The Defense Department recently added $21 billion to the estimated cost of deploying U.S. missile defense systems, such as this Ground-based Missile Defense interceptor installed last year in Alaska (DOD photo). Missile Defense Cost Rises by $21 Billion By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The projected cost of building the U.S. ballistic missile defense system as currently envisioned has jumped $21 billion to $87 billion, mainly as a result of newly announced hardware purchases, according to a Defense Department document released this week (see GSN, April 15). The Selected Acquisition Report, which details expected cost changes of major military systems in development, attributes the projected 32-percent increase “primarily” to the planned purchase of 20 additional ground-based interceptors to be deployed in Alaska in 2008 and 2009; two advanced, transportable X-Band radars for deployment overseas; 40 additional sea-launched interceptors; a theater air-defense battery; and an upgraded radar in Greenland...Full Story

New U.S. Response Plan Takes Effect By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — A host of U.S. plans for responding to terrorist attacks were officially replaced yesterday by the new National Response Plan (see GSN, Jan. 6)...Full Story

House Subcommittee Backs Tighter Iran Sanctions By Justin Chapura, CongressDaily WASHINGTON — A House International Relations subcommittee approved a bill Wednesday that tightens sanctions against Iran and allows U.S. assistance to pro-democracy groups (see GSN, April 14)...Full Story

	Friday, April 15, 2005

New U.S. Response Plan Takes Effect By Joe Fiorill Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — A host of U.S. plans for responding to terrorist attacks were officially replaced yesterday by the new National Response Plan (see GSN, Jan. 6). The new plan and the closely related National Incident Management System, which officials describe as the playbook for implementing the response plan, replace a patchwork of existing documents. They govern federal assistance to state and city emergency agencies and formally assign responsibilities in times of disaster to different federal agencies. “The NRP provides the seamless integration of crisis and consequence management as mandated by” a 2003 presidential directive on domestic incident response, National Incident Management System Integration Center acting director Gil Jamieson told a House of Representatives subcommittee yesterday afternoon. The national plan replaces such prior plans as the Federal Response Plan, the U.S. Government Interagency Domestic Terrorism Concept of Operations and the Federal Radiological Emergency Response Plan. Response agencies yesterday wrapped up a two-month transition period during which they could train personnel and bring existing subsidiary plans into line with the new response plan. More than 100,000 people have taken online training courses for the national plan and incident-management system, Jamieson told a Transportation and Infrastructure Committee subcommittee with jurisdiction over emergency management. With the end of the training and modification period, Homeland Security began the final stage of National Response Plan setup, in which it is expected to assess plan coordination and protocols. Goal-Setting Method Questioned Homeland Security official Corey Gruber briefed the subcommittee on an interim National Preparedness Goal, the result of another post-Sept. 11 directive from President George W. Bush. The goal is a standard for response capabilities by which agencies at different levels of government can measure their readiness and Washington can prioritize its spending. Among its top priorities are WMD detection and response, sharing of information among agencies, interoperability of communications equipment and hospital surge capacity. The goal’s March 31 release “represents the first major step in transforming the way the nation plans, trains, exercises, allocates resources and develops capabilities to prevent and respond to terrorist attacks, major disasters and other emergencies,” said Gruber, policy initiatives and analysis director in the department’s Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness. “The interim goal identifies measurable targets and priorities to guide the nation’s planning and provides a systematic, capabilities-based approach for determining how prepared we are, how prepared we need to be and how we should prioritize efforts to close the gap,” Gruber said. Subcommittee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) and senior Democrat Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) pressed Gruber on whether disaster scenarios that were considered in defining the response-capability goals were too heavily tilted toward natural disasters. International Fire Chiefs Association representative John Buckman, though, leveled the opposite complaint, expressing concern that planning scenarios had focused too heavily on terrorism. Gruber said the priorities defined in the goal applied to terrorist attacks as well as to natural disasters. The plan is scheduled to be finalized on Oct. 1. Back to top

Bolton Linked to Third Attempted Dismissal Allegations have arisen of a third incident in which the White House nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations tried to remove a government employee from his job, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, April 14). John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, claimed that a State Department expert on Middle East nonproliferation issues was insubordinate and purposely withheld a document requested by Bolton’s chief of staff. The expert, Rexon Ryu, was transferred to another bureau, officials said. Bolton said he had prepared a file on Ryu, and did not want him connected to any issues the undersecretary was working on, the Post reported. He never specifically requested Ryu’s firing, officials said. However, “If Bolton says he doesn’t want him working on any issues, what are you going to do?” one said. Ryu worked closely with former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Assistant Secretary of State for Nonproliferation John Wolf, according to the Post. Wolf said that Ryu did not purposely hide information from Bolton. “We looked into the concerns, found the omission was inadvertent and that there was no basis for the allegation,” he said. Details of Bolton’s reported tangles with State Department analyst Christian Westermann and a CIA analyst have been raised during the undersecretary’s nomination process. Ryu now works in the office of Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska (Dafna Linzer, Washington Post, April 15). Back to top       Senate Committee Approves Intelligence Chiefs The Senate intelligence committee yesterday approved the White House picks for national intelligence director and deputy director, the Washington Post reported (see GSN, April 13). The full Senate will now consider the nominations of U.S. Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte and Lt. Gen Michael Hayden to oversee the U.S. intelligence committee. Deputy director nominee Hayden testified yesterday that he and Negroponte are serious in their intent to exert control over the CIA and intelligence agencies within the Defense Department. “We want to strengthen the center of the community, give the DNI real power,” said Hayden, who currently leads the National Security Agency. Questioned about U.S. intelligence on prewar Iraq’s purported WMD programs, Hayden said he has studied the issue and found that “before the war … we had a mountain of evidence about WMD from which the community drew conclusions, but that mountain was essentially inferential.” There was “no smoking gun, it was indirect, it was oblique,” he said. Improvements have been made to a system “that wasn’t good enough” he said (Walter Pincus, Washington Post I, April 15). Meanwhile, the presidential commission on WMD intelligence last month said that the FBI and CIA modernization plans are inadequate, the Post reported. “We do not believe that either response is entirely adequate, the commission said in a March 29 letter to President George W. Bush. The plans indicate “just how important — and how difficult — Ambassador Negroponte’s job will be.” The FBI plan to develop a new directorate to handle and coordinate intelligence collection “fails to create a truly specialized and integrated national security work force,” the commission said. The directorate would not manage operational resources, making it “an overlay on intelligence activities that are managed by other elements of the FBI,” according to the letter. “The directorate’s lack of authority prevents the FBI from vertically integrating foreign intelligence collection, analysis and operations,” the commission said, according to the Post. A planned CIA effort to increase its staff of analysts and operations personnel by 50 percent is “too general to create accountability,” the letter states. The agency is hiring “a relatively small number of (new) analysts in this fiscal year,” with the rest to come of an unspecific “long term.” The slow hiring boost for operations officers means the agency might not meets its 2011 deadline, the commission said. The staffing plan “would still leave the CIA with a thin overseas presence, especially when there is a need to surge in a particular area such as Iraq,” panel member said (Walter Pincus, Washington Post II, April 15). Back to top       Threat of Terrorists Acquiring Weapons of Mass Destruction Exaggerated, Experts Say Terrorist groups would need assistance of nations before they could acquire weapons of mass destruction, former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix and other experts said yesterday (see GSN, April 11). “I’m as concerned about global warming and its long-term effects” as about the immediate threat of terrorists acquiring unconventional weapons, Blix said at a Helsinki conference on WMD terrorism. “Support and coordination from states would be needed for terrorists to produce WMDs,” he said, according to Agence France-Presse. Blix did say that “there is a small but not zero risk” of terrorists acquiring such capabilities. “Material and technology are now widespread, and an ability to create WMDs is also greater,” he said. The threat of terrorists using weapons of mass destruction has been exaggerated, said John Parachini, a political analyst with the RAND Corp. “WMDs are not easy to produce,” he said. “The mix of terrorism and WMDs becomes really dangerous if a group or groups form a sort of connection with a state and get knowledge from states how to produce WMDs” (Agence France-Presse/Aljazeera, April 14). Separately, Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf yesterday also dismissed fears that terrorists could acquire nuclear weapons, Reuters reported. “My frank view is very different to all the concerns the world shows and my frank view is, no way, this cannot happen,” Musharraf told Reuters. He added that the manufacture and use of a far less threatening radiological weapon by a terrorist group was more plausible. Such a device could produce radioactive fallout some 50 to 100 yards in diameter, according to Reuters. “It will get contaminated. It can be cleaned — maybe there will be some casualties — but it is not a nuclear explosion. That is not going to take place,” Musharraf said. He added that even Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who is accused of standing at the center of an underground international nuclear ring and selling uranium enrichment technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea, did not have the know-how to complete a nuclear weapon.  “Having got enriched uranium, it’s sawdust lying around, you [need] to have very high technology available to you to make that into a bomb,” he said. “The remaining steps [Khan] is not the expert on and they are equally, if not more, high-tech,” Musharraf said. Pakistani scientists worked for 30 years to produce portable nuclear weapons, and someone inexperienced in building a trigger mechanism for a bomb would end up with a device more than 6 1/2 feet in diameter, Musharraf said. “How do you carry that? It’s the size of that sofa,” he said, gesturing toward a piece of furniture in his Rawalpindi military residence. “I cannot imagine terrorists running over in the mountains, hiding in cities, to be able to put through all this chain to develop a bomb; I don’t think so at all,” he said (David Brunnstrom, Reuters, April 14). Back to top       Ottawa Hospital Prepares Decontamination Room The $17.7 million emergency room expansion at the Ottawa Hospital in Canada includes a hazardous materials decontamination room that could be used following a WMD incident, the Ottawa Citizen reported today (see GSN, March 3). The space is self-contained, with its own entrance and drainage. It was prepared to handle people exposed to chemical, biological or radiological agents, according to the Citizen. The hospital also received WMD-related equipment from the Canadian Health Ministry, including a decontamination tent, detectors and protective gear for medical personnel. “It means that we’re able to respond to community needs all the while protecting our staff,” said Dave Levesque, hospital occupational safety officer (Sara Hussey, Ottawa Citizen, April 15). Back to top

House Subcommittee Backs Tighter Iran Sanctions By Justin Chapura, CongressDaily WASHINGTON — A House International Relations subcommittee approved a bill Wednesday that tightens sanctions against Iran and allows U.S. assistance to pro-democracy groups (see GSN, April 14). The House Middle East and Central Asia Subcommittee approved the Iran Freedom Support Act of 2005 (H.R. 282), passing amendments offered en bloc unanimously and by voice vote. According to Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the amendments “include comments and recommendations the subcommittee staff received from subcommittee members.” One amendment states that after publication in the Federal Register of any individual or business that has invested at least $20 million in Iran's energy sector, managers of U.S. mutual funds and pensions plans would be required to remove investments from those designated entities. Ranking Democrat Gary Ackerman, (N.Y.) said the bill “makes it clear that Congress is concerned that Americans, simply by contributing to their 401(k)s, may be unwittingly fueling Iran's drive to acquire nuclear weapons.” Another amendment put forth allows the United States to withhold assistance to countries that have companies or individuals with more than $20 million invested in Iran. It recommends seeking U.N. support for a resolution requiring Iran to grant the International Atomic Energy Agency full access and control over weapons inspections within the county. “I understand that most other countries believe that most of bills that we pass in Congress interfere with their ability to function, but that should not deter us from doing the right thing and setting the right tone for U.S. foreign policy,” Ros-Lehtinen said. A controversial provision expands the sanctions under the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act of 1996 to include the petroleum byproducts industry. Representative Howard Berman (D-Calif.) defended this stipulation, saying “as lucrative as investment in Iran may be, losing their chances to do business with U.S. companies may be a higher price [for foreign companies and foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies].” Berman said that even as United States and European diplomacy with Iran continues, the bill “reminds everybody — the Iranians, the Europeans and the administration — that at the end of the day, we do not have a verifiable end to Iranian efforts to develop ... [a] nuclear program.” “Inaction appears to only embolden terrorist attacks,” Ros-Lehtinen said in her statement. “This gives us the leverage we need to get cooperation from our allies and make sure that we can put an end to ... terrorism and proliferation,” she said later. Another provision in the bill would allow anti-Iranian government groups to receive federal money to support pro-democracy causes. Ros-Lehtinen dismissed speculation that the provision was included because of her support for one group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq. The group, also known as MEK,  was once in favor with the United States as a primary pro-democracy organization, but was placed on the U.S. terrorist list in 1997 for its proximity to former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's regime. There has been support in recent years for the group to be taken off the list. Ros-Lehtinen, a proponent of MEK's removal, said that “will be a determination that the Bush administration will be reviewing.” Ros-Lehtinen, said the bill does not target any specific group, and that the question for MEK is “whether they should still be held by ancient history [and now], whether they're U.S. allies or U.S. enemies. I don't believe they belong in the list, I believe a new look should be placed on them.” Back to top       Russia Builds Temporary Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage Site With Assistance from United States Moscow has constructed a temporary storage site for spent fuel from scrapped nuclear submarines at the Zvezdochka shipyard in northern Russia, ITAR-Tass reported yesterday (see GSN, April 13). The site has received more than $60 million dollars in aid from Washington. Five nuclear-powered Murena-class submarines have been dismantled there, according to ITAR-Tass. The project doubled the temporary spent fuel storage capacity at Zvezdochka, shipyard spokeswoman Nadezhda Shcherbinina said (ITAR-Tass/BBC Monitoring, April 14). Back to top       Russia Conducts Terrorism Drill at Nuclear Facility Russia held an antiterrorism exercise Wednesday at the Novosibirsk nuclear fuel production facility, Interfax reported (see GSN, Dec. 10, 2004). Officials staged an armed takeover of the plant led by the facility’s head security guard. After taking mock hostages, the terrorists demanded to speak to a facility official. Authorities, taking into consideration the threat to hostages and local residents, instead raided the facility, capturing the assailants and freeing the hostages. The facility’s management conducted the exercise in collaboration with regional units of the Federal Security Service, the Interior and Emergencies ministries and local officials. Authorities called the drill a success, according to Interfax (Interfax/BBC Monitoring, April 13). Back to top       Seoul Rejects Joint U.S.-South Korea Intervention Plan for Potential North Korea Meltdown South Korea has rejected a classified plan to combine military forces with the United States for an armed intervention in the event of major troubles in North Korea, Agence France-Presse reported today (see GSN, April 14). Seoul’s National Security Council today cited concerns that the plan could infringe on South Korean sovereignty, AFP reported.  Under the terms of a treaty with Washington, however, the South Korean military would still come under U.S. command in wartime, according to AFP. The scrapped plan, code-named 5029, called for the United States to lead the effort to secure Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons sites and materials in case of regime collapse, analysts said. “After reviewing [5029], the NSC determined that some points in the plan could serve as factors limiting South Korea’s exercise of its sovereignty,” the National Security Council said today in a statement (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, April 15). Back to top

Missile Defense Cost Rises by $21 Billion By David Ruppe Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The projected cost of building the U.S. ballistic missile defense system as currently envisioned has jumped $21 billion to $87 billion, mainly as a result of newly announced hardware purchases, according to a Defense Department document released this week (see GSN, April 15). The Selected Acquisition Report, which details expected cost changes of major military systems in development, attributes the projected 32-percent increase “primarily” to the planned purchase of 20 additional ground-based interceptors to be deployed in Alaska in 2008 and 2009; two advanced, transportable X-Band radars for deployment overseas; 40 additional sea-launched interceptors; a theater air-defense battery; and an upgraded radar in Greenland. The report also cites as lesser contributors early expenditures for equipment to be deployed from 2010 to 2013, such as work toward fielding a constellation of Space Tracking and Surveillance System satellites to track and distinguish ballistic missile launches globally. The increase from the $66.1 billion projected last year could add budget pressure to the already expanding and crowded missile defense program, potentially driving up budgets beyond anticipated levels, forcing cuts or delays to other components of the system, or both, according to Philip Coyle, a senior adviser at the Center for Defense Information. “This $21 billion cost increase likely will stretch out the program and lead to significant program tradeoffs,” he said. Missile Defense Agency spokesman Richard Lehner in an e-mail today said some of the anticipated new cost already has been addressed in a separate, six-year budget plan released this year. A review of that budget plan, however, does not show such a substantial budget increase over what was projected last year.  It indicates an increase of just $3 billion to $10.7 billion for hardware to be bought in fiscal 2006 through fiscal 2009, which encompasses the years in which the agency would make most of the large-scale purchases driving the projected increase. Senator Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) at a missile defense hearing last week said the agency has indicated in a document that it will need an additional $7.6 billion for procuring hardware from fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2011, beyond what was included in this year’s budget projections. “The funding is not actually in the budget. It’s money that you all are planning to spend. And thus you hope that it’s in future budgets. So it hasn’t been through the process of forcing hard budget choices and then all the other calculations that we have to make with regard to the deficit and so forth,” he told the agency director Lt. Gen. Henry Obering. Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Michael Wynne then said that the agency was hoping that money would be taken from the armed services operations and maintenance budgets to cover the cost. “There is a huge debate over who would spend or who would budget for that money,” he said. Funding Plans Called at Risk The ambitious Ballistic Missile Defense System, a vast and growing collection of high-technology systems under development and construction, is intended to defend the United States homeland, U.S. forces overseas, and potentially allies, against all ranges of ballistic missiles. Budget documents released this year show the agency’s budget is projected to drop below $8 billion for fiscal 2006, which has been attributed to cuts ordered by senior Pentagon leadership last December. They show, however, that the annual agency budget is projected to climb above $10 billion by fiscal 2009 and remain there through fiscal 2011. Those later budget increases through fiscal 2009, however, do not come close to the projected system cost growth. The agency budget is expected to experience a net increase of $1.1 billion over the next four years, when the new equipment mostly would supposedly be funded, compared to a budget projection last year. The agency announced the additional, future hardware purchases beginning in 2008 this year, continuing an unusual practice of projecting purchases three years in advance, rather six years as for most major military acquisition programs. The practice, which critics say conceals the potential long-term cost of the missile defense system, drew a rebuke this year and last year from the White House budget office. In a budget document released in February, the Office of Management and Budget said the agency’s failure in previous years to budget for the newly announced hardware and costs to operate and maintain the program could jeopardize funding for such purchases. It “puts at risk the ability of MDA to field operational capabilities,” the office said. The agency already is having trouble funding the multiple technological approaches to defeating long-range ballistic missile attacks it is pursuing.   Citing $5 billion in budget reductions across fiscal 2006 and fiscal 2011 ordered by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz last December, it has announced delays on several long-term systems.  Plan Debated in Light of Cost Agency Director Obering at the hearing last week said Congress has authorized the military to spend $95 billion for missile defense since 1983, when President Ronald Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative. Such expenditures are justifiable, he said. “The cost of 9/11, one attack, not a weapon of mass destruction, according to the GAO [General Accountability Office] was about $83 billion. So … we would recoup the entire cost of the system since its conception if we can prevent one attack, and that is especially in light of a weapon of mass destruction, which was not used in the 9/11 attacks,” he said. Missile defense critics say the cost has been significantly higher. In a letter to President George W. Bush last year, 49 retired admirals and generals said at least $130 billion has been spent on missile defense since the Reagan announcement (see GSN, March 26, 2004). In addition, U.S. efforts to develop a strategic missile defense actually have been underway since the 1960s, adding billions of dollars more to what has been spent. Citing such figures, critics have questioned whether the technological challenge is too great to begin deploying national missile defense capabilities beyond a limited test infrastructure. The admirals and generals recommended that Bush “postpone operational deployment of the expensive and untested GMD system and transfer the associated funding to accelerated programs to secure the multitude of facilities containing nuclear weapons and materials and to protect our ports and borders against terrorists who may attempt to smuggle weapons of mass destruction into the United States.” What has been spent, Obering acknowledged last week, is “a lot of money.” He added, though, “It’s still less than three percent of our defense budget [and] we think that the return on that investment is considerable.” Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright, who commands the U.S. Strategic Command that would run the potential system, insisted at the hearing that a missile defense is needed. “We have a complex threat out there, multiple nations, multiple types of threats, and offense is not going to be enough to deter them,” he said. Back to top       NATO Plays Down Significance of Theater Missile Defense Cooperation With Russia NATO said yesterday that its cooperation with Russia on missile defense activities does not rise to the level of planning for a joint missile defense system, despite claims by Moscow earlier this week, ISN Security Watch reported yesterday (see GSN, April 12). Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Tuesday that Russia and NATO “plan to create an effective battlefield antimissile system in Europe. This system will protect all the areas on the European continent that can be attacked by missiles.” A NATO air defense expert, however, said yesterday that “NATO and Russia are working together to develop procedures and structures to conduct theater missile defense activities in a crisis response operation outside NATO and Russian territory.” However, “It is premature to suggest that the cooperation will result in a joint theater missile defense system,” the official said (Ekrem Krasniqi, ISN Security Watch, April 14).   Back to top

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