U.S. missile-defense salvage operations under way

Gates said 30 interceptors in the ground would provide a "strong" defense against North Korea. In addition, his 2010 spending plan would add $700 million to field more Raytheon-built Standard Missile-3 and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) systems built by Lockheed Martin.

The plan to forgo building 14 new silos for a savings of $170 million will be "challenged strongly in Congress," said Riki Ellison, head of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, an industry- and member-supported pressure group.

He said he was bringing grass-roots missile-defense advocacy leaders to Washington from 33 of the 50 U.S. states to tell Congress that Americans "are not wanting to be less protected against North Korea and Iran."

A wide range of lawmakers have argued that, with Pyongyang and Tehran demonstrating growing ballistic missile capabilities now is no time to cut U.S. long-range defenses.

"A reinvigorated national missile defense system would remind our enemies that regardless of who occupies the White House, America's commitment to its security is not negotiable," Representative John Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader of the House, said in a June 4 guest column in the Chicago Tribune.

As part of its salvage operation, Boeing hopes to spin off the directed-energy technology it has been developing as part of its Airborne Laser, a high-powered chemical laser in a 747 jumbo jet.

Gates would turn the ABL, as it is called, into a research program and cancel a second prototype aircraft. The Government Accountability Office estimates about $5 billion has been spent on ABL so far, ahead of a planned attempt to shoot down a target missile later this year.

"ABL is the pathfinder for directed energy weapons," Michael Rinn, Boeing's program director, said. He said it had shared "expertise and lessons learned" with a range of other programs.

"The true value of ABL is in developing the technologies required for useful military applications of target acquisition, precision pointing, active tracking, and beam control/fire control," Rinn added in a statement to Reuters.

Gates toured the missile-defense complex at Fort Greely on June 1, after North Korea carried out its second underground nuclear test and test-fired a barrage of short-range missiles notwithstanding international pressure not to do so.

Halting the expansion of the base's anti-missile silos, he said, was "not a forever decision."

(Reporting by Jim Wolf; editing by Dave Zimmerman)