Milwaukee Journal Sentinel July 21, 2001
Missile defense: Some still believe it can't be developed
by Peter Pae
Protecting Americans from a foreign missile attack has become the most daunting military challenge of the last two decades - a technological feat that some say is more difficult and costly than building the atom bomb.
Setting aside those risks, President Bush has pushed missile defense to the forefront of his national security plans, reigniting intense debate here and abroad over the political ramifications of fielding such a system and over whether it is even possible.
In theory, the system finally would erase the last vestiges of the Cold War threat of instant annihilation, providing the United States and its allies protection from ballistic missiles through an array of weapons fired or launched from the ground, sea, air and space.
But critics contend that in the nearly two decades since President Reagan launched the "Star Wars" program, and after spending some $75 billion searching for the perfect anti-missile system, the Pentagon isn't any closer to deploying an effective shield against nuclear attack.
"This is the most difficult thing that the Defense Department has ever tried to do," said Philip Coyle, the Pentagon's former chief of test and evaluation. "We're trying to do something that is more difficult than developing the atom bomb, but without the urgency or the national commitment."
Military planners still have not resolved the overall architecture of even a limited shield against a missile attack or defined how all the advanced elements of a defensive system would work.
Moreover, each element of the system would require advances in a broad range of technologies, including sensors to distinguish real warheads from decoys, high-powered chemical lasers able to shoot hundreds of miles and "kill vehicles" with unparalleled reliability.
"It's going to be very tough to weigh all these disparate systems and put them together into an integrated architecture," said Loren Thompson, an advocate of missile defense at the Arlington, Va.-based Lexington Institute. "They have different operators, different technologies and they all have to be coordinated. It's going to be very complicated."
Estimates of the cost of even a limited system vary widely, from an economical $80 billion to as much as $300 billion. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld called the criticisms of the technology a "red herring," although he acknowledged that more research is needed.
"We have no intention of deploying something that doesn't work, but what the definition of 'work' is, is terribly important," Rumsfeld said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "If anyone thinks that you're going to deploy something full-blown that works perfectly - I mean, if that were the case, the Wright Brothers failed dozens and dozens of times before they flew the airplane. If they'd quit after the first failure, we wouldn't have airplanes."
The Bush administration is facing stiff resistance to the plan from allies and foes. Dozens of envoys have been sent to meet with foreign officials, arguing that deploying the system would help alleviate concerns of nuclear proliferation. But the reception so far has been cool.
China has been one of the more vocal critics, contending that much of the system, including the proposal to build a battery of interceptors designed to destroy about a dozen ballistic missiles, specifically targets them.
Indeed, a strategic review under way in the Pentagon reportedly recommends redirecting the focus of military planning from Europe to Asia, including developing new long-range weapons to counter China's military power.
To build a meaningful missile defense, the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 would have to be significantly modified or scrapped. The treaty, itself controversial since the day it was proposed, restricted the Soviet Union and the United States from building a shield against intercontinental ballistic missiles, which are capable of spanning half the globe in 30 minutes and showering a city with multiple nuclear warheads.
Behind the treaty was the idea that if both countries remained naked to attack, neither would risk starting a nuclear war. The concept of "mutual assured destruction" was considered a powerful deterrent to launching the missiles.
But Bush and missile defense proponents say much has changed since then. The Soviet Union collapsed and new threats have risen as additional nations have obtained nuclear weapons, built missiles or threatened to do so.
"We need a new framework that allows us to build missile defenses to counter the different threats of today's world," Bush said in May, kicking off in earnest what is now being called the "Son of Star Wars."
"We have more work to do to determine the final form the defenses might take," he said. "We will explore all of these options further."
Exactly what Bush will choose is still up in the air. But from his speech and in recent remarks made by Rumsfeld, analysts have gleaned some idea of the shape of Bush's missile defense plan.
Bush probably will call for accelerating work on ground-based interceptors that President Clinton set in motion last year with the idea of eventually developing a "layered shield" involving anti-missile weapons based in the sea, air and ultimately in space, Thompson said.
Hoping to sell the idea to its allies, the White House already has begun dropping the word "national" from missile defense, asserting that the system could protect nations from both intercontinental ballistic missiles and short-range rockets such as Iraqi Scuds used during the Gulf War.
Under the scenario envisioned by the Pentagon, satellites with infrared sensors initially would detect missile launches and track the flight path, providing information to the various anti-missile systems.
A short-range missile could be shot down by U.S. Army-operated ground-based lasers and missiles, by Navy ships off the coast or by a modified Air Force Boeing 747-400 aircraft flying nearby and carrying chemical lasers.
Space-based lasers orbiting above and interceptor missiles based in Alaska could knock out intercontinental ballistic missiles during their booster and mid-course stages.
All of the systems are in varying degrees of development with the interceptor closest to deployment, perhaps a limited one within three years. Space-based laser is by far the most complex technology and could take another generation or more before it could be deployed, according to the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis.
Critics contend missile defense offers a false sense of security, citing other previous attempts at defending the U.S. from attacks, including batteries of 1960s-era Nike missiles that ringed many U.S. cities.
The history of missile defense is replete with failed starts. In the early days of the program, the Pentagon poured billions into such exotic technologies as beam weapons, orbiting nuclear reactors, space-borne mirrors and electromagnetic rail guns that would fire high-velocity bullets from space.
By 1991, former President Bush backed a streamlined $41-billion missile defense system - called GPALS for global protection against limited strike - that aimed to quickly deploy a system that could counter an attack by 200 missiles. Then, as now, the technology was unable to discriminate between real missiles and decoys and the interceptors proved unreliable.
"They have been testing this for the last two decades and they have missed more often than not," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense and space policy group that has been a vocal detractor of missile defense. "Are any of these things going to make me sleep easier at night? No, I'll still be afraid of nuclear war."
Added Jon B. Kutler, president of Quarterdeck Investment Partners Inc., a defense investment bank: "This could be the most expensive video game that didn't work."
Copyright 2001 / Los Angeles Times
