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U.S. Plans I: Congressman Questions 2004 Deployment Goal By David Ruppe The deadline is motivated by election-year political considerations, charged Representative Tom Allen (D-Maine), a member of the Armed Services and Government Reform committees, subcommittees of which have heard testimony from Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish in recent weeks. Allen cited Kadish’s statements that two critical missile defense system components will not yet be operating in 2004 and that there will have been only limited testing of the components planned for deployment. “The administration’s plan to put a rudimentary system in place on the eve of the 2004 election, whether or not it is proven to work, is irresponsible and politically transparent,” Allen said in a press statement released yesterday. Missile Defense Agency spokesman Lt. Col. Rick Lehner said today that the agency might nevertheless have a rudimentary capability by the end of 2004. Allen, however, urged the administration to abandon the deadline. “Premature deployment will not serve U.S. national security and will only heighten public cynicism,” he said. In previous testimony, defense officials have stated that the administration intends to deploy a rudimentary, “emergency” ground-launched, midcourse interceptor capability at Ft. Greely, Alaska, for potential defense against a ballistic missile attack on the U.S. mainland (see GSN, Feb. 28). Developers are building the system to launch a kill vehicle on top of a booster missile which, when guided by various radar and sensors, would separate and target an enemy warhead for destructive collision (see GSN, March 18). Responding to questioning from Allen and others Tuesday and on June 27, Kadish 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 (see GSN, May 3). Kadish said the agency will not be able to conduct operationally realistic flight-tests of the midcourse defense system before 2004. Such tests would include sophisticated countermeasures and would withhold from the interceptor advance data regarding the target’s trajectory, launch time and location. Realistic testing is scheduled to take place over a course of many years, officials have said. The agency also does not plan to flight-test any Ft. Greely interceptor missiles by 2004, Allen said, citing Kadish’s testimony. There is a concern that separated booster rockets might land in populated areas. MDA Responds Agency spokesman Lehner today said the administration might deploy an effective system without all of the features that are planned for the complete system. To substitute for X-band radar, for example, “it may be possible to incorporate an Aegis radar into the mix for that first block ’04 system,” he said. Past interceptor testing has substituted a homing device on the target for the role of the X-band radar. Regarding the less-capable Aegis S-band radar, Lehner said, “We’ll be using that in certain flight-tests before [2004] to see how that performs.” The ABM Treaty had prohibited the agency from using S-band radar in tests of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system. Developers plan to use the radar to monitor the next ground-based missile test, scheduled for the end of August. It will actually participate in battle management in December, he said. As for the absence of new satellite systems, Lehner said the current early warning satellite system, the Defense Support Program, should be “fully capable against the kind of threat we might encounter at that point in time.” The planned upgraded system, Space-Based Infrared System-Low, is intended for a more advanced threat than the agency expects the United States to encounter in 2004, he said. Incomplete testing also will not be a problem, Lehner said. “In about two years, you figure we’ll have probably about eight tests at the most. By that point, we probably should have some confidence in [the system’s] ability to take on a rudimentary threat. It’s better than nothing,” he said. “As long as we proceed down that course of having good intercept tests, I think we could have a lot more confidence that we could have a rudimentary capability in place by 2004.”
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