National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2006

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Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, the Senate will soon vote to approve the fiscal year 2006 Defense authorization bill. The passage of this legislation is important to all Americans who are now serving in the U.S. Armed Forces, but especially to those who are serving in harm's way.

Our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan require all the support that our Nation can give them until the day that they can return to their homes. Our military prides itself in being the most capable and the best trained fighting force in the entire world. The Constitution places in Congress the responsibility to ``raise and support armies'' and to ``provide and maintain a navy.'' It is therefore of the greatest importance that Congress provide our troops with the equipment that they need for their dangerous missions.

The wars that continue in Iraq and Afghanistan are unlike the conflicts that the United States has fought in the past two decades. In the first Persian Gulf War or Kosovo, our military depended on high-tech aircraft and smart bombs to quickly overwhelm our enemies. Today, in Iraq, our awesome airpower is of limited use. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are, by and large, the wars of the soldier and the marine. These are the wars of the foot soldier, carried out in the hostile streets of foreign cities. These troops do not enjoy the near-invulnerability of stealth aircraft or cruise missiles. Our troops do not see the enemy as a blip on a radar screen, because often the enemy is seen eye to eye.

With this being the reality of urban warfare, there must be a new focus on providing our ground troops with the equipment that they need to fight and survive in the urban combat environment. The Defense authorization bill reported by the Armed Services Committee makes steps in this direction. It authorizes $1.4 billion in spending to protect our troops serving overseas. This figure includes $500 million to detect and destroy roadside bombs, $344 million for up-armored HMMWVs, and $118 million for body armor.

But more must be done to provide our troops with the next generation of weapons that will help our troops prevail in ground combat. More needs to be done to apply the technology that allows our military to dominate the air and the seas to build a new generation of weapons that will allow our troops to dominate the ground. One such technology that deserves investigation is the SPIKE missile system currently being developed by the Navy. The SPIKE missile is designed to be a low-cost, lightweight, precision-guided rocket that would allow our troops to accurately engage enemies at great range. If this technology is successful, it could provide our ground troops with the same sort of revolutionary advantage that precision-guided munitions provided to our advanced aircraft a decade ago.

There are also emerging opportunities for the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to support the warfighter on the ground. While important UAVs like Global Hawk provide intelligence about what is going on in large sections of a country, our ground troops often need to know what is happening on the other side of a hill. Smaller UAVs can provide our troops with a decisive advantage in urban environments. Important projects like SWARM, being developed by Augusta Systems in Morgantown, are exploring ways to allow small UAVs to work together to seek out our enemies on the battlefield, eliminating the chance that our troops could be taken by surprise. The next step is to use small UAVs as ways to strike first, before our ground troops come into the range of our enemy's weapons. Our military is only beginning to tap the growing potential of UAV technology to support our troops on the ground.

The Department of Defense is currently engaged in the Quadrennial Defense Review, a top-to-bottom study of our military strategy, posture, and equipment that will guide this Nation's defense research and development and procurement policies for the next 4 years. With this review underway, it is an ideal opportunity to place a new emphasis on bringing cutting-edge technology to our troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. I urge the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the other Pentagon officials who are carrying out this study to broaden their view of what our troops require.

The QDR should propose new technologies to protect our troops from the threats that they face in combat, and it should also accelerate the development of new weapons systems that allow our soldiers to dominate the battlefield in urban environments. The Department of Defense should place these efforts on the top of its priorities: we should not wait for the next war to give our troops the advantage of new, high-tech weapons. Instead, the Pentagon and Congress should make every effort to arm our troops with the next generation of technology, today. For so long as our troops are serving in harm's way, we must give them not only the armor and protection, but also the weapons, that they need to ensure that they will come home safely.

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