Missile Defense Critics Cite Countermeasures In Enemy Missiles, But Then Move To Cut Funds For Airborne Laser That Overcomes Countermeasures
While Obama Castigates Cold War Systems That Go Unused, Franks Says He Would Be Delighted To See Missile Defense Unused If Enemies Don’t Attack
While President Obama recently derided weapons systems that go unused, it would be a welcome measure of success if U.S. missile defense systems never are used, a congressman said.
If enemies never dare attack the United States because it has deployed missile defense systems, this would be a signal achievement, said Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), at a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee strategic forces subcommittee on the future of missile defense programs. He co-chairs the Congressional Missile Defense Caucus.
He responded to Obama’s comment to a joint session of Congress Feb. 24, when the president said he would “reform our defense budget so that we’re not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don’t use.”
But in the case of missile defense systems, it would be a great development if they lie idle, Franks said. The reason: that would mean rogue nations had decided not to launch missiles against the United States, its forces and its allies out of fear that U.S. missile defense systems would defeat those weapons.
He recalled that missile defense critics who once said that hitting a missile with a missile was impossible, and were proved wrong, now voice concerns that interceptors must be able to overcome enemy missile countermeasures – even as the critics prepare to slash funds for the Airborne Laser system that completely overcomes the countermeasures problem.
So Franks expressed dismay that President Obama may make deep cuts in successful missile defense programs.
At the same time, he cited progress in developing missile defense improvements that will be able to defeat enemy missile countermeasures. “We are moving in some very positive directions in that area, and I believe that we will prevail” in the quest to defeat countermeasures.
Franks stressed that the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) already is well along in developing a system that will completely circumvent the problem of enemy countermeasures: the Airborne Laser (ABL).
If anyone is concerned about countermeasures, he indicated, they should be supporting ABL, he said. That referred to the fact that the ABL attacks enemy missiles in their boost phase trajectory, just after they are launched from pads or in-ground silos, long before those enemy missiles have a chance to spew forth multiple warheads, decoys or confusing chaff.
He said he is “very concerned” that the administration may move to kill funding for the ABL when Obama releases his detailed federal government budget plan in late April or early May.
That would mean not only that the United States would lose its boost phase missile defense system, it also would mean that the nation would lose a huge investment in laser technology.
Contemplating deep cuts or cancellation of the ABL “is an extremely dangerous thought,” Franks said, “because the laser technology … is to missile defense what the computer chip was to the computer industry.”
Because ABL would kill enemy missiles in their boost phase, that would “do away with most of the countermeasure arguments because they’re never deployed in the first place,” Franks said.
He asked a witness if systems such as ABL are important in resolving the countermeasure issue.
“There are huge technological issues associated with the … laser system,” said retired Gen. Larry D. Welch, former Air Force chief of staff and now the about-to-retire president and CEO of the Institute for Defense Analyses, a Washington think tank.
ABL Is Needed
However, that said, Welch told the subcommittee that “the Airborne Laser in my view is something that we need to have, we need to be flying, and we need to be learning about.”
He added that the ABL can be greatly improved from the system currently built. The MDA has just one prototype ABL, which involves a heavily modified 747-400 jumbo jet co0ntributed by the prime contractor, The Boeing Co. [BA], with a laser system by Northrop Grumman Corp. [NOC] and a beam control/fire control system by Lockheed Martin Corp. [LMT].
“There also are vast technologies that would make such a system order of magnitude more effective, and we need to be making investments in those technologies,” Welch said.
That would run counter to moves by some in the administration and Congress to cut or kill the ABL program.
However, lawmakers determined to cut missile defense programs such as ABL may not be swayed by those comments.
For example, Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Calif.), who chairs the subcommittee, said Congress must be mindful, as it decides funding levels for defense programs, of the “raging deficits and debt” in the federal budget. Annual deficits this year will surpass the $1 trillion mark for the first time, vaulting from a record $459 billion in fiscal 2008 that ended last Sept. 30, to $1.752 billion in the current fiscal 2009, according to earlier (now-dated) figures from the White House Office of Management and Budget. The OMB sees deficits totaling almost $7 trillion in the next 10 years.
More recent Congressional Budget Office estimates, however, calculate that the government will need to borrow $9.6 trillion to cover deficit spending over the next 10 years, equivalent to about two-thirds of the economic output of every man, woman and child in the United States for a full year.
Much of that will be shoveled out the door to big banks, insurance companies and other private firms, rather than going to properly governmental purposes such as providing for the common defense, including missile defense.
But regardless of that fiscal catastrophe, the United States still faces a threat of missile attack by rogue nations and others, noted Rep. Michael Turner of Ohio, ranking Republican on the subcommittee.
U.S. “adversaries’ capabilities are continuously evolving,” Turner cautioned. “If we do not invest in long-term R&D or evolve our capabilities as well, they risk becoming obsolete.”
A report presented to the committee by the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) shows that the job of creating a full-fledged U.S. missile defense system is far from over, and this is no time to rest on past achievements.
“The IDA report recommends that, ‘within the spectrum of RDT&E activities, science and technology should receive renewed emphasis and increased funding,'” he noted. “I am interested in our witnesses’ thoughts on what aspects of S&T should receive more emphasis.
“We want and demand success in our missile defense system; our national security and the security of our allies depends on it. We must, therefore, ensure the Department has the right authorities, tools, resources, and flexibility to be successful.”
Tauscher denied that as Congress writes the federal budget for the upcoming fiscal 2010, that it will clobber missile defense, taking money away to spend elsewhere as a bill- payer.
“I think missile defense will not be singled out to take any [unfair] cuts,” she said. Rather, she argued, there “will be cuts across the board.”
However, she noted that Congress already has made some decisions about missile defense.
For example, as to whether the planned European Missile Defense (EMD) system should be built to protect Europe and the United States against Iranian missile attacks, Congress already decided there should be no funds used for construction of the EMD until conditions had been met, including a certification by the secretary of defense that the EMD system will work. EMD interceptors will be a two-stage variant of the three-stage Ground-based Missile Defense (GMD) interceptors already in place in Alaska and California. GMD guards against long-range missiles from North Korea. (Please see separate story in this issue.) Both EMD and GMD programs are led by The Boeing Co. [BA].
Tauscher repeated critical comments she made a week earlier, assailing the EMD and GMD. (Please see Space & Missile Defense Report, Monday, March 23, 2009, for a full story, and for a ver batim transcript of her remarks to a conference and later to journalists.)
On EMD, she again said she wants to see a system installed to take out short- and medium-range enemy missiles, rather than long-range enemy weapons.
“The question shouldn’t be whether we deployed a long-range system,” she said. “The question should be why we haven’t deployed a short-range system.”
True, Tauscher conceded, Iran has ambitions to field intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. “The certainly have not abated their ambitions” for long-range missiles, she said.
However, some military analysts say Iran already has the technology to build intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), as proven when it launched a satellite into orbit which 30 minutes later was over the United States.
In addition, Iran has launched a missile from a submerged submarine.
Iran also has a nuclear materials production program that Tehran claims is merely for powered electrical generating reactors, but Western leaders fear Iran is moving to build nuclear weapons.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said Israel should be wiped from the map, and that Israel soon shall cease to exist. He also has said he envisions the world without the United States.
The subcommittee heard from witnesses who assessed the future of U.S. missile defense, and gauged the quality of oversight of missile defense programs.
David G. Ahern, Pentagon director of portfolio systems acquisition in the office of the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, testified before the subcommittee.
Significant strides have been made in improving management and oversight of MDA and its programs, he said, including formation of the Missile Defense Executive Board.
The Department of Defense “has made significant progress in ensuring proper management and oversight of the Missile Defense Agency as it has developed the Ballistic Missile Defense System and fielded individual elements” of the missile protection effort, Ahern said.
Looking forward, continued cooperation between the MDA, office of the secretary of defense, the individual armed forces and the combatant commanders who will use missile defense services “will be critical to long-term success of the” ballistic missile defense system, Ahern predicted.
Another witness said that on the one hand, special budget flexibility given to MDA in 2002 permitted it to move far more rapidly that it could have under routine armed services budget restrictions and rules, so that the United States today has an initial missile defense capability in place.
On the other hand, MDA now should face more restrictive rules on how it spends money, which has totaled $56 billion since 2002 and augurs well to total another $50 billion by 2013 to build missile defenses protecting American cities from annihilation.
That was the picture presented to the subcommittee by John Pendleton, director for the defense capabilities and management team of the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, the federal watchdog agency. Pendleton said much of those details had been presented by GAO in years past.
He sees progress in MDA management. “DOD has recently taken some steps to improve transparency and accountability of ballistic missile defense programs, such as the creation of a Missile Defense Executive Board to provide top level oversight and a life-cycle management process that established defensewide funding accounts,” Pendleton congratulated the agency.
Those steps, while laudable, don’t yet permit sufficient oversight of programs, Pendleton said.
“Sustained top leadership will be needed to build upon this recent progress,” he added.
If all the full restrictions of routine budgeting are imposed on MDA at this point, the situation will be this: some missile defense programs such as the sea-based Aegis weapon control system and companion Standard Missile interceptors will have been fully developed under the streamlined, lesser-constraints rules permitting swift progress, while other systems such as EMD, GMD and ABL — all programs led by Boeing — that still are in development will be slowed by suddenly facing the stricter rules.
Turner noted that it is thanks to the streamlined rules that the United States now has a missile defense system in place and working.
“We have a fielded missile defense capability that our military commanders rely on,” Turner said. “The rapid development and deployment of this capability was unique, and it was enabled by the flexibility of special authorities granted to MDA.”
He acknowledged, however, that these rules mean that MDA doesn’t have as much oversight by Pentagon leaders.
If more constraints are placed on MDA, Turner said, the trick will be not to overdo it and slam programs with draconian limits.
“The challenge ahead is balancing MDA’s needed flexibility while providing more structure and enhancing the involvement of [military] stakeholders,” Turner said.
He also warned that moves to shift individual missile defense systems to the various armed services should be done with care, because it is vital that all of the separate missile defense systems must be able to work together as a seamless entity in bringing down enemy missiles.
“Because these systems are so integrated and complex, transfer must be done smartly,” Turner warned. “A key issue is the process for, and timing of, transferring the responsibility for operations and maintenance and follow-on procurement.”