Faith-Based Missile Defense!

[ITR_champion]

In reading all these “with hard work and effort we can accomplish anything posts”, it’s interesting to note that we’ve already spend way over $100 billion without accomplishing much.

[Dave_Stewart]

Wow, I’m buying shares in which companies again?

Lockheed? Boeing? Who makes this stuff?

[Monster104]

I think I recall reading that a fairly small contractor has the actual job of building high tech warheads or some such…

[Dave_Stewart]

On wobbly missiles, from http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/media/releases/2001/082701missile.html

In a front-page story in the New York Times (August 27), reporter William Broad concluded from numerous interviews, including with Pentagon officials, that “the missile defense planned by the Bush administration may be least able to destroy warheads from countries that are thought to pose the biggest threat… The trouble is that so-called rogue nations, like North Korea, Iran and Iraq, would fire wobbling, rudimentary warheads during an attack, and those turn out to be among the hardest to hit.”

For radio interviews on this critical new development in the debate over national missile defense, contact the following experts:

Phil Coyle, Senior Advisor, Center for Defense Information and former Assistant Secretary of Defense and Director, Operational Test & Evaluation during the Clinton administration
Tel: 323-656-6750 Email: martha.krebs@att.net
“This is a very important problem and when I was in the Defense Department I urged the Ballistic Missile Defense Office to plan and conduct tests of tumbling reentry vehicles. There may be solutions; it’s hard to say. It’s one we recognized years ago that needed to be explored through realistic testing.”

Tom Collina, Director of Global Security, Union of Concerned Scientists and an expert on national missile defense.
Tel: 202-223-6133 Email: tcollina@ucsusa.org
“These early missile defense tests have been overly simplistic. And the question is whether the system will be able to pass the tests that are to come. The article in the New York Times points to some of the reasons why this missile defense system will never be effective.”

Spurgeon Keeny, President, Arms Control Association and former Deputy Director of the U.S. Arms Control & Disarmament Agency under Carter and Assistant Director under Nixon. Was involved in negotiating the ABM Treaty.
Tel: 202-463-8270 (O); 202-966-1692 (H)
“This is the latest in a long list of technical problems with the proposed National Missile Defense to receive press attention. It underscores the fact that a reliable, effective system even against a limited threat is many years away and will take great expense to accomplish. These serious technical problems make it most unfortunate that the United States is prepared to abandon its international commitments under the ABM treaty–a decision that will have far reaching adverse effects on overall U.S. security interests.”

And from http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/commentary/0108nuctreaty.html

President Bush and his Republican colleagues should be congratulated for their call to end our vulnerability to nuclear weapons and to reach beyond cold war policies. The key question is: how should we end this vulnerability.

The Republican Party offers a vision based on high-tech military might. In contrast, most Americans and most of the world prefer a strategy that would eliminate the nuclear threat completely, through a system of verified and enforceable disarmament. The modern Republican Party, however, has turned its back on the Ronald Reagan motto “Trust but Verify” in favor of “Won’t Trust, Can’t Verify.” The president and his advisers have decided to set aside not just the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty but also other legally binding constraints on U.S. weapons.

The choice for Americans and for the world is now between two options: a strategy based on international law aimed at eliminating nuclear weapons, and a policy that rejects international legal controls and relies solely on military force. This choice between law and disarmament on the one hand and lawless war-fighting on the other is obscured by the political debate inside the beltway. Both Republicans and Democrats are confusing the issue. The White House is keen to talk a language of reassurance that ignores the attack-orientated format of the U.S. armed forces. The Democrats and most of the arms-control community are hung up defending the ABM Treaty and the continuation of nuclear deterrence. Much of the argument on missile “defenses” has centered on the questions: Will it work? How much will it cost? The problem with this approach is that it provides no response to the challenge: “If it works and if it’s cheap, you have no objection in principle.”

The other often-used objection to missile defense is the negative impact on world opinion. But, again, this leaves wide open the question of how to deal with the problem of vulnerability. Americans need to be clear in their own minds about how their security should be maintained rather relying on what foreigners are upset about.

A clearer picture of the implication of missile “defenses” emerges when these defense systems are considered in their military context. If America ever went to war in Korea, the U.S. Army and Air Force in South Korea would fight alongside their South Korean partners with strong support from the U.S. Pacific fleet, the Marines, and U.S.-based air power. Missile defense would be there to pick off any missiles that survived U.S. strikes. A similar use of U.S. conventional weapons to counter opposing forces could negate almost all of Russia and China’s nuclear arsenals today. China’s force is small but even Russia’s 400 or so nuclear missile launchers could be overwhelmed by the thousands of cruise missiles and stealth bombers in the U.S. arsenal. U.S. security planners have long been obsessed with giving the president an option to win a nuclear war without tossing the entire planet into the incinerator of a nuclear holocaust. What better way than to use smart conventional weapons to negate the other side’s nukes?

The Clinton administration spent some energy working this out and even tested the Navy’s Trident ballistic missiles with conventional warheads. The incoming Bush team backs the idea of “counterforce” as the basis of U.S. security strategy, as several of the people the president has now appointed to key positions described in the National Institute for Public Policy report on nuclear weapons (www.nipp.org). Nuclear weapons can be dramatically reduced if conventional weapons can be used to attack an opponent’s nuclear arsenal. Even a dramatic reduction to some 900 deployed nuclear weapons would still leave the U.S. with two warheads for each Russian missile–not even counting the smart weapons in the U.S. stockpile. Building on this present U.S. supremacy, the Bush administration is now determined to build up a full range of missile shields not only targeted at incoming missiles but also at non-U.S. satellites. In fact, the proposed lasers in space–which may be tested in a few years time–will be far more effective against these satellites than against enemy rockets. In the language of the U.S. Space Command, lasers are weapons for dominating the full spectrum of conflict.

This strategy has one critical flaw, even for advocates of missile technology. Americans are very reluctant to go to war and politicians in Washington are scared stiff that even one soldier might get killed. So the problem with adopting a policy based so much on military force is that it cuts out real policy options that can be used. Politicians often refer to Teddy Roosevelt’s recommendation, “Talk softly and carry a big stick.” That strategy seems to have been replaced with a new posturing: “Talk loudly and carry an enormous club you can’t use.”

In comparison with this over-militarized approach, a policy of disarmament and threat elimination would be cheap and practical. The U.S. allies in NATO have been trying to persuade the administration to consider such a policy but with no luck thus far. There is now a clear road map to a world free of the threat from weapons of mass destruction through a series of treaties that already outlaw chemical and biological arms and could do the same for nuclear weapons. Inspectors would leave no stone unturned and would be backed up by military force. Back during the Gulf War, Bush Sr. built a global consensus to take on Saddam Hussein, but that unity has been squandered as the U.S. has pursued hostile policies toward Russia and has taken sides in the Middle East. Leading the world toward a freedom from fear of weapons of mass destruction would help rebuild the consensus. Instead, we have a president who rejects using law to control weapons–be they hand guns at home or nuclear weapons abroad. He is leading the world toward nuclear anarchy with a grin, a wave, and slap on the back.

But wait there is more!

On Saturday, July 14th the Pentagon conducted the fourth intercept test of the National Missile Defense (NMD) system. Delayed by more than 18 months due to technical problems, early reports from Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization indicate that “everything worked in a nominal (or acceptable) mode.” However, in the aftermath of the successful test–the first in almost two years–Kadish’s remarks were unexpectedly subdued. He cautioned that it takes many weeks to analyze the test data and that, “we have a long road ahead in all the missile defense activities.”

Kadish’s caution is warranted. Preliminary information shows that there was a problem with the prototype radar used to tell ground controllers if the kill vehicle hit the target. In the case of the first NMD intercept test, which took place in October 1999, missile defense advocates were quick to praise the test as an unqualified success. Months later, however, test data revealed that the interceptor homed in on the large, brightly illuminated decoy balloon that helped guide it to the mock warhead. As Tom Collina of the Union of Concerned Scientists, aptly stated, “They got lucky.” Counting the most recent NMD test, the test record stands at two hits and two misses–hardly an outstanding ratio.

Philip Coyle, formerly the Pentagon’s chief civilian test evaluator, noted in a report last September that the NMD system’s effectiveness is not yet proven, even in the most elementary sense. In fact, the program is so immature that ‘‘a rigorous assessment of potential system performance cannot be made.’’ Coyle described how flight tests are being “dumbed” down to ensure the public perception of success, and interceptors are being given advance information they will not have in real world engagements.

Undeterred, missile defense enthusiasts like Senate minority leader Trent Lott (R-Miss) viewed the successful test as a reason to deploy the system as soon as possible. “We should put this right at the top of the agenda, not allow it to be pushed aside by Democrats,” the Senator remarked on Fox News the day after the test.

Bush has talked of a deploying a “layered” missile defense system that would combine the ground-based NMD system with sea-, air-, and space-based components, but the specifics remain vague. In keeping with this plan, in FY 2002, the Bush administration has requested $8.3 billion for missile defense programs, an increase of 57% over last years’ budget.

The Pentagon is planning on spending a substantial portion of the budget increase on an ambitious new testing schedule of the various missile defense systems. In the next year and a half, the Pentagon wants to conduct up to 17 flight tests. Each test costs about $100 million. Also in the budget request are funds to build a new missile defense test site in Alaska. The idea is that the new test site could become the command center for a rudimentary missile shield as early as 2004.

Because both the expanded testing and the new test facility will violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Moscow, the State Department sent out a 14-page memo to all U.S. diplomatic posts abroad warning that these violations could take place ‘‘in months, not years,’’ as previously thought.

While the Bush administration is trying to move fast and furiously with the missile defense programs, the fact remains that none are currently up to the task. As Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has pointed out, “There is no test that could possibly be conducted in the next twelve months that would violate the ABM Treaty. Neither the ship-based systems nor the Airborne Laser are ready to test against any target, let alone an ICBM.”

Russian officials have indicated a willingness to discuss changes in the ABM Treaty to address U.S. concerns about emerging ballistic missile threats, but warned that a U.S. “go it alone” approach on missile defense could seriously jeopardize future nuclear reductions in Russia’s armaments and encourage China and other nations to build up their arsenals.

Given that the $70 billion spent on missile defense technologies over the past two decades has not produced a single workable device, a crash program to deploy a system is unlikely to fare better. Before President Bush throws away four decades of progress on arms control and risks sparking a new arms race, he should rethink the consequences of moving full speed ahead with a missile defense system and readjust the direction of his policy to bring it into line with strategic, political, and economic realities.

I think our American friends should be writing to Senate minority leader Trent Lott to ask him to explain his enthusiasm for such an oddball and futile defence proposal.

[Mr.Duality]

As we have seen this morning, terrorism is by far the greater threat.

Excellent post, Tejato. I saved it, and will give you credit if I use it anywhere.