Aerospace Daily June 11, 2001
Post report of a fast-track missile defense plan gets mixed reaction
BY Jefferson Morris (jeff_morris@aviationnow.com)A newspaper report that the Pentagon is considering rushing a bare-bones missile defense system into operation by 2004 is generating a mixture of skepticism and puzzlement among industry and government sources.
The Washington Post reported June 8 that prime missile defense contractor Boeing is furnishing the Department of Defense with a number of ideas for near-term missile defense, including placing five interceptor missiles in Alaska by March 2004.
If true, this could represent the first concrete plan for missile defense to emerge from the Bush Administration.
Boeing spokeswoman Monica Aloisio would not comment on the story, except to say that an April 23 Pentagon briefing by Boeing mentioned in the Post never took place.
"Certainly Boeing has been asked by the government to present numerous options, but I have no knowledge of this 23rd of April briefing," she said.
Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, a Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) spokesman, also said he was unfamiliar with any such briefing. If it did occur, he said, it probably would have been one among many briefings on various options.
"There were probably more than two dozen different alternatives and options that have been briefed, and questions asked, and questions answered," said Lehner. "And this is just more of the same."
The Post report called Boeing's ideas "proposals," although this is not entirely accurate, according to Lehner.
"They're really not proposals. They're answers to questions that we pose to
Boeing," he said.
Skeptics unreceptive to reported plan
Missile defense skeptics were not receptive to the reported plan.
Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), the newly installed Senate Majority Leader, said the Bush Administration risks embarrassing the country if it tries to deploy a national missile defense system by 2004. Daschle said the Administration appears to be rushing to deploy a system before the technology is ready, and without regard for the diplomatic and financial impact.
"They even want to do it without the radar systems now. I don't get it," Daschle told reporters. "The system doesn't even work without radar. There is such a rush to deploy that I think it's going be an embarrassment to them, to the country, if we rush to judgment, rush to the commitment of resources."
J.M. Roberts, a retired Army major general who now heads High Frontier, a missile defense advocacy group, said the proposal, as reported by the Post, isn't what the country needs.
"It's better than nothing, but it's certainly not the answer," Roberts said. "We know very well that the most effective thing they could do would be to have a spaceborne defense, so you could intercept an enemy rocket on the way up, rather than on the way down."
He said the group also would like to see a defense system based on Navy Aegis
ships, which would make it more mobile.
Too little, too early
The idea of placing five interceptors in Alaska is little more than a "fig leaf," according to John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, which analyzes defense issues.
"Five interceptors with no discrimination radars would require a degree of cooperation from the enemy that we might be able to get from Britain, but certainly could not get from France," he said.
However, such a system would be feasible, he said.
"Would it be physically possible for them to scrape up five interceptors at one location and have the President give a speech at that location claiming that they were operational? Yes," said Pike. "Would it be anything that anybody would bet the country on? Probably not."
The Post story said that another Boeing idea is to place a missile tracking radar system on a moveable floating platform, akin to an oil-drilling rig. Pike said this idea is plausible.
"Boeing has had real good success with doing Sea Launch off of a platform, and so if somebody was to try to claim to me that they could build the radar on a barge and tow it somewhere faster than they could build it on site, I'd listen to that," he said.
Copyright 2001 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
