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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


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