A leading Republican lawmaker admonished the White House Tuesday for pursuing a European-based missile defense program while cutting money for one that's designed specifically to protect the United States.
At a breakfast meeting with defense reporters in Washington, Rep. Mike Turner, who heads up the House Strategic Forces Subcommittee warned the Obama administration's focus on a Europe-based defense leaves the U.S. vulnerable in the event of a rogue attack by North Korea or Iran.
"The slow evolution that we are having with the phased adaptive approach is not sufficient to respond to the threat we have from North Korea and Iran," Turner says. "Our concern is that the threat is developing faster than the phased adaptive approach is going to be able to respond."
In the early stages of the plan, the so-called European Phased Adaptive Approach focuses on defending against short-ranged and medium-ranged threats from Iran, but fails to develop long-range deterrents for the continental U.S. until 2020. Even then, the technology the administration plans to use has yet to be developed.
"This relies on an untested and uncreated system, which is just a gleam in the eye of a weapons designers," says Eric S. Edelman, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and former senior Pentagon official in the Bush administration.