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U.S. Pentagon Panel Calls For Expanded Missile Defense Program
A panel from the U.S. Defense Department has recommended that the Bush administration expand a planned National Missile Defense (NMD) program to include sea-and space-based weapons, Pentagon spokesman Craig Quigley said Saturday.
The recommendation was made in a report by the panel headed by retired Air Force General James McCarthy on March 30 as part of a broad review by a number of groups of U.S. defense programs, Quigley said.
Quigley confirmed a Los Angeles Times report that the interim study stressed to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld the need to rapidly develop an ability to destroy attacking long-range missiles at any stage of flight -- from lift-off, through mid- course to final approach to target.
The Times reported that the committee was urging the new administration to continue funding the Clinton team's limited, ground-based system, while supplementing it with anti-missile systems based on warships, on aircraft and in space.
Quigley stressed that the recommendation by the committee -- part of a study being done by the private Institute for Security Analysis -- was not final and that another expert panel was making an even more detailed study of missile defense for Rumsfeld.
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