| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"PagCal" |
| Date: |
10 Jul 2006 04:29:13 AM |
| Object: |
US squanders millions on missle defense (star wars) |
Union of Concerned Scientists
Citizens and Scientists for Environmental Solutions
www.ucsusa.org
analysis
Technical Realities: An Analysis of the 2004 Deployment of a U.S.
National Missile Defense System This is the executive summary from the
May 2004 UCS report Technical Realities: An Analysis of the 2004
Deployment of a U.S. National Missile Defense System.
The ballistic missile defense system that the United States will deploy
later this year will have no demonstrated defensive capability and will
be ineffective against a real attack by long-range ballistic missiles.
The administration's claims that the system will be reliable and highly
effective are irresponsible exaggerations. There is no technical
justification for deployment of the system, nor are there sound reasons
to procure and deploy additional interceptors.
The Missile Defense Agency should halt its deployment of the Block 2004
GMD system, and Congress should require that the system undergo
operationally realistic testing before it is deployed.
On December 17, 2002, President Bush announced that he had directed the
Secretary of Defense to begin fielding a ground-based missile defense
that would achieve initial operational capabilities in 2004. The system
is intended to defend the United States initially against attacks by
long-range ballistic missiles North Korea might deploy in the future.
The general operating principles and many of the key components of the
ground-based midcourse defense (GMD) system are based on technology
developed under the Clinton administration's national missile defense
(NMD) program. The GMD system will use ground-based interceptor missiles
to launch "kill vehicles" that are intended to destroy their targets by
colliding with them in the midcourse of their trajectory, outside
Earth's atmosphere. The system will use ground- and sea-based radars to
track the warheads and other objects released by attacking missiles, and
the kill vehicles will use infrared sensors to home on their targets.
The Bush administration plans to deploy its missile defense systems in
two-year blocks. The first, Block 2004, covers the years 2004 and 2005.
It is the only block for which detailed information on planned
deployments is publicly available, although some general information is
available for Block 2006 and beyond. This report focuses on the Block
2004 GMD system.
The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has been planning to make this system
operational by September 30, 2004, with an initial deployment of 10
interceptors at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base,
California. More recently, the MDA has stated that the system could be
operational as early as July 2004, when the first interceptor is
deployed in its silo, but that only "several" interceptors would be
deployed by the end of
September. Current plans are to deploy a total of 20 interceptors at
these two sites by the end of 2005, and Congress has already
appropriated funds for these interceptors. However, the administration's
fiscal year (FY) 2005 budget includes funds to procure and deploy an
additional 20 interceptors.
This report analyzes the defensive capabilities of the Block 2004 GMD
system as it will initially be deployed and as it is planned to evolve
through 2005. To do so, we examine the GMD test program in detail and
assess what it has demonstrated about the capability of the system and
its individual components. We also analyze the theoretical technical
capabilities of the key system components—the radars and the kill
vehicle—to determine how they would function in a hypothetical ballistic
missile attack by North Korea. We ultimately assess the capability of
the defense to defend Hawaii, Alaska, and the west coast of the United
States from North Korean attacks. (The administration has stated that
the system is also intended to defend against attacks from the Middle
East, but this is irrelevant since no nations there could deploy a
long-range missile by 2005. Moreover, the radars available to the GMD
system are oriented in the wrong direction for attacks coming from the
Middle East and look instead toward Russia and China. The MDA has not
begun to upgrade the one radar oriented in the right direction, and it is
unlikely to be available until the end of Block 2004, if then.)
Although the Pentagon has not publicly issued any detailed assessments
of the defensive capability of the system it will deploy, several
officials have made statements in congressional testimony indicating
that the system will be highly effective. We discuss the assumptions
underlying these statements and provide a critique of these assessments.
We then discuss the policy implications of the Pentagon overestimating
the defensive capability of the deployed GMD system.
We also assess the Defense Department's assertions that the deployment
date is "event driven" rather than "schedule driven," i.e., that the
date for deploying the system and making it operational depends on
events in the development and testing program and not on external factors.
Finally, we recommend changes to the current and future U.S. program to
develop defenses against long-range ballistic missiles.
Download the full report or the executive summary.
.
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
