TABLE OF CONTENTS
 

Deploying a missile defense by 2004: A Sham Defense to Meet an Artificial Deadline

Victoria Samson, Research Associate, vsamson@cdi.org

President Bush announced Dec. 17 his intention to push for deployment of some sort of missile defense system by 2004/2005. Touted by administration officials as a way of fielding a rough defense that could eventually be tweaked to the Pentagon’s liking, this action does nothing to bolster the United States’ defense. Instead, it solidifies a program that has had a shaky history, is undergoing severe problems in its testing phase, and continues to divert billions of dollars away from technologies that actually improve national security.

In the president’s statement, he says that he has "directed the Secretary of Defense to proceed with fielding an initial set of missile defense capabilities. We plan to begin operating these initial capabilities in 2004 and 2005, and they will include ground-based interceptors, sea-based interceptors, additional Patriot (PAC-3) units, and sensors based on land, at sea, and in space."

At a press conference later that day, Missile Defense Agency (MDA) head Lt. Col. Ronald Kadish clarified what this will entail. Building on top of what was known as the "test-bed facility" in Ft. Greely, Alaska, the MDA will put six ground-based interceptors there and four at Vandenberg AFB in California (which has been involved in the test program as the launch site of the practice target missiles) in 2004. 10 more ground-based interceptors will be fielded in 2005. By the end of 2005, 10-20 sea-based interceptors – the Standard Missile (SM)-3 – will be fielded on three converted Aegis ships; 15 Aegis ships will be dedicated to surveillance. As well, the Aegis cruiser USS Lake Erie, that has been on loan from the US Navy for testing of the SM-3, will be handed over to the MDA. The accelerated production of the Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC)-3 missile will continue as planned if Congress can agree on how to fund it -- presently a large percentage of the PAC-3 acceleration dollars are to come from the ground-based and sea-based interceptor programs. Radars that will be used by the newly-deployed interceptors are a sea-based X-Band radar, upgraded Cobra Dane radars on the Aegis cruisers, and upgraded land-based early warning radars. The latter include radars located in the UK (Fylingsdale) and Denmark (Thule in Greenland), so those two countries were formally asked for their permission for the first time on Tuesday.

Administration officials had two central themes when discussing the program. First, they were careful to portray this 2004/2005 deployment as a "modest" increase in the U.S.’ capabilities. This is likely an effort to manage expectations, especially if the missile defense programs continue to have flight test failures like the one that occurred Dec. 11. Second, and perhaps most important, deploying a missile defense system while it is still early in its development phase is acceptable because this is, in the words of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, an "evolutionary program, [that] will evolve over a period of time." Apparently, now that the Pentagon has embraced spiral development for its up-and-coming programs, it isn’t necessary to complete a program’s testing before fielding it: once deployed, DoD can fix any problems that crop up.

The difficulty with that method of developing weapons systems is that it is more appropriate, and cost effective, to deploy systems that have at least completed realistic operational testing and have proven themselves to be marginally reliable. None of the missile defense systems being fielded fit that description.

The ground-based interceptors being installed in Alaska and California are the only ones specifically designed to counter long-range ballistic missiles and only when the enemy missiles are in their midcourse phase. (The PAC-3 and the SM-3 interceptors can only be used against shorter-range ballistic missiles, none of which could reach the United States.) The ground-based system – known as the Ground-based Midcourse (GMD) system - has undergone highly scripted testing with tightly controlled variables. For example, it has been tested against missiles with decoys that are designed to look much different from the warhead. The test interceptor is also given a plethora of prior information about the target to aid in its discrimination. Yet even with all these testing aids, and despite using well-known technologies (like the Minuteman ICBM as a temporary booster rocket), the program has struggled mightily, suffering three failures out of the eight attempted flight test intercepts.

Even if one ignores for the moment the testing problems GMD has had, the architecture that is to be deployed by 2004/2005 needs new technologies still to be developed in order for system to work. A booster rocket has yet to be built – the existing development program has had such a rocky history that the MDA granted a contract to a second company last spring to hedge its bets. The sea-based XBR has not been built yet, and the contract was granted just earlier this year. Upgrading of the early warning radars rests upon the approval of the UK and Denmark, both of who have expressed discomfort about the possibility. Given the lackluster performance the GMD system has shown simply in testing well-established technologies, it is unclear how the MDA can reasonably expect that brand-new technologies will perform at anywhere near an acceptable level of reliability in less than two years. This is rocket science, things do go wrong, and one cannot take a handful of intercepts during artificial testing situations and extrapolate that all we have to do is catch up with the engineering in order to have a missile defense system that will work.

Another very likely constraint to meeting this 2004/2005 timeline is funding. The MDA has projected, based on the past couple of years’ appropriations, that it would receive about $8 billion in both 2004 and 2005. To meet this new deadline MDA is projecting it will need an additional $1.5 billion for those two years. $17 billion is being requested for a system that does not yet exist and is barely squeaking through its testing program. At a time when homeland defense, the war on terrorism, and impending hostilities with Iraq are all straining defense allocations, missile defense seems a questionable priority.

Even so, this could almost be acceptable if it would result in a working defense against an actual threat. But it won’t. None of the so-called "axis of evil" countries have missiles now or in the near future with the range need to reach the United States. There is no intelligence supporting a long-range missile threat by 2004, and therefore no reason for the rush to deploy. Despite administration claims otherwise, politics has had a heavier hand in determining the missile defense deployment schedule than technology or threat assessment. If there is any missile threat, it is the threat of short-range Scuds and Scud-variants to our troops abroad. A better return on the DoD’s investment would be to put more funding into short-range ballistic missile defense programs like the PAC-3. As it stands now, the only thing the direction to deploy by 2004/2005 does is to provide a sham defense for the United States.

CDI’s "Briefing Room"

Army to Call Up Reservists to Guard Air Force Bases —The Army has announced that it will call up roughly 9,000 reservists and members of the National Guard to help guard 163 Air Force bases and facilities in the United States. The call-up is the result of an agreement between the two services in order to allow large numbers of Air Force reservists called up after the Sept. 11 attacks to return to private life. Many of the Air Force reservists have been on active duty for more than a year.

U.S. Officer Stabbed In South Korea —A U.S. Army officer was attacked while walking to his home near his base in Seoul on Dec. 15. According to Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, he was attacked by three South Korean men in their early 20s who stabbed him twice in the stomach with a five-inch knife. Lt. Col. Boylan said that the men cursed him and told him that U.S. troops should leave the country. The attack comes in the wake of major widespread protests resulting from the recent acquittal of two U.S. soldiers whose military vehicle ran over and killed two South Korean schoolgirls in June. An estimated 300,000 South Koreans participated in candlelight vigils protesting the acquittal over the weekend. Lt. Col. Boylan was treated for a stab wound in his side and minor abrasions and bruises.

NATO, EU Work on Details of Military Pact — NATO and the European Union (EU) have began filling in the substance of a military agreement between the two organizations that would allow the EU’s new military force to use NATO as a backup, ending months of deadlock. The break came last weekend when Turkey dropped its objections to allowing NATO assistance to EU military operations. In return, Turkey, a member of NATO but not a member of the EU, was guaranteed that EU arms would not be used against Turkish interests. In a related development, a EU summit on Dec. 13 announced that talks on Turkey’s joining the organization could begin after December 2004.

British Stick to Plans On Eurofighter —Britain intends to purchase the full 232 Eurofighters currently planned, despite published reports that the Ministry of Defense (MoD) was interested in scaling back the order. According to the MoD, it has a contract to buy a first batch of 55 Eurofighters, known as the Typhoon, and a memorandum of understanding to purchase a second batch of 89 planes, with that contract to be signed next year. A contract for a third batch of 88 Eurofighters is expected in 2007. Concerns about the Eurofighter program have been growing since the November 2002 crash of a prototype, and the subsequent announcement by the MoD that it was going to delay taking delivery of the first aircraft by six months until next June.

Quotation of the Week — "There's lots of words that the Pentagon uses that have a meaning, like 'capability,' or 'initial capability' or 'deployment.'...[B]y avoiding those words, I think we maybe come to a better understanding as to what's going to happen. I think the way to think about the missile defense program is that it will be an evolutionary program, it will evolve over a period of time. Any capability -- with a small 'c;' I'm not talking about initial capability, initial IOCs or any of that -- but capability with a small 'c' will probably, one would hope, improve as you go along. And it will…when it finishes some day out there in the years ahead, it very likely will look quite different than it begins," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Defense Department news briefing, December 17, 2002.
 

This Week on SUPERPOWER: Global Affairs TV —
"US vs. UN"

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The ten-thousand page document released by the Iraqi regime has so far not revealed any 'smoking gun' that would irrefutably demonstrate Saddam Hussein has violated UN Security Council resolutions. Yet proof or no proof the Bush administration seems determined to treat any Iraqi response to weapons inspectors as an admission of guilt. What does this say about the role of the UN? Is America headed on a collision course not just with Iraq but with 50 years of efforts at international peacekeeping as well?

Joining Superpower moderator Lisa Simeone to discuss the issue this week will be Mark Thompson, national security correspondent for Time magazine; Husain Haqqani, syndicated columnist and visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; and Yoshihisa Komori, Editor-at-Large for the Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun.

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