Senate Panel Approves $4.5-Billion ‘Star Wars’ Budget for 1988

The Senate Armed Services Committee, meeting in closed session Thursday, approved a 1988 “Star Wars” budget that exceeds this year’s spending by nearly $1 billion but falls more than $1 billion short of President Reagan’s request, committee sources said.

The committee’s proposal for $4.5 billion in research funds for Reagan’s program of space-based missile defenses will probably face strong opposition both in the full Senate and in the House of Representatives, where sentiment toward the controversial program is less favorable.

Diversion Rejected

The Armed Services Committee also rejected several attempts to cut funds for nuclear arms and use the money to buy additional conventional weapons.

The committee, locked in dispute over arms-control provisions, failed to complete action on the bill to authorize Defense Department programs in fiscal 1988, which begins Oct. 1. The committee’s bill would authorize $302.7 billion, up from $290 billion this year but short of the Administration’s $312-billion request.

The House will take up its version of the defense bill next week. Its Armed Services Committee voted $3.8 billion for research on the Strategic Defense Initiative, as “Star Wars” is formally known. But committee Chairman Les Aspin (D-Wis.) plans to propose whittling that figure to $3.6 billion--barely more than this year’s level--to help bring the bill in line with the House-passed fiscal 1988 budget, which leaves room for $289 billion in total spending.

Reagan sought $5.7 billion for SDI. That would be an increase of nearly 60% over this year’s $3.5 billion for research into such exotic weapons as lasers and particle beams designed to shoot down enemy missiles during all stages of their flight, from immediately after liftoff to shortly before impact.

Levin Leads Drive

The drive to cut nuclear weapons spending was led in the Senate Armed Services Committee by Carl Levin (D-Mich.). In a speech Wednesday to a defense industry group, Levin announced his intention to offer amendments “to directly transfer money from nuclear programs to conventional” arms.

“In a constrained budget environment, we must, in effect, play Robin Hood,” he said. “We must take from the redundant and give to the under-funded.” While American forces already have a surplus of nuclear weapons, he said, “our conventional forces, and those of our allies, are in real need of improvement.”

Sources said that Levin came closest on an effort to transfer $500 million for the Midgetman missile--a mobile, single-warhead intercontinental ballistic missile--to a variety of conventional weapons programs.

Even so, sources said the Senate bill contained only $700 million for Midgetman research, compared with $2 billion in the House Armed Services Committee bill, nearly the full amount sought by the Administration. Midgetman has been a favorite program of a group of moderate Democratic lawmakers, including Aspin and presidential hopeful Sen. Albert Gore Jr. (Tenn.).

After completing action on the spending provisions of the bill, the Senate committee turned to arms control proposals. Pending when the committee adjourned until next Tuesday was an amendment that would require the President to adopt a narrow interpretation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

The narrow interpretation, which Reagan has rejected, would limit the Administration’s ability to test “Star Wars” components outside the laboratory. The House Armed Services Committee bill already includes such an amendment.

Cranston Plan

If the Senate committee version of the bill has no language on the ABM Treaty, Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) and other leading arms control supporters say they plan to try to propose the amendment on the Senate floor.

Senate arms control advocates also plan a floor amendment requiring the Administration to adhere to certain aspects of the unratified SALT II arms limitation treaty.

The House has also attached strict arms control amendments to a bill appropriating supplemental funds for a variety of government programs for the current year.

Administration officials argue that the amendments, if they became law, would tie the President’s hands in arms negotiations with the Soviet Union. Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) has said he would ask Reagan to veto the 1988 defense spending bill if it passed with the arms control amendments attached.

California Spending

The bill contains several provisions of particular impact on California. The committee, for example, approved the Administration’s full $27-million request to expand naval port facilities in Long Beach and at Hunter’s Point in San Francisco, sources said. The House committee had deleted that money until further studies could be made of the environmental impact of dredging at those locations.

The Senate committee, according to sources, also approved the Administration’s requests for several new weapons programs under development by California defense contractors, including $1.2 billion for McDonnell Douglas’ C-17 Airlifter, a new military cargo plane; $2.5 billion for advanced F/A-18 Hornet fighter aircraft, co-developed by Northrop, and $176 million to purchase ground-to-air Stinger missiles from General Dynamics.