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By Sharon Weinberger
The FY '06 budget request for the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) reflects a significant change in strategy in several key technology areas, including plans to reevaluate a new boost-phase intercept system and delaying selection of a third interceptor site for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) program.
The total request for MDA in the FY '06 budget is $7.5 billion, almost a billion less than the current year's enacted budget of $8.4 billion. While several programs under MDA's purview are being reevaluated or delayed, the new Kinetic Energy Interceptor (KEI) program, a nascent boost-phase system, bore the brunt of the widely expected $1 billion cut from the agency's topline budget.
Congress, which last year expressed significant skepticism over the program, slashed the FY '05 request for KEI, which is being developed by Northrop Grumman [NOC]. MDA now also is...