Iranian nuclear negotiator Sirus Naseri (shown in a March 2 photo) has expressed caution over a U.S. offer to contribute to an international incentives deal to resolve the Iranian nuclear controversy (AFP photo/Dieter Nagl). Iran Reportedly Offers to Halt Some Nuclear Development Pressure by the United States and European Union has led to an offer by Iran to stop most of its nuclear fuel cycle development while retaining the right to enrich small amounts of uranium, the Financial Times reported Saturday (see GSN, March 11). Iran made the offer to Washington through a third party, diplomats said Friday. Brussels was not included in the communiqu‚, possibly indicating an attempt to engage Washington directly, said one person involved in the offer. The United States, however, remains opposed to direct negotiations with Iran and continues to demand of Tehran “cessation of enrichment activity,” said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher (Guy Dinmore, Financial Times, March 12)...Full Story

U.S., British, Libyan Officials Describe Steps Leading to Libya’s Decision to Abandon WMD Efforts U.S., British and Libyan officials have recently provided detailed information on the negotiations that led to Libya’s decision in late 2003 to dismantle its WMD programs, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 15)...Full Story

Effort to Create a National Missile Defense System Hinges on a Controversial Acquisition Approach By George Cahlink, Government Executive WASHINGTON — In mid-December, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency failed a test it had spent nearly two years and millions of dollars preparing for. Twenty-three seconds before an interceptor missile was set to launch from the Central Pacific into the atmosphere and knock out a dummy warhead incoming from Alaska, a software glitch brought the countdown to a halt. The interceptor never left its silo, and the bogus weapon splashed harmlessly into the ocean. A few days later, the Defense Department announced it would not have a limited missile defense shield for the United States in place by the end of 2004, as previously planned (see GSN, March 10)...Full Story

	Monday, March 14, 2005

U.S., British, Libyan Officials Describe Steps Leading to Libya’s Decision to Abandon WMD Efforts U.S., British and Libyan officials have recently provided detailed information on the negotiations that led to Libya’s decision in late 2003 to dismantle its WMD programs, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday (see GSN, Feb. 15). The details were disclosed in recent interviews with the Times. Libya first pitched giving up some of its WMD efforts in the late 1990s, with an offer to the Clinton administration to abandon chemical weapons development in exchange for loosening U.S. terrorism-related sanctions, officials said. The United States refused at the time, saying that resolving the issue of Libyan responsibility for the 1988 bombing of an airliner over Scotland was more important. However, the United Kingdom resumed diplomatic relations with Tripoli in summer 1999.  Following that move, Libya turned over two intelligence agents implicated in the bombing, one of whom was convicted in 2001. Further negotiations between Libyan, British and U.S. officials led Tripoli to accept responsibility for the Lockerbie airline bombing and pledge to pay $2.7 billion to relatives of the 270 people killed in the attack. U.S. and British officials said they informed Libya that resolving the Lockerbie bombing issue was not enough to lead to improved relations, the Times reported. “We had made a point that while Lockerbie was extremely important, a sine qua non for progress on full reintegration would depend on addressing the WMD programs,” said one official. Negotiations increased following a March 2003 meeting between Seif Islam Qadhafi, son of Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qadhafi, and British intelligence agents, according to the Times. During that meeting, Qadhafi indicated his father was willing to negotiate. Over the next several weeks, U.S. and British intelligence officials met with the head of Libyan external intelligence, Mousa Kusa, and other Libyan officials in several European cities, the Times reported. “There were periodic contacts, but the Libyans were not admitting they had a nuclear program,” said a senior U.S. official. “They were being coy.” In late August 2003, however, a ship carrying nuclear-related equipment was intercepted en route to Libya. That event is believed by some to be the final impetus for Qadhafi’s decision, the Times reported. “The capture of the BBC China helped make clear to Libya that we had a lot of information about what it was doing,” said John Wolf, who was U.S. assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation at the time. A senior British official said, though, that Libya had previously hinted at possessing a nuclear weapons program and had intended to abandon it, the Times reported. “The BBC China was another nail in the coffin,” the official said. “But one can overplay the significance of that event.” Economics might have been behind Libya’s WMD disarmament, the final details of which were hammered out in a Dec. 16, 2003, meeting between Libyan, U.S. and British officials, one European diplomat said. “From my conversations with the Libyans, it appeared that they had determined that it was too expensive to develop nuclear weapons, both in specific terms and in terms of sanctions,” the diplomat said (Frantz/Meyer, Los Angeles Times, March 13). Back to top       U.S. General, Pakistani and Afghan Officials Express Skepticism About al-Qaeda Acquiring WMD There is no evidence that the al-Qaeda terrorist network is attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction, Pakistani and Afghan officials and a top U.S. general have said, the Associated Press reported Sunday (see GSN, Feb. 16). Maj. Gen. Eric Olson, the U.S. second in command in Afghanistan, said he had seen nothing to indicate that al-Qaeda is seeking unconventional weapons. There is “no evidence that they’re trying to acquire a terrorist weapon of that type and, frankly, I don’t believe that they are regrouping,” he said on Feb. 25. “I think the pressure on them here, the pressure on them in Pakistan, the pressure on them in Iraq, is pretty great and it makes it very difficult for them to operate,” Olson added. Pakistani Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao agreed. “That is simply out of the question,” he said regarding the organization’s ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction. It has been months since Pakistani intelligence picked up “chatter” from al-Qaeda, agents told AP. “We have broken the back of al-Qaeda,” Interior Minister Sherpao said last month.  Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said last week that his government had “eliminated the terrorist centers” in his country’s Waziristan region and other areas. “We have broken their communication system. We have destroyed their sanctuaries,” he said. “They are not in a position to move in vehicles. They are unable to contact their people. They are on the run” (Paul Haven, Associated Press/Montana Standard, March 13). Back to top       Looting of Past WMD-Related Sites After Invasion Highly Organized, Iraqi Official Says The postwar 2003 looting of sites associated with Iraq’s past WMD efforts appeared to have been conducted in a highly organized manner, Iraqi Deputy Industry Minister Sami al-Araji said last week (see GSN, March 7). “They came in with the cranes and the lorries, and they depleted the whole sites,” Araji told the New York Times. “They knew what they were doing; they knew what they want[ed]. This was sophisticated looting.” Equipment that could be used for making ballistic missile, chemical, biological or nuclear weapons parts was missing from as many as 10 sites, Araji said. He said he had no proof on the final destination of the equipment, but believed the looters were more interested in financial gain than in developing weapons. White House officials declined to comment, saying they already knew of reports of looting at Iraqi sites (Glanz/Broad, New York Times, March 13). Back to top       U.S. Military Strategy Review to Focus on WMD Threat The U.S. Defense Department’s Quadrennial Defense Review is expected to emphasize unconventional threats from terrorism and weapon of mass destruction, the Associated Press reported Friday (see GSN, Jan. 27). Completed after every presidential election, the strategy document affects budgets, weapons purchases and military doctrine, according to AP. The upcoming review is expected to stress the need for unconventional warfare and technologies, such as special operations forces and unmanned systems, said Loren Thompson, a military expert at the Lexington Institute. “They are putting together a military posture that is very heavily oriented in the direction of unconventional threats, like terrorists and plutonium merchants, and strongly oriented away from the types of conventional dangers that drove the Cold War defense posture,” he said. Ryan Henry, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, detailed the emerging threats last month. These dangers include catastrophic attacks by terrorists or nations using weapons of mass destruction, as well as biological warfare (Associated Press/Yahoo!News, March 11). Back to top

Iran Reportedly Offers to Halt Some Nuclear Development Pressure by the United States and European Union has led to an offer by Iran to stop most of its nuclear fuel cycle development while retaining the right to enrich small amounts of uranium, the Financial Times reported Saturday (see GSN, March 11). Iran made the offer to Washington through a third party, diplomats said Friday. Brussels was not included in the communiqu‚, possibly indicating an attempt to engage Washington directly, said one person involved in the offer. The United States, however, remains opposed to direct negotiations with Iran and continues to demand of Tehran “cessation of enrichment activity,” said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher (Guy Dinmore, Financial Times, March 12). Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said Saturday that the U.S. incentives were insufficient, the Associated Press reported. “The restrictions on spare parts that have no military purpose should have not been imposed from the beginning, and lifting them is not an incentive,” he said, adding that “joining the [World Trade Organization] is an obvious right of any country in the world.” Iranian nuclear negotiator Sirus Naseri, however, described the U.S. offer as a “new awakening ... (that) I believe would stand to benefit the United States more than anybody else” (Nasser Karimi, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, March 12). Fellow Iranian negotiator Hossein Mousavian told the BBC yesterday that the U.S. offer “does not represent any economic advantage and does not have much value,” Agence France-Presse reported “To show their goodwill, the Americans should release our assets that are frozen in American banks, lift their economic sanctions against Iran and put an end to their hostile acts against Iran in the world and the region,” he said (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, March 13). France is satisfied with the concessions offered by Washington, French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said today, AFP reported. “These gestures made recently by the United States give us what we expected and show that the United States, like Russia and China . . . wants to give negotiations a chance,” Barnier said (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, March 14). Naseri said today that Iran may be preparing its final offer in talks with France, Germany and the United Kingdom, Reuters reported. “It might not be long before we put on the table our final proposal and give them a deadline to either accept or reject it,” Naseri said, adding that he recognized that such a strategy meant the two sides “might be moving toward an agreement or toward a confrontation” (Reuters, March 14). Negotiations between Iran and the European nations are on track, despite Tehran’s public indifference to Washington’s incentives package, a top Bush administration official said yesterday. “This is a negotiating process between the Europeans and the Iranians and it’s not surprising to hear those statements,” Stephen Hadley, White House national security adviser, told Fox News Sunday. He added that Iranian President Mohammad Khatami had expressed interested in discussing the kinds of guarantees and assurances Iran could give to show it is not seeking atomic weapons (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, March 13). Washington and Brussels are prepared to wait until after Iran’s presidential election in June for an agreement on Tehran’s nuclear program, U.S. and European officials have said, the Washington Post reported Saturday. “Any durable agreement will need support from the government beyond June,” a European official said (Robin Wright, Washington Post, March 12). Meanwhile, Israel has plans for a combined air and ground attack on targets in Iran in case a diplomatic push by the EU and the United States fails to resolve the nuclear issue, the London Sunday Times reported. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’ Cabinet gave “initial authorization” last month for an attack, and Israeli forces have practiced destroying Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment plant on a site mock-up, according to the Times. U.S. officials have been informed of the plan and have indicated they would not block an Israeli attack if diplomatic efforts fail, the Times reported (Uzi Mahnaimi, Sunday Times, March 13). “The Iranian threat is an existential threat to the state Israel. Military action is the very last resort,” Ephraim Sneh, a member of the Israeli parliament’s Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee and retired general, told Israel’s Army Radio yesterday. “We have to ensure that other steps, diplomatic steps are carried out first. Here the United States plays a leading role and I hope it will fill it” (Josef Federman, Associated Press, March 13). U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday told ABC’s This Week that Washington has not backed a military strike by Israel on Iran, insisting that the United States was committed to a negotiated settlement, AFP reported (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, March 13). Back to top       IAEA Gains Access to Key Player in Khan Network Malaysia has allowed International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to interview a key member of the international nuclear network formerly headed by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Financial Times reported Saturday (see GSN, Feb. 18). Agency experts first interviewed Buhary Syed Abu Tahir, described as the network’s chief financial officer, last month, the Times reported. Additional interviews are expected, Western diplomats said. The sessions with Tahir, who remains in custody in Malaysia, are expected to provide information backing or refuting Iran’s description of its acquisition of nuclear equipment, according to the Times (Stephen Fidler, Financial Times, March 12). Meanwhile, Pakistan today denied reports that it was sending used centrifuge components to the U.N. agency for testing to help determine the source of highly enriched uranium contamination in Iran (see GSN, March 11). “We are not providing any centrifuges,” Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Jalil Abbas Jilani said. “These are entirely baseless reports” (Agence France-Presse/Khaleej Times, March 14). Back to top       North Korea Need Not Completely Disarm Before Receiving Benefits, State Department Official Says North Korea could receive aid for disarming even before it has fully dismantled its suspected nuclear weapons program, a U.S. official said Friday (see GSN, March 11). “I don’t think anyone is asking D.P.R.K. to completely disarm ... and only then will the United States and other members of the six-party process give them benefits,” said senior State Department official Evens Revere, according to Agence France-Presse. Under the terms of a U.S. proposal, Washington requires a “commitment” from Pyongyang “to start a process” for ending its nuclear weapons program, Revere said. “As the commitment is fulfilled, we would fulfill our part of the deal in terms of providing certain benefits and signing on certain agreements and understandings,” he said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, March 12). Meanwhile, the Russian Embassy in Seoul yesterday backed away from statements made by atomic energy official Sergei Antipov that Pyongyang does not possess nuclear weapons (see GSN, March 10). “It’s not an official position of the Russian government,” an embassy spokesman told the Korea Times. “I think it was an expression of his personal opinion.” The embassy did not, however, endorse the view that Pyongyang has nuclear warheads (Park Song-wu, Korea Times, March 14). Elsewhere, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is expected to push for a new round of six-party talks during a trip to Asia this week. Washington and Beijing appear to differ on how to persuade Pyongyang to resume negotiations, Reuters reported. The differences became apparent during a visit by Chinese officials to Washington last week, a U.S. official said. “The Chinese were clearly told they had to do more and they replied that our rhetoric had been unhelpful and we needed to tone it down,” said the official (Saul Hudson, Reuters, March 13). Back to top       German Businessman to Stand Trial in South Africa for Involvement in Nuclear Smuggling Network German businessman Gerhard Wisser is reportedly set to go on trial in South Africa for his alleged involvement in the international nuclear network formerly led by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, Agence France-Presse reported Saturday (see GSN, Sept. 28, 2004). South African authorities last fall charged Wisser with four counts of violating the country’s Nuclear Energy Act and a law banning WMD proliferation, AFP reported. Wisser is believed to have helped produce equipment in South Africa for Libya’s now-defunct nuclear program, according to AFP (Agence France-Presse/Dawn, March 12). Back to top

Egypt Aided Iraqi Chemical Weapons Effort in 1980s, U.S. Weapons Inspectors Find U.S. weapons inspectors in Iraq have discovered that Egypt aided former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons program during the 1980s, the Associated Press reported Saturday (see GSN, Feb. 4). Following the outbreak of war between Iraq and Iran in 1981, Hussein’s regime paid Egypt $12 million “in return for assistance with production and storage of chemical weapons agents,” the Iraq Survey Group said in an annex of a report released last fall. “During the early years, Egyptian scientists provided consultation, technology and oversight allowing rapid advances and technological leaps in weaponization,” the report says. Iraq sought help in the mid-1980s from Egyptian chemical weapons experts in the production of sarin nerve agent, AP reported. Baghdad had only 5 tons of sarin in 1984, but possessed nearly 400 tons by 1988, according to the Iraq Survey Group report. Egypt also reportedly helped Iraq obtain rocket warheads capable of containing chemical agents, according to AP. Egypt has denied allegations of aiding Iraq’s past chemical weapons program, AP reported. U.N. weapons inspectors, though, backed the Iraq Survey Group’s conclusions. “We were aware from back in 1991 that there was a link between Iraq and Egypt on chemical weapons,” said former senior U.N. adviser on chemical weapons Ron Manley (Charles Hanley, Associated Press/Khaleej Times, March 12). Back to top       Aberdeen Completes Chemical Weapons Destruction Workers on Friday finished disposal of all mustard agent at the Aberdeen Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in Maryland, making it the first site on the continental United States to eliminate its entire stockpile of chemical weapons agents, the U.S. Army announced (see GSN, Feb. 7). “This is a great day for the people of Maryland and for the global chemical weapons disarmament effort,” U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency Director Michael Parker said in a press release. Workers are continuing to rinse steel storage containers to remove agent residue. That work is expected to be completed next winter, after which the plant’s equipment will be dismantled and decontaminated, according to the Army. Inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons last week completed a final inspection of Edgewood Chemical Activity’s Chemical Agent Storage Yard. They confirmed that all 1-ton mustard agent containers had been removed from storage for disposal at Aberdeen (U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency release, March 11). Back to top

Effort to Create a National Missile Defense System Hinges on a Controversial Acquisition Approach By George Cahlink, Government Executive WASHINGTON — In mid-December, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency failed a test it had spent nearly two years and millions of dollars preparing for. Twenty-three seconds before an interceptor missile was set to launch from the Central Pacific into the atmosphere and knock out a dummy warhead incoming from Alaska, a software glitch brought the countdown to a halt. The interceptor never left its silo, and the bogus weapon splashed harmlessly into the ocean. A few days later, the Defense Department announced it would not have a limited missile defense shield for the United States in place by the end of 2004, as previously planned (see GSN, March 10). For many weapons program managers, such a high-profile test failure — which was not the program’s first — would be cause for despair. Contract awards might be delayed and more oversight likely would come from members of Congress and political appointees in the Pentagon. However, missile defense managers have not faced those obstacles. They quickly identified the problem as easy to fix, scheduled another test and declared that if an enemy launched a limited missile attack, the interceptors could be pressed into emergency action. “We’re disappointed that we didn’t get this off,” Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, director of the Missile Defense Agency, told reporters in January. “But we are certainly not disheartened in any way, shape or form, because it shows us we are exactly working through what we consider to be the fine-tuning of this system as we proceed.” The agency’s response reflects its confidence in the controversial “capabilities-based” acquisition strategy it is using to build the missile shield. With an annual budget of about $10 billion, few specific requirements spelled out in the contracts to construct the system and broad exemptions from traditional oversight, the agency believes it can quickly field a shield capable of offering limited defense. As technology improves and threats change, the system gradually will be upgraded to offer higher levels of protection. Philip Coyle, the Pentagon’s director of operational test and evaluation in the Clinton administration and a leading skeptic of missile defense efforts, is not impressed by this approach. He notes that it took nearly two years to prepare for the most recent test. “At the rate they are going, it could take 50 years to complete their flight test program,” says Coyle, now a senior adviser at the Center for Defense Information. Obering argues that his agency has “been successful in developing a capability where in some cases there was nothing even two, 2 1/2 years ago. And we’ve done it with a lot of speed and within the cost and schedule constraints that we have. We ought to be taking the authorities that MDA has and see how we can apply those in other areas across the department.” Indeed, the Pentagon believes the “capabilities-based” approach is the wave of the future that will allow the latest technologies to reach the field much more quickly. Already, the Army’s $2.8 billion Future Combat System and Defense’s agency-wide multibillion-dollar Global Information Grid, which provides a single battlefield network for the military services and U.S. allies, are being developed with the goal of achieving broad capabilities rather than meeting highly specific requirements. “It’s the effect we want, it’s not the platform we’re interested in,” Ryan Henry, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, told an industry group in January. Old Idea, New Approach Since the earliest days of the Cold War, the Defense Department has been trying to figure out how to build a shield to protect the United States from foreign missile attacks. Proposals ranged from small systems, such as the Army’s Safeguard missiles that briefly guarded nuclear missile silos in North Dakota in the 1970s, to President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, which envisioned space-based lasers protecting the country from a nuclear holocaust. A variety of political, diplomatic, technological and financial issues have kept the United States or any other country from successfully deploying a missile shield. By the 1990s, large-scale missile defense systems seemed as dated as the Soviet Union. In the late 1990s, though, the idea of a national missile shield began making a comeback as rogue nations, such as Iran and North Korea, developed more sophisticated ballistic missiles and fears grew that long-range missile technology could slip into the hands of terrorists. In 1998, a bipartisan commission headed by Donald Rumsfeld warned that the United States was underestimating the threat posed by ballistic missiles. A year later, Congress passed a law calling for the creation of a national missile defense system as quickly as possible. During the Clinton administration, defense officials conducted research and development on building such a system, but repeatedly put off making any decisions on when and how to deploy it. I n December 2001, President Bush directed the Pentagon to pursue an “evolutionary approach” toward putting a missile shield in place by 2004. “The United States will not have a final fixed missile defense architecture,” he stated in the directive. “Rather, we will deploy an initial set of capabilities that will evolve to meet the changing threat and take advantage of technological developments.” In early 2002, Rumsfeld, by then the defense secretary, combined various missile defense programs being pursued by the military services into a single research and development effort managed by a single entity, the Missile Defense Agency. He gave the agency unprecedented authority to operate outside normal acquisition rules by eliminating traditional oversight, scrapping documents that set out specific requirements, allowing shifts in funding among missile programs, and enabling the MDA director to set deadlines and schedule reviews and tests. Dean Gehr, business development director for Raytheon Missile Systems in Tucson, Ariz., which is among the key contractors working on missile defense, says creating a single agency avoids the turf battles that sometimes plagued past programs pursued by the missile agency’s predecessor, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. “We see it as a benefit, because you have more unity with one leader,” Gehr said. The new approach also saves time. Most major weapon systems are designed based on complex requirements set by Defense Department officials and spend years in development and testing before they are fielded. For example, contracts were first awarded to design the Air Force’s F/A-22 fighter in the mid-1980s. Only now is the aircraft undergoing final flight-testing. Military leaders and the White House believed the ballistic missile threat was too great to spend years developing a defense system, so they bet on the idea that a limited defense would be better than none at all. Under that approach, the system initially would be able to handle a small missile attack from a nation such as North Korea aimed at one or two locations, but could not deal with a large attack simultaneously aimed at multiple cities, as envisioned during the Cold War. As technology and threats change and military personnel offer feedback on the system, the Pentagon can incorporate new technologies to create a more robust shield. This approach, known as “spiral development,” borrows on an idea pioneered by commercial software developers, who regularly issue new versions of basic operating systems. The agency is funding and fielding pieces of the missile system in two-year blocks, not the traditional six-year weapons planning cycle. The 2004-2005 block focuses on using existing ground- and sea-based systems to provide limited defense against long-range threats. By the 2010 and 2012 blocks, the focus will expand to airborne lasers and fast-moving kinetic energy interceptors that can take out missiles shortly after they are launched. Patricia Sanders, MDA deputy director for integration, says missile defense is not like other weapons systems, which generally replace previous versions already in the field. “There’s not a foundation to build on that you would have in replacing one aircraft with another, so we want to bring it on as rapidly as is feasible,” she said. Maj. Gen. John Holly, the agency’s deputy director, said that in the past, a system would have to be nearly perfect before fielding, but now it can be deployed when it offers limited capability. For example, the Missile Defense Agency has six ground-based interceptors at Fort Greely, Alaska, that could be used in emergency situations, despite the fact that nine live intercept attempts using the missiles have resulted in only five hits. The agency also has five Standard Missile 3 interceptors on Navy Aegis cruisers that could be called on in an emergency. It touts the availability of both options as a sign that it has met the president’s goal of having the beginnings of a missile shield in place by the end of 2004. Growing Concern Critics, however, contend that fielding a missile system outside traditional rules without extensive testing is the wrong approach. They question why the agency is being allowed to spend billions of dollars with little scrutiny and without having to pass regular tests. “A system is being deployed that doesn’t have any credible capability. I cannot recall any system being deployed in such a manner,” retired Gen. Eugene Habiger told The Washington Post last fall. In the 1990s, he headed the U.S. Strategic Command, where he oversaw all Air Force and Navy strategic nuclear forces. Coyle, the former Pentagon weapons tester, says giving the MDA director responsibility for program reviews strips independent oversight responsibility from senior Pentagon officials on the Defense Acquisition Board. The board periodically reviews major weapons to ensure they are on track and approves changes in schedules and funding. Coyle says the reviews often include independent assessments on issues ranging from emerging threats to whether a program’s cost projections are realistic. Holly said missile defense has received as much Pentagon oversight as other large weapons programs, just not through traditional channels. He says agency officials meet weekly with the Pentagon’s acting acquisition chief, Michael Wynne, and the department has set up a Missile Defense Study Support Group, including representatives of the defense secretary, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the military services, to regularly review the program. Last fall, The Washington Post reported that the study group had met 47 times in two years, but quoted members as saying their role was advisory and they sometimes learned of program decisions after the fact. “What we are doing is empowering senior leaders at the agency to make the program’s judgment calls,” Holly said. He said Defense Acquisition Board reviews focus “on trying to find problems as much as anything,” and require “tons of documentation” and numerous meetings leading up to them. Terry Little, a longtime Defense Department weapons program manager who now is the agency’s executive director, said the missile defense program is subject to rigid internal annual reviews to determine whether it is meeting goals. This means, he says, that if airborne lasers show more promise than kinetic energy interceptors, money could be shifted from the former to the latter. “In most weapons programs, a commitment to develop is a commitment to the end,” Little says. “But here, we’re a lot more like private industry, with assessments that ask if we really need it.” Last April, the Government Accountability Office criticized how the Missile Defense Agency tracked spending and questioned whether its testing efforts were realistic. The report (GAO-04-409) stated that program flexibilities should not “diminish the importance of ensuring accountability over the substantial investments in missile defense.” GAO auditors noted that the agency projected that it would spend $53 billion between 2004 and 2009, but had not established baseline cost estimates, which are needed to determine overruns. The agency has since agreed to provide such estimates. However, auditors and the Missile Defense Agency could not settle their differences over independent testing of the missile shield. The Government Accountability Office called the agency’s flights tests “repetitive and scripted,” and urged MDA officials to submit to independent testing by the Pentagon’s director of operational test and evaluation. Agency officials resisted, saying the program is a unique research and development effort, and that they would gradually step up their own tests. Members of Congress, however, have become concerned about putting pieces of the missile defense system in place without more realistic testing. Last fall, they ordered the agency to submit the missile defense system to the same rigorous testing that other weapons face. Questions linger, though, over how those tests will be conducted. The Pentagon’s operational tests are judged against system requirements, which do not exist for missile defense. Moreover, recently retired Pentagon weapons tester Thomas Christie is already at odds with the Missile Defense Agency. He has told members of Congress that if the missile shield were deployed today, it would be only 20 percent effective in taking out incoming missiles. Agency officials contend the system would be 80 percent effective. Obering says the agency can learn a lot from ground-based simulations and experiments, and generally uses flight tests for the purpose of confirming those results. Obering, who worked in the control room during some of NASA’s first space shuttle launches in the 1980s, says the space agency also relied extensively on simulations. “In fact,” he says, “the first time we launched the space shuttle, it was inhabited.” Back to top

Bush Nominates New Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security U.S. President George W. Bush plans to nominate former National Security Council staffer Robert Joseph as the next undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, the White House announced Friday (see GSN, March 8). Joseph is senior scholar and director of studies at the National Institute for Public Policy. He served on the National Security Council staff as special assistant to the president and senior director for proliferation strategy, counterproliferation and homeland defense. Joseph founded the Center for Counterproliferation Research at the National Defense University and served as professor of national security studies (White House release, March 11).       Back to top

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