It could simply be a matter of poor timing. But coming as Congress raises
concerns about proper oversight of the Pentagon's missile defense
program, news that the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) will now classify some
test results as secret is raising eyebrows.
The decision to reclassify information about testing of the Ground-based
Midcourse Defense system, designed to develop interceptors to take
out enemy intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) heading for the
United States, was recently revealed in Defense Daily, and involves one
of the more controversial aspects of the missile defense development
program.
Critics have been arguing for months that the interceptor test program is
not adequately taking into account likely enemy efforts to spoof the
system through use of decoys and other countermeasures. The new MDA
classification orders, which cover details of targets and
countermeasures used in future flight intercept tests, will have the
effect — if not the intent — of muzzling this criticism. You cannot criticize
what you cannot see.
MDA officials argue this is necessary to avoid giving potential enemies
information they can use to defeat the eventual interceptor system. It
is true that information about the interceptors' targeting and decoy
discrimination capabilities could help an enemy ensure its future ICBMs
punch through a missile shield and reach their targets in the United
States.
That said, it is not as if missile defense technologies are so
cutting-edge that they deserve the kind of so-called black protection given
to the development of the stealth fighter, or even spy satellites. The technology
involved in developing ground-, sea- and air-based missile defense
interceptors (or even lasers) is largely basic rocket science, and has
been discussed in public for several decades.
Further, the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, not to mention other
efforts under development by MDA, is at a very early stage of
development, not anywhere near its desired operational capabilities. Nor
is the test program anywhere near the point where likely real-world
decoys could be used in the testing.
So, it is not obvious that allowing public scrutiny of testing parameters,
either current or planned for the next decade or so, could really
damage the future system's viability.
Indeed, the reason routinely given by MDA for the office's inability to
provide Congress or the American public with either a planned
architecture for, or cost estimate of, the U.S. missile defense program is
precisely because the overall program and its components are in
early stages of development.
The effort to speed development is cited as the reason for the recent
reorganization of MDA and its programs, and for application of the
Pentagon's newest acquisition reform concept, known as spiral development,
to those programs.
Congress and outside critics of the missile defense program already are
worried about the effect of the missile defense reorganization and the
use of spiral development on the ability to track progress. The
reorganization not only makes it more difficult to follow the budgetary path
of
the various missile defense systems under development, it also has the
effect of shielding developmental signposts from the Pentagon's
internal review processes.
The use of spiral development in the program further obfuscates the actual
developmental goals of the individual programs, by applying
less-than-clear capabilities requirements as standards for judging
readiness of a system for fielding, rather than clear-cut operational
requirements. Many in Congress are worried enough about the effect of
these changes on congressional control over the program's direction
and purse strings to be demanding explanations from Pentagon officials.
The House Government Reform Committee, for example, is planning
hearings in mid-June.
Classifying testing parameters and results as secret only draws the veil
tighter. Classified information can only be released to certain
members of Congress, and not to the community of independent scientists,
public policy organizations and the general public who follow
missile defense development.
There are compelling reasons for keeping as much information as possible
about missile defense development in the public eye. Missile
defense long has been an issue of serious technical and public policy
debate. Many of the technologies being explored are not yet proven, not
because they break the laws of physics, but because the engineering
exactitude required to build successful intercept systems is
enormously difficult to achieve.
Furthermore, the costs involved in development and potential deployment,
under any plausible architecture, will be huge. The United States is
looking at long-term investments of at least $200 billion just to develop
the missile defense systems now being explored, not counting the
additional costs to sustain and operate them over time.
It is legitimate to ask whether the cost is worth the trade-offs that will
have to be made elsewhere in the U.S. defense and domestic budget,
especially now as the anti-terrorism campaign is demanding an influx of
resources.
In all weapon development — to steal a phrase from former President Ronald
Reagan, himself a missile defense supporter — one must "trust but
verify" that the weapon works before we buy it, and that it does so at a
price consistent with its actual utility.
While Pentagon intentions may not be nefarious, the results of the recent
changes are a step backward for good public policy-making and
rational defense budgeting because they diminish our ability to verify
that missile defense systems under development ever will meet those
criteria.
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