Capitol Hill denizens are increasingly debating whether the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) should alter its research and spending priorities to better address more immediate concerns than defending against a long-range strike.

Ahead of unspecified but anticipated changes coming with a new White House administration and the 111th Congress starting next year, lawmakers, their staff and Hill watchers already are discussing relatively lower-priced but high-profile changes to the Bush administration's fiscal 2009 budget request that could, in turn, herald future priorities.

They include bolstering theater-based missile defenses provided by the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) systems, de-emphasizing potential ground-based midcourse defense interceptors in Europe, and re-examining all strategic forces – especially, nuclear weapons – in light of both peer-state competitors and terrorist threats. But beyond exasperation with President Bush's policies, Congress is eyeing MDA's programming details with growing frustration, according to key aides.

Related lawmaking is expected under the FY '09 defense authorization measure now working through Congress, including the Senate's version of the bill, which should be debated there soon. Moreover, in several speaking engagements on the Hill in recent days, legislators, staff, analysts and even the MDA's director have discussed the issues and responded.

MDA chief U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Trey Obering acknowledges that meeting warfighters' needs is an important focus. "This is an area that more should be looked into," he said. But Obering, who will retire this fall, has a ready litany of progress that the Defense Department has made in just the past six years, leading to a crude-but-operational system that includes ground-based interceptors (GBIs) in Alaska and California and Aegis BMD ships recently spotlighted in the U.S. satellite shootdown.

But congressional critics lament that MDA only now is starting to plan for significantly more THAAD and Aegis interceptors, which have been called for in official requirement studies since 2006, and critics also chastise GBI testing concerns (Aerospace DAILY, June 24). They cite alleged agency pullback from GBI testing this year due to test costs, despite MDA claims that it gets more out of each trial, and they criticize an FY '09 budget move to push off acquiring additional THAAD units, which the agency has since relented on.

The discussion, which spun out from a spring full of budget testimony and government reports on missile defense successes and shortcomings, has even proponents acknowledging likely changes to come. "We're going to have to be tougher on government contractors, on government managers, and eliminate some of the mistakes made year after year," said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.).