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U.S. Plans: Bush Administration Announces Anti-Missile Deployment Plans By David Ruppe The plan, announced by White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, calls for deploying 10 ground-based interceptor missiles in Alaska in 2004 and an additional 10 by 2006 for destroying long-range enemy warheads in space. The system also will involve sea-based interceptors, additional advanced Patriot theater missile interceptors, and sensors on land, sea and in space, according to the announcement. Fleischer also said the Pentagon also has formally requested British and Danish participation in the missile defense effort, which, if accepted, would make it officially a trans-Atlantic effort (see related GSN story, today). Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is expected to provide more details at a press briefing this afternoon. Previously, the stated Bush administration plan was to build a missile defense infrastructure across the Pacific Ocean, including five or six missiles at Fort Greely, Alaska, ostensibly for testing purposes, but which could be activated in an emergency for defense. The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency has for years been developing the so-called “test bed,” across the Pacific. Almost immediately following the U.S. abandonment of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in June (see GSN, June 13), contractors broke ground to construct the missile silos at Fort Greely (see GSN, Dec. 11). The deployed system will build on the test bed. President George W. Bush had vowed during his election campaign to put a system in place by 2004 that could defend the United States against a limited intercontinental ballistic missile attack. Former President Bill Clinton decided in September 2000 against early deployment, citing concerns the technology was not yet proven under realistic conditions. Question of Reliable Protection A Bush statement released by Fleischer said, “We have adopted a new concept of deterrence that recognizes that missile defenses will add to our ability to deter those who may contemplate attacking us with missiles.” In the view of retired Navy Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, former director of the Center for Defense Information, the system still is not ready for deployment. “I would not rely on this system, I would rely on other offensive systems to take out the threat,” he said. “Can you imagine any president, that if he builds this system, that he’s going to hide behind it? If the system is not 100 percent kill-perfect, it is not a good system in this case.” The Bush statement also described the deployment decision as “another important stop” to countering ballistic missile threats, deploying “initial capabilities” that have emerged “from our research and development program.” The statement acknowledged that the system’s technologies were in research development. “While modest, these capabilities will add to America’s security and serve as a starting point for improved and expanding capabilities later, as further progress is made in researching and developing missile defense technologies and in light of changes in the threat,” it said. Representative Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, praised the announced plan in a statement as “prudent.” “Over the last few years, we have demonstrated a degree of technological maturity that permits us to proceed with a reasonable degree of confidence,” it said. Different Opinions on Readiness The decision to deploy comes as the various critical technologies involved, such as interceptors, radar and information management systems remain in various stages of research, development and testing, all of which is expected to continue throughout the decade. Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish told a congressional committee this year the agency would not be able to conduct operationally realistic flight tests of the midcourse defense system before 2004 (see GSN, July 19). Kadish then said two key components of the system would not be in place until after 2004 — an X-Band radar, which would be used for tracking the enemy missile, and space-based missile-detecting satellites designed to provide improved early warning of missile launches. Critics have questioned whether the tens of billions of dollars effort will ever produce an effective system, arguing that current U.S. technology continues to face significant technological challenges and that any system could be easily fooled by enemy decoys and countermeasures. They have charged, and the agency’s top officials publicly conceded, that testing has not yet approached real world conditions. Administration officials in recent weeks, nevertheless, have declared that recent testing has proven the system could work effectively. “We no longer need to experiment, to demonstrate or prevaricate. We need to get on with this and I’m confident we will,” Kadish told a London conference on missile defense last month. “Sometime in the next five years or so we will have effective defenses against a multiple range of threats,” he said. “Our missile defense program since 2001 has demonstrated that missile technology, in particular hit-to-kill technology, actually works,” Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said in public comments in October. He cited previous hit-to-kill testing of the core system, the ground-based mid-course interceptor, which the Pentagon reported resulted in four direct hits on mock warheads in space. The most recent test of the system on Dec. 11, though, failed because a rocket booster failed to separate, according to the Missile Defense Agency. The agency’s record for the tests is now five of eight hits. Lead contractor Boeing reportedly is considering canceling the next two flight-tests, Inside Missile Defense reported in October. Matt Martin, a missile defense analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation in Washington says the agency originally planned more than 20 hit-to-kill tests before testing the system under operational conditions. “Back when BMDO [the now-defunct Ballistic Missile Defense Organization] used to actually publish detailed listings of what the tests would be, what they were going to test for, what the warhead/decoy set-up was going to be, they listed 21, 22 developmental tests before they got to operational testing,” he said. Chuck Spinney, a longtime Pentagon analyst with a reputation for criticizing Pentagon weapons acquisition policies, said deploying a system before it is fully developed is a common Pentagon practice. “This is Pentagon business as usual. Deployment before verifying a system works through testing is bad engineering practice and the reason we do it in the Pentagon is because we’re spending other people’s money and the deployment will increase production funds flowing to the contractors, which means more contracts will be flowing to congressional districts,” he said. The practice, he said, creates “a political safety net so the program can’t be turned off,” he said.
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