Next president faces full plate of urgent defense issues
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Monday, December 4, 2000
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Defense Department is drafting a list of
priorities for the incoming presidential administration.
At the top of the list concerns the national missile defense system,
suspended by President Bill Clinton. Both presidential candidates have
pledged to revive the NMD but other missile issues are on the agenda,
including the funding of such theater missile programs as the PAC-3, the
THAAD, the Navy Theater Wide, and the air forces's Airborne Laser and
Space-Based Laser.
Another key issue, Pentagon officials said, is whether the next
president modifies the Quadrennial
Defense Review for the modernization of the U.S. military services. The
question hinges on whether who is president and how much he is willing to
devote to defense.
Both candidates — George W. Bush and Al Gore — have pledged to
increase defense allocations. But the Pentagon expects Bush to order an
immediate increase in the defense budget.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Rudy De Leon said the Pentagon has increased
its annual defense budget by $180 billion over the last two years. He cited
pledges by both presidential candidates to increase the budget by up to an
additional $100 billion -- which will boost the figure of new defense
investment to $250 billion.
"Now, QDR is one issue that is regularly discussed in the Pentagon and
clearly will be the first
significant piece of the new administration in terms of defense policy," De
Leon told an audience at the Center for Naval Analysis Forum on National
Strategies and Capabilities near Washington on Wednesday. "So I think as the
QDR takes center stage when the new administration comes to power, there are
new financial resources on the table."
Other issues for the next administration will concern recruitment,
cooperation with the technological sector, computer security, information
technology and warfare. The U.S. Navy has launched a study of the use of
information warfare.
On Friday, the National Infrastructure Protection Center warned against
a new wave of cyber attacks on U.S. electronic commerce sites. "In most
cases the hacker activity had been ongoing for several months before the
victim became aware of the intrusion,'' the center said.
De Leon urged the next administration to make defense a bipartisan
issue. He cited President Bill Clinton's appointment of Defense Secretary
William Cohen, a former Republican senator from Maine.
"How we bring in the advantages of what the marketplace is producing
into a system that has difficulty digesting is going to be a critical piece
of continuing defense reform," De Leon said. "Because, again, dollars that
we don't needlessly spend on infrastructure are dollars that we can more
efficiently utilize using the advances in information technologies and into
quality of life or the modernization effort."
Monday, December 4, 2000
4
|