Republicans Assert Testing Issue A Pretext Democrats Use To Justify Slashing Funds For Missile Defense In Fiscal 2010 Budget
Cuts That Harm Ground-based Missile Defense Program Would Weaken U.S. Defense Against Long-Range Or ICBM Enemy Missiles
The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is poised to increase testing ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems, as some members of Congress have requested for less-developed programs, but funding must continue in fiscal 2010 if those programs are to be tested and progress, the MDA director said.
Further, cuts in the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) program could have a serious deleterious effect, because currently the GMD system alone has the capability to annihilate incoming enemy missiles with ranges exceeding 5,000 kilometers (3,107 miles), Army Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly, the director, observed. Other missile defense systems won’t be able to counter that threat until future years, he indicated.
He responded to questions from defense journalists, after a House Armed Services Committee strategic forces subcommittee hearing on the adequacy of BMD testing.
When Space & Missile Defense Report asked O’Reilly whether a perceived deficiency in testing could be properly used as grounds to slash or cancel funding for any given missile defense program, he said, “Programs need to continue, so that we can continue to test.”
Ultimately, it is the decision of the armed services and their warfighters to decide, after evaluating test results, whether a given system can be expected to perform effectively against enemy missiles, O’Reilly noted.
“The decisions on whether to employ these missile [defense] systems … primarily belongs to warfighters, who look at the results and make a determination that they want the capability, and understand the limitations that today haven’t been tested yet,” he said.
He declined to comment on expectations that missile defense funding will be cut deeply, with one estimate that $3 billion will be hacked out of the total $9.6 billion missile defense effort. (Please see Space & Missile Defense Report, Monday, Feb. 23, 2009.)
“It depends on how a budget cut would come” and in which programs, he said. “It’s hard to answer that question,” without knowing whether cuts would be confined to certain programs or occur across the board. “We provide information to the decision makers, so they can make informed decisions,” he noted.
Rather, O’Reilly noted that all programs in the Department of Defense are being reviewed by the incoming Obama administration, which confronts the reality that the U.S. economic output is plunging, cutting the flow of revenues the government requires to fund defense and other programs.
Some Democrats in the hearing focused ample criticism on testing for the Ground-based Missile Defense (GMD) program led by Boeing [BA].
They also have criticized the still-in-development Airborne Laser and the European Missile Defense programs, also led by Boeing.
But they have praised the now operational sea-based Aegis weapon control system and companion Standard Missile interceptor by Lockheed Martin Corp. [LMT] and the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, also by Lockheed.
O’Reilly told the subcommittee that the various U.S. missile defense systems are designed to work as a unified entity, and that one can’t pick and choose, eliminating some of the programs.
“There are many different classes of threats” that the United States confronts from enemy missiles, from short-range weapons to intercontinental ballistic missiles, and “we need to address them all,” he said.
Further, all systems require improvement, and adequate testing to measure that improvement, he said.
He pointed out to the subcommittee that GMD is the only currently fielded system able to counter long-range enemy missiles. He said later that the GMD system is needed to meet that threat.
But Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), who chairs the subcommittee, criticized testing of the GMD, and noted that a review concluded that GMD tests thus far won’t “support a high level of confidence in its limited capabilities.”
After his appearance before the panel, O’Reilly said he does support testing of the various missile defense systems. “I do support further testing” in a “comprehensive test program,” he said.
He noted, for example, that arrangements have been made for salvo testing, in which more than one target missile would be launched in a single test, and missile defense systems would attempt to kill both targets.
And, he added, it is key that in tests thus far, “all of the programs have had varying degrees of success.”
He declined to comment on what effect rumored cuts in missile defense programs would have on them.
Another witness before the panel, Charles E. McQueary, director of operational test and evaluation in the Department of Defense, took strong issue with a news report saying that McQueary lacks high confidence that the GMD would be effective against North Korean missiles.
That report “misconstrued my position,” he said. The GMD system “has a limited capability” to kill incoming enemy missiles, he said.
GOP: Testing As Pretext
Some Republicans, while stating that testing and target missiles could use improvement in the missile defense effort, said Democrats may be using the testing issue as a pretext to slash missile defense programs deeply.
“Testing should not be used as an impediment” to furthering missile defense programs needed to protect the United States from enemy attack, said Rep. Michael Turner of Ohio, ranking Republican on the subcommittee.
While Democrats may say that a lack of adequate testing of a given missile defense system warrants cutting funds for that system, that only guarantees that even less testing of that system can be achieved, he said.
“I worry about the impact that cuts may have on testing,” Turner said. Testing “is the first to go when cuts are made to defense programs.”
Meanwhile, he said, potential enemy nations are advancing rapidly in building their missile capabilities. “The threat doesn’t wait for us to perfect our defenses,” he said.
A similar view came from Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), co-chairman and founder of the bipartisan Congressional Missile Defense Caucus, with about 60 members.
Missile defense isn’t just about gaining the capability to kill incoming enemy missiles, though that is enormously important, Franks said to journalists. Rather, he said, missile defense also is about devaluing potential enemy missile and nuclear programs, “and preventing proliferation.”
Franks, who has estimated some still-developing missile defense programs might face financial cuts of 50 percent or more, said such deep reductions could be devastating. “I think it [would have] a profound impact,” he said. “We don’t have a robust, layered system, even now,” he said. To make giant cuts “is a dangerous thing.”
The GMD system is the sole defense against long-range or intercontinental ballistic missiles, at least until the day when the Airborne Laser aircraft-mounted system could become operational. And it, too, is being targeted for cuts by Democrats.
And huge missile defense spending cuts also would harm U.S. efforts to persuade rogue nations to abandon their nuclear production and missile development programs, he added.
For example, he said Iran is approaching “the point of no return” in gaining a nuclear capability. (Please see story in this issue.)
“We underestimate how significant the change would be in our world if a nuclear Iran emerges,” he warned. “Obviously, they then have the ability to threaten their neighbors, to catalyze a [nuclear] arms race in the Middle East. But most terrifying to me, they then have the capability to pass along this technology and perhaps even capability to jihadist terrorists, or to any terrorists.”
Franks noted that Osama bin Laden has said that it is the religious duty of al Qaeda to gain a nuclear weapon. “That’s not ambiguous,” Franks said. “And you don’t have to be an alarmist to be concerned about that.”
While some critics have said missile defense is expensive, Franks observed that in a non-nuclear attack on 9/11, the direct cost of damage done by civilian airliners flown into buildings was $75 billion to $100 billion, about equal to the entire cost thus far of the missile defense program that began in the 1980s under then-President Reagan.
And the price tag for damage to the entire economy was about $2 trillion, he noted.
For example, airlines suffered enormous losses after 9/11, as many travelers became afraid to fly.
“So to suggest that somehow cutting missile defense is economically an advantage is, I think, short sighted beyond my ability to articulate,” Franks said.
While some witnesses before the subcommittee questioned whether missile defense systems have been proven to be fully effective against enemy missiles, Franks observed that “no system that we have ever devised has been 100 percent demonstrated effective in all cases.”
That must not be permitted to block the United States from doing whatever it can to counter and defeat enemy missiles, Franks said.