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Inhofe: Missile Defense Agency's Latest Failure

Office of James M. Inhofe, US Senator for Oklahoma

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
December 16, 2010

INHOFE: MISSILE DEFENSE AGENCY’S LATEST FAILURE
“Evidence That New START is Threat to U.S. Security”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) and a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), today pointed to yesterday’s test failure of our nation’s missile defense system as further evidence that ramming the New START Treaty through the Senate during the lame duck session is a threat to our national security with the following statement:

“At the very same time that the Senate took up floor consideration of New START, which would place restrictions on nation’s missile defense program, the Missile Defense Agency announced that it failed another planned Ground Based Interceptor (GBI) intercept of a ballistic missile target during a test over the Pacific Ocean. This was the MDA’s second consecutive failure of a Ground Based Interceptor test and its third test failure since the MDA came under the control of the Obama Administration. Since then, the MDA budget has been cut by $200 million, GBI missile modernization has been reduced by nearly $2 Billion from its highest spending levels and the Airborne Laser has been reduced to a test and evaluation bed. All of these reductions are reflected in MDA’s ranking of 223 of 224 for employee satisfaction and commitment in the 2010 Best Places to Work survey of Department of Defense (DoD) agency subcomponents. The Obama Administration is placing our national security at risk by failing to fully fund, field, modernize and test a missile defense system and pushing this Senate to ratify a nuclear arms treaty with Russia that clearly places limits on future developments of U.S. missile defense. This is just another reason to oppose the New START Treaty.”

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