Thursday, the House of Representatives passed a supplemental appropriations bill for disaster relief and a continuing resolution for funding government operations.
Tucked inside of language granting Military and Veterans funding was a provision for the necessary costs to detect, defeat and defend against the use of ballistic missiles as requested by Department Of Defense.
The measure allocates $200 million for a new missile field in Fort Greely.
U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan R-AK: “That’s a lot of jobs, and it just shows how strategically important we are.”
Just over a month ago, the Trump administration asked Congress to appropriate $2.1 billion to expand the missile-defense base on Fort Greely.
The request included $200 million to pay for the construction of a fourth missile-silo field at the base. The remaining amount would be used to buy and emplace 20 interceptor missiles in the new field.
The three existing missile fields at the base on Greely now accommodate 40 of the nation’s 44 ground-based midcourse defense interceptors. The GMD system is designed to destroy an incoming enemy missile while it’s still above the atmosphere.
Fort Greely was selected as a site for the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system after the United States announced that it would withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Over the last fifteen years, the United States government has been developing the Greely missile defense installation, initially planning to deploy a total of 25 to 30 anti-ballistic missiles by 2010.
With the continued development of an intercontinental ballistic missile program by North Korea, Fort Greely has expanded. In early November, Boeing Company, the GMD system’s prime contractor, completed the installation of the 40th interceptor at the Greely missile-defense base.
That was the last of 14 additional interceptors that the Obama administration had ordered in 2013, after a previous confrontation with North Korea over its development of an offensive ballistic-missile system with nuclear warheads.
Fort Greely is near the Great circle line from North Korea to the continental United States.
Story as aired:
No comments:
Post a Comment