MDA budget 2009

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency published yesterday a summary of it's fiscal year 2009 budget submission to the Congress. For a brief overview of the requests for 2008 and 2009 take a look at the site of the Center for Arms Control.

The overall budget requests for 2009 sum up to US$12.26 billion, which is 17.75% more than in the year 2008. The highest increase experienced the Space Based Infra-Red System-High (SBIRS-High) with 137% and the BMD Sensors with a 84% higher budget. The Midcourse Defense is supposed to be cut by roughly US$200 million, which equals due to the high volume only 8%.

President George W. Bush requested in his 2009 FY budget proposal US$719.8 million to deploy elements of the U.S. missile shield in Europe. According to the document submitted to U.S. Congress on Monday, the 2008-2013 budget for the project is estimated at about $4.8 billion.

Picture: © RIA Novosti