U.S. Plans I:  Senators Criticize Proposed Study of Nuclear Interceptors

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Two U.S. senators, Democrat Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) and Republican Ted Stevens (Alaska), yesterday expressed strong opposition to Pentagon consideration of using nuclear weapons in space as part of the national missile defense system under development (see GSN, April 11).

The Washington Post reported April 11 that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had encouraged a Defense Science Board task force to explore the idea of using nuclear weapons to destroy WMD warheads in space after launch by enemy ICBMs.

“I find that just absolutely inexplicable, how we would even explore the use of nuclear-tipped interceptors with what they might do [with] radiological fallout to people and to countries,” Feinstein said.

Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish told a hearing of the Senate and House appropriations defense subcommittees “we have no part of our program that involves nuclear-tipped interceptors.”  He added, however, “people do think about those types of things across a broad range dealing with missile defense.”

Feinstein and Stevens are members of the Senate panel.

“I hope whoever thought about it in the secretary of defense’s office is soon in a think tank,” Stevens, the committee’s senior Republican and one of the Senate’s leading national missile defense advocates, said.

“That has alarmed my people to no end, absolutely no end,” he said.  “And I’d fire the guy.  I’m serious.  We should not have people thinking out loud on the job and speculating as to future possibilities when in reality we are trying to get us a missile defense system.”

“It obviously makes me mad,” said Stevens, who noted Congress had not appropriated any funds or authorized any nuclear interceptors.

A senior committee aide said there is a concern that even a Defense Science Board study of the idea without first obtaining bipartisan congressional support could put Democratic support for the Bush administration’s missile defense agenda at risk.

“There ought to be consultation with the Congress before we do anything in this area,” the aide said. The Pentagon should not pursue the idea “unless there is consensus.”

To do otherwise could put at risk “that fragile coalition that’s kept the president’s program moving forward.”

The task force would consider the idea in a review of alternatives to the current direct impact, hit-to-kill approach after it completes another study this summer, an official said in the Post story.

Critics have charged the ground-based ballistic missile defense system under development by the Pentagon will not work because its hit-to-kill interceptor could be easily fooled by simple countermeasures.

The Pentagon this year also began more aggressively exploring use of miniature kill vehicles, up to 40 of which might be launched by a single interceptor missile, to better deal with such countermeasures as decoys (see GSN, April 10).

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U.S. Plans II:  Possible Chemical Weapons Found at Missile Defense Site

After discovering barrels of what might be dangerous chemicals, the U.S. Army halted ground-clearing work last week at an Alaskan site designated for part of the ground-based missile defense system, the Army said last Friday (see GSN, March 5).

Workers at Fort Greely, a former chemical and biological weapons test site, discovered up to 20 barrels labeled “U.S. CWS” — for the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service, which was disbanded in 1946.  More barrels might be buried at the site, the Army said.

Work for the missile defense system has been halted until officials determine what materials the barrels contain, said Army spokesman Chuck Canterbury (Reuters/Council for a Livable World, April 12).

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U.S.-Russia I:  Joint Missile Defense Would Build Confidence, Experts Say

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

The United States and Russia should jointly develop missile defense programs to better alleviate Russian concerns, U.S. and Russian nonproliferation experts said at a panel in Moscow yesterday (see GSN, April 1).

“Only joint work on such systems, however complicated and costly they may be, can persuade Russia and the United States that such anti-missile systems are not aimed against each other,” said Yuri Fyodorov, deputy director of the PIR Center for Policy Studies in Russia.

Sharing Components, Information

U.S.-Russian cooperation could come in the form of use of Russian-made components in a U.S. missile defense system, said Alexander Pikayev of the Research Council of the Moscow Carnegie Center.  If Russia sells missile defense equipment to the United States, that would make the Russian military dependent on U.S. markets, and in turn cause Russian military policy to change from looking at the United States as an adversary, he said.

The United States has looked at using Russian technology, such as the S-300 system, as components in a U.S. system, said Rose Gottemoeller, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (see GSN, March 7).

“The best guarantee against the breakout of a war between the two countries is the production of one and the same weapon system,” Pikayev said.  “If the two countries built a tank, a joint tank, it is obvious that they are simply incapable of fighting each other because you cannot divide the tank into two.”

Another way the two countries should cooperate is through the exchange of information, Fyodorov said.  The United States and Russia should share information on ballistic missile launches, including information gathered through early-warning systems, he said.  Information sharing could be accomplished either through formal agreements or mutual understandings, Fyodorov said.

Benefits

Past comments by Bush administration officials, such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, have shown a willingness on the part of the United States to engage Russia in cooperating on a missile defense program, Gottemoeller said (see related GSN story, today).

“The first reason for engaging in this cooperation is to build Russian confidence about the limited nature of the missile defense system that the Bush administration is planning to build,” Gottemoeller said.

U.S.-Russian cooperation on missile defense could also help improve overall relations between the two countries and bring them closer together, Pikayev said.  Such cooperation could move the two countries away from mutual deterrence and toward a more stable partnership, and even to an alliance, he said.

In the wake of the U.S. announcement to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, joint technical cooperation could do more to alleviate concerns than any arms control agreement signed at the May U.S.-Russian summit, Pikayev said.

“So if we cast aside arms control, if we depart from arms control and arrive at cooperation in the field of weapons development, we will thereby make a gigantic leap towards building a true alliance between our countries,” he said.

Importance of Treaties

Technical cooperation, however, cannot provide the same level of assurance as arms control agreements, such as the ABM Treaty, said Jon Wolfsthal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Once the ABM Treaty ends in mid-June, when both the United States and Russia are expected to withdraw, the only constraints on missile defense will be technical and financial, Wolfsthal said.

“Fortunately for people interested in stability, these systems are still very expensive and are totally unproven,” Wolfsthal said.  “So there is some existing transparency and confidence that the Russian Federation can take by observing what, in my opinion, will be a series of expensive failures of U.S. missile defense technology” (Federal News Service transcript, April 16).

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U.S. Plans:  Army, MDA Delay PAC-3 Flight Test

The U.S. Army and the Missile Defense Agency delayed a flight test of the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missile scheduled for last weekend because of a measuring problem, Defense Daily reported yesterday (see GSN, March 27).

The delay was because of “a telemetry problem, which I think is a range problem,” said MDA spokeswoman Alicia Garges.  The test could be rescheduled for later this month, she said.

The multiple-engagement flight test was planned to involve a PAC-3 missile intercepting a Storm II target, which is made up of surplus components from Minuteman II and Pershing II intercontinental ballistic missiles, Defense Daily reported.  Additionally, a second PAC-3 missile was supposed to attempt to intercept a modified Patriot missile that represented a short-range theater ballistic missile, Garges said.

The Army and MDA have completed two out of four planned PAC-3 flight tests, with the last operational flight test scheduled for May, according to Defense Daily.  Already 16 PAC-3 missiles have been built, with full-scale development expected by fall (Kerry Gildea, Defense Daily, April 16).

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U.S-Russia II:  Joint Early-Warning Center Almost Complete, Analyst Says

A joint U.S.-Russian early-warning center for ballistic missile launches is almost complete, a Russian analyst said today (see related GSN story, today).

The new center is being created ahead of the planned strategic arms reduction summit between U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in May, said Lt.-Gen. Vasily Lata, senior official of the Russian Center for Political Studies.  The center will help reduce the risk of an accidental nuclear attack, Lata said (ITAR-Tass, April 17).

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U.S. Plans:  Cruise Missile Defenses Deserve Consideration, Expert Says

The United States should seriously consider deploying a system to defend the continental United States from a sea-launched cruise missile attack — potentially one conducted by terrorists using WMD-armed missiles — said Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, in the spring issue of the National Interest (see GSN, March 12).

“Cruise missiles are small and inexpensive enough that it may not be beyond the means of terrorists to acquire them,” O’Hanlon said.  “Reconfiguring a standard cruise missile to carry a primitive nuclear warhead, likely to weigh half a ton or more, is probably beyond the abilities of terrorists, but outfitting a cruise missile with a dispensing mechanism for distributing chemical or biological agents or radiological materials may be feasible.”

Therefore, “a defense against ship-launched cruise missile is desirable and achievable, but difficult and expensive,” O’Hanlon said.

The cost of a U.S. cruise missile defense system would represent a “modest investment” when compared with the costs of a U.S. ballistic missile defense system, O’Hanlon said.

Radars and Interceptors

The first stage of a U.S. cruise missile defense system would use U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships to intercept suspicious foreign ships sailing close enough to U.S. coasts to conduct an attack, according to O’Hanlon.  A ship that is secretly equipped to launch an attack, however, could possibly evade U.S. patrols, so physical defenses are also needed, O’Hanlon said.

The next stage would consist of radar stations and missile interceptor bases, said O’Hanlon.  Ground-level radars would have difficulty detecting incoming cruise missiles at the low altitudes at which they fly, so airborne radars would be needed.  Such systems, installed on aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles or balloon aerostats several thousand feet above the ground, could detect incoming missiles at farther ranges than ground stations, and fewer radars would be necessary to cover the entire U.S. coastline, according to O’Hanlon.

Radar systems could cost up to $10 billion, assuming 100 radars at $100 million each, O’Hanlon said.  Those costs could be reduced to less than $4 billion through the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, such as the Global Hawk, he added.  Operating costs for radar systems could range between $300 million and $1 billion, depending on the type of aircraft and radar used, O’Hanlon said.

To shoot down cruise missiles, the United States would need to deploy 1,000 interceptors dispersed among 100 coastal bases.  O’Hanlon estimated the cost of that deployment to fall between $5 billion and $10 billion.

A total U.S. cruise missile defense system could cost up to $20 billion to deploy, O’Hanlon said, and an equal amount to operate the system over a 20-year timeframe (Michael O’Hanlon, National Interest, Spring 2002).

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Russia:  Moscow Shield Obsolete, Former General Says

The Soviet-era missile defense system installed around Moscow has become obsolete and can no longer adequately defend against attack, a former Russian space forces general said yesterday (see GSN, April 11).

Retired Lt.-Gen. Anatoly Sokolov said the A-135 missile defense system should be dismantled, according to the Interfax-Military News Agency.

“It makes no sense to maintain a dying system, as the existing anti-missile defense is unable to provide efficient protection of the area, let alone the entire country,” Sokolov said.

The former Soviet Union first deployed the A-35 missile defense system around Moscow in 1974.  The system consisted of a radar network and more than 60 missile interceptors.  The current A-135 version, which has been enhanced to include both medium- and long-range missile interceptors, was put into operation in 1994.

The United States had a similar missile defense system during the 1970s to protect intercontinental ballistic missile fields in North Dakota, but later dismantled it (Associated Press/Army Times, April 15).

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U.S. Plans I:  Pentagon Lowers Cost Estimate for Combined Development

The cost of researching and developing the U.S. ballistic missile defense system has dropped to $47 billion, according to the U.S. Defense Department quarterly Selected Acquisition Report released Thursday.

The estimate takes into account the costs for research, development, testing and evaluation of missile defense programs, but not procurement costs.  The cancellation of some Missile Defense Agency programs, such as the Space-Based Infrared System-Low and the Navy Area theater defense program led to a reduction from the previous $59 billion estimate, according to the report (U.S. Defense Department release, April 11).

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U.S. Plans II:  MDA Considering International Participation

Non-U.S. missile defense contractors and experts might join the industry team coordinating the integration of U.S. missile defense systems, Defense Daily reported Friday (see GSN, April 12).

“Foreign participation is under consideration,” said one team official, according to Defense Daily.

The team has had “some preliminary contacts” and “put out some feelers” regarding non-U.S. participation, but U.S. officials have not yet decided whether to internationalize the national industry team, an official said.

Some team members believe joint programs such as the Medium Extended Area Defense system and the Arrow system require participation from other countries.

The United States must eventually integrate MEADS, which has been developed in coordination with Italy and Germany, into its missile defense plans, according to Defense Daily.  The national industry team may also consider integrating the Arrow missile defense system, which has been developed by the United States and Israel and currently is planned only for Israel (see GSN, March 15).

Not Aiming for 100 Percent

The Missile Defense Agency formed the national industry team to assemble top experts in the defense industry, academia and U.S. national laboratories to help integrate the varied components of a layered missile defense.

The team is not aiming to reach 100 percent success rates in missile defense tests, said team members, adding there will be difficulties and failures.

“We’re not looking for 100 percent success.  We’re looking for a good batting average,” said one official.  “If we were hitting a 100 percent success, we’re low risk, and we’re not earning our keep.  There will be some failures.”

Team members said they plan to push the envelope technologically (Kerry Gildea, Defense Daily, April 12).

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