No-Value Missile Defense

Robert G. Gard, Ret. Lt. Gen.

July 08, 2004

The $10 billion missile defense system that's set to be deployed in a few months has some small problems: It hasn't been tested. And it probably can't deflect missiles. In recent weeks, Republican senators have shot down the option to conduct battle-condition tests on the system, even though the government's own defense scientists have pointed out the holes. Here, retired Army Lt. Gen. Robert Gard spells out why the president must reconsider.

 Robert G. Gard, Jr., Lt. Gen., U.S. Army (Ret.)  is currently senior military fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Formed in 1980, the  Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation has been a leader in all the key arms control struggles of the late 20th century. 

The Bush administration intends in the next few months to deploy ground-based, mid-course National Missile Defense system in Alaska and California.  This deployment is expensive and untested, and will add nothing to U.S. security.

Incredibly, though, the planned deployment has only undergone a limited number of highly scripted intercept tests with stand-in components and a GPS locator on the targets. The most recent such developmental test was conducted in 2002, and it failed. 

When Senate Democrats tried in the past few weeks to require realistic testing under battle conditions before moving ahead with deployment, Republicans almost unanimously rejected these amendments.

Operational testing of any ground-based system should be conducted prior to procurement and deployment.  Missiles are no different than any major procurement project; a company would not think of selling a new computer or automobile without rigorous testing under all conditions.

The project manager of one of the space-based components of the system noted recently that integrating the components of even a ground-based sub-system prior to testing them adequately had made it difficult to diagnose and correct problems. Premature production and deployment risks concealing major design flaws, resulting in sharply increased corrective costs. The Pentagon's own director of Operational Test and Evaluation has observed that operational testing of system about to be deployed is not in the plan for the foreseeable future. 

Moreover, there is a significant technical problem that calls into question the very concept of a missile defense system designed to intercept incoming missile warheads in space that should be solved before moving to deployment.  The National Intelligence Council has warned that a state capable of developing and deploying inter-continental ballistic missiles armed with weapons of mass destruction could easily incorporate decoys or other countermeasures that could render a mid-course missile defense ineffective. 

In a joint article, George Rathjens, a former deputy director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency, and Karl Kaysen, a former chair of the Federation of American Scientists, have expressed grave doubts that "the problem of discriminating between warheads and decoys in the mid-part of their trajectories can be effectively solved in the near future, if ever." Commenting on the ground-based system about to be deployed, a highly distinguished defense scientist, Richard Garwin, recently put it more bluntly: "It's totally useless."

There is the added consideration of cost, especially at a time of large deficits and competing demands of other defense programs. Expenditures for the new system in the Bush administration's Fiscal Year 2005 budget exceed $4 billion, with total costs projected to reach more than $100 billion. The costs for all forms of missile defense in this year’s budget exceed $10 billion. This raises the question of the contribution of missile defense to the defense of the nation compared to alternative uses of the funds.

First, why would any state, rogue or otherwise, attempt to deliver a nuclear weapon at the United States by ballistic missile when it is well known that we already have the capability to pinpoint the source of the launch and deliver a devastating retaliatory attack? There is no evidence that heads of rogue states, including the leaders of North Korea and Iran, have suicidal inclinations for themselves or their countries.

The more likely attack on the United States is by terrorists or agents of a rogue state, smuggling weapons of mass destruction into the country through a port, across a border or by aircraft. A higher priority for funding to protect the United States against such an attack are accelerated programs to secure the vulnerable sites around the world that contain nuclear weapons or materials that can be used to construct a nuclear weapon or a "dirty bomb," and to secure our ports and borders.

For all these reasons, I organized 49 retired generals and admirals to sign an open letter to the president urging him to postpone the operational deployment of the planned missile defense system until realistic testing proves that it is not simply an ineffective scarecrow but a weapons system capable of defending the nation against ballistic missiles.  The president should listen to this advice.

This piece was distributed by MinutemanMedia.org