Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)

Senator Inhofe requested that this Reader's Digest article be placed in the Congressional Record on October 3, 1996.

`Ballistic missiles can and increasingly will be used by hostile states for blackmail, terror and to drive wedges between us and our allies.'

This warning, delivered to Congress last spring by R. James Woolsey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, had a particular immediacy. Just weeks earlier, China had threatened Taiwan by test-firing missiles off Taiwan's shores. In a not-so-veiled warning against interference, China reminded a former U.S. diplomat that Los Angeles was within reach of its nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

Ballistic missiles are becoming a dangerous factor in international relations, but the United States has yet to deal fully with the threat. Here are five reasons why the nation must take steps to defend itself:

1. Ballistic missiles are proliferating. More than 20 nations are in the ballistic missile `club.' Others are knocking on the door. Although the United States stopped exporting ballistic missiles over two decades ago, Russia, China and North Korea eagerly peddle their rockets--often in the guise of aiding `space programs.'

Pakistan, which has been developing its own ballistic missile, the Hatf, has reportedly acquired 30 nuclear-capable, medium-range M-11 missiles from the Chinese to counter India's growing missile force. Saudi Arabia owns Chinese CSS-2 missiles . Iran has added Chinese CSS-8s, a front-line ballistic missile , to its considerable arsenal of Soviet-made Scuds. There has even been a report that Peru, smarting from past reverses at the hands of its neighbors, entered into negotiations with North Korea last year to obtain ballistic missiles.

The CIA identifies five `rogue nations'--Libya, Iraq, Iran, Syria and North Korea--whose `aggressive' programs to arm missiles with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons could threaten the United States.

There are indications that Libya is seeking to buy ballistic missiles from North Korea . Iraq, whose Scud rockets rained down on Israel and Saudi Arabia in the Gulf War, is rapidly rebuilding production facilities to turn out an upgraded Scud called the El-Hussein.

In North Korea, scarce financial resources are being lavished on long-range Taepo Dong missiles . Intelligence sources in South Korea report that within five years, these rockets may be able to reach all of the western, and much of the central, United States.

2. Missile range and accuracy are rapidly increasing. By strapping on booster engines, countries can turn shorter-range missiles into multi-stage rockets--vastly increasing attack distance.

In December 1989 intelligence officials were astounded when Iraqi missile scientists successfully tested a powerful rocket bolted together from five Soviet Scud engines. Iraq's ballistic-missile research and development facility at Mosul was destroyed during the Gulf War, but it has been rebuilt and expanded. North Korea and China are also creating `hybrid' long-range missiles from rocket components. Moreover, experts add, China is going all-out to make its CSS-4 ICBM capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads.

One problem for missile neophytes--accuracy--may have been inadvertently solved by the United States. Our Global Positioning System (GPS) uses an orbiting satellite network to provide an exact location fix on earth. Originally a U.S. defense program, GPS is now routinely available to anyone--including foreign governments.

Former CIA Director Woolsey explains that within a few years, GPS could give ballistic missiles such pinpoint accuracy that even with nonnuclear warheads, they would have immense destructive power. GPS could make it feasible, Woolsey warns, `for Saddam Hussein to threaten to destroy the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) or for Chinese rulers to cause a Chernobyl-like disaster at a Taiwanese nuclear-power plant.'

3. Warheads of mass destruction are within reach of many new missile powers. The Grail for those building mass-destruction weapons is a `deliverable' nuclear warhead, one that is small enough and sturdy enough to be launched by a missile . Designing one requires technical sophistication and immensely complex calculations, which is why high-speed supercomputers are vital to advanced weapon designs.

Thus, national-security experts were dismayed when the Clinton Administration relaxed supercomputer export guidelines. Since then, U.S. computers capable of bomb design have gone to China and Russia. U.S. officials claim they will keep close track to ensure the technology is used only for civilian purposes. But as Stephen Bryen, a former Pentagon official and an expert on strategic technology transfer, notes, `It is absurd to believe that in a country bent on developing high-tech weapons, supercomputers will not end up being used by the military.'

Meanwhile, countries such as Iran, Iraq, Libya and North Korea have not ignored the path to a big bang on the cheap: chemical and biological weapons. Pound for pound, poison gas and such deadly germs as anthrax can have the same mass-killing power as a nuclear bomb.

A chilling discovery at the end of the Gulf War was Saddam Hussein's huge biochemical arsenal; hundreds of tons were destroyed by U.N. observers. During the war, according to Gen. Hussein Kamil Hasan, Saddam's son-in-law, Iraq got as far as filling warheads with deadly germs such as the cancer-causing aflatoxin.

4. Defense against ballistic-missile attack is a practical reality. It's for political, not technological, reasons that the U.S. government has chosen not to build a missile defense . One of the first anti-missile weapons, the Nike-X, was ready by the early 1960s. But, partly as a gesture of good intentions toward the Soviets, then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara refused to deploy it.

This restraint culminated in the U.S.-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty of 1972, which limited both countries' defense systems. Although the Kremlin repeatedly violated the treaty by enlarging its ABM system to protect greater portions of the Soviet Union, by 1976 the United States had closed its sole missile-defense facility in North Dakota.

Only when President Ronald Reagan revived interest in an effective defense against ballistic missiles did funding pick up, and the United States went on to make astounding leaps in technology. The Reagan effort pointed to what is acknowledged to be the most elegant and effective technique for killing ICBMs--space-based sensing satellites and interceptor weapons (either lasers or rockets) that find and destroy missiles at their most vulnerable stage: shortly after launch. The space-based system would be augmented by ground-based, hyerfast anti-missile interceptors to `clean up' any remaining missiles or warheads.

In 1993 a panel of scientists assembled by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) reviewed a ballistic-missile defense system. The AIAA found `no technical barriers to the development and deployment' of a workable missile defense .

5. The longer we wait, the less time we may have. In November 1994, President Clinton issued Executive Order 12938, declaring missile proliferation to be a `national emergency.' However, every Congressional effort to build a defense against attack has been vetoed by the President or thrown into a limbo of `further research.'

A secret National Intelligence Estimate, prepared for the President last November declared flatly: `No country, other than the major declared nuclear powers, will develop or otherwise acquire a ballistic missile in the next 15 years that could threaten the contiguous 48 states and Canada.'

Intelligence experts immediately pointed out the report's flaws. It virtually ignored Alaska and Hawaii (`They're part of the United States last time I heard, ' says Woolsey); also, it brushed aside existing Russian and Chinese ICBMs and the threat of instability in, or accidental launches from, those countries. At least one freak launch of an armed Soviet missile during routine maintenance has been reported.

President Clinton has said `there is not a single Russian missile pointed at America's children.' We have no way of verifying this--nor would it mean much, if true. Gen. Igor Sergeyev, head of Russia's strategic missile forces, told CBS News's `60 Minutes' that his ICBMs could be retargeted in `a matter of minutes.' Indeed, another Russian general told Tass news agency last June that a multiple warhead test just conducted was the 25th launch in the past four years.

The Clinton Administration's missile-defense policy rests on two slim pillars. One is the U.S. intelligence program--which, says the report to the President, will spot missile programs `many years before deployment.' But Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist and missile expert Gregory Canavan points out that intelligence analysts were completely surprised by Iraq's big 1989 missile test. Analysts also thought Iraq was five years away from building a nuclear weapon; documents and equipment uncovered after the Gulf War showed Iraq was about two years away.

The other pillar of the Clinton defense is the ABM treaty. However, this agreement--negotiated with a national entity that no longer exists--does not reflect the spread of ballistic missiles to dozens of nations around the globe. By bending over backward to comply with the treaty, the United States has purposely blunted what small air defense it has. This may already have cost American lives.

On the night of February 25, 1991, in the midst of the Gulf War, a Scud missile was fired from Iraq. The launch was picked up by American surveillance satellites, which computed the missile 's speed and direction. The pooled information revealed the target area--Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, where American forces were stationed.

This vital information was transmitted almost instantly back to earth--but not to Dhahran's two batteries of Patriot missiles , upgraded anti-aircraft weapons intended to provide battle-zone missile defense . Because of concerns about ABM treaty compliance, the data went to the U.S. Space Command headquarters near Colorado Springs, Colo. There, analysts were supposed to evaluate the information and send it on to Saudi Arabia--a time-consuming process in the short life of a launched missile.

On that night, analysts were so unsure of the data that they didn't even phone a warning to the Patriot batteries. There was no attempt to intercept the missile , which hit a temporary barracks, killing 28 GIs.

Surveys show that the public believes the United States can `shoot down' incoming missiles . But if an ICBM were fired at the United States today, here is what would happen:

A vast network of reconnaissance satellites would detect the launch, compute its speed and predict its trajectory and approximate area of impact. Ground-based radars would track it. Then . . .

Nothing.

Untold numbers of Americans might die from a nuclear, chemical or biological strike.

Surely, no treaty, no faith in our ability to see over the political and technological horizon, should be allowed to stand in the way of a missile defense that would prevent this horrible outcome.