No More Excuses or Taxpayer Money for the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS)

The Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) is running out of time and excuses (and hopefully taxpayer funding).  This is happening while the evidence supporting the elimination of funding for Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 for the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) keeps growing.  Originally conceived as the replacement to the Patriot missile system, MEADS is being jointly built by the United States, Italy, and Germany with the Americans shouldering more than 50 percent of the cost.  Even though the Army doesn’t want the project, there was an additional $800 million allocated for MEADS through 2013 (including $400 million in President Obama’s latest budget). 

One of the biggest roadblocks to halting the program was the potential termination costs to be incurred by American taxpayers.  However, a new report by the Pentagon shows Congress that they can defund the program without the fear of termination costs.  According to a letter from Frank Kendall (Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics) to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, if Congress cuts off funding for MEADS now, not only will there will be no termination costs,  the government will actually save money.

MEADS has been on the chopping block for more than a year and if it wasn’t for a last minute reprieve in 2011 by the Senate Appropriations Committee, the program would have faded away into taxpayer lore with the $600 toilet seat and $400 hammer.  Already this year, the House Appropriations Committee has cut funding for MEADS.  Seeing the writing on the wall, some MEADS advocates want to leverage any useful technology that has emerged from the funding thus far.  This sounds reasonable but is not an excuse to continue funding the program.  According to an op-ed by Robert Newton, a retired Air Force colonel and former Pentagon acquisitions officer, “The question is how. Dumping hundreds of millions of additional taxpayer dollars into a poorly performing program that will never materialize is absurd.”  The ploy by advocates of MEADS is to use this rationale as a ruse to continue funding to develop this technology.

The prime contractor for MEADS has claimed that funding for FY 2013 is necessary in order to finish the proof of concept phase which would make the technology viable for other systems.  According to DOD testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, completing the proof of concept would fulfill the United States’ commitment to the project.

There has been some disagreement about how much funding is needed to complete this proof of concept stage and now there is evidence that the military can meet this metric even if funding for FY 2013 is eliminated.  In recent news reports Lockheed Martin has admitted that current (FY 2012) funding would be enough to accomplish testing to be carried out in November.

In a nice bi-partisan showing of support for eliminating MEADS, four Democrats and four Republicans signed a letter in March calling on the leaders of the Senate Appropriations and Armed Services Committees to reject the Pentagon’s $400 million request for 2013 to continue funding for the program.  According to the letter, “Facing a serious fiscal crisis, we cannot afford to spend a single additional dollar on a weapons system such as MEADS that our warfighters will never use.”

In a follow up letter of his own to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Sen. John McCain, (R-Ariz.), the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, noted that he was disappointed that “the Department has chosen to ignore current law and congressional direction by requesting an additional $400 million for MEADS in fiscal year 2013 to continue the ‘proof of concept’ that Congress instructed be completed utilizing no more funding than the level appropriated for fiscal year 2012,…”

Time is running out on MEADS and Congress needs to do the right thing and defund the program immediately.