Dumbing Down Missile Defense
Timmerman, Kenneth R.
China, Iran, and North Korea already have us in their sights yet President Clinton denies that there is any threat. It's no surprise that the same people who once caved in to the Soviets on...
...faced no realistic ICBM threat over the next ten years...
...Had the Clinton administration continued the program I left in place, the Navy Theater Wide [Aegis] system would be deployed by now, and with the right sensors, that system could defend the United States...
...Three months later, the Republicans came charging back, introducing the Defend America Act, which called for the deployment of a national missile defense system by 2003...
...has chosen not to defend itself against," says Heritage Foundation defense expert Baker Spring...
...Fundamentally, this administration does not believe in missile defense," says Rep...
...Changes in the threat led President Bush in 1989 to dramatically revise the SDI concept into a new doctrine called Global Protection Against Limited Threats...
...Iraq's success in using modified Scud missiles in the 1991 Persian Gulf War gave a sense of urgency to SDIO director Cooper, who emphasized the need for quickly fielding defenses capable of protecting against a limited strike...
...satellites and disrupting U.S...
...Treaties don't protect...
...The existence of the third stage concerns us...
...That treaty did not modify the Russians' behavior, only ours...
...could have deployed national missile defense systems by now if it hadn't been for the ABM treaty...
...Yet as the Chinese protest U.S...
...With an additional investment of between $2 billion to $3 billion we could have an operational, world-wide missile defense system within one year...
...Said Cooper: "Because of a slavish devotion to this treaty, we are dumbing down that system so we will have the absurd situation sometime in the future where an Aegis cruiser captain sitting in the Sea of Japan will be able to shoot down a missile if it is aimed at Tokyo, but will not be able to shoot it down if it's aimed at Seattle...
...Making matters worse, says Sen...
...James Inhofe (R-Okla...
...Astonishingly, the administration simply refuses to do this...
...We're in a budgetary pickle...
...Soon after taking office, Clinton ordered Secretary of Defense Les Aspin to carry out a "Bottoms-Up Review" of Pentagon programs and force structure...
...study the feasibility of creating a missile defense umbrella for all of East Asia, includThe American Spectator January 1999 ing Japan and Taiwan, says a top White House official...
...The Israeli system involves small, unpiloted aircraft that would loiter over the battlefield carrying high-speed anti-aircraft missiles that would intercept enemy missiles during their relatively slow ascent through the earth's atmosphere...
...homeland or at our friends overseas...
...Critics argue that the Clinton administration's "dumbed-down" version will wind up costing much more, while delivering much less, than the Reagan-era SDI...
...He also pledged that China would join the Missile Technology Control Regime, which requires members to establish an effective export control system to prevent the sale of missile components to countries such as Iran...
...They think arms control is the only answer...
...infrastructure and making America vulnerable to nuclear blackmail...
...A week later North Korea test-fired a new multi-stage missile over Japan—and over the heads of the U.S...
...He understands quickly I don't want to pay for an exterminator...
...Even without the modifications, existing Aegis cruisers have already demonstrated a capability to track "live" missiles throughout their entire flight...
...This system is designed to intercept incoming missiles at higher altitudes than the improved Patriots, thereby providing coverage to a wider area, or combat theater...
...Missile defense advocates such as former Reagan administration Pentagon official Frank Gaffney and Sen...
...As president, Clinton has said more than 130 times that "no missiles" are currently aimed at the United States, a statement Clinton himself showed was patently false when he negotiated a missile de-targeting agreement with China's Communist leaders during his June 1998 trip to Peking...
...Despite these disturbing developments, the Clinton administration has uttered no protest, nor has it attempted to limit sales to China of missile, space, and communications equipment by U.S...
...Democratic Sen...
...The Pentagon estimates that the Chinese have fewer than 500 warheads today, although they are actively modernizing them to defeat limited defenses...
...China is said to be acquiring a variety of foreign technologies which could be used to develop an anti-satellite (ASAT) capability," the report states...
...Even though the Soviet Union is gone and even though there has been a complete transformation for the other [signatory] on the ABM treaty, we have elected to keep that as some shining example of a discarded idea," Abrahamson says...
...Donald R. Baucom...
...will have to look at the feasibility of the systems, and at the treaty issues, and then make a determination...
...I was told that this was not a formal linkage, but that the two were clearly related," said Dr...
...The reason for this reckless inaction seems to be blind fealty to an obsolete treaty, and more basically, a self-destructive anti-defense mindset in the grand tradition of Cold War appeasement...
...But if they have to build 20,000 warheads in order to maintain a retaliatory capability, I have no doubt they will do it, even though it would divert them from much higher priority things, such as flush toilets and electricity...
...We view this as an unlikely development...
...Russia has long objected to U.S...
...Prodded by Congress, the administration is now pursuing a flawed plan that fits the restrictions of the ABM treaty, which allows the U.S...
...Li called for immediate negotiations toward a new international treaty banning all missile defense systems, including tactical missiles such as the improved Patriot batteries the U.S...
...During Desert Storm, some Patriots flew just over Tel Aviv rooftops in search of incoming Iraqi Scuds...
...In an August 24 letter to Sen...
...intelligence agencies detected a massive shipment of Chinese rocket propellant bound for Iran in June 1998, just as President Clinton was arriving in China...
...The problem is, they have the worst record of any administration in this century of enforcing arms control...
...Equally troubling are Chinese efforts to develop radio frequency weapons, high-powered microwave warheads, and directed energy weapons that "would upset or damage electronics in enemy equipment," the report said...
...The idea was to couple spacebased early warning sensors to a National Missile Defense system in the United States and to theater missile defense batteries that could be rapidly deployed to hot spots around the world...
...LongThe American Spectator • January 1999 range search radar on board the 40 Aegis destroyers and 22 Aegis cruisers track incoming targets and pass targeting information to missiles on board...
...They could simply unilaterally decide to destroy a major segment of our population, and...there's nothing at all that we could do about it...
...China has built hundreds of these missiles and keeps them aimed on Taiwan, Pentagon intelligence officials say...
...It didn't help that missile defense systems were spread across the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force...
...We have a modernization issue, we have a major readiness issue, and we have a force structure issue...
...plans to develop even limited theater missile defenses, which would be incapable of intercepting China's ICBMs...
...Technology transfer is not rare or unusual, it is pervasive...
...Long-range ballistic missiles are the only category of weapons the U.S...
...Not so, says Cooper: "When I left SDIO at the end of the Bush administration, we had a fully funded program to deploy ground-based interceptors within nine years, that would have cost $25 billion just for the first site, which could have been built in nine years...
...Raja Mohan, a respected Indian defense analyst and an editor of the Hindu daily in Delhi...
...After breaking every promise made on the subject since 1985, President Jiang Zemin pledged during his U.S...
...And when the Patriots did succeed in coming close to their targets (none scored a direct hit), dozens of Israelis were wounded and scores of houses destroyed by crashing debris...
...end its missile defense programs, sources familiar with the negotiations told TAS...
...Hence the critical importance to the administration of fudging the National Intelligence Estimate of the threat...
...After Iran came its partner, North Korea, which could develop missiles "placing at risk western U.S...
...It was a typical Clinton maneuver, kicking the can down the road...
...Much of the technology had already been developed during the Reagan administration and was ready for early deployment...
...These systems "are intended to operate about 90 kilometers behind the front line of friendly troops but could move forward once air superiority has been established in the theater of operations," according to a 1997 report by the General Accounting Office...
...Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the breakup of the Soviet Union two years later, the threat of a massive Russian first strike against America was greatly reduced, even in the eyes of the most hardened Cold Warriors...
...companies such as Loral Space Systems, Hughes Electronics, or Motorola (all big contributors to the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign and to the DNC...
...Within weeks of taking office, Bill Clinton delivered the fatal blow...
...intelligence analysts believe that North Korea is developing this and other missiles in joint programs with the Islamic Republic of Iran...
...dispatched to Israel and the Persian Gulf recently to defend against Iraqi Scuds...
...Acknowledging that missile sales, which CIA analysts estimate earn Pyongyang $i billion per year, "were aimed at obtaining the foreign money we need at present," the commentary verged on open blackmail: "If the United States really wants to prevent our missile export, it should lift the economic embargo as early as possible and make a compensation for the losses to be caused by discontinued missile exports," the commentary said...
...One top Republican staffer, Ed Timperlake, who has co-authored a book about China's attempt to influence the 1996 elections, tells TAS that he was taken to lunch recently by a Chinese embassy official, who openly admitted that Peking's "strategic goal was to prevent missile defense for Taiwan...
...The new agreements specifically prohibit testing theater missile defense systems capable of intercepting North Korea's Taepo Dong missiles, the State Department said, "because they have a range greater than 3,500 kilometers...
...Republican aides in Congress voiced surprise at Shelton's comments, given that for several weeks beforehand, the general had been receiving satellite photographs and communications intercepts revealing preparations for the launch...
...Given the extensive cooperation between Iran and North Korea, which the commission addressed in a classified version of the report handed to Congress, these two irrendentist states pose an extraordinary threat to most of the continental United States...
...This led to the famous "three-plus-three" compromise—three more years of research which, if successful, would lead to deployable systems three years later...
...had abandoned Reagan-era plans to defend America against a massive Soviet first strike, and that Chinese strategy calls for using ICBMs as retaliatory but not first strike weapons...
...Conversely, spending on theater missile defenses such as the Patriot upgrade expanded in the wake of Desert Storm...
...Because no single service was chosen as top dog, missile defense never had a military patron...
...The CIA told Congress in September that U.S...
...We wanted to make it clear to the Department of Defense that they could test for theater defenses without raising treaty compliance issues," State Department arms negotiator Dave Wollan explained...
...If Congress insists on deploying a national missile defense system, under these new agreements that system cannot be tested under realistic conditions against the type of threat it was conceived to defend against...
...As former CIA Director R. James Woolsey likes to put it, instead of facing a single Soviet dragon, as we did during the Cold War, America has now descended into the jungle which is "full of snakes...
...The reason there is no program to develop Aegis into a national missile defense, says former SDIO Director Cooper, is very simple: It was canceled in 1993 during the first weeks of the Clinton administration...
...In a talk before non-proliferation analysts last September, Walpole admitted that no one in the intelligence community had expected North Korea to develop an ICBM capability so soon...
...TAS has learned that top-secret intelligence reports, presented to President Clinton shortly after the August 31 Taepo Dong test, warned that an Iranian government delegation had flown an entire plane-load of advanced telemetry equipment to North Korea to monitor the test, flying back to Iran afterwards with the results...
...Administration critics think not...
...Despite these promises, TAS has learned, U.S...
...There is no restriction on using lasers as an anti-short range or intermediate range system," Bell tells TAS...
...deployed batteries of the upgraded missiles, known as PAC2-GEM, to Israel, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia in November as the crisis with Iraq deepened...
...Congress wasn't happy with Clinton's Pentagon budget cuts, and in its 1995 defense authorization bill, mandated deployment of a national missile defense system and reauthorized the money to build it...
...Making matters worse, McInerney said, were the "unfunded things" such as the recent deployments in Iraq and Bosnia, which eat into the overall Pentagon budget...
...These agencies also have evidence of ongoing nuclear cooperation...
...And the administration's Bob Bell says deploying Aegis for national missile defense simply won't happen, because sea-based interceptors are prohibited under the ABM treaty and the administration "has no program to develop one...
...Some of the surviving programs are cut-and-paste systems such as the Patriot upgrade, which was used to ward off Saddam Hussein's improved Scud missiles with less than stunning success during the 1991 Gulf War...
...This administration claims it can build a national ground-based system for a third of the price of what we had estimated, and do it in just three years after a decision to do so in 2003...
...The Navy's Aegis system was designed to provide an integrated air defense network for our carrier battle groups, and can be rapidly deployed to zones of conflict in an emergency...
...Since the Rumsfeld Commission report, the CIA has beefed up its intelligence gathering and changed its methods of analyzing the missile threat, relying increasingly on "B-Team" experts whose job is to challenge the assumptions and conclusions of Agency analysts, Walpole said...
...No less of a threat in this regard are rogue states such as Iran and North Korea, about which the administration has shown itself even more insouciant...
...Such a capability, said Knesset member Ron Cohen, would be "a powerful deterrent" to rogue states, who have never believed the U.S...
...In February 1996, Aegis cruisers off the Taiwan coast tracked Chinese M-9 missiles launched in an effort to intimidate Taiwan, and last August a Japanese Aegis cruiser tracked the Taepo Dong 1 test by North Korea...
...It's no surprise that the same people who once caved in to the Soviets on missile defense now do the same for the Chinese...
...The Navy conducted a successful intercept using the EKV against a U.S.-built Lance missile in January 1997...
...National missile defense involves treaty amendment issues," Wollan said...
...territory in an arc extending northwest from Phoenix, Arizona, to Madison, Wisconsin...
...We hadn't anticipated it...
...Then in 1992, congressional Democrats, led by Bob Bell and his boss, Sen...
...strategic missile defenses, and during the 1980's found sympathetic allies in Time magazine correspondent Strobe Talbott (now undersecretary of state) and top Democratic aides on Capitol Hill, who came to power with Bill Clinton opposing missile defenses on ideological grounds...
...Like orbiting asteroids, these small, low-cost satellites would have been able to track and destroy enemy missiles outside the earth's atmosphere, whether they were aimed at the U.S...
...Had it been continued, I have no doubt the Clinton administration would have imposed ABM treaty hurdles before American engineers—in the same way they are doing with space-based lasers...
...The man who wrote Clinton's defense platform (in which he pledged to trim S6o billion from the Pentagon's budget) was John Holum, who has played a major role in administration arms control policy since 1993, first as director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and more recently as undersecretary of state...
...has contributed funding to Israel's Arrow anti-missile system, which was successfully tested on September 14...
...The bipartisan Rumsfeld panel handed down its unanimous conclusions on July 15, 1998, and they were devastating...
...Spending on national missile defense systems was slashed from $1.8 billion in 1993 under the Bush programs, to $380 million two years later—"taking the stars out of Star Wars," as Aspin liked to say...
...The Republican leadership in the Senate sent a stinging letter to President Clinton on September 25, accusing the administration of making illegal modifications to the ABM treaty, falsifying the historical negotiating record, and failing to submit the proposed September 1997 changes to the Senate for advice and consent...
...was seeking "absolute strategic superiority and absolute security" for itself and its allies...
...The joint Chiefs have historically been against SDI, to protect their organizational rice bowls," argued Baker Spring...
...An Israeli parliamentary delegation visiting Washington in September urged members of Congress to explore new technologies aimed at intercepting missiles in their initial boost phase, when they are most vulnerable, easiest to spot, and still flying over enemy territory...
...The CIA had focused only on potential Third World adversaries capable of developing an "indigenous ICBM...
...are working on new, far more modest concepts, involving high-flying aircraft and missile-shooting drones, which for the first time would give the U.S...
...The commission concluded that among the rogue states, Iran was the furthest along, and could develop an ICBM capable of reaching U.S...
...These moves have prompted a heavy-handed lobbying effort on Capitol Hill by the Chinese...
...targets "in an arc extending northeast of a line from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to St...
...military communications, according to a Pentagon report released on November 2, 1998...
...The administration has already blown the initial deadline, which called for a full-up systems integration test of a national missile defense network in 1999 (we're now looking at summer 2000...
...Under current programs, which have been sustained only by congressional insistence, the administration plans to modify the Aegis system for use against short-range missiles, but is preventing its being designed or tested to defend against ICBMs...
...The threat today is more 41 diffuse, and in a way, much more difficult to counter than during the 1980's...
...isleading statements and outright lies about America's vulnerability to missile attack have become standard fare of the Clinton administration...
...THAAD was supposed to beavailable for emergency deployment by the end of 1998, but a series of test failures prompted the administration to slash funding repeatedly in 1998, until Congress restored funding in October...
...Since then, TAS has learned, intelligence reports delivered to the White House in November documented new deliveries by North Korea of missile components and production gear to Pakistan, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, and, especially, Libya...
...Because the president and the arms control theologians were dead-set against early deployment of a national missile defense 42 January 1999 The American Spectator system, the White House gave the CIA a highly qualified order, effectively instructing them to conclude that the U.S...
...Besides, said incoming House Speaker Bob Livingston on November the countries most likely to target the U.S...
...Beijing also may have acquired high-energy laser equipment and technical assistance which probably could be used in the development of ground-based ASAT weapons...
...They can modify behavior...
...According to retired Lt...
...Curt Weldon (R-Penn...
...Offk 43...
...A senior arms control official at the Foreign Ministry in Peking told a visiting foreign reporter in November that China felt so strongly on this issue that it would limit its sales to Iran and join the MTCR only if the U.S...
...The countries of interest are helping each other...
...KENNETH R. TIMMERMAN, publisher of Iran Brief, is a frequent contributor to The American Spectator...
...Instead of accelerating the development of missile defense systems, the Pentagon announced it had reduced funding tor—and was contemplating the cancellation of—an entire component of the missile defense program, ostensibly because of production problems at a Lockheed Martin facility in Massachusetts...
...An agreement reached with Russia in September 1997 imposed new limits on the speed and capabilities of U.S...
...Paul, Minnesota," within five years of a decision to build such a missile...
...W]e have no choice but to conclude that the ABM treaty did not survive the dissolution of the Soviet Union...
...The U.S...
...The Clintonites' ideological aversion to missile defense has percolated deep into the intelligence community...
...The U.S...
...The test of Taepo Dong r showed that North Korea was now capable of hitting the Prudhoe Bay oil fields in Alaska, endangering a critical, multi-billion dollar U.S...
...agreed not to sell theater missile defense systems to Taiwan and Japan...
...or Israel would actually retaliate against a missile attack by targeting them with nuclear weapons...
...missile defense research now that Republicans in Congress have mandated that the U.S...
...deployment of more sophisticated missile defenses "would be seen as a deliberate effort to impoverish the Chinese and keep them in a state of subservience," the analyst said...
...When President Clinton took office, the five-year program for missile defenses called for the expenditure of $39 billion," writes the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization's official historian, Dr...
...Bush administration SDI Organization director Ambassador Henry Cooper accuses Bell of posturing: "The Clinton administration canceled the Raptor-Talon BPI program that I left fully funded in 1993...
...Following this test, the United States would be able to field a national missile defense in three more years if the threat warranted such a deployment," BMDO historian Baucom writes...
...North Korea revealed its intentions in an unusual commentary carried by the official Central News Agency in July...
...But when Holum and Samore broached the subject, the Chinese said they were still studying the issue...
...In a videotaped interview with the Center for Security Policy last September, the former head of SDI under President Reagan, General James Abrahamson, claims that the U.S...
...First, they exposed the flaws of the CIA assessment, which ignored Russia and China on grounds that the U.S...
...from developing space-based, air-based, sea-based, and advanced ground-based theater defenses capable of intercepting ICBMs...
...SLAVES TO A DEAD TREATY While tight budgets may explain why the Joint Chiefs are not pushing missile defenses, critics argue that the Clinton administration has gone out of its way to ensure that any defenses that do eventually get built will be "dumbed down" by international treaties...
...Just three months after taking office in 1993, Clinton axed a Reagan-Bush era plan that would have begun deployment of a national missile defense system, getting the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency to adopt a "narrow" interpretation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile 39 (ABM) treaty, which was first signed with the USSR in 1972...
...already has a missile defense system capable of protecting the American homeland, but has refused to deploy it for fear of angering the Russians and the Chinese...
...Clearly if you can put something into orbit, you get awfully close to ICBM capability...
...Clinton vetoed that bill on December 28, 1995, leading to the government shut-down that cost Republicans in Congress so heavily...
...The Chinese have become increasingly strident in protesting U.S...
...Kyl, was a White House decision to "impose very high classification on what was drafted to be—and should remain—a largely unclassified document...
...According to Heritage Foundation analyst Baker Spring, THAAD's problems are directly attributable to the administration's devotion to the ABM treaty, "since it was designed not to the best of our capabilities, but to treaty restrictions!' For several years, the U.S...
...Classifying it would, of course, significantly constrain the use that could be made of this study for purposes of public education and debate...
...Blaming congressional Republicans for starting "a new arms race" by introducing a national missile defense bill, he said that the U.S...
...The official response by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Rumsfeld Commission report ironically underscored this point, albeit unintentionally...
...Is that any way to build a national missile defense system...
...Optimizing the system to attack incoming ballistic missiles would require a software upgrade for the radar and a new "front end" to the Standard Block 4 missile, known as the Exo-Atmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV...
...The administration's response to the North Korean test was astonishing...
...technology was now being used by China to improve the accuracy of its ballistic missiles and to develop new delivery systems capable of launching multiple nuclear warheads...
...William Schneider, undersecretary of state in the Reagan administration, puts it more bluntly: "This has become such a big issue that you can't go to a conference on prenatal care in China without hearing a complaint on missile defense...
...A more ambitious program using ground-based launchers is known as Theater High-Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD...
...Even so, it still falls far from the mark...
...If these boost-phase intercept systems work, the rogues would risk being attacked by their own missiles...
...While that may sound like a lot of money, it is spread across a number of different programs, and represents less than one-third of the annual expenditures on missile defense made during the Bush administration...
...SHOOT!NG DOWN STAR WARS Missile defense has been a hot-button issue since 1983, when President Reagan proposed creating a national missile defense system to shield America from a massive Soviet first strike...
...Atop Pentagon analyst specializing in Chinese military programs, interviewed this past summer, explained China's opposition to missile defense in terms almost identical to those used by the White House theologians of arms control, who claim that missile defense is bad because it puts America's potential adversaries at a disadvantage and thus promotes an arms race...
...Air Force project, known as the air-borne laser, involves a system mounted in a modified Boeing 747-40o airliner, which would be capable of shooting down enemy missiles within seconds of launch with a single laser burst, fired from up to 500 kilometers away...
...The administration's attitude toward missile defense has roots in its approach to the former Soviet Union...
...Clinton was supported in slowing down missile defense spending by none other than the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who felt that scarce budget dollars would be diverted from programs they felt merited a higher priority, and by those whom Cooper calls the "cheap hawks" on Capitol Hill...
...But dubiety of its assessment prompted Congress last year to appoint a blue ribbon panel headed by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to take another look...
...the ability to destroy enemy warheads packed with biological or nuclear warheads over the heads of the enemies who launched them...
...The Pentagon and prime contractor Raytheon say they have made significant improvements since then, and are now using an all-new interceptor designed to "hit and kill" incoming missiles...
...The subject has become so hot that President Jiang himself berated Clinton during the June 1998 summit over U.S...
...The CIA's national intelligence officer for strategic and nuclear programs, Robert D. Walpole, offered an explanation for General Shelton's oversight...
...Accordingly, it is our position that the ABM treaty has lapsed and is of no force...
...Then they hammered the U.S...
...Navy—into the Sea of Japan...
...It also prohibits tests against target missiles flying faster than 5 kilometers per second, a speed quickly reached by any multi-stage missile...
...U.S...
...It's like asking the exterminator if I had termites in the Southeast corner of my house on December 21 four years ago, instead of whether I've got termites...
...This program was a UAV-interceptor concept more advanced than the current Israeli program...
...Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, derided by liberals as a hugely expensive "star wars" fantasy, would have cost less than $3o billion stretched over ten years, according to official Pentagon budget figures...
...The American Spectator • January 1999 just how real is the threat that a potential adversary will be able to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the American mainland...
...There may not have been a truly indigenous ballistic missile development program since 37 Robert Goddard," who invented the concept of space flight back in the 1920's...
...But as Rumsfeld told an audience at the Center for Security Policy on October 7: "I don't know of a single nation on earth with an `indigenous' ballistic missile program...
...a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, General Henry H. Shelton wrote: "The commission points out that through unconventional, high-risk development programs and foreign assistance, rogue nations could acquire an ICBM capability in a short time, and that the Intelligence Community may not detect it...
...ALL SYSTEMS GO-STOP Alarmed by the recent missile tests, and by the administration's repeated defense cuts, Congress tacked on $1 billion for missile defense systems in the omnibus budget package signed by President Clinton on October 20...
...Despite these successes, the Clinton administration has not only refused to upgrade Aegis, but has suppressed a Pentagon study requested by Congress last year that recommended the immediate world-wide deployment of Aegis as a missile defense system...
...trip in 1997 that China would make no new nuclear sales to the Islamic Republic, and that it would stop the sale to Iran of cruise missiles and ballistic missile technologies...
...The reason was clear, a top White House official familiar with the negotiations tells TAS: "They're afraid that if Taiwan develops an effective missile defense that would decrease China's ability to intimidate them...
...to build ground-based interceptors in the continental United States that may never lead to successful missile defenses...
...In 1995 the ClAproduced a National Intelligence Estimate concluding that no country would be able to threaten the United States with an "indigenous ICBM" for at least ten years...
...The PLA will attempt to establish Electronic Warfare dominance on the battlefield during the early, critical stages of battle...
...Although the launch of the Taepo Dong r missile was expected for some time, its use as a space launch vehicle with a third stage was not," Walpole said...
...White House arms controller Bell argues that the technologies "just weren't there," and says there was no point in deploying an inferior system...
...work on defensive systems, their own military has been aggressively developing exotic new offensive weapons capable of destroying U.S...
...Former Nunn aide Robert Bell, who is 40 January 1999 • The American Spectator now the chief White House arms negotiator, says these U.S...
...We have not restructured our defense spending, and must do so to free up dollars for missile defense," he told TAS...
...It has become a campaign...
...Nunn, sharply reduced funding for Brilliant Pebbles, which Cooper says was the most promising technology developed during nine years of SDI research and could have been deployed much faster than the more costly ground-based systems...
...Israel is now hoping to deploy three batteries of Arrow missiles starting next year, just as Iran is expected to start deploying its Shahab-3, But THAAD, Patriot, and Arrow all have one major drawback: they intercept incoming missiles over friendly territory...
...who was instrumental in getting a supplemental $1 billion appropriation for missile defense in the final budget deal in October, say that $135 million of that amount could also go for the Aegis system...
...This came in addition to a special $179 million appropriation for theater missile defense in May, and $3.45 billion for missile defenses included in the defense appropriation bill...
...The letter concludes with an unprecedented rebuke: "The Senate's advice and consent powers are not ceremonial or pro forma...
...missile interceptors, allowing slower systems capable of intercepting Iraqi Scuds, but prohibiting more capable interceptors that could The American Spectator • January r999 be effective against ICBMs...
...The irony, says former ACDA Director Ronald Lehman, is that these moves came after the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and at a time when he and other Bush administration officials were negotiating with President Yeltsin to share Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) technology with Russia, in a joint effort to develop a global missile defense network to protect against rogue states...
...Sam Nunn of Georgia led the fight against SDI, arguing that it violated the ABM treaty...
...CHINA TAKES OFFENSE China's assistance to Libya may be a new development, but the People's Republic has a long history of selling missiles to 38 January 1999 • The American Spectator Iran...
...will have warning of an emerging capability, but whether the nature and magnitude of a particular threat will be perceived with sufficient clarity in time to take appropriate action...
...intelligence and prevailing prejudices among the government arms control community, which has consistently failed to evaluate the missile threat accurately: "The question is not simply whether the U.S...
...Instead of one adversary, the United States must now keep its eyes on a dozen potential adversaries, each pursuing clandestine nuclear and biological weapons programs, and each developing ICBMs that could strike America without warning...
...That interpretation effectively prevented the U.S...
...On November 12,1998, Undersecretary of State John Holum and top White House nonproliferation specialist Gary Samore traveled to Peking to discuss China's nuclear and missile technology sales to Iran...
...Once again, a promising technology was deemed unacceptable because deploying it would be in violation of the ABM treaty...
...and Israeli boostphase intercept programs are permitted under the ABM treaty because they do not include space-based laser interceptors...
...That program included theater missile defenses, a constellation of miniature space-based interceptors known as "Brilliant Pebbles," and ground-based interceptors...
...While Aspin's review did not lead to dramatic changes beyond those already put in train by Bush, the one area slated for major hits was missile defense...
...The administration canceled the program "because of a slavish commitment to follow a treaty with a country that went away in 1991," Cooper tells TAS...
...One U.S...
...The Chinese were planning to raise the issue with Clinton again at the APEC summit in Malaysia in November, says former Undersecretary of State Schneider, who met with Chinese leaders in Peking just before Clinton canceled that trip because of the Iraq crisis...
...Acquisition had been approved through the Pentagon bureaucracy, and contractor bids were sitting in envelopes at Huntsville, Alabama," at SDIO headquarters...
...Added to that, the commission's public report stated, was a "high risk of continued surprise," owing to poor U.S...
...Intelligence sources tell TAS: "We are seeing a revived effort by Libya, which is receiving assistance from North Korea, China, and now Iran, to build a missile capable of reaching NATO bases in Europe with a nuclear warhead...
...Ambassador Li Changhe made China's concerns public for the first time on August 13, 1998, lashing out at the United States at the United Nations Conference on Disarmament in Geneva...
...Weldon, who along with Sen...
...Companies in Israel and the U.S...
...In September, Congress told the administration to increase spending on Aegis from $190 million to $310 million in the defense appropriation bill...
...In accordance with this effort, TAS has learned, the Clinton White House has set in motion an environmental-impact study on two sites in Alaska that could be used as launch sites for ground-based interceptors, seeking to appease Republicans on Capitol Hill by giving the appearance of moving forward on national missile defense...
...In about a year, the newly-appointed head of BMDO, General Malcolm O'Neill, and his staff had to downsize the program and restructure the organization to fit the $18 billion Bottoms-Up Review program...
...China's tactic of choice in its battle to prevent the Taiwanese people from electing pro-independence leaders has been to bracket the island with shorter-range M-9 missiles, as it did during the February 1996 presidential elections...
...The Navy has already invested $5o billion to build a fleet of Aegis cruisers and destroyers, which contain most of the elements required for a global missile defense network," Gaffney says...
...Even black [highly classified] programs have been cut for lack of funds...
...argue that the U.S...
...Kyl chairs the joint U.S.-Israeli Inter-Parliamentary Commission on National Security...
...We need to get rid of the Bush administration conception of SDI," Holum told Defense Daily during the 1992 campaign...
...The administration has pledged to submit the new agreements only after the Russian Duma ratifies Start II sometime in 1999, and as part of a package of arms control agreements...
...In 1991, despite major changes in the SDI programs under President Bush that led the Pentagon to begin acquisition of a smaller space-based system, Nunn's opposition forced the administration to walk the program back to a technology demonstrator...
...envoys with demands that the U.S...
...John Kyl (R-Ariz...
...Aides to Rep...
...This is simply a fraud...
...Once the new administration came in, they were given instructions to return the bids to contractors unopened...
...Boost-phase intercept programs were an integral part of President Reagan's SDI, which was headed for early 1990's deployment of satellite sensors and space-based interceptors and lasers before the arms controllers cut it back...
...The Chinese will do whatever it takes to maintain a credible second strike capability," the analyst said...
...Debris from that third stage splashed down some 3,500 miles from the launch site, giving North Korea the ability to target Alaska and possibly America's west coast, Walpole admitted...
...with missiles, such as North Korea, Iran, or Iraq, "don't care what our agreement is with Russia...
...Thomas McInerney, president of Business Executives for National Security and a former Air Force assistant chief of staff, missile defenses have not been singled out, but have taken a hit because the whole military budget has been cut...
...Instead of asking what is the missile threat to the United States and when will it materialize," says the Heritage Foundation's Baker Spring, "the White House asked what is the missile threat if you don't count Russia and China, and you don't count Alaska and Hawaii as part of the United States, and if you forget the fact that there is trade and technology sharing among the proliferant states, and if you discount space launchers like the Chinese Long March rockets as possible ICBMs...
...That is by far the most expensive way of going about missile defense," says Cooper...
...They would prefer it not require them to build 20,000 nuclear warheads...
Vol. 32 • January 1999 • No. 1
