The Pentagon is seeking a big boost in spending for missile defense to 9.1 billion dollars in 2005 but its overall budget for procuring new ships, planes and other military equipment declined markedly, according to budget documents made public Friday.The requests are part of a 401 billion dollar defense budget for 2005 that President George W. Bush is scheduled to submit Monday to Congress.
The defense budget documents were inadvertently posted on a Pentagon website and later withdrawn, but not before they were seen and widely circulated among news organizations.
The request for more money for missile defense comes as the Pentagon nears deployment of a rudimentary missile defense system in Alaska that is designed to track and intercept long range missiles.
The 9.1 billion dollars requested is a 20 percent increase over the 7.6 billion dollars authorized for missile defense in 2004.
But procurement of other weapon systems is set to decline in 2005 to 74.9 billion from 81.1 billion this year.
The army suffered drops in procurement of aircaft, missiles and combat vehicles while the navy also had spending on aircraft and shipbuilding cut back, the documents showed.
The air force, which has the heftiest procurement budgets of all the services, was up slightly at 32.5 billion dollars.
It budgeted 4.1 billion dollars for advanced procurement of 24 F-22 Raptors, and 4.7 billion dollars for C-17 and C-130 transport planes.
Money also was budgeted by the air force and the navy for the V-22 Osprey, the controversial aircraft that flies like a plane but takes off and lands like a helicopter.
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