GlobalSecurity.org In the News

U.S. ABM DEFENSE TEST RILES MOSCOW

On July 14, the United States tested elements of an NMD system. A dummy fired from the Air Force base in Vandenberg, California, was shot down minutes later by an interceptor launched from a test site on the Kwajalein atoll (Marshall Islands). A similar test conducted in the same area a year ago ended in failure, and the Clinton administration had to put on hold the deployment of a limited NMD system.

The new "aggressive, accelerated phase of NMD testing" was reported to the Senate Armed Forces Committee by high-ranking Pentagon officials: Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Lt.Gen. Ronald Kadish, head of the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. Within the next 14 months, it is planned to conduct 17 NMD tests, with $ 8 billion earmarked for purpose in the budget for the new fiscal year, beginning October 1. (As reported earlier, the draft military budget proposed to Congress provides for a 57 percent increase in funding for NMD projects).

There is a substantial difference between the NMD concepts of the Clinton and Bush administrations. The former was talking about a system built on ground-based interceptor missiles that, in the event of a nuclear conflict, were intended to destroy warheads flying toward the United States in mid-path. Now the idea is to put in place a multilayered system ensuring interception at the booster, middle and final stages of flight. To this end, both short-, medium- and long-range kill vehicles are to be used.

Wolfowitz and Kadish told Congress ground would soon be broken on another test site, in Alaska, as part of the NMD program. In August, the area will be cleared of trees to accommodate 10 silo-based interceptor missiles.

The Alaska base as well as prospective deployment of a special radar on Hawaii or on a battleship are expected to render more "life-like" the intercept tests which until now were only conducted on targets flying from the continental part of the United States. It is also planned to modernize the radar on Shemya Island and test the deployment of interceptors on NMD-modified destroyers.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who at a news briefing described the test program as ambitious, maintained that new tests and the building of a test site on Alaska did not constitute a violation of the 1972 ABM Treaty. We are not going to breach the treaty in the foreseeable future and have every intention of reaching agreement with the Russians, he said.

The U.S. State Department, however, made a different assessment of upcoming tests. A memo sent to U.S. embassies and consulates overseas says that the tests will collide with the ABM Treaty within months rather than years. It also says that the deployment of an intermediary interceptor-missile base on Alaska will have been completed by early 2004.

The different interpretations by the administration's two departments should apparently be attributed to their different target audiences. Unlike Rumsfeld's statements meant for the media, the explanation offered by the foreign policy department is official and is accompanied by an array of arguments for diplomatic talks, the central thesis being that with the Cold War over, the significance of arms control treaties and agreements signed during that period has changed. In other words, they can now be dispensed with.

It is indicative that Wolfowitz told the senators that tests planned for the next few months would "bump up" against the ABM Treaty. In other words, the new program implies withdrawal from the treaty. John Pike, a well-regarded U.S. expert and director of the Global Security research center, says in this connection that as soon as the facility at Fort Greely, Alaska, turns it into a site for launching interceptor strategic missiles, that would automatically mean violation of the ABM Treaty.

Copyright 2001 Moscow News