Federation of American Scientists:
Some members of the House Armed Services Committee want the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency to return to its previous practice of publicly disclosing information about planned flight tests of ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems and components.
Earlier this year, the Department of Defense said that information about BMD flight tests, objectives and schedules was now classified, even though such information had routinely been made public in the past. (DOD Classifies Missile Defense Flight Test Plans, Secrecy News, March 5, 2018).
But in their initial markup of the FY2019 National Defense Authorization Act, members of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee said that the new secrecy was unacceptable, at least with respect to the test schedule.
