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WE NEED A MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM -- NOW

(System needed to thwart existing, potential threats)
By Senator Don Nickles
11 July 1996

(The author is an eight-year member of the Senate Republican leadership and and the newly-elected Assistant Majority Leader -- the highest leadership position ever held by an Oklahoma Senator. Nickles serves on the Senate Finance Committee, Budget Committee, Rules and Administration Committee and Energy and Natural Resources Committee. In 1980 -- at age 31 -- he became the youngest Republican ever elected to the Senate. And in 1992, he became the first Oklahoma Republican ever elected to a third term in the U.S. Senate.)

It will probably come as a shock to most Americans, but today this country has no defense against ballistic missile attack. Despite the fact that the Russians have already put into place a system for defending Moscow, and despite the fact that we are working with the Israelis to create a system to defend their country from missile attack, we have no such defense ourselves. Defense Secretary William Perry put it very clearly when he told the House National Security Committee on March 6 of this year, "We have no capability to shoot down any ballistic missile fired at the United States."

That is why I am an original cosponsor of the Defend America Act, a bill which declares it to be the policy of the United States to deploy a national missile defense system by the end of 2003.

The Defend America Act says this entire country should be defended against limited, unauthorized or accidental ballistic missile attack in recognition of both existing threats and those which almost certainly will develop in the future.

Both threats are very real.

Political instability and uncertainty in Russia and China highlight the need to guard against a possible unauthorized or accidental missile launch. Recent saber rattling by the Chinese during the Taiwan Straits crisis should have provided a wake-up call for us all.

The other threat comes from at least two dozen other countries that currently possess or are seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction -- nuclear, chemical and/or biological weapons -- and the means to deliver them. Many countries that already have short-range missiles are now seeking to acquire more sophisticated, long-range missiles.

Opponents of an effective missile defense program cite three objections.

First, they say it is not needed. Second, they say it would cost too much. And, third, they say it would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia.

The first argument that a missile defense system is not needed is based on rosy intelligence estimates that simply do not reflect reality. Those estimates predict that no new missile threat will develop for 15 years.

These intelligence estimates are often wrong. Several years before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Major George Fielding Elliot, author and military science writer, declared, "A Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is a strategic impossibility." Such an estimate sounds chillingly similar to those we are hearing about the missile capabilities of other countries.

The estimate of a 15-year safe period is based on the fatal assumption that no nation with nuclear weapon and long-range missile capabilities will sell that technology to another nation. That assumption simply is not good enough. Secretary Perry has confirmed that China is soliciting SS-18 long-range ballistic missile technology from Russia and Ukraine.

The SS-18 is Russia's most lethal intercontinental ballistic missile. Conveniently, that missile could also be used to put peaceful payloads into orbit. There is simply no way to keep the Russians from selling the technology and the Chinese from buying it ostensibly for peaceful purposes and then using it to build missiles to threaten Hawaii, Alaska and the continental United States.

The second argument that a missile defense system would cost too much is also flawed. The Congressional Budget Office has come up with cost estimates as high as $60 billion ($60,000 million). But a newly released report from the Heritage Foundation's Missile Defense Study Team shows an early, global anti-missile capability can be put into place for as little as $2-3 billion ($2,000 million-$3,000 million) over the next five years. That estimate reflects the $50 billion ($50,000 million) already invested in the Navy's AEGIS fleet air defense system and would allow the first of 22 cruisers and 650 modified interceptor missiles to come on line in three years. In addition, the Defend America Act calls for the Secretary of Defense to determine what is affordable.

The third argument that the bill would violate the ABM treaty is addressed in the bill itself in the provision which urges the administration to negotiate changes with Russia in the treaty to allow deployment of an effective missile defense system. If an agreement is not reached within one year after the bill is enacted, the President and Congress are to consider exercising the option of withdrawing from the treaty, as provided in sections 13, 14 and 15 of the ABM treaty.

You don't have to look much beyond the Middle East to find more than enough reasons to require a commitment to missile defense. We all remember how the Iraqis used short-range ballistic missiles to terrorize Israel and Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War. One SCUD missile killed 34 American soldiers in their U.S. barracks in Saudi Arabia.

Iraq was able to extend the range of its SCUD-B missiles, originally acquired from the Soviet Union in the 1980s with reported help from China. Post-Gulf War inspections in Iraq revealed that the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission relied on a wide variety of foreign sources to accelerate its nuclear weapons program.

The end of the Cold War ended one threat. It made the world a safer place. But it did not make the world a safe place. The threat of nuclear proliferation and the spread of long-range ballistic missiles is still there. That's why the Defend America Act is needed - NOW!