Daniel Inouye: “I too support Army transformation and, most importantly, the protection of our soldiers. I want to express my…”

“I too support Army transformation and, most importantly, the protection of our soldiers. I want to express my disappointment with the $152 million cut taken by the committee from the President's budget request for the BAT program. Despite increased emphasis being placed on precision guided munitions, this cut will cripple a promising program that has shown progress in testing and is nearing the end of its development phase. The Department of Defense is currently creating a vision of precision munitions capabilities and transformation investments for our Armed forces and I believe BAT could play a significant role. The Army has already spent close to $1.9 billion developing this program and the President's fiscal year 2003 request is needed to complete development, testing and make this system production ready by 2005. That is well within the Army's schedule to support both the Army's Interim and Objective Transformational Forces.”