On Friday, September 29, the 2007 Defense Budget of 447.6 billion dollars allocated for the defense of our country and national security was signed into law by the President of the United States of America. This legislation was approved by the 435 members of the House of Representatives and the 100 members of the United States Senate before submission to the President. The 2007 Defense budget of 447.6 billion dollars marks the largest annual amount of tax dollars spent on Defense, but of equal value is that this high mark for Defense equates to the lowest percentage of our Gross National Product spent on Defense since the 1800’s.

At 2.1% of the Defense budget, $9.4 billion will be spent on missile defense in 2007; this is an increase of $1.4 billion from last year and $110 million dollars above the President’s request. The 2007 Missile Defense allocation marks the fourth year in a row that the missile defense budget has been increased. We at MDAA, as well as those men and women in the Armed Forces around the world, thank Congress and the President for their decision to legislate into law these expenditures for missile defense.

A more detailed analysis of the Missile Defense Agency Budget shows a stronger movement towards near term deployment and capability in that over 5 billion dollars of the Missile Defense Budget is allocated for the near term interceptor capabilities that include GBI, THAAD and Aegis. In addition, Congress added more money than the President requested for near term capability. These additions are as follows:

• 200 million dollar increase for the land based GBI
• 85 million dollar increase for the sea based Aegis which includes 20 million dollars for signal processing and 15 million dollars for terminal defense (Navy Wide Area Defense)
• 40 million dollar increase for cooperation with Israel on their land based missile defense system, ARROW
• 18.4 million dollars for Short Range 40 -100 Kilometer Missile Defense

Also noteworthy is 32.8 million dollars for the third GBI site in Central Europe and that 10 more Ground Based Interceptors were purchased to make a total of 50 interceptors. These systems combined with funding for future interceptor systems such as the Air Borne Laser (ABL), Kinetic Energy Interceptor (KEI), and Multiple Kill Vehicle (MKV) at a combined total of close to a billion dollars displays a balance for future development driven by Congress and the President.

To those in the world that seek to proliferate and use ballistic missiles to threaten and intimidate, the annual amount of American tax dollars spent and capability displayed (13 intercepts in the past 12 months), must raise credible and serious doubt to their allocation of scarce resources for ballistic missiles which can and will be nullified by our growing and effective missile defense.

With other needed priorities for federal funding, it is with a humbling perspective that Missile Defense accounts for only 2.1% of the federal funds spent on Defense and a much smaller fraction of the overall Federal Budget. We believe, with strong conviction, that money spent on missile defense will help insure our society to prosper and have freedoms that our forefathers created, so that we and our future generations can also have those freedoms.

Money Well Spent