GOP, Pentagon tussle over East Coast shield

April 28, 2015

Politico:

The Pentagon has repeatedly said it doesn’t need — nor can it afford — a third anti-missile battery on American territory to defend against a possible attack from North Korea or Iran.

But that hasn’t stopped congressional Republicans, ideologically predisposed to a more comprehensive missile shield than Democrats, from pushing for one on the East Coast.

For several years now backers have not been able to prevail in getting enough support to find the billions of dollars needed to construct the anti-missile site along the Eastern Seaboard, as Democrats in the Senate have effectively blocked the effort. Yet, there’s a new push for doing so in the House Armed Services Committee that could see support in the GOP-led Senate as well, beginning with new direction to re-locate a high-powered X-band radar from a ship.

“I do intend to go forward with it,” Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), the panel’s Strategic Forces Subcommittee chairman, told POLITICO.

The subcommittee announced Wednesday it has included language in its defense authorization bill for next fiscal year that “directs immediate work on site design and other study and process work to homeport such radar on the East Coast.”

The effort is shaping up to be one of the the most partisan disputes in the Armed Services Committees in both the House and Senate, which frequently tout their traditional bipartisanship…

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