Pentagon to Seek Money for Testing Missile Defense
Viviane Lerner
July 10, 2001
Pentagon to Seek Money for Testing Missile Defense
By JAMES DAO
WASHINGTON, July 9 — The Pentagon is preparing to ask Congress for money to
build a missile defense test site in Alaska that could also become the
command center for a working antimissile system as early as 2004, military
officials said.
If it becomes operational, the site will be a clear violation of the 1972
Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which allows some testing of antimissile
technology but forbids deployment of a shield against long-range missiles in
any state except North Dakota.
Despite that, the proposal has won qualified support from some influential
arms control advocates and missile defense skeptics, suggesting that it
could blunt Democratic opposition in Congress to President Bush's missile
defense plans.
John B. Rhinelander, a lawyer who advised ABM negotiators in 1972 and is a
leading arms control advocate, said in an interview that the new Pentagon
proposal was so limited in scope that the Russians were not likely to worry
that it could effectively counter their nuclear force of about 6,000
weapons. The Pentagon plan calls for installing 10 or fewer interceptors at
Fort Greely, near Fairbanks.
As a result, Mr. Rhinelander argued, the Russians may be willing to amend
the ABM treaty to allow deployment of such a small system even as close to
their borders as Alaska. That would allow the Bush administration to claim
victory while keeping the current arms control system largely intact.
"I think this is a more ingenious plan, and one that does less violation to
the treaty, than anything I can think of," Mr. Rhinelander said. "Ten
launchers is peanuts. The Russians will object initially, but hopefully they
will accept this concept. And we will have this behind us. Basically the
treaty will be preserved, with this one wrinkle."
But many other arms control advocates have attacked the proposal as an
effort by the administration to deploy a missile defense system quickly
under the guise of improving testing. Many Democrats have urged the Pentagon
to conduct more realistic tests on antimissile technology, while
conservative Republicans have demanded immediate deployment of a rudimentary
system.
"I think they are trying to trap us in our own rhetoric," an aide to one
Democratic senator said.
Joseph Cirincione, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, said: "I think it's a transparent ploy to abrogate the
treaty. There is no compelling reason to put a test site in Alaska."
Under the Bush plan, which has been outlined in briefings to reporters and
Congressional aides but not yet detailed in budget documents, the Pentagon
would build missile test sites on Kodiak Island, off Alaska's southern
coast, and at Fort Greely in central Alaska. The Wall Street Journal
reported on the plan today.
The plan calls for using launch sites on Kodiak to fire target missiles
toward the continental United States and interceptors to shoot down test
missiles coming toward Alaska from either California or Kwajalein Atoll in
the Pacific. Those flight tests would more realistically simulate the speed
and trajectory of weapons launched from, say, North Korea, than do current
tests, in which missiles are launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in
California toward Kwajalein, Pentagon officials said. The next flight test
between Vandenberg and Kwajalein is scheduled for Saturday night.
In a more controversial element of the plan, the Pentagon would also build
silos and missile storage facilities for about five interceptors at Fort
Greely, which military planners view as the likely base for a system of
ground-launched interceptors capable of defending the nation. Pentagon
officials say Fort Greely would initially be used as simply a storage site
and command center for launching test missiles from Kodiak.
But if development of antimissile technology proceeded on schedule, the Bush
administration would consider declaring Fort Greely a working missile
defense system as early as 2004, if there was credible evidence of a missile
threat to the United States, Pentagon officials said.
"If you face an emergency and had some confidence in these interceptors,
then they could be used as an emergency missile defense," said Lt. Col. Rick
Lehner, a spokesman for the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense
Organization.
The Pentagon is also expanding testing on other missile defense
technologies, including a laser that would be mounted on the nose of a
Boeing 747 and interceptors that could be launched from Navy destroyers. If
those technologies developed quickly, they also might be put into operation
in the next four to five years, Colonel Lehner said.
The Pentagon is still drawing up the detailed budget documents that will
spell out how much money it needs to start work on the Alaska sites. The
Bush administration is seeking to increase spending on missile defense by 57
percent, to $8.3 billion, mostly for research and development.
Pentagon officials said the Defense Department might ask Congress for
permission to begin work soon, to take advantage of the final weeks of
Alaska's short construction season. Such work would probably be limited to
cutting trees and grading landscape, the officials said.
Some arms control advocates contend that under the ABM Treaty, the United
States must seek Russian approval to build new test sites. They also assert
that any work on such test sites will violate the treaty if the sites are
intended to become part of a working missile defense system.
But some experts say that the treaty is not clear on those issues, meaning
disputes are likely to rage no matter what the administration does.
"It is a question that doesn't have an answer," said Amy Woolf, a defense
specialist for the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan agency of
Congress, when she was asked if building a test site at Fort Greely would
violate the treaty.
"Whatever we say, the Russians are likely to disagree with," Ms. Woolf
added. "It's a question of how you want to handle the political fallout from
that."
Some powerful Democrats, including Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, chairman
of the Senate Armed Services Committee, have said they will oppose any
defense appropriations that might violate the ABM Treaty. Mr. Levin's office
said today that he had not received enough information about the Alaska
proposal to know whether it would violate the treaty.
In a sharp exchange during a committee hearing last month, Mr. Levin
repeatedly asked Mr. Rumsfeld whether any action in the 2002 budget might
violate the treaty. Mr. Rumsfeld initially said no, but then qualified his
answer.
"One or more of the activities may — eventually will, the good Lord
willing — run up against the treaty and be a violation," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
"Before that happens," he continued, "we would have been in discussions with
the Russians. And we fully intend that we would have fashioned some sort of
a framework to move beyond the treaty."
Missile Test Is 1 for 2
WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE, N.M., July 9 (AP) — The Pentagon reported partial
success today in a test of the Patriot missile system, with one of its
interceptors destroying a remote-controlled F-4 fighter plane that was using
radar-jamming signals, while a second Patriot failed to hit an incoming
missile.
The F-4 test was the first time the Army had fired its latest-generation
Patriot, the Pac-3, at a fighter airplane. The other Patriot test firing was
aimed at a Hera target missile which was designed to simulate an incoming
ballistic missile.
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
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