Dartmouth 2K9 Possible 2ac cards Gates see extreme spending – will cut now Presstv 5/8



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Gates see extreme spending – will cut now

PressTV 5/8 (Press TV, Gates urges cuts in military spending 5/8/10) http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=125863§ionid=3510203

Gates noted that since 9/11, the Pentagon's base budget has nearly doubled — not counting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  He targeted health and defense expenditures in his efforts to tame the Pentagon's runaway spending. He said that he wants to cut between USD 10 billion and USD 15 billion from the Pentagon's nearly 550-billion-dollar baseline budget.  The savings are aimed at allowing the US to maintain force levels and to spend on modernization programs, Gates said.  The call for cuts in budget comes at a time when the department is preparing the defense budget for fiscal year 2012. 


ABL tests and programs underway already.

Bolkom and Hidreth Specialists in National Defense, Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade Division, , 2007

7/9/2007 CRS Report For Congress“Airborne Laser (ABL): Issues for Congress” http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/RL32123.pdf


In 2006, Boeing announced successful surrogate low-power laser testing from the ABL aircraft. In October 2006, Boeing rolled out the ABL aircraft in Wichita, Kansas, announcing successful completion of major system integration milestones in preparation for some flight testing that will lead to the lethality test in August 2009. As of January 2007, ABL had completed over 50 flight tests. In March 2007, the ABL successfully completed the first in a series of in-flight tracking laser firings at an airborne target. Officials argue this is an important step toward demonstrating the aircraft’s ability to engage an airborne target. Major ABL subsystems include the lethal laser, a tracking system, and an adaptive optics system. The kill mechanism or lethal laser system (as distinct from the other on-board acquisition and tracking lasers) is known as COIL (Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser). COIL generates its energy through an onboard chemical reaction of oxygen and iodine molecules. Because this laser energy propagates in the infrared spectrum, its wavelength travels relatively easily through the atmosphere. The acquisition, tracking, and pointing system (also composed of lasers) helps the laser focus on the target with sufficient energy to destroy the missile. As the laser travels to its target, it encounters atmospheric effects that distort the beam and cause it to lose its focus. The adaptive optics system compensates for this distortion so that the lethal laser can hit and destroy its target with a focused energy beam. The current ABL program began in November 1996 when the Air Force awarded a $1.1 billion PDRR contract (Program Definition Risk Reduction phase) to several aerospace companies. The contractor team consists of Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman (formerly TRW). Boeing Integrated Defense Systems (Seattle, WA) has overall responsibility for program management and systems integration, development of the ABL battle management system, modification of the 747 aircraft, and the design and development of ground-support subsystems. Lockheed Martin Space Systems (Sunnyvale, CA) is responsible for the design, development, and production of ABL target acquisition, and beam control and fire control systems. Northrop Grumman Space Technology (Redondo Beach, CA) is responsible for the design, development, and production of the ABL highenergy laser. A number of subcontractors are also involved. It is envisioned that a fleet of some number of ABL aircraft would be positioned safely in theater then flown closer to enemy airspace as local air superiority is attained. Although the Defense Department once indicated that a fleet of five aircraft might support two 24-hour combat air patrols in a theater for some unspecified period of time in a crisis, there has been no public discussion in recent years as to how many aircraft might eventually be procured or deployed as part of a future BMD system. It is likely, however, that current plans are to acquire seven production aircraft.

Contractors will Demand the Transformational satellite Program

Clark April 15th, 2009 (Colin Clark, editor of DoDBuzz and Pentagon correspondent for Military .com. Colin joined the Military .com team from Space News, where he covered Congress, intelligence and regulatory affairs.Before that, he founded and edited for three years the Washington Aerospace Briefing, a twice-weekly Space News publication. He covered national security issues for Congressional Quarterly and was editor of Defense News before that. His first job covering defense was with Defense Week, where he won a national award for his coverage of the first Quadrennial Defense Review, Last Hurrahs for T-Sat, http://www.dodbuzz.com/2009/04/15/last-hurrahs-for-t-sat/)

The first details about what is happening inside one of the biggest programs marked for cancellation by Defense Secretary Gates are beginning to filter out. In the days after Gates announced its planned demise, Boeing and Lockheed Martin went through what may well be the last design reviews for the Transformational Satellite program. A source familiar with the program told us that the attitude during the reviews was pretty “fatalistic,” which would certainly not be in keeping with the approach many contractors are going to take to programs targeted by Gates. While some in industry talk about the secretary’s speech last week helping things by clearing the air or introducing more stability into the fevered atmosphere surrounding the defense industry the last month or so, many defense industr6y types have been loading up for bear, preparing detailed lobbying campaigns and community outreach. But the Boeing and Lockheed teams were apparently resigned to the end of their program.



No Compensation
Anna Palmer, @ Roll Call, ‘9 [May 12, Firms Are Playing Defense, http://www.crewsmostcorrupt.org/node/1541]

The Obama administration has pressured House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense Chairman John Murtha (D-Pa.) and Senate Appropriations Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) not to add programs to the budget — and defense contractors are going to have a harder time getting lawmakers to reinstate programs, according to defense analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute. “A sea change is upon us in the way money is appropriated in terms of military programs,” Thompson said. “In general it is going to be difficult for Democratic appropriators to disagree with a Democratic president on whether weapons should be added when the country is facing a huge budget deficit,” he added. The Obama administration has also vowed that this will be the last wartime supplemental spending bill, and that future spending for conflicts abroad will go through the regular Defense appropriations bill. The supplementals have been magnets for additional defense spending in years past.



No Horse Trading
John Lyman, Assistant Editor for Foreign Policy Digest, ‘9 [August, The Price of Success: Obama’s Efforts to Reform Military Spending in the Midst of Two U.S. Wars, http://www.foreignpolicydigest.org/War-and-Peace-August-2009/August-2009/the-price-of-success-obamas-efforts-to-reform-military-spending-in-the-midst-of-two-us-wars.html]

Speaking before a national Veterans of Foreign Wars convention Monday in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S. President Barack Obama had sharp words for members of Congress. “If Congress sends me a defense bill loaded with a bunch of pork, I will veto it.” Obama’s warning comes after the House approved in late July by a vote of 400-30 a $636 billion Pentagon spending bill, as the Pentagon executes an obstacle-laden withdrawal from Iraq while shifting U.S. military might to Afghanistan. Obama’s reasons for moderating the defense budget are many. To name a few, record levels of government spending to combat the financial crisis and stimulate the recession economy has diminished the government’s stores of financial flexibility, stores which it must ration ever more scrupulously to achieve the Obama administration’s ambitious agenda – a public healthcare option, alternative energy entrepreneurship, and an expanded diplomatic corps. Most significantly for the Pentagon, a long-standing call for reforming defense spending, contracting and procurement, most recently espoused by Defense Secretary Robert Gates in Foreign Affairs magazine, is also motivating Obama’s stern message. The administration’s success or failure in achieving the defense spending reforms it seeks will profoundly affect not only the Iraq and Afghan wars, but also the future of U.S. military policy.




No One Wants ABL
Noah Shachtman, @ Wired, 2/12/10 [Laser Jet Blasts Ballistic Missile in Landmark Test, http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/02/laser-jet-blasts-ballistic-missile-in-landmark-test/#more-22504]

This is a test the MDA was hoping to conduct in 2002, after spending about a billion dollars. But the Airborne Laser ran into all kinds of problems along the way. The chemicals the jet depended on to generate its high-strength laser weighed down the 747. Getting the laser to accurately zap through the atmosphere proved tougher than anticipated. The Airborne Laser eventually ballooned into a $7.3 billion project. Finally, Defense Secretary Robert Gates got so fed up, he told the MDA to end the Airborne Laser program after a single jet. “I don’t know anybody at the Department of Defense who thinks that this program should, or would, ever be operationally deployed,” Gates told Congress last year. “The reality is that you would need a laser something like 20 to 30 times more powerful than the chemical laser in the plane right now to be able to get any distance from the launch site to fire.” So, right now the [jet] would have to orbit inside the borders of Iran in order to be able to try and use its laser to shoot down that missile in the boost phase. And if you were to operationalize this you would be looking at 10 to 20 747s, at a billion-and-a-half dollars apiece, and $100 million a year to operate. And there’s nobody in uniform that I know who believes that this is a workable concept.


Space Weaponization Now
Catherine Lutz, Professor at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, ‘9 [July, Obama’s empire, http://www.newstatesman.com/asia/2009/07/military-bases-world-war-iraq]

On the other hand, the pouring of money into military R&D (the Pentagon has spent more than $85bn in 2009), and the corporate profits to be made in the development and deployment of the resulting technologies, have been significant factors in the ever larger numbers of technical facilities on foreign soil. These include such things as missile early-warning radar, signals intelligence, satellite control and space-tracking telescopes. The will to gain military control of space, as well as gather intelligence, has led to the establishment of numerous new military bases in violation of arms-control agreements such as the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. In Colombia and Peru, and in secret and mobile locations elsewhere in Latin America, radar stations are primarily used for anti-trafficking operations.





Last printed 9/4/2009 07:00:00 PM




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