By Dave Ahearn
The United States shouldn’t completely abandon its plans for the European Missile Defense (EMD) system as Russia has demanded, but Washington should slow the EMD effort until it is tested and proven to work, according to Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), who chairs the House Armed Services Committee strategic forces subcommittee.
Even if proven to work effectively, EMD will only protect the United States–not Europe– from long-range Iranian missiles, she said, while condemning Iran for launching a satellite that within half an hour was over the United States.
EMD “interceptors cannot protect them. Interceptors can protect us,” she said.
Iran is “dangerously close to a nuclear weapon,” she said of the nuclear materials production program that Iran refuses to abandon, despite worldwide condemnation.
Tauscher, speaking yesterday in her office with several journalists, also castigated Iran for “provocatively [being] able to deliver a weapon as far away as the United States,” because it now possesses the technology required to construct an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
Tauscher responded to a question by Space & Missile Defense Report, sister publication of Defense Daily, as to whether she is concerned by Iran developing space/satellite launching capability that involves missiles with global reach.
However, she estimated that it will be 2013 to 2015 before Iran is able to develop a nuclear weapon, miniaturize it, and fit it atop an ICBM.
“I didn’t say we shouldn’t be concerned about an ICBM out of Iran,” she emphasized.
Meanwhile, she would focus on missile defense systems countering shorter-range enemy missiles. She said the United States needs more Aegis/Standard Missile [Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Raytheon [RTN]) sea-based systems, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing [BA] and others), or THAAD, systems, and Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (Lockheed Martin and Raytheon) systems.
Even though the EMD system would use a two-stage interceptor version of the three-stage Boeing Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system already up and running in Alaska and California, Tauscher said that “the deployed system has not achieved credible deterrence.” She added that “it has not achieved what I consider operational deterrence, credible deterrence.”
She added that in presenting the EMD system to Europeans as workable, “I think we harmed ourselves.”
Tauscher also was asked by Space & Missile Defense Report whether Vice President Biden was correct to say that the United States won’t abandon its EMD plans, despite blistering Russian attacks on the radar that would go in the Czech Republic and the interceptors that would go in ground silos in Poland.
Tauscher said Biden didn’t refer to the EMD specifically, but rather spoke more generally of a defense against the Iranian missile threat.
“He said missile defense, not European Missile Defense,” she said.
On Saturday, speaking to European leaders in Munich, Biden was thought by journalists at the session to refer to the EMD when he said that “we will continue to develop missile defenses to counter a growing Iranian capability–provided the technology is proven to work and is cost-effective.” Biden said it is important that Americans and Russians can differ on some issues, while working cooperatively in other areas.
As to whether the United States might strike some grand bargain with Moscow that would involve permanently abandoning plans for the EMD, however, Tauscher dismissed that out of hand, saying that any “grand bargain has nothing to do with our deployment of a third site,” the EMD plan.
At another point in the round-table, she said that “I don’t think we are making any concessions to the Russians.”
As to when, eventually, the EMD system might ever be built, Tauscher said it could be added to and integrated in missile defense systems providing a shield against short- to medium-range systems.
Those more limited systems could be developed and deployed quickly, and then at some later time the United States could “bolt on a long-range system.”
Finally, we asked her whether North Korea appears poised to launch a long-range missile, perhaps a Taepo Dong-2, because she thinks Pyongyang isn’t deterred by U.S. missile defense systems.
Tauscher responded that she can’t divine what is in the minds of North Korean leaders such as Kim Jung Il, but said this bellicose action may have more to do with attempting to extort more food and oil from the United States and other nations– “how many people are starving” — than with proving that the insular communist country has the capability to strike U.S. cities with nuclear weapons.
The Ground-based Missile Defense system, in testing, has achieved eight successful hits out of 13, with only two failure-to-launch missiles in recent years. The last three completed tests were successful.
EMD was designed specifically to protect Europe as well as the United States.
GMD-EMD at this point is the only U.S. missile defense system able to kill long-range enemy missiles. In the future the Airborne Laser, or ABL, (also by Boeing) would be able to hit long-range enemy missiles in their liftoff-ascent, or boost, phase of flight.
The ABL is in development, but is poised for a test later this year in which it will knock down a target missile, at which point Congress will have to decide whether to order more of the aircraft.
The United States also is developing the Kinetic Energy Interceptor as a boost-phase program.