The group's lengthy critique is certain to complicate administration
efforts to win congressional support for boost-phase systems, on which
Bush planned to spend nearly $1 billion in 2004 out of a total $9.1
billion proposed budget for missile defense.

Appropriations committees in both chambers of Congress already have
voted to slash by half or more a Bush request for $301 million to
begin developing land- or sea-based boost-phase interceptors.

Another boost-phase program known as the Airborne Laser, which
involves mounting a laser in a Boeing 747 jetliner and zapping
missiles, is further along in development and expected to receive the
$626 million that Bush has sought for it.

But weight problems and other technical glitches have bedeviled the
program and forced delays in the first intercept attempt, now
scheduled for 2005.



From The Washington Post, 7/16/03:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2003Jul15.html

Questions On Missile Defense Plans

Scientists' Report Questions Technology's Effectiveness

By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, July 16, 2003; Page A02


An extensive study by a national group of scientists raised serious
doubts yesterday about the likely effectiveness of some weapons that
President Bush is pursuing in his drive to develop a system for
defending the United States against ballistic missile attack.

The study, by a 12-member group under the American Physical Society,
the largest U.S. association of physicists, focused on a category of
weapons intended to knock down enemy missiles soon after launch in
their "boost phase."

It concluded that while the boost-phase approach might provide some
defense against longer-burning liquid-fueled missiles, such a system
would push the limits of what is technically possible.

Even more critically, the study found, boost-phase weapons would
likely prove entirely ineffective against faster, solid-fueled
missiles that potential adversaries -- notably, North Korea and Iran
-- are projected by U.S. intelligence analysts to possess within the
next 10 to 15 years.

The study did not deal with the central part of Bush's program -- a
plan to install land-based interceptors in Alaska and California that
would soar into space and obliterate enemy warheads arcing through
their "midcourse phase" of flight.

But Pentagon officials have acknowledged limitations to this scheme
and spoken of the need to supplement it eventually with boost-phase
weapons.

__________________________________________________ ____

It's only money, right? What else would we do with it?

Harry

"A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it's real money."

Senator Everett Dirksen