Missile Defense Activation Date Remains Uncertain

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Having missed Oct. 1 and Dec. 31 deadlines for activating components of the ground-based national missile defense ordered by President George W. Bush, U.S. military officials now say may never declare the system operational (see GSN, Jan. 13).

The administration has invested billions of dollars to install up to 10 interceptor missiles in Alaska and California and other equipment last year in preparation for the deployment of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system. The interceptors are designed to strike enemy warheads in space on their way toward the continental United States.   Another 10 interceptors are scheduled for emplacement this year and 20 more after that.

Target dates to make the system operational were set twice for last year, but yesterday a Defense Department spokesman said a formal deployment might never happen.

“I don’t know that such a declaration will ever be made,” said Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita in a press briefing.

“Whether or not that occurs — and when that occurs — is not my decision,” Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Henry Obering reportedly told reporters Tuesday.

Critics of the program praised the idea of putting off a deployment, arguing the system is not ready to work.

“The sensible and only justifiable position is to keep the Alaska site as what it was supposed to be — a test facility.  It hurts the nation’s and the military’s credibility to declare a collection of untested parts an operational defense. We will need years of testing to know if any of these proposed systems will work,” said Joseph Cirincione, director of the Nonproliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Di Rita was pressed on the timing of the deployment yesterday, with reporters noting that Bush signed a directive in December 2002 stating his administration “plans to deploy a set of initial missile defense capabilities beginning in 2004.”

Following Bush’s 2002 order, officials initially had set the deployment date for Oct. 1, 2004. They later said it would occur by the end of the year (see GSN, Oct. 14, 2004).

Deploying a national missile defense system by the end of 2004 had been a Bush campaign vow in 2000 and again last summer (see GSN, Aug. 5, 2004). 

“Later this year, the first components of America’s missile defense system will become operational,” he said at a major bill signing in August.

Di Rita said yesterday, however, the Pentagon is “not marching toward a particular date on which we will say the system is now operational.”

He also denied the administration had ever set a deployment date.

“I don’t think that the goal was ever that we would declare it was operational.  I think the goal was that there would be an operational capability by the end of 2004,” he said.

Di Rita did not say why the Pentagon is not now planning for deployment, though he suggested that operating the system might conflict with development and testing.

“Testing is, at the moment, a higher priority,” he said.

The first full flight test of the system in two years failed last month after a computer shutdown that Obering described this week as a “minor glitch.” The previous flight test also failed.  Di Rita said a decision on deployment was not linked to the recent test failure.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld foreshadowed a change of deployment plans last August.

“I can’t imagine anyone who is dumb enough to set a firm date,” he said (see GSN, Aug. 19, 2004).

Philip Coyle, the Pentagon’s top testing official during the Clinton administration, said he suspects that officials recognized that the system simply was not ready for activation.

“It sounds like the secretary of defense, because Di Rita speaks for him, and the head of the MDA have come to realize that the system has no demonstrated capability to defend against an enemy missile under realistic conditions,” said Coyle, now a senior adviser at the Center for Defense Information.

Coyle and other critics have argued that the administration should never have planned to deploy the system in 2004, noting that key elements — an advanced radar and a satellite network — are years away from operation (see GSN, May 14, 2004).

Critics have also charged that fundamental technological hurdles continue to challenge the system’s ability to work effectively, in an inability to defeat basic enemy countermeasures, such as using decoys to conceal a warhead during its flight (see GSN, Sept. 29, 2004).

“I never understood how they were going to be able to declare operational capability because major pieces were missing and they hadn’t been able to demonstrate in flight intercept tests that the system could work without targeting aids and other artificial features,” Coyle said.

Di Rita said yesterday, “Some capability exists,” describing that capability as “nascent” and “limited.”

He would not comment when asked whether he was confident the system could intercept a North Korean warhead, the primary threat most often cited by administration officials.

“The system is what it is, and it will get better over time.  … You’ll have some capability.  It’s limited. It’s not what everybody wishes it may be, perhaps.  But some capability exists while you continue to improve upon the capability of that system,” he said.

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