Heritage Foundation Leadership for America

What Happened in 2002

In June 2002, President Bush took the important step of freeing the United States from the constraints imposed by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty with the former Soviet Union, after securing Russia's effective approval. The Administration provided a general description of the kind of missile defense it believes the country should deploy--a global system that is capable of providing U.S. territory and U.S. friends and allies with protection against limited ballistic missile attacks. It should be a layered defense with the ability to intercept a missile whether it is in its boost phase, mid-course, or terminal phase of flight. The Administration has yet to announce the specific system design or architecture to meet this goal. It has continued to develop a wide variety of applicable system technologies without specifying which ones would be included in the deployed system.2

The Administration requested slightly less than $8 billion for the missile defense program in the current fiscal year. The vast majority of these funds are for research and development. In this context, the Missile Defense Agency achieved a number of successes in 2002, destroying target missiles or missile warheads in tests of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system and the Sea-Based Midcourse Defense system. Progress should accelerate now that the ABM Treaty restrictions on development and testing activities are no longer applicable. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld took an important step by freeing the missile defense program from some cumbersome acquisition procedures.3

On the other hand, the operational tests of the U.S. Army's most advanced missile defense interceptor, the Patriot PAC-3 system, resulted in miscues,4 and the Department of Defense canceled the U.S. Navy's area defense program because of cost concerns.5

Though Congress is likely to accept the Administration's missile defense requests, disagreements among proponents may delay the programs. Many are concerned because the Defense Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2003 (P.L. 107-248) reduced funding for the important boost-phase development programs.6

What to Do in 2003

Both the Administration and Congress must turn their attention to matching the promise of protecting U.S. territory and U.S. friends and allies from ballistic missiles as soon as possible with an effective program that fields that defense in the nearest possible term. They should work to do so by taking the appropriate steps to:

• Identify the necessary elements of the missile defense architecture. Missile defense should not get bogged down in internecine conflicts that pit one particular missile defense technology against another. The Administration and Congress should start the process of identifying the indispensable elements of a missile defense system for deployment and avoid conflicts that result from personal preference or parochial concerns.
• Accelerate the deployment of systems that can provide a limited defense at the earliest juncture. Every day that the United States and its allies do not have even a limited defense in field is another day that regimes and terrorist groups hostile to America have an opportunity to exploit this glaring vulnerability.
• Focus attention on the development of technologies that hold the greatest promise. Generally, these are boost-phase and space-based systems. They should not, however, be pursued at the expense of other options.
• Continue efforts to include U.S. friends and allies in the missile defense program. The Administration is working with its allies to create a global missile defense capability. This important step would hold benefits beyond defense, discouraging rogue leaders from considering the use of ballistic missiles to rain terror on any of their target countries. Congress should support this effort and be prepared to commend U.S. allies for their contributions to this system.
• Match the missile defense program to the requirements for U.S. security in the post-Cold War world. The world today presents a multitude of threats to the United States, including from non-state terrorists, rather than one overarching threat like that posed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. As a result, the requirements for U.S. strategic stability are vastly different, and missile defense programs must be designed for these new requirements.
• Preserve a flexible and streamlined management system for the missile defense program. The Department of Defense has adopted a capabilities-based approach to the acquisition of major defense systems and a spiral development process that allows the early delivery of advanced technology to the field.7 These principles have been applied to the missile defense program while the Pentagon also undertakes an initiative to revamp the weapons acquisition process.8 The temptation will be for Congress to reduce the flexibility extended to missile defense program managers in the name of congressional oversight. Congress should resist this temptation and exercise its proper oversight responsibilities in terms of gauging the program's ability to deliver effective missile defenses to the field as soon as possible.

Baker Spring is F. M. Kirby Research Fellow in National Security Policy in the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

EXPERTS