Rumsfeld: No Date Set for Missile Defense Deployment

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday there is no firm deadline for deploying components of a national missile defense system this year, responding to a question of whether he had set an Oct. 1 goal.

Speaking to the press at an annual missile defense conference in Huntsville, Ala., Rumsfeld said he did not believe there was a sense of urgency within the government to deploy the system, and that no identified threat from North Korea currently motivates putting it on alert (see GSN, Aug. 3).

Rumsfeld appeared to acknowledge that the anticipated deployment of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system may have been scheduled for a particular date, as has been reported. He said, though, that such schedules are made to be broken.

“Someone has a schedule they put out and they change it. Events occur that causes them to change it,” he said.

“But I can’t imagine anyone who is dumb enough to set a firm date,” he said.

The Washington Post reported today that Rumsfeld is still developing the rules dictating when and under whose authority the system might be fired in defense and is awaiting a final assessment about its readiness for operations.

President George W. Bush in December 2002 signed a directive requiring the military to “proceed with plans to deploy a set of initial missile defense capabilities beginning in 2004.”

Bush said in a speech Tuesday that the system, including a missile placed in a silo last month in Alaska, would offer a defense against future threats.

“We’re going to do what’s necessary to protect this country,” he said.

Rumsfeld was asked to comment on whether he signed a so-called “warning order” last year, directing the military to prepare for deploying the GMD system on Oct. 1 of this year, as reported by Global Security Newswire in July (see GSN, July 13).

Such an order would not set a fixed date for an event, but rather would be “a preliminary notice of an order or action which is to follow,” according to a Defense Department definition.

A warning order is further defined as “A planning directive that describes the situation, allocates forces and resources, establishes command relationships, provides other initial planning guidance, and initiates subordinate unit mission planning.”

A Democratic congresswoman this year criticized the administration for scheduling the deployment a month before the national elections on Nov. 2. A senior official denied the charge (see GSN, March 26). Democratic presidential candidate Senator John Kerry (Mass.) has also said a deployment now would be premature.

Army Maj. Gen. John Holly, who directs the Ground-based Midcourse Defense program, said in an interview yesterday that the program is focused on making components of the system ready for deployment by Sept. 30 because that is the end of the fiscal year.

“That’s when the money to accomplish this has been delivered and appropriated and authorized by the Congress to execute the mission,” he said.

Both houses of Congress have preliminarily approved language this year that would authorize administration-requested expenditures for fiscal 2005 beginning Oct. 1 for deployment operations.

A spokesperson for Rumsfeld has refused to discuss whether the defense secretary signed a warning order. Spokespeople for various military commands have generally referred all questions on the topic back to the Rumsfeld’s press office.

Rumsfeld yesterday said he could not recall giving such an order. “I have no idea, I doubt if I signed something like that,” he said.

Senior officials, however, have on occasion said Oct. 1 was set as the goal, as did Air Force Maj. Gen. William Shelton, director for policy, resources and requirements of the U.S. Strategic Command, in comments yesterday to Global Security Newswire (see GSN, Aug. 18). Shelton said he did not know who set the goal.

U.S. Pacific Command Commander Adm. Thomas Fargo testified to Congress in March that Navy forces and hardware “will be ready to support Missile Defense Initial Defensive Operations on or before 1 October.”

An Air Force Space Command official last October delivered a slide-show briefing that said that Rumsfeld and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) had chosen Oct. 1 for the deployment or Initial Defensive Operations (IDO).

“SECDEF and MDA decided upon 1 Oct 04 as IDO date,” according to the presentation.

It said the date set an “ultra aggressive timeline,” presenting issues of “poorly defined roles for and responsibilities of key organizations” and “unfunded requirements.”

Rumsfeld said yesterday the administration’s plans to deploy the system are driven by a desire to use the fielded system for testing and the belief that the technology would “evolve more rapidly” as a result.

“I think there are any number of things that benefit from getting it out there,” he said.

The planned deployment would also help the U.S. military “get better cooperation from our friends and allies,” he said.

Officials have said recently, however, that regardless of any goal, a final decision to deploy would be made only after a determination by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Strategic Command and other commands of the system’s utility and suitability against probable threats.

It would be done “pending completion of standard military utility assessments now under way … as would be done for any new weapon system,” according to Missile Defense Agency spokesman Richard Lehner.

The Strategic Command’s Shelton said yesterday “we’ve got a long way to go” before the system is ready for operation.

Military officials have said they could face a challenge in keeping the vast and complex system on alert while simultaneously using it for testing.

The difficulty involves, at least in part, separating operator involvement in the test from concurrent real life operation of the system so that the system does not mistakenly perceive the country is under attack, according to Holly of the Missile Defense Agency.

“What you don’t want to do is accidentally launch a live interceptor because of a test input. That would be rather embarrassing I would say,” he said, adding that a software solution is being developed to allow concurrent operation.

Rumsfeld suggested that given today’s likely threats, the system would not need to be always on alert once deployed.

“If someone came to me and said the world is roughly like it is today and we’ve got a choice, either we keep the alert capability up or take the alert capability down and go ahead and do some more adjusting and evolving, I would say do the latter,” he said.

“Because that’s what’s really important, unless we have a threat warning of some kind,” he said (see GSN, Aug. 18). 

While defense against potential North Korea capabilities has been previously citied as the target of deployment by U.S. officials, Rumsfeld suggested the communist nation does not pose any immediate threat.

“I don’t feel there is urgency about deploying, [based on] what we know,” he said.

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