John Spratt: “this amendment would take $30 million out of the space-based kinetic intercept program, leaving $14 or $15 million for…”

“this amendment would take $30 million out of the space-based kinetic intercept program, leaving $14 or $15 million for concept definition, which is the status of it anyway, and instead, shift that $30 million to another program, a vitally important program as part of missile defense which has been debited by this bill, the airborne laser bill. So it would not decrease by any means the total amount appropriated by this bill for ballistic missile defense. It would simply reallocate within those accounts $30 million, shifting it, as I said, from the space-based boost phase interceptor over to the airborne laser system to make up for 50 percent of a cut which the committee has made in that particular program. Mr. Chairman, some 15 years ago when the SDI program, Strategic Defense Initiative, was first begun, it was to be a layered defense. There were to be ground-based layers and space-based layers. One of the space-based layers was a space-based intercept system. It would have been a satellite which would have housed many different smaller satellites, each of which would have housed many different interceptors, each of which could be fired at missiles as they were launched, or even in the midcourse, as they came towards the United States.”