allies and partners.”
The budget request supports President Donald J. Trump’s direction set out in the National Security Strategy to “deploy a layered missile defense system to protect the American homeland from North Korean and Iranian missile threats,” he said. Further, he pointed out, the request supports regional missile defenses to protect deployed forces, allies, and partners…
