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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

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wrcooper - 12:22pm Aug 7, 2002 EST (#3541 of 3545)

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Finding 3 ? Historical Costs Mount:Even before the new spending proposed by the Bush administration is taken into account, missile defense is already one of the most expensive military programs in history. The Pentagon has spent $91 billion on missile defense projects since President Reagan?s 1983 "Star Wars" speech, and more than $143 billion since the early 1960s.

Finding 4 ? Missile Defense Budget Soars: Missile defense spending jumped from $5.4 billion in FY2001, the last budget submitted by the Clinton administration, to $7.8 billion in FY 2002, the first budget submitted by the incoming Bush administration ? an increase of 43%. Spending on missile defense for the four years of the Bush administration is slated to total $32.7 billion (in constant, 2002 dollars), an 85% real increase over total spending on missile defense during the final four years of the Clinton administration.

Finding 5 ? Missile Defense Costs Will Force Serious Budget Tradeoffs: Although missile defense currently accounts for about 2% of total Pentagon spending, it is by far the most expensive research and development program in the military budget. According to an internal memorandum by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, as of mid-2002 the Pentagon had obligations totaling $250 billion to pay for existing weapons programs between FY 2003 and FY 2007, plus an additional $600 billion after 2007 to complete those programs without even counting the long-term costs of missile defense, which have yet to be officially projected beyond 2007. This means that the costs of deploying a multi-tiered missile defense system, which could easily exceed $200 billion over the next decade and one-half, will require one or more of the following major budgetary tradeoffs: 1) Cancellations or deep reductions in a number of Cold War "legacy" weapons programs (beyond the recent decision to cancel the Crusader artillery system); 2) Major Pentagon spending increases beyond those already contemplated; or 3) Substantial tax increases or cuts in non-military programs.

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wrcooper - 12:22pm Aug 7, 2002 EST (#3542 of 3545)

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Finding 6 ? Technical Problems Continue to Plague Missile Defense Projects: Despite several recent "hits" in highly scripted tests of the ground-based and sea-based elements of a prospective missile defense program, serious technical challenges remain. Tests of the ground-based interceptor continue to use a transponder to guide the kill vehicle to within 400 yards of the mock warhead, an unrealistic "prop" which would obviously not be available in the event of an actual ballistic missile attack. Major components of the final system, ranging from the booster rocket to the proposed X-band radar, are either behind schedule or have yet to be started.The Pentagon?s Missile Defense Agency has demonstrated no capability to distinguish realistic decoys from warheads in the weightless environment of space, an essential requirement for the success of the ground- and sea-based midcourse interceptors that are the most highly developed elements of the administration?s proposed multi-tiered system. Systems designed to avoid this problem by destroying long-range ICBMs shortly after they are launched, before decoys have been released, are largely theoretical at this point ? key elements of these proposed boost phase systems have yet to be designed, much less developed or tested.

Finding 7 ? Special Interests Exaggerating the Threat, Overlooking the Hurdles: The Bush administration?s exaggerated assessment of the ballistic missile threat and its unjustified optimism about the capabilities of its proposed missile defense system are rooted in its undue reliance on former corporate officials and conservative missile defense boosters in the formation of its strategic policy. Now that its former chairman is running the Pentagon, the findings of the 1998 Rumsfeld Commission on the emerging ballistic missile threat to the United States have become the baseline for U.S. assessments of the ballistic missile threat, despite the fact that a key finding of that commission ? involving how quickly a hostile nation could develop a long-range ballistic missile ? was based in significant part upon briefings supplied by engineers from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and other major defense contractors. This is hardly objective counsel given that these companies stand to gain billions of dollars worth of new contracts from the deployment of a missile defense shield designed to protect against the alleged threat of Third World ballistic missiles. The Rumsfeld Commission?s approach of weaving unlikely worst-case scenarios into a more menacing vision of the ballistic missile threat, rather than taking a practical look at what is likely given existing political, economic, and strategic constraints, is now the rule rather than the exception at the Pentagon. Like their conservative cohorts at the Center for Security Policy and the Heritage Foundation, key Bush administration officials view the technical difficulties involved in building a viable missile defense system through rose-colored glasses. For example, in a television interview conducted on July 24, 2001, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz asserted that "the Navy Theater Wide system is something that works," even though that system had yet to be involved in a single intercept test at that point.

Finding 8 ? Contractors Are Cashing In: The top four missile defense contractors ? Boeing, Lockheed Martin, TRW, and Raytheon ? split $6.5 billion in missile defense contracts from 1998 through 2001, which accounted for two-thirds of all missile defense contracts issued by the Pentagon during that time period. If approved by Bush administration reg

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