By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — With the demise of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the United States now can greatly broaden development and testing on a range of previously banned missile defense technologies, an expert said yesterday.

Over Russian objections, the U.S. withdrawal from the treaty took effect yesterday (see GSN, June 13).  Bush administration officials have described the treaty as a Cold War relic that thwarted U.S. missile defense efforts.

The treaty’s end will allow the United States to explore “a full panoply of technological options, that have been closed off for the past 30 years,” Baker Spring, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a prominent U.S. missile defense proponent, said.  Spring spoke yesterday at a briefing in the U.S. Capitol sponsored by the George C. Marshall Institute.

The range of now-available missile defense activities, he said, include:

*         testing a sea-based interceptor against a long-range target missile;

*         using sea-based radar to support interceptor tests against long-range missiles;

*         testing a mobile land-based interceptor, such as the Army’s Theater High Altitude Air Defense system, against a long-range missile;

*         testing an airborne laser against a long-range missile;

*         testing a space-based interceptor against any ballistic missile; and

*         developing and testing a multiple interceptor system (see GSN, April 10).

In addition, the Bush administration can activate plans to begin constructing a battle-management radar on Shemya Island, Alaska, and would be free to build a sea-based anti-ballistic missile radar, upgrade existing early warning radars for anti-ballistic missile capability, and field an emergency deployment of not-yet-modified Navy ships for use against North Korean missiles, he said.

Furthermore, the administration can now deploy more than 100 land-based, long-range missile interceptors, and place them at more than one site, he said.

The treaty allowed each country to deploy no more than 100 interceptors at just one site.

“As the events of September 11 made clear, we no longer live in the Cold War world for which the ABM Treaty was designed.  We now face new threats, from terrorists — who seek to destroy our civilization by any means available — to rogue states armed with weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles,” U.S. President George W. Bush said yesterday in a statement.

With the treaty in the past, the United States will step up missile defense cooperation with other countries, Bush said.

“Because these threats also endanger our allies and friends around the world, it is essential that we work together to defend against them, an important task which the ABM Treaty prohibited,” he said.

The treaty was signed by the United States and the Soviet Union in 1972 to discourage a nuclear arms race in which the two sides would expand their arsenals to ensure defeat of each other’s national missile defenses.

Wade Boese, research director at the Arms Control Association and a critic of national missile defenses, said eliminating the treaty and stepping up missile defense efforts could prompt countries such as China and Russia to accelerate efforts to improve their ballistic missile capabilities, and, perhaps, to share countermeasure technologies with rogue states developing ballistic missiles.

“If you feel the missile defense might give the U.S. a first strike advantage, that’s going to be of concern to you, and you’re going to steps to address that,” he said.  “It should be noted that back in the National Intelligence Estimate of 1999, the intelligence community actually predicted that if the United States went forward with its missile defense plans, Russian and China would likely sell their countermeasure technology to other countries.”

Lagging Behind the Threat

So far, no missile defense programs have produced a system ready to protect the United States from an intercontinental attack.

The missile defense effort is “lagging behind the threat,” according to Spring.  If no effective system is produced in the long term, he said, “the critics of missile defense will ridicule us, and I think with some justification.”

Boese agreed, saying, “Now without the ABM Treaty, it does put the pressure on the Pentagon to produce.  Now it’s time for missile defense proponents and advocates who have said it has been the treaty that has hindered missile defense to either put up or shut up.”

Boese said technological challenges, not the treaty, are responsible for today’s lack of an effective missile defense system, after tens of billions of dollars spent over decades.

Commenting on Spring’s list of programs now allowable, Boese said many of “those programs were originally conceived of being tested against short- and medium-range systems — which are permitted under the ABM Treaty” but have not been tested on longer-range systems.

Focus Needed

Spring urged the military to resist the temptation to “let a thousand technological flowers bloom,” concerned that an overly wide array of programs could impede efforts to field a defense quickly to meet the emerging threat.

Spring was nevertheless confident that the Bush administration would not overextend its resources by researching too many dead ends, despite the recent Pentagon decision to eliminate traditional oversight and performance measures for missile defense research (see GSN, Feb. 19).

Boese recommended a more focused approach, but focused away from national missile defense, contending the most pressing ballistic missile threat comes from short- and medium-range ballistic missiles that threaten U.S. troops abroad and allies.

“We should be concentrating our efforts on addressing the most immediate threat first, which is the theater missile threat.”

Key Challenges

Boese and other skeptics say the most prominent part of the U.S. effort, the mid-course, ground-launched system, is an overly ambitious system that may never work and where oversight is greatly needed.

They have said the system could be easily defeated by fooling it with decoys and camouflage, or overwhelming it by launching multiple missiles.

Asked if abolishing the ABM Treaty would help the Pentagon overcome such challenges, Spring suggested that the multiple interceptor concept — in which every target, including decoys, is attacked — could be effective.  That technology is in the early stages of development and Pentagon officials have called it potentially expensive and “risky.”

He also said rogue states launching a ballistic missile attack at the United States might have difficulty deploying sophisticated countermeasures for their warheads, a point missile defense skeptics dispute.

“Any country that is capable of developing a ballistic missile, will also be able to develop sophisticated decoys,” or at the very least buy them from Russia or China, Boese said.

For further information, see:

ABM Treaty Text

U.S. Fact Sheet on Withdrawal from ABM Treaty

U.S. Defense Department Executive Summary

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