Congress considers cutting missile defense

PanARMENIAN.Net - The U.S. Congress was considering cutting funding to the White House's plan to build a missile defense system in Eastern Europe.



Democrats said the high-tech system, which has strained relations with Russia, is unproven, The New York Times reported.



But the White House said it is necessary to move ahead with construction in Poland and the Czech Republican soon to prepare for long-range missiles that could come from Iran.



A House subcommittee was considering legislation that would cut $160 million in funding from the missile defense program, delaying construction on interceptor silos in Poland. A similar bill was in the works in the Senate.



The Government Accountability Office reported in March an anti-missile program "cannot yet be fully assessed because there have been too few flight tests conducted to anchor the models and simulations that predict overall system performance," the newspaper reported.



But the director of the Missile Defense Agency, Lt. Gen. Henry A. Obering III, disagreed, telling the newspaper, "I do believe we are on the right path."