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To: Win-Lose-Draw who wrote (138882)	12/17/2001 8:41:25 AM
From: JHP	Respond to of 436258

sure their going to build a missle defense NOT, they cannot even do this: December 16, 2001 Navy Missile Defense Plan Is Canceled by the Pentagon By JAMES DAO WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 — The Pentagon has canceled a Navy program intended to shoot down short- range ballistic missiles, a decision that military officials said today was the first in a series of changes that the Bush administration is likely to make in its missile defense programs. The Navy program, which would have put interceptors on ships at sea, was killed because it had gone more than 50 percent over budget and had fallen more than two years behind schedule, the officials said. It was known as the Navy Area Missile Defense program. Under rules set by Congress, to save the program the Pentagon would have had to certify that it was essential to national security, that its costs could be brought under control and that no alternatives existed. Senior military officials decided that they could not make that case. "It's unfortunate we've reached this point, but certification was impossible," Edward C. Aldridge, the under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, said in a statement. The program's failure underscores the technological challenges in building a defensive shield capable of protecting the entire nation from long-range missiles, a top military priority of President Bush. Intended to protect ships, ports and amphibious operations from short-range missiles, the Navy program was viewed as one of the less technically difficult anti-missile programs in the Pentagon's missile defense arsenal. "If the easy things are this difficult," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.com, a military policy Web site, "the difficult things are going to be extraordinarily difficult." Mr. Pike has long been a critic of the Pentagon's missile defense programs. In Depth U.S. Military But the cancellation of the program also indicates that the Bush administration's missile defense priorities may be shifting, particularly now that the president has announced his intention to withdraw from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which prohibited the development of ship-based defenses against long-range missiles. By canceling the Navy Area program, which cost $2.3 billion over the past decade, the Pentagon will be able to spend more money on developing ship-based defenses against long-range missiles, programs that had been severely constricted by the ABM treaty, officials said. Those programs are intended to shoot down long-range missiles either high in the atmosphere or just after launch. The decision came under attack from missile defense advocates who said that the Pentagon needed to be developing protection against both long- and short-range missiles. "This is a seriously flawed decision," said Frank Gaffney Jr., president of the Center for Security Policy, a conservative military policy group. "Everybody understands we have to have missile protection for our carrier battle groups and marines and other forward elements. This is not a way to find resources." The major problem with the Navy program was that ship-based targeting computers were not working well enough with the Aegis radar systems on missile cruisers. Those radars were designed to track airplanes, which are larger, slower and generally easier to follow than missiles. The Navy was experimenting with computer systems that would have enabled a ship to collate data from many sensors, including satellites, airplanes and other ships. Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, said that the Pentagon still intended to develop sea-based defenses against short- range missiles. But he said the program would first have to be reorganized. Home \| Back to Politics \| Search