Pentagon Optimistic About Missile Shield
By JAMES DAO
ASHINGTON, April 14 — Buoyed by four successful missile defense tests in a row, senior
Pentagon officials say they are on schedule to open a rudimentary missile shield site in Alaska by the
fall of 2004.
Just last summer, the Pentagon was expressing at best a guarded optimism about its antimissile program,
which had had a string of failures. Since then, prototype interceptors have scored four consecutive direct
hits on targets, three of them long-range ballistic missiles.
Now, senior officials say, they have much greater confidence that their main antimissile technology, known
as hit-to-kill, has turned a developmental corner. They say they are on track to open a working ballistic
missile defense site, the nation's first in three decades, at Fort Greely, Alaska, by October 2004.
"It is becoming increasingly clear and we are becoming increasingly confident that we will be able to make
hit-to-kill work reliably enough to be effective," Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish of the Air Force, who leads the
Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, said in an interview.
The administration is preparing to withdraw in June from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which
prohibits development of missile defense systems. The administration contends that the treaty has slowed or
prevented the testing of promising technologies, a contention critics of missile defense dispute.
General Kadish said the Missile Defense Agency intended to take immediate advantage of the treaty's
withdrawal by including actions prohibited by the treaty in the next antiballistic missile test, in July.
The actions include using ship-based radar to track the interceptor and target missiles, part of the
Pentagon's efforts to adapt Aegis cruisers to shoot down ballistic missiles. The Pentagon had planned a
similar test last fall but postponed it when lawyers concluded that using ship-based radar violated the
treaty.
"The treaty withdrawal will mean an awful lot to us," General Kadish said.
The Pentagon's push to build a missile shield site in Alaska while developing new technologies like
ship-borne interceptors underscores the Bush administration's desire to balance competing, and sometimes
conflicting, demands on its missile defense program.
On one hand, Mr. Bush wants to show that effective missile defense is nearly at hand and that the program
is not a waste of money. On the other hand, the administration is also trying to respond to critics, including
Republicans, who argue that the interceptors in Alaska will be inadequate to defeat missile attacks.
Since President Ronald Reagan vowed to build an impenetrable shield over the United States, the Pentagon,
by some estimates, has spent more than $60 billion on antimissile technology, yet does not have a working
system. The Pentagon expects to spend nearly $8 billion more this year on missile defense.
The administration plans to start work this summer on a small missile defense base at Fort Greely, near
Fairbanks, that would house five missile interceptors. Though initially intended for testing, the site could be
used to defend the United States against a missile attack, the Pentagon says.
"Once you have that built, then there's an inherent capability there for whatever use the country might need
of it at the time," General Kadish said.
Some critics of relying on interceptors in Alaska say the Pentagon must develop alternative systems, such as
ship-launched interceptors or airborne and space-based lasers.
For that reason, the Pentagon is also pouring billions of dollars into an array of alternatives, trying to create
what Mr. Bush has called a "layered" system capable of shooting down missiles at different stages of flight.
That system is outlined in a secret Pentagon document, the Nuclear Posture Review, which calls for
building a "near-term emergency" missile defense system between 2003 and 2008. The report says that
system might include a laser aboard a Boeing 747 that could shoot down missiles in their early phase; a
"rudimentary" system of ground-based interceptors in Alaska capable of destroying missiles high in the
atmosphere, the midcourse; and interceptors fired from ships.
Of those three technologies, Pentagon planners say only the ground-based interceptors are close to being
ready for use. The Navy is still developing a ship-launched interceptor fast enough to catch a ballistic
missile. The first test of the airborne laser is scheduled in 2003.
General Kadish said the Pentagon was still developing a long-term plan for missile defense. Studies by the
Defense Science Board, an advisory panel that reports to the secretary of defense, and by a corporate team
led by the Boeing Company and the Lockheed Martin Corporation will help develop that road map, General
Kadish said.
Both reports are expected to be completed this summer, in time to help the Missile Defense Agency
develop its budget for 2004, when it expects to make major decisions about the Fort Greely site.
Among other things, the report by the Defense Science Board will look at the possibility of using
nuclear-tipped interceptors as a way of defeating decoys and other countermeasures, General Kadish said.
Hit-to-kill technology depended on a nonexplosive interceptor packed with sensors to find an enemy
warhead and destroy it simply by crashing into it. Some scientists argue that those interceptors could be
tricked by balloons shaped like warheads.
General Kadish said the Pentagon had no plans to build nuclear-tipped interceptors, which were used in an
old antimissile system, Safeguard, which was dismantled in the mid-1970's.
"Sometimes brute force can be useful," he added. "We don't rule out anything long term."
Despite recent successes in the hit-to-kill program, the Pentagon has also had some missile-defense
setbacks. A prototype booster rocket for carrying a kill vehicle failed in a test in December. A network of
24 low-atmosphere missile-tracking satellites known as Space Based Infrared System-low has been so
over budget and behind schedule that Congress has threatened to cancel financing.
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