DOD Wants to Field Defenses Without Calling It Deployment
As part of its fiscal year 2004 budget request, the Bush administration
is asking Congress to treat plans to field up to 40 ground- and
sea-based missile interceptors before 2006 as part of a research
and development program and not as an acquisition program. Some
Democratic senators see the move as a Pentagon attempt to begin
deploying missile defense systems without subjecting them to rigorous
or realistic testing.
President George W. Bush announced December 17, 2002, that the
United States would field the initial elements of an evolutionary,
multilayered missile defense system in 2004 and 2005. These first
elements would include up to 20 ground-based missile interceptors
for use against long-range ballistic missiles and 20 sea-based interceptors
to counter short- and medium-range ballistic missiles.
Both types of interceptors have yet to be subjected to tests resembling
real-world scenarios. The Pentagon refers to such testing as operational
testing.
U.S. law—section 2399 of Title 10 of the United States Code—requires
that major defense systems, defined as any system costing more than
$115 million to research and develop, complete operational testing
before proceeding past “low-rate initial production.”
The Pentagon is requesting more than $9.1 billion in missile defense
funding for fiscal year 2004. (See
ACT, March 2003.)
Some Democrats in Congress assert that Pentagon plans to deploy
up to 40 missile interceptors exceed the understood definition of
low-rate initial production, thereby requiring the interceptors
to be operationally tested before being fielded. The legal prohibition
was crafted to prevent faulty or immature systems from being passed
to the armed services.
A spokesperson for the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), which oversees
missile defense research and development, said that MDA intends
to operationally test the missile defense system after the interceptors
are fielded. Democratic Senate staffers, however, argue that that
process is backwards since the goal of operational testing is to
determine whether a weapons system works well enough to merit deployment.
The Pentagon contends it has adopted a new approach, called spiral
development, to make weapons systems available to military users
earlier in the production process. Strongly criticized by some lawmakers,
spiral development calls for fielding weapons systems before they
are perfected in order to have some basic capability quickly with
the aim of improving systems as time passes.
Although Thomas Christie, the director of the Pentagon’s office
of Operational Test and Evaluation, endorsed the general concept
of spiral development in his office’s annual review of Pentagon
systems under development, he also struck a cautionary note. “I
recognize and agree, in principle, with the desire to field new
capabilities as soon as possible, but that desire should be tempered
with the responsibility to ensure that the weapons will not put
Americans at risk,” Christie wrote in a February report to
Congress. (See
ACT, March 2003.) “We must reinforce the principle
that systems that go to war must be tested the way they will be
employed,” he added.
At a February 13 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld defended the Pentagon’s plans to
deploy missile interceptors prior to their operational testing.
“I happen to think that thinking we cannot deploy something…until
you have everything perfect, every ‘i’ dotted and every
‘t’ crossed, it’s probably not a good idea,”
he testified. “I think we need to get something out there,
in the ground, at sea, and in a way that we can test it. We can
look at it, we can develop it, we can evolve it, and…learn
from the experimentation with it.”
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) sent a February 19 letter to Rumsfeld
contesting his position. “I believe that any deployed missile
defense system, must meet the same requirements and standards that
we set for all other fully operational weapons systems,” she
wrote. “I simply do not understand how we can go forward with
the deployment of a missile defense system which may or may not
work and which the Department of Defense apparently does not believe
needs to be fully or realistically tested.”
The dispute comes down to how the Pentagon’s plans for basing
up to 40 missiles interceptors in Alaska and California and aboard
naval ships beginning in 2004 are to be labeled.
Pentagon officials appear to want it both ways. They would prefer
that the interceptors be recognized by Congress as part of a “test
bed” for research and development. At the same time, they tout
the inherent operational capability of the proposed test bed in
public statements, creating the aura of a deployed system.
Congressional critics see the test bed as simply the first stage
of a much bigger deployment, which is the impression President Bush
made when he declared December 17 that he was “pleased to announce
that we will take another important step in countering [the threats
of the 21st century] by beginning to field missile defense capabilities
to protect the United States, as well as our friends and allies.”
These critics charge the Pentagon wants to avoid testing that could
reveal the system’s flaws and postpone deployment of the interceptors
beyond 2004, which some Democratic legislators have charged is a
politically motivated deadline because it is a presidential election
year.
Rumsfeld explained in the February 13 hearing that finding the
right term to describe the Pentagon’s plans is controversial.
“And the words are hot button words because the testing is
required before deployment but not before a test bed, and yet the
reality is the test bed offers a deployable minimal capability,”
Rumsfeld stated.
The Clinton administration had a plan to field a total of 20 ground-based
interceptors in Alaska by the end of 2005. The Pentagon described
that plan as a deployment.
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