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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Wednesday, December 18, 2002

Deployment of missile-defense system ordered

By Tom Squitieri
USA Today

WASHINGTON — President Bush yesterday ordered the initial deployment of a national missile-defense system designed to shoot down ballistic missiles before they reach the United States.

Bush described the system as "modest," but said it would "add to American security and serve as a starting point for improved and expanded capabilities later, as further progress is made in researching and developing missile-defense technologies."

Bush's announcement came six days after the latest test of the anti-missile system failed when an interceptor missile did not separate from its booster rocket. So far, defense officials say, five tests of the system have succeeded, but three have failed.

The Bush plan is more limited than President Reagan's 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative, which came to be known as "Star Wars." But Bush expanded on the ground-based system envisioned by President Clinton by ordering research and testing of sea-based and space-based add-ons that could be deployed later.

Pentagon officials said yesterday that when the first components are installed in Alaska by 2004, the system will provide limited defense to all 50 states against missiles coming from Northeast Asia. By 2005, the limited protection should extend to missiles coming from the Middle East.

Currently, only Russia and China can strike the continental United States with intercontinental ballistic missiles launched from their territories.

Russia has a large force of such missiles, far too many for any limited missile-defense system to overcome. China has a small ICBM force but is expected to increase its arsenal in the coming years.

Several other countries are developing long-range missiles, intelligence officials said.

  • North Korea is the closest. Its long-range missile may soon be ready for flight testing.
  • Iran is not expected to have a long-range missile until 2010.
  • Iraq could have one by 2015. Foreign assistance from North Korea or others could speed these developments.

The anti-missile system is extremely controversial, largely because of its high cost and early tests that have shown it to be only partially effective.

Administration officials were careful not to oversell it.

"It will be an evolutionary program," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said. "I like the feeling, the idea, of beginning and putting something in the ground or in the air or at sea, and getting comfortable with it, and using it and testing it, and learning from that."

The plan announced yesterday would begin by placing 10 ground-based interceptor missiles at Fort Greely, Alaska, by 2004. Six more missiles would follow by 2005 or 2006. Four missiles would be deployed at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., by 2005.

The anti-missile program has cost $16 billion over the past two years. It will cost $17.5 billion in the next two years, Pentagon officials said.

Critics say the decision to go ahead is premature. Deploying the missiles "violates common sense" by proceeding "before (the missiles) have been tested and shown to work," said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Until last year, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty barred both the United States and Russia from building or deploying an anti-missile system. But the Bush administration officially withdrew from the treaty last summer after giving Russia six-months' notice. Once that happened, the Pentagon moved quickly to start work at Fort Greely, 100 miles southeast of Fairbanks, on six underground silos for interceptor missiles.

Even supporters say there is still a major problem with the booster unit, which has yet to be consistent in tests.

"You can't use an interceptor that doesn't fly right," said Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, director of the Defense Department's Missile Defense Agency. "I don't like where we are with the booster."

But Kadish said the system now works. That's something "I could not tell you ... with confidence" a few years ago, he said. "Test and fix, test and fix, test and fix, that is what we are doing."

Critics scoffed at the idea that the system is ready to deploy.

"The timing is simply a political decision to get something in the ground before the 2004 election," said John Isaacs president of the Council for a Livable World. "The system that will be deployed will be blind and deaf. The radars will not be ready, the early warning satellites will not be ready, and the missiles have not been thoroughly tested."