Anthony Capaccio
Congressional spending panels have rejected a Pentagon request to transfer $50 million into developing small commercial satellites to monitor adversaries such as North Korea.
The decision by the House and Senate Defense Appropriations subcommittees stymied a plan that the Defense Department said in a budget request would “leverage the commercialization and peacetime use of this prototype technology” to develop a low-cost class of satellite technology “capable of producing medium-resolution imagery.”
The proposal from the Joint Chiefs of Staff was greeted with enthusiasm by some lawmakers as the Trump administration works to counter North Korea’s push to develop nuclear warheads and missiles that could hit the U.S mainland. “It’s something that we really need for many places, particularly Korea,” for constant surveillance, Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said at a hearing in July.
But requests to shift, or “reprogram,” funds require approval from all four panels that authorize and appropriate defense programs. While the Senate and House Armed Services Committees approved of the plan, the appropriations panels said no.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-06/lawmakers-block-mini-satellites-that-could-spy-on-north-korea
