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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Pentagon Keeps Secret Study That National Missile Defense Is A Boondoggle |
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by Mike Lehman
(No verified email address) |
15 Jun 2001
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The Pentagon has been trying to keep secret an internal report that indicates National Missile Defense simply won't work based on its inherent technological shortcomings. Rep. John F. Tierney (D-MA) has been dogged in his efforts to have the report made available to the public. What follows is an excerpt of more lengthy testimony from the Congressional Record, available on the Federation of American Scientists website. |
Congressional Record: June 12, 2001 (House)
Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Speaker, I join a number of my colleagues here this evening to discuss the administration\'s policy on national missile defense...
In view of all our national priorities, whether they be domestic in nature or international and defense prospects that affect our national security, the cost that is going to be incurred must be warranted by the security benefits we should expect to gain. Americans deserve to know before we deploy the realistic cost estimates and who will pay. Is it only the United States that is going to fit the bill, or will all nations that stand to benefit from any deployed national missile defense system participate in sharing the cost?
So far, the projections show the following costs. Mr. Speaker, I have another chart. Mr. Speaker, as the chart indicates, the initial estimates for 20 interceptors were originally estimated to be at a cost of nine to $11 billion. The fact of the matter was that that was in January of 1999 at $10.6 billion. By November of that year, it was at $28.7 billion. By February of 2000, it had moved up to 100 interceptors being planned, and the estimate then was $26.6 billion. By April, it rose to $29.5 billion; by May to $36.2 billion; by August of 2000, $40.3 billion by the own estimate of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. Now in August of 2000, the CAIG report estimates it up to about $43.2 billion. That is with a number of items not included. As my colleagues can see on the chart, other estimates in testing adjustments, alternative booster programs add another $4.5 billion, bringing it up to some $47.7 billion. Not included also is the restructuring of the program to remedy testing delays. That adds another $2.8 billion. Essentially, we are up to $50.5 billion on this program and going up, up and forever upward.
We should not forget the fact that this administration is not only talking about a land-based limited system. It is talking about adding a second phase and a third phase to the land-based design, adding a sea- based provision, adding an air-based aspect, and then going on to space-based laser. So let us add those up. Adding phases 2 and 3 of a ground-based system would add another $50 billion. The sea-based system would be another $53.5 billion. An air-based system would add another $11 billion. The space-based laser, besides inviting in the number of people to secure items in space which we alone have almost monopoly on, would add a cost to seventy to $80 billion. So total estimates on this program are at a minimum of $80 billion to $100 billion or as high as a trillion dollars, depending on how far out we go.
That should all bring us to the issue of feasibility. The administration now intends to use this system whether or not it works. In other words, it is going to buy it before it flies it. We have had a number of experiences in our military programs with that, most recently with the F-22 and with the Osprey. The Osprey not only costs us a lot of money to go back and cure remedies that were not caught because we did not test it properly, it has cost us the lives of 25 Marines.
In keeping with this administration\'s ready, shoot and then aim prospect, Secretary Rumsfeld has taken an in-your-face attitude to our allies as well as to our friends as well as to Russia and China. He is determined to put all other considerations aside and deploy this system even if the technology is not available and is not proven feasible.
Astoundingly, the Washington Post reported these comments from an administration official, and I quote: ``It is a simple question. Is something better than nothing?\'\' It went on to say, ``The President and the Secretary of Defense have made it pretty clear that they believe some missile defense in the near term is, in fact, better than nothing.\'\'
Now my colleagues may join me in being astounded in that, but that statement should at least rest on two underlying assumptions. One would be that that something in fact works, and this does not; and, two, that deployment will not subject the country to even greater security dangers. This program will.
What the Pentagon and the Department of Defense and the Secretary and the President know but do not apparently want the Americans to discover or consider or debate is that the National Missile Defense System\'s effectiveness has not yet been proven even in the most elementary sense. Also, there should be grave concerns regarding the disturbing side effects of the National Missile Defense System, such as uncontrollable launches and their attendant risk to world security.
A study has been completed, not by groups opposed to missile defense, but by the department\'s own internal experts. That study makes it clear that potentially profound problems exist with the National Missile Defense System. The Office of Operational Test and Evaluation, known by its initials OT&E, is an independent assessment office within the Department of Defense. It was created to oversee testing programs and in particular to ensure that weapons development programs are adequately tested in realistic operating conditions. Its former director, Mr. Philip Coyle testified on September 8 of last year before the Subcommitte on National Security, Veterans\' Affairs and International Relations of the Committee on Government Reform. He testified about a report that he had compiled during the deployment readiness review that was conducted in the summer of 2000.
As a result of that testimony, it became apparent that the Pentagon was overstating the technological progress and potential of this National Missile Defense System. Because I thought it was imperative that the public have full access to Mr. Coyle\'s study, I asked Mr. Coyle to provide the full report for the record of that committee, and he agreed to my request. My motion that the subcommittee include that study on the public record for the September 8, 2000 hearing was accepted without objection. At no time did Mr. Coyle or Lieutenant General Ronald Kadish, the Director of the Missile Program, express any reservations.
Well, after 8 months and at least six separate requests and a subpoena threat, the subcommittee finally obtained the study. But the Department of Defense asked that that study be kept confidential. I think this is precisely the wrong response. The Bush administration is proposing to our allies and strategic partners that deployment be speeded up even beyond optimistic evaluations.
In this context, the need for public debate about the system\'s capabilities and its potential dangers if deployed prematurely is urgently needed. I have, therefore, written to Secretary Rumsfeld for a full explanation of the Department of Defense request to hush up this report. I have asked the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays), the subcommittee chairman, to schedule hearings on this study and its implications as expeditiously as possible. In conversations earlier this evening with the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays), I have been informed that those hearings will be pursued.
Now, Mr. Coyle raises fundamental problems with the national missile defense testing programs. He tells us it is far behind schedule, and it is slipping further. The test program is severely deficient, failing to test basic elements of the system. In fact, after numerous failures, Mr. Coyle tells us that the Pentagon actually altered the test program to make it easier, and still it continued to fail.
Mr. Coyle described the immature status of the program. There are limitations in flight testing and inadequacy of available simulations. Therefore, a rigorous assessment of potential system performance cannot be made. That is, no one can reliably predict that the National Missile Defense System, as planned by this administration, will perform at the required levels. Testimony of the Director found several ways the system may not work: its inability to defend against decoys. As discussed extensively in open literature, the enemy could employ various types of countermeasures and overwhelm this function. I hope that our speakers this evening will talk at length at that. I know the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) is here. He has particular expertise in this area, and we should discuss it at length. But rather than address the fatal errors, the omission of tests with countermeasures could make the system unable to fulfill its core function of defending against accidental or intended launches; and rather than discuss that, the Pentagon is hitting them by dumbing down the testing requirements.
The Department of Defense also provides interceptors with key discrimination information ahead of time. In other words, it rigs the game. It tells them trajectory. It tells them timing. It tells them height. It tells them all sorts of information. Yet, the system will not have that benefit if and when it is deployed. So there is a need for rehearsed engagements without advanced knowledge, yet none have been done so far and none are planned to be done.
The director criticizes the software user simulations as it suffers from an unfounded reliance on unrealistic and overly optimistic parameters. There is no plan to consider conducting flight tests with multiple targets or interceptors even though multiple engagements could be expected to be the norm. These are potential security risks of premature deployment.
Phantom tracks. The system automatically allocates interceptors against phantom objects. In other words, these are created when the radar coverage transfers from one radar system to a second radar system, and the system mistakenly interprets the new radar rhythms as originating from a second reentry vehicle. The operators, the manual operators were unable to deal with that. There is one very serious immediate danger if the United States launches multiple interceptors against missiles that do not exist. Adversaries may interpret these launches as a hostile first strike and respond accordingly.
So it brings us back to this idea that we are going to deploy this system before we have adequately tested it, before we have talked about the cost of this program, before we have talked about our priorities in defense and whether or not this is, in fact, the most serious issue we ought to be confronting at such an enormous cost while it is still very far from being feasible.
Deployment has been defined to mean the fielding of an operational system with some military utility which is effective under realistic combat conditions against realistic threats and countermeasures, possibly without adequate prior knowledge of the target cluster composition, timing, trajectory or direction and when operated by military personnel at all times of the day and night in all weather.
In almost every one of those categories, there have been tests that have been failed or tests that are not even planned to determine whether or not this system can work. Yet, we have a Secretary and apparently an entire administration that is willing to walk that plank and commit billions and billions of dollars on a system that has not been proven to work, casting aside all of our other defense needs, casting aside the questions that it brings to our national security, and casting aside the issues of others priorities within this country.
We have a report that seriously calls into question the readiness of this national missile defense. I think that report leads to serious questions of this administration\'s ill-advised plan to deploy before it has proven technologically feasible and apparently with total disregard for costs, stability in this country and the world, and effect on other priorities.
This is no time for the Department of Defense to bury a study. It is time for full disclosure, for deliberation and for debate. |
See also:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2001/h061201.html
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