The missile defense system that President Barack Obama plans to deploy in Europe starting next year may not function properly and could face significant cost overruns, a nonpartisan congressional watchdog agency warned Tuesday.

The report raises questions about legislation that would strengthen the U.S. commitment to the deployment plan that the White House was negotiating in return for Republican votes it needed for Senate approval of a new U.S.-Russia nuclear arms reduction treaty.

According to the Government Accountability Office, Obama has committed the Defense Department "to a schedule that could be challenging to meet, based on the technical progress of missile defense element development and testing programs."

Moreover, the administration committed the Pentagon "to this schedule before the scope of the development efforts was fully understood, GAO said in its report to a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. The GAO is an investigative arm of Congress.

The GAO report was released five days after an interceptor designed to destroy ballistic missiles in flight missed its target over the Pacific Ocean in the U.S. missile defense program's second failed test this year. It was the seventh failure in 15 tests since 1999.

Some experts question the integrity of the tests, saying they are staged under unrealistic conditions, according to the Pentagon's own data. Among other objections, critics say no decoys are used in the tests, and current sensor systems cannot differentiate between decoys and actual targets.

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