CIAO DATE: 09/04

The Unfettered MDA

Victoria Samson

Center for Defense Information

June 2003

The Pentagon’s missile defense program, long unfettered by many of the established practices of the Department of Defense (DoD), is about to become even more independent. That is, if Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s proposed “Defense Transformation for the 21st Century Act” goes through Congress as it stands. By specifically releasing the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) from certain funding practices other programs are bound to uphold, and by repealing oversight sections of the U.S. Code, this act would essentially make the MDA answerable to no one.

It is Title IV’s Section 413, “Transformation of Appropriations and Budget Process,” which targets MDA’s funding allocations. It states that U.S. Code Title 10, Section 223 is to be repealed. Section 223 specifies that ballistic missile defense elements should be broken down by technological segments (terminal phase, boost phase, etc.) in the DoD’s budget justification books. This categorization itself is already less specific than what’s required for other weapon programs. It was put into place after MDA was re–organized in January 2002, with the explanation that the agency needed the “flexibility” to carry out its mission. At the time, critics complained about the loss of budget transparency.

But apparently, that “flexibility” in budgeting wasn’t enough for the Pentagon.

The analysis provided with the proposed Transformation Act explains that eradicating the MDA’s budget boundaries, as amorphous as they are, is will let the Pentagon “take full advantage of spiral development and capabilities–based acquisition.”

That may be. But without even the cursory breakdown of MDA funding requests by the technology segments, it will be nearly impossible for missile defense funding and development to be independently monitored.

MDA budget transparency would be further reduced by Section 414 of the proposed legislation. Its section A states that allocations for MDA “shall be available for all necessary expenses for missile defense missions of the Department of Defense;” meaning that no more would the MDA have to explain what funding it wants for research, procurement, and so forth. Section B of Section 414 decrees that money authorized for the general purpose MDA category “shall remain available for obligation for three consecutive years.”Ê This would mean that funding would disappear into MDA: no one outside the program would know what the money is buying or even how much is being spent on an annual basis.

There have been some efforts to counter this power grab. The FY 2004 defense authorization recently passed by the Senate included an amendment that orders the creation of technical performance criteria for missile defense systems and insists that they be proven by operational testing. It further requires the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation to give an annual assessment of how well the MDA is meeting the performance criteria. While this is a laudable attempt to inject some accountability into the missile defense program, it is not enough to countermand the budget opaqueness in the Transformation Act. And it may be moot if this amendment is dropped during the House and Senate conference debate scheduled for later this month.

The explanation provided by Secretary Rumsfeld for Section 201 of his proposed legislation succinctly sums up his attitude toward oversight in general: “This section would repeal overly burdensome administrative requirements.”

But he is missing the point of congressional oversight of Pentagon programs. It provides accountability and helps ensure cost and quality control of weapon systems. Without these safeguards, Congress — which by law is itself accountable for the nation’s purse — is limited to merely rubber–stamping whatever programs are popular at the Pentagon at any one time. And that would certainly be a recipe for waste, fraud and abuse. Even with current reporting requirements, weapon development costs consistently run over their budgets by about 30 percent.

The changes to today’s congressional reporting requirements in the Transformation Act may make Secretary Rumsfeld’s work and life at MDA easier. But it will also leave the Congress and the public in the dark about whether the ambitious and costly missile defense effort is going to work.

Letter to the editor, Defense News, June 2, 2003.