Technicians this week installed the fifth missile interceptor for use in the U.S. missile defense system at Fort Greeley, Alaska (U.S. Missile Defense Agency photo). U.S. Missile Defense Can be Fooled by Decoys, Documents Say By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Documents published by the U.S. Missile Defense Agency over the past two years appear to confirm what experts have charged is a fundamental flaw of the national missile defense system the Bush administration plans to make operational in Alaska this year (see GSN, Sept. 22). The documents — technical appeals for innovative ideas from the small business community — say readings from the sensors that would be used by the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system are “not adequate” for distinguishing an enemy warhead from a decoy or other nearby objects...Full Story

White House Backs Senate Intelligence Reform Bill By Mike Nartker Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The White House yesterday came out in favor of legislation being debated in the Senate that would create a national intelligence director, but raised concerns about several of the bill’s provisions (see GSN, Sept. 28)...Full Story

Security Council Could Be Next Step if North Korea Rejects Further Nuclear Talks, U.S. Says By Marina Malenic Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — A senior U.S. official warned yesterday that North Korea might have to be brought before the U.N. Security Council if it refuses to participate in six-party talks aimed at resolving the standoff on its nuclear programs (see GSN, Sept. 28)...Full Story

	Wednesday, September 29, 2004

White House Backs Senate Intelligence Reform Bill By Mike Nartker Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The White House yesterday came out in favor of legislation being debated in the Senate that would create a national intelligence director, but raised concerns about several of the bill’s provisions (see GSN, Sept. 28). In a formal statement, the White House said it “supports” passage of a bill prepared by Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine) and top committee Democrat Joseph Lieberman (Conn.) intended to implement the intelligence reform proposals made this summer by the Sept. 11 commission. The bill, approved unanimously by the Governmental Affairs Committee last week, would create a position with a large degree of budgetary and personnel authority over many of the agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, as well as implement other structural changes to the community (see GSN, Sept. 23). “The administration supports, in particular, the establishment of a NID [national intelligence director] with full, effective and meaningful budgetary authorities to manage the intelligence community,” the White House policy statement says. The administration also said that it would oppose any amendments to the bill “that would weaken the full budget authority or any other authorities that the president has requested for the NID.” During a press conference yesterday, Collins said the White House statement would provide the Senate bill with “momentum” and would help deflect calls for a slower approach to the issue of intelligence reform, as has been proposed by some lawmakers and outside experts (see GSN, Sept. 22). “The statement of administration policy makes clear that the president wants this bill on his desk as soon as possible,” Collins said. “At a time when our nation is under increased threat of a terrorist attack, it would be irresponsible for Congress to adjourn for the year without enacting this important legislation.” The White House raised concerns, though, about several provisions in the Senate bill, such as those that would “create a cumbersome new bureaucracy” in the national intelligence director’s office. That was an apparent reference to the Senate bill’s call for a group of new administrative positions, including an intelligence community ombudsman intended to prevent politicization of intelligence. Similar legislation making its way through the House of Representatives call for fewer bureaucrats and would not create an intelligence ombudsman (see GSN, Sept. 27). In addition, the White House signaled its opposition to a move supported by the Sept. 11 commission, and included in part in the Senate intelligence reform bill — the declassification of the intelligence budget. While the Sept. 11 panel recommended that the total amounts allocated to the various intelligence agencies be declassified, the Senate bill contains a provision that would only allow the release of the amount of the overall intelligence budget as requested by the White House and appropriated by Congress. “The legislation should not compel disclosure, including to the nation’s enemies in war, of the amounts requested by the president, and provided by the Congress, for the conduct of the nation’s intelligence activities,” the White House policy statement says. The House intelligence reform bill would continue to keep the total intelligence budget requested by the president and appropriated by Congress classified. Collins said yesterday, though, that “on the fundamental issues,” the White House’s positions were in line with those of the Senate bill. Amendment Debate While the White House said it would oppose amendments offered to the Senate bill that would weaken the authority of the planned national intelligence director, there was debate on the Senate floor yesterday over an amendment offered by Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) that some have said would give the new director too much authority.  The Specter amendment would give the new national intelligence director the authority to manage the CIA and a number of Defense Department-controlled agencies, such as the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. The amendment is based on a proposal made this summer by Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (see GSN, Aug. 27). The Specter amendment was opposed, though, by a number of lawmakers, including Collins, Lieberman and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.), who said that such a move would hurt the agencies’ ability to provide information to military commanders. “To ensure that these agencies provide the proper intelligence to our military customers, the secretary of defense must be able to direct them in executing their operational missions,” Warner said. Specter accused Warner, whose committee oversees the Pentagon, of engaging in a “turf battle.” Specter’s criticisms resulted in a sharp reply from the Virginia senator. “I am really quite in temper that that word continues to be brought up, because I personally am striving to do what is best for this country and to make our intelligence system stronger as a consequence of this legislative process,” Warner said. A vote on Specter’s amendment is expected to be held today, according to reports. Back to top       Russia Considering Terrorism Threat Level System The head of the Russian Security Council said today that Moscow is considering a system to alert the public to the terrorism threat level, CNN.com reported (see GSN, June 23). Such a system would have “an array of measures and actions” for the public to take in response to the threat level, Igor Ivanov said. Russian officials are still considering how information would be transmitted to the public, Ivanov said. One system under consideration is the use of various colors to indicate the threat level, as is used in the United States. “Maybe by color, maybe by number, maybe something else,” he said (CNN.com, Sept. 29). Back to top

Security Council Could Be Next Step if North Korea Rejects Further Nuclear Talks, U.S. Says By Marina Malenic Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — A senior U.S. official warned yesterday that North Korea might have to be brought before the U.N. Security Council if it refuses to participate in six-party talks aimed at resolving the standoff on its nuclear programs (see GSN, Sept. 28). “At some point, you have to ask the question, if the North Koreans are not willing to engage in talks seriously, what the future of the talks is. … If, at some point, North Korea continues to stonewall, then I think the Security Council is the next logical step,” said Undersecretary of State John Bolton, speaking at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. The Security Council would have the authority to impose sanctions on North Korea. Bolton also said that North Korea was probably stalling in anticipation of the Nov. 2 U.S. elections. “It’s clear the North Koreans took a look at the calendar and decided it was not in their interests to have a fourth round before our elections,” he said. Meanwhile, the State Department yesterday urged Pyongyang to return to the negotiating table in response to a statement Monday by a senior North Korean official that North Korea had “weaponized” plutonium. “The fundamental situation is that North Korea has … continued to violate its commitment, is bragging about violating its commitments and its promises, has alienated its neighbors, has postponed benefits … of interaction with the outside world, and has now stalled and apparently failed to show up for a round of talks they agreed to a few months ago,” said spokesman Richard Boucher. “Statements such as this, rhetoric such as this, just reinforces the need to reach an agreement which says this is no longer going to be a danger and it’s not going to happen again,” he said. “We have a mechanism to reach that agreement, to allow North Korea to end these programs, but also to gain the benefits of interaction with the outside world, and we have a proposal on the table from the United States to enable North Korea to do that.” Elsewhere, Agence France-Presse reported that Kim Yong Nam, North Korea’s chief legislator and second-in-command to leader Kim Jong Il, is expected to visit China next month to discuss the stalled nuclear talks, according to a Beijing source. Back to top       U.S. to Push for Security Council Referral of Iran The United States will continue to advocate that Iran’s nuclear activities be referred for debate in the U.N. Security Council, a senior U.S. official said yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 28). Sending Iran’s case to the Security Council would alter the international community’s perceptions of Tehran’s nuclear work, which would in turn put pressure on the Islamic republic, said Undersecretary of State John Bolton, speaking at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. “It would cause a change in the global political calculus, which should change the cost-benefit analysis in Tehran,” Bolton said. Bolton said that, while the mission of the International Atomic Energy Agency includes monitoring nuclear safeguards agreements under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the agency is required to refer cases to the Security Council once “questions arise” in connection with compliance. Iran’s case has met that condition, he said. “Moving the Iran question to the Security Council should be a matter of the smooth functioning of the IAEA system,” Bolton said. “At a minimum, we say there are questions that have arisen about what Iran’s nuclear program is about — quite apart from the fact that it has violated its safeguards agreements, repeatedly, as the [IAEA] board found in November,” he said. He added that it was particularly important that Russia consider how its agreement with Iran to build a light-water reactor near Tehran affects Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons drive.  “I think one of the concerns that we’ve had with Russia is that their involvement in the Iranian nuclear program, the construction of the Bushehr reactor and the supply of fuel for that reactor, puts them in the position of a supplier to Iran.   And they are concerned that if they were to withdraw from Bushehr, they would simply be replaced by some other commercial entity from another country,” he said. “I can understand that commercial concern, but that’s not the approach that we would like them to have.  And I think seeing the issue in their capacity as one of the five permanent members in the Security Council would have an effect on the way they view it,” he added. Asked if the nuclear weapons programs of other countries in the region such as India, Pakistan and possibly Israel may have influenced Iran’s alleged drive to acquire such a capability, Bolton pointed out Iran’s international agreements to forego such development. “Iran has joined the NPT as a nonweapons state. Now if it’s got a concern with its security because of Pakistan or some other country … and it wants to pursue nuclear weapons legitimately, then it can withdraw from the [Nuclear] Nonproliferation Treaty,” he said (Marina Malenic, Global Security Newswire, Sept. 29). Russian officials said today that they oppose sending Iran’s case to the Security Council, Agence France-Presse reported. “Moving this question to the Security Council, which is a political body, does not correspond to the interests of the issue,” said Igor Ivanov, head of Russia’s Security Council. “This question falls under the mandate of the IAEA, and the IAEA is ready to continue this work” (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Sept. 29). Elsewhere, diplomats said yesterday that initial tests of soil samples taken from Iran’s Lavizan Shiyan military complex — which satellite photos indicated had been razed earlier this year (see GSN, July 29) — revealed no indications of nuclear activity, the Associated Press reported. The diplomats added, however, that the agency’s investigation of the site was not yet complete. “We have still not looked at all results” of environmental sampling, said one diplomat (George Jahn, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Sept. 28). Meanwhile, Iranian officials yesterday said they are urging European countries to create “new mechanisms” for verification of Tehran’s nuclear work that would avoid referral to the Security Council, while some Iranian lawmakers proposed withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The withdrawal legislation, drafted by leading conservative lawmaker Hassan Kamran, only needs support from 15 of 290 legislators to be submitted to parliament, Reuters reported. “The bill obliges the government to pull out of the NPT if the International Atomic Energy Agency does not meet the [November] deadline” to remove Iran from the agenda for its meeting that month, Kamran told Iran’s state-run news service (Parisa Hafezi, Reuters, Sept. 28). Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said yesterday he recently proposed creating an inspection “contract” with Europe, Russia, China and nonaligned countries at the United Nations that would “help the [negotiation] process to be continued inside” the IAEA, the Los Angeles Times reported. “We are looking for some contract or mechanism that lets us continue with our right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, including producing fuel for power plants, and on the other hand, to remove the concerns of others and assure them Iran is not going to divert (uranium) towards a nuclear weapons program,” Kharazi said, adding that Tehran was willing to consider “any kind of verification mechanism … to make sure there is no secret program.” Kharazi did not specify what he wanted in the contract, according to the Times. He invited other foreign ministers to create an agreement in the same spirit as the pact Iran made with the United Kingdom, France and Germany last year in which Tehran agreed to suspend its enrichment activities in return for European assistance with peaceful nuclear technology (Farley/Marshall, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 29).  “We are against (a) nuclear bomb. And it’s not part of our defense strategy,” said Kharazi. He added that IAEA inspectors had not found evidence of nuclear weapons development in Iran. “Iran is quite transparent. All sites are under inspection,” he said (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Sept. 28). Back to top       Democratic Republic of the Congo Ratifies CTBT The Democratic Republic of the Congo yesterday submitted its ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, according to the CTBT Organization (see GSN, Sept. 24).  The organization called the move “highly significant” because the African nation is one of 44 countries that must ratify the treaty before it can enter into force (see GSN, Sept. 17). To date, 118 countries have ratified the agreement, including 33 of the 44 nations whose ratifications are necessary for the treaty to enter into force (CTBT Organization release, Sept. 29). Back to top       U.S. Air Force Extends Service Life of B-2 Bombers The U.S Air Force plans to extend the service life of the nuclear-capable B-2 bomber to nearly 2060, Aviation Week & Space Technology reported this week (see GSN, Aug. 18). The bomber was once set to be retired in 2037, but the Air Force has pushed that back to 2058, said Harry Heimple, Northrop Grumman Integrated Systems’ manger for government requirements. In the meantime, several upgrades are planned for the B-2, including the addition of active stealth technology and the use of new materials to make the bomber more serviceable, Aviation Week reported (Wall/Fulghum, Aviation Week & Space Technology, Sept. 27). Meanwhile, a new study by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment nonprofit research institute says that improvements to the Air Force’s fleet of 21 B-2 bombers would help maintain U.S. long-range strike capabilities, according to Defense Daily. “Near-term improvements to current American long-range strike capabilities should emphasize on ‘precision information’ needed for precision strike,” the study says. “In the case of the bomber fleet, the next step with the greatest payoff would be to invest around $2 billion to modernize the avionics in the 21 B-2s” (Lorenzo Cortes, Defense Daily, Sept. 29). The Air Force is also considering deploying a new long-range strike aircraft between 2020 and 2025, and perhaps as early as 2015, according to Aviation Week & Space Technology (see GSN, June 24). The new manned aircraft would be expected to have a range of 2,500 nautical miles, a speed of Mach 2 and a daytime attack capability (Wall/Fulghum, Aviation Week & Space Technology). Back to top       World Must Reject Nuclear Terror, Allison Says By Jim Wurst Global Security Newswire NEW YORK — A nuclear attack on the United States by terrorists is “inevitable if the U.S. and other governments just continue to do what they are doing,” Graham Allison, author of Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, said here Monday in pressing for greater security of nuclear materials. “We are living on borrowed time. It’s more puzzling why it hasn’t already happened than why it could happen,” Allison, a director at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, said in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations.  Pointing to the title of the book, he said the chances of such a disaster could be “reduced to virtually zero” if extra safeguards are placed on the world’s supply of weapon-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium (see GSN, Sept. 22). To this end, Allison said foreign policy in the field should be based on three “no’s” — “no loose nukes,” meaning “locking down as good as gold” all existing plutonium and HEU supplies; “no new nascent nukes,” stopping additional countries, particularly Iran, from developing a nuclear program; and “no new nuclear weapons states.” On this last point, he said, there are eight nuclear weapons states “and then there’s North Korea slinking across. I would draw a bright line under the eight and say ‘that’s how many there are and there’s not going to be more.’” This strategy requires a hard line against the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran, he said. This requires “a bunch of carrots” and “a very large stick;” the carrots being economic and political incentives and the stick being military action to destroy their nuclear sites if required. Allison said North Korea presents the greatest threat since it was more likely to sell nuclear weapons to terrorists. The communist nation will “absolutely” develop nuclear weapons “if we just keep doing what we are doing. This will be judged by historians as the worst failure in American foreign policy ever,” he said.  The Bush administration’s behavior toward North Korea has been “strange,” he added. U.S. officials have refused to negotiate bilaterally with the communist regime or offer economic incentives for it to eliminate its nuclear program. The carrots here should be “all the bribes they want” and the stick should be the warning that a nuclear North Korea will provoke a new Korean War in which North Korea would be destroyed, said Allison. “That’s an extreme proposition justified only because when I ask myself what is the world going to look like if North Korea succeeds in having nuclear weapons. … I think that world is going to be even worse,” he said (see GSN, Sept. 28). Allison said Iran has been clear in its objectives to produce a complete domestic nuclear cycle, but the United States alternates between “barking speeches” and “ignoring them.” “We haven’t threatened them with anything plausible, we haven’t actually offered them anything, but we’ve told them we want them to change their regime (and) we don’t want you to have nuclear weapons,” he said. The goal should be to “freeze Iran where it is today.” The West should offer Iran “a lot of carrots” including a promise not to attack, allowing Iran to finish the Bushehr nuclear plant with the guarantee of a constant supply of nuclear fuel from Russia as long as the spent fuel is returned, and supporting European investments. He estimated that such “a grand bargain” would have an 80 percent chance of success. The sticks should include sanctions, but “the really big stick is a credible military threat to destroy their facilities for enriching uranium and reprocessing plutonium before they turn on,” Allison said. By “locking down as good as gold” the world’s supply of highly enriched uranium and plutonium, Allison said he meant the nuclear material should be as completely secured as the U.S. stock of gold. “Locking it down at the source is the point of greatest leverage” to prevent terrorists from getting nuclear weapons, he said. The U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which is designed to secure all Russian nuclear weapons and fissile materials, has succeeded in securing half the Russian materials after 13 years at a cost of $1 billion per year, he said. The present schedule, which Allison said the Bush administration endorses, means the job will not be finished until 2020. He added the Democratic presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, says it can be completed in four years. Back to top

Hungary Had Cold War Chemical Arms Stockpile The Hungarian Defense Ministry has acknowledged possessing chemical weapons during the Cold War-era, the Hungarian newspaper Nepszabadsag reported last week (see GSN, July 23). In addition to possessing chemical weapons, the Hungarian military also conducted exercises involving small amounts of agent in the 1960s and the 1970s, the newspaper reported. Since 1990, Hungary has worked to reduce its chemical weapons stockpiles to a small amount of mustard gas, nerve agent and lewisite for use in testing protective equipment, Nepszabadsag reported (Zoltan Haszon, Nepszabadsag/BBC Worldwide Monitoring, Sept. 28). Back to top

Experts Debate North Korean Missile Capability There is debate among U.S. intelligence officials and outside experts regarding the extent of North Korea’s ballistic missile capabilities, which have been cited by the Bush administration as a reason for developing a U.S. missile defense system, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Sept. 27). North Korea by late 2001 had developed the Taepodong 2 long-range missile and could soon begin flight tests, according to the most recent National Intelligence Estimate on ballistic missiles. U.S. intelligence analysts have said there could be two versions of the missile, a two-stage version with a range of about 6,000 miles — capable of striking Hawaii, Alaska and the western United States — and a three-stage version capable of traveling 9,000 miles. No long-range missile launches have occurred to date, according to the Post. U.S. officials said, though, that many details of North Korea’s missile efforts remain unknown, the Post reported. Some experts have said that North Korea does not have the technological capability to develop a missile capable of conducting a nuclear strike on the United States, according to the Post. “It would require a huge technological leap for them,” said Joseph Cirincione, nonproliferation director at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “I don’t see the evidence that they’ve made the necessary breakthroughs” (Bradley Graham, Washington Post, Sept. 29). Back to top

U.S. Missile Defense Can be Fooled by Decoys, Documents Say By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — Documents published by the U.S. Missile Defense Agency over the past two years appear to confirm what experts have charged is a fundamental flaw of the national missile defense system the Bush administration plans to make operational in Alaska this year (see GSN, Sept. 22). The documents — technical appeals for innovative ideas from the small business community — say readings from the sensors that would be used by the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system are “not adequate” for distinguishing an enemy warhead from a decoy or other nearby objects. Furthermore, they suggest that the system, if used, might face numerous decoys and other sophisticated countermeasures. That appears to undercut assertions by officials that missile defense would provide a “modest” or “rudimentary” defense against a “limited” threat. The problems are described in little-noticed solicitations published on the Internet by the Missile Defense Agency’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, written in fairly technical language with the intent of attracting innovative technological solutions to problems. Critics say the language appears to confirm a fundamental flaw that they have argued for years would render the system ineffective at defeating even a basic ICBM attack. “It’s the Achilles heel of this system,” said Ted Postol, an MIT arms control expert. “Given the fact that they have only certain sensors they can use, [the problem is] impossible to solve.” “Apparently the big defense contractors — Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed — have not been able to solve this problem, or else the MDA would not be turning now to small businesses for creative ideas,” said Philip Coyle, the Pentagon’s former top weapons testing official, now a senior adviser with the Center for Defense Information. The system reportedly faces other serious technological challenges that could hamper effective operation, such as significant delays in the flight test program (see GSN, Aug. 18) and in producing a new rocket booster, and insufficient overall development that has delayed the onset of realistic operational testing. Even if the system could be made to work, said Senator Jack Reed (D-R.I.) in an e-mail to Global Security Newswire, “It will still have virtually no capability to tell the difference between decoys and real warheads, which means it will be essentially useless against any enemy capable of attacking us with a nuclear missile.”  Distinguishing a warhead from a decoy is “one of the most difficult technical problems they face, and to the degree it cannot be solved, it will prevent the GMD system from being effective, now and in the future,” Coyle said. While acknowledging that countermeasures pose a challenge, administration and agency officials have asserted that the system could offer an effective defense against “limited” ICBM threats it would face in the near future. The Missile Defense Agency “will present to our combatant commanders by the end of 2004 an initial missile defense capability to defeat near-term threats of greatest concern,” then-MDA Director Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish said in congressional testimony in March. ‘Not Adequate’ The Ground-based Midcourse Defense system is being developed to intercept enemy warheads in space as they head toward the United States. On the president’s order, the Pentagon plans to install up to 10 interceptors this year in Alaska and California to offer some defense against a projected North Korean ICBM capability. The Missile Defense Agency has reported that it lowered the fifth interceptor into its silo at the Alaska site this week (see GSN, Sept. 24). An additional 10 are scheduled for emplacement in 2005 and the administration is requesting money this year for at least 10 more beyond that. Kill vehicles launched from those sites would be required to “discriminate” —using heat sensing, infrared sensors — an enemy warhead from decoys and other objects in a matter of seconds with the hope of striking the warhead. A key technical difficulty of that challenge, experts have said, is distinguishing a warhead from decoy balloons, chaff or other objects that might resemble the weapon to the kill vehicle’s sensors. To the infrared sensor, the oncoming warhead appears as a very rough blur among other blurs, according to Coyle. “Even though the EKV [exoatmospheric kill vehicle] has already had to commit to a target, all it sees is a bunch of shapeless blurry pixels.  If there are two objects like that in the field of view, the EKV has no way of knowing which is which,” he said, citing photos published in a report he co-authored in May. A key passage from two small business solicitations published in late 2002 appears to confirm that that challenge has not been solved. “Target discrimination (the ability to identify or engage any one target when multiple targets are present) during National Missile Defense (NMD) midcourse engagement is a complex technological hurdle. … Feature differences among decoys, penetration aids, and targets are not adequate for discrimination by current missile passive IR sensors,” it says. The agency is pursuing advanced X-band radars that could aid the discrimination system by showing the shapes of the warhead and other objects. However, they will not be deployed at least for another year and along with the infrared sensors could be fooled by an “antisimulation” countermeasure of concealing the warhead in a Mylar balloon amid a field of empty, decoy balloons, critics say. The small business solicitations suggest the system could face in the near term such countermeasures in the event a threat materialized. “Threats envisioned for the near- and far-term are a challenging mixture of countermeasures that include chaff, jamming, low observable RVs (re-entry vehicles), balloons, coatings, antisimulation, and simulation, among other countermeasures, that will require novel approaches to the discrimination problem,” according to a document published this summer. Another solicitation posted this summer says that “Ballistic missile threat capabilities continue to proliferate and progressively evolve to fainter targets and the use of more sophisticated decoys — conditions that increase the potential limitations of background clutter on surveillance system performance.” Another said missile interceptors in the future could face up to 200 decoys or objects at one time. Such passages offer rare insight into what the agency thinks about the limitations of the system, Postol said. “It looks like an honest engineer who was actually trying to solve a problem wrote this up, rather than a spin doctor,” he said. Documents Address Future Challenges, MDA Says A Missile Defense Agency spokesman acknowledged in an e-mail that countermeasures challenge the system. “As we have said for years, countermeasures do now, and probably always will, present technical challenges for both current and future missile defense systems,” said spokesman Richard Lehner.  The agency in a statement released to Global Security Newswire said, though, that the small business solicitations refer to potential challenges from future threats. “They are not written to advertise limitations in existing systems or near-term block upgrades, but to focus attention on improvements that would add significantly to performance, lower cost, and add robustness against more complicated future threats (including sophisticated countermeasures),” the statement says. Agency officials have argued that the system would likely face a primitive threat from any near-term ICBM aggressor and that against such a threat the system could be fairly effective. A Washington Post article this month, for instance, suggested that the Missile Defense Agency estimates an 80 percent rate of effectiveness for the system, though the story indicated little about the assumptions underlying the estimate. It did suggest, however, that the number did not include data from early flight tests, which apparently include the only two tests using a type of decoy that critics said was found to closely resemble the dummy warhead to the infrared sensor. “My guess is there are no decoys involved [in deriving the threat estimate], that they’re just asking can this thing hit an object in space with a reliability of x,” Postol said.   “If there are decoys there, the numbers very quickly go to zero. They can’t look inside the balloons, period.” MDA Spokesman Lehner said that estimates and computations of effectiveness behind such numbers are classified, and said Postol “does not have access to highly classified information detailing our technical, scientific and engineering approach to defeating countermeasures.” He also said the “most important data” used to derive such estimates comes from computer modeling and simulation and ground tests “that can postulate a huge number of likely scenarios and match system performance to determine expected effectiveness.” Critics have charged that the administration must be assuming very simplistic or no countermeasures to arrive at such estimates, and add that models used for estimates may not be realistic as the agency has excluded advanced countermeasures from its testing regime (see GSN, June 8). “The MDA has avoided the problem of target discrimination, by defining an ‘unsophisticated threat,’ that is, one or two missiles from a rogue nation involving no effective decoys countermeasures.  If the threat is defined as being nonthreatening, that ‘solves’ the problem,” Coyle said.   “Since no flight intercept tests have been done with decoys that resemble the target RV, nor have flight intercept tests been done with radar chaff or other countermeasures, the system has no demonstrated capability to deal with the types of decoys or countermeasures a determined enemy would employ,” he said. “Unfortunately, the MDA makes the artful assumption that North Korea … will not field any countermeasures that could defeat the U.S. interceptors,” writes Richard Garwin in an article due to appear in the November issue of Scientific American.  “My assessment … is that the present missile defense approach is utterly useless against ICBMs of new or existing nuclear powers because midcourse countermeasures are so effective,” he writes. Garwin and other experts have insisted that effective countermeasures are simple to build and well within the reach of an ICBM-armed country. “The fundamental problem is that any country capable of building and successfully launching a nuclear-tipped ICBM can easily make and deploy many Mylar balloons ð— just like the ones you can buy in the supermarket ð— that look just like a nuclear warhead to a far away radar or satellite,” said Senator Reed. “And if there are many decoys and only one target, you have very little chance of hitting the target if you can’t discriminate.” In that way, “An attacker could overwhelm the system by using antisimulation balloon decoys,” the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote in a critical report in April 2000. The 2000 report concluded, “Any country capable of deploying a long-range missile would also be able to deploy countermeasures that would defeat the planned NMD system.” Proposed Solutions To try to solve the problem, the agency says it is simultaneously pursuing various technological solutions, including advances in radar and infrared sensors, lasers, signal processing, data fusion, and decision-making algorithms. A prominent approach, according to Coyle, is to have the kill vehicle carry different types of sensors, including infrared, radar and visible light, looking for differences between the suspected warhead and other nearby objects. “Then they hope to fuse all that data together to pick out the target RV [re-entry vehicle] from the accumulated signals that the various sensors collect, and compare those signals with stored data files that have been precoded to predict what the actual target might look like,” he said. “As indicated in the SBIR solicitation, some of these sensors don’t exist and would have to be invented and developed,” he added. Postol said that solution offers little promise for solving the problem of a warhead hidden in a balloon, equating it to searching luggage at an airport without being able to open it or subject it to x-rays or sniffing dogs. “It’s the equivalent to being restricted because of circumstances to only inspecting suitcases by vision,” he said. “You can use binoculars, or microscopes or rose-colored glasses … but you’re still basically looking at the outside of suitcase.” Garwin argues there are other potential solutions to the midcourse intercept countermeasures challenge: space- or aircraft- based lasers for “popping” balloons or interceptors carrying gas to push the balloons, which would cause the decoys with less mass to move farther than the warhead. He said in an e-mail, though, that the Missile Defense Agency does not appear to be pursuing them and that they would require significant and costly changes to the planned system. “Anyhow, that would be quite a different system, and we would begin its development only if MDA accepted the fact that they will be impotent if an adversary adopts AS [antisimulation] for the nuclear warheads on its early ICBMs,” he said. Back to top       U.S. Presents Prerequisites for International Participation in Missile Defense System The U.S. Defense Department is calling for significant cost sharing with countries and formal agreements to allow participation by international companies in U.S. missile defense programs, Aviation Week & Space Technology reported this week (see GSN, Sept. 28). The United Kingdom and Australia already have the requisite framework agreement with the United States (see GSN, July 8), with Japan close to an agreement and several other nations moving toward participation, according to Aviation Week.  Partners would be expected to match U.S. funding to about 50 percent. The Pentagon, however, has left open the possibility for alternative funding arrangements, such as “in-kind” contributions to the system, Aviation Week reported (Robert Wall, Aviation Week & Space Technology, Sept. 27). Meanwhile, MEADS International received a $3 billion contract to design and develop the Medium Extended Air Defense System, which is expected to replace the Hawk and Patriot missile defense systems, according to a company press statement (see GSN, July 15). The United States and Italy have signed an agreement to develop the system, and Germany is expected to sign on later this year. “We will continue to demonstrate the benefits that Europe and the United States gain by working closely together to solve national defense needs — interoperability, reduced cost and better systems,” said MEADS International Vice President Axel Widera (MEADS International press release, Sept. 28). Back to top

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