White House May Reconsider Missile Defense Approach

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — After spending years and billions of dollars to develop and deploy ground-based missile interceptors, the Bush administration appears to be reconsidering its leading approach to defending the U.S. homeland against enemy ICBMs, a key congressional committee said last week (see GSN, Oct. 4).

While the U.S. Missile Defense Agency continues to seek billions to develop and deploy the interceptors — including as many as 40 in silos in Alaska by the end of 2007 and some in Europe after that — it appears to have abandoned ambitions for significantly improving the current system and to favor other approaches, the Senate Appropriations Committee said in a report accompanying its version of the fiscal 2006 defense appropriations bill.

“After many years of investment in this midcourse interceptor, MDA has now essentially decided that the first generation GBI [ground-based interceptors] will also be its last generation GBI. This approach would fail to capitalize on the years of previous investment and technology development in a decreasing budgetary environment,” it said in a lengthy critique.

The language was drafted by the committee’s defense subcommittee chaired by Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska).

The agency’s “spiral development” approach to developing missile defense, uncommon to military weapons development, is to field systems before they are fully developed and then make upgrades or field improved systems in two-year cycles as technological development progresses. 

In its report, the committee said the agency plans no further spiral development for the interceptor currently being deployed and is seeking to separate it from other parts of the midcourse intercept program, which includes advanced radars and command and control.

“MDA at best plans only marginal improvements to the capability of the GMD [Ground-based Midcourse Defense] program’s ground-based interceptor,” the committee said. It cited a statement by a senior Defense Department official at a Jan. 28 briefing that the agency would “not pursue major booster or kill vehicle upgrades” for the interceptors.

The committee report directs the agency to fully develop and upgrade the system, in conjunction with related sensors and command and control systems, until they are in “a final stable configuration.” Lawmakers also demanded a report by Dec. 1 on a plan for carrying out the directive.

A spokesman said the agency would not comment on the report’s points until after the appropriations bill is finalized later this fall.

A critic of the administration’s missile defense policies suggested the committee’s language reflects a struggle between politics and science.

“It appears the agency has come to recognize the limitations of this system and what [the committee is] trying to say is that they don’t want them to,” said Philip Coyle, a senior adviser at the Center for Defense Information and a former top Pentagon testing official.

The system’s “proponents are concerned about this and they’re trying to get MDA’s attention,” he said.

A pullback from the spiral development of ground-based interceptors would reflect the military’s “extremely low confidence in the system,” said University of Maryland arms control analyst Jeffrey Lewis, noting the midcourse defense system was not activated last year despite a December deadline.

“MDA simply realizes that they cannot deliver a [ground-based interceptor] system that works, or at least, that anyone [in the military services] wants,” he said.

The interceptors, each of which consists of a single “kill vehicle” launched into space by a multistage rocket, have been a core element of the agency’s foremost and most costly technological approach so far to trying to intercept enemy long-range warheads in space: the Ground-based Midcourse Defense program.

Critics have charged the approach is fundamentally flawed, contending its high complexity could undermine its effectiveness and that the interceptors could easily be fooled by the simplest countermeasures. They have said the system was pushed into deployment by politics. Administration officials have disputed those arguments.

The Clinton administration first gave the program priority in 1996, with the announced goal of developing by 1999 elements of an initial national missile defense system that then could be fielded within three years of a decision to deploy. That “3+3” plan included developing and fielding up to 100 interceptors in Alaska along with powerful ground-based radars, satellite sensors, upgraded early warning radars, and a huge command and control infrastructure.

A newly Republican-controlled Congress pressured the Clinton administration to develop and field the system at the earliest possible date, Coyle said. “There was pressure on the administration and Secretary of Defense William Perry to do more on missile defense,” he said, noting for instance a 1999 law declaring a policy to deploy “as soon as is technologically possible.” 

The midcourse system was viewed as the most likely to deploy early, Clinton said in a 2000 speech. However, he then deferred a decision to deploy, finding that a defense capability had not been determined feasible in part for lack of realistic testing, and citing questions about the system’s ability to deal with countermeasures.

Criticizing the move, then-presidential candidate George W. Bush implied he would deploy an anti-ICBM system during his first term, and several months after taking office he declared the threat of ballistic missile attacks the “most urgent threat” facing the United States (see GSN, April 9, 2004).

In December 2002, Bush directed the military to begin deploying the ground-based interceptors by the end of 2004, citing “progress made to date in our development efforts” (see GSN, June 23, 2003). Some program elements, including at least six interceptors in Alaska and two in California, have been fielded, while others are being prepared.

The interceptor effort has drawn huge amounts of the agency’s budget, with $3.3 billion of the planned $8.73 billion budget for fiscal 2006 to be directed to the ground-based interceptors, according to a Congressional Research Service analysis in July. 

The military, though, has not declared the system operational and officials last year suggested it might never be (see GSN, Jan. 14). Live testing has been repeatedly delayed. The Army has resisted taking ownership for system components and responsibility for their procurement. Officials have described its capability as providing only a “thin line” of protection; though they say that might be improved with the addition of advanced radar and more missiles in the coming year.

Officials have maintained they gained sufficient confidence in the system from several successful intercept tests early this decade for the initial deployment. The system has a five-for-10 record of intercepts, though, and was unsuccessful in its three most recent tests. Interceptors failed to leave their silos in the last two tests.

Critics have charged that the ground-based interceptor concept is flawed, arguing that even with advanced sensors the interceptors could easily be fooled by countermeasures, such as decoys or liberally sprinkled chaff. Testing of the system, they have said, has been too artificial to demonstrate that the system would work against an actual attack.

Missile Defense Agency officials have acknowledged that countermeasures pose a challenge and have indicated they are working to address the problem in several ways, including by trying to improve upon sensors and algorithms used to discern enemy warheads from countermeasures.

However, they also are pursuing alternate methods for intercepting enemy warheads in space. The administration is increasing investment in developing miniature kill vehicles, many of which might be launched from a pod boosted by a single missile. Such technology, challenged in part by the high cost of building miniature interceptor components, has been viewed as an alternative, potentially better approach to midcourse defense than the single-interceptor rocket. The agency hopes to bring the cost down to below $100 million per “Multiple Kill Vehicle.”

“MKV helps address the midcourse countermeasure challenge by destroying multiple credible threat objects in a single engagement,” the agency said in a budget document submitted to Congress in February.

Also, officials this year revealed a possibly more serious alternative to the current concept: deploying transportable midcourse interceptors, which could be based beyond the current Alaskan and Californian silos and closer to a threat. With its Kinetic Energy Interceptor program, the agency envisions developing a potential “replacement” for the stationary program by 2011, agency Director Lt. Gen. Henry Obering said in prepared testimony to the defense subcommittee in May.

In addition, the agency is pursuing boost-phase defenses, preparing airborne lasers and Kinetic Energy Interceptors to be used from land, sea and space.

The committee report questioned the administration’s focus. “The committee is extremely concerned that MDA’s approach to the GBI is symptomatic of a broader lack of focus on the administration’s stated missile defense priorities.”

That echoed comments by Stevens at the May hearing, suggesting that Obering focus on systems the agency is developing for near-term deployment (see GSN, May 12). He indicated concern about the future of the Alaskan missile fields, saying government scientists chose them as an ideal location for defense against a potential threat and noting the surrounding community had “already been through a trauma of one base closure.”

“We’re trying desperately to reach that balance between the near-term priorities and the longer-term priorities that are involved in our development program,” Obering told the committee.

“We cannot give up on the future though,” he said.

Given the powerful congressional support, Lewis said he does not expect the interceptors to be abandoned completely. “I would be shocked if this system were disassembled by like the Sentinel/Safeguard system,” Lewis said, referring to a nuclear-tipped interceptor system that in 1976, by congressional mandate, was ordered taken apart by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld several months after it was activated.

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