Now That It's U.S. Policy to Defend America Against Missile Attack, Let the Debate Be Joined As to the Optimal Way to Do So

(Washington, D.C.): Now that the House of Representatives has joined the Senate in voting
by
overwhelming, bipartisan majorities to declare the policy of the U.S. government to no longer be
one of leaving the American people vulnerable to a ballistic missile attack but to deploy a national
missile defense system, the debate can finally shift to the surpassingly important question:
How
can this policy be executed most quickly, most effectively and most efficiently?

The Democrats Abandon Their President

The wholesale collapse of Democratic opposition to the “Cochran-Inouye National Missile
Defense Act of 1999″ — evident in the 97-3 Senate vote 1 in
favor of this legislation and the
Clinton Administration’s sheepish withdrawal of its threat to exercise a clearly unsustainable veto
— dispelled any lingering doubts about why the minority was so determined in the election season
last year to keep a version of this legislation from even being debated: Few legislators
can
publicly defend a policy of assured vulnerability to missile attack, a policy that has only
been
sustained since it was codified in the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty because very
few
Americans knew of its existence. As soon as the absurdity of such a posture became widely
known, it was obvious that missile defense of the United States would become what is suddenly
being universally described as a “potent political issue.”

In the wake of the Senate’s action, President Clinton engaged in one of his most extraordinary
flip-flops. He declared that we are committed to meeting the growing danger that outlaw nations
will develop and deploy long-range missiles that could deliver weapons of mass destruction
against us and our allies” — flatly contradicting the adamant insistence, until yesterday, by his
National Security Advisor, Samuel Berger, and other spokesmen that the Administration remained
opposed to making a commitment now to a missile defense deployment. 2 The President’s
dramatic reversal, coupled with the House’s overwhelming affirmation of legislation similar to the
Cochran-Inouye bill, both makes possible at long last and necessitates an
honest, rigorous and
open national debate about whether the ground-based approach to national missile defense
that the Clinton team professes to support makes sense.

A Flexible, Affordable Near-term Alternative: the ‘AEGIS Option’

In fact, as a new study by a blue-ribbon Commission on Missile Defense 3 sponsored by the
Heritage Foundation confirms, far and away the fastest, most efficient and most cost-effective
way to provide wide-area missile defenses is by adapting the Navy’s existing $50+ billion
investment in the AEGIS fleet air defense system to give it anti-ballistic missile capabilities.
Among this study’s conclusions are the following:

“Defending the entire United States with ground-based defenses would require
multiple sites.

such a multi-site
system could cost an additional $25 billion and take another five to seven
years to complete, depending on how many sites were to be built.”

Specifically, the study concludes that, as “the Rumsfeld Commission pointed
out…even
short-range missiles could be launched from ships off the east and west coasts of the United
States, targeting over 145 million Americans who lived in those counties; and that the
inland
ground-based defense sites like those proposed in the Clinton Administration’s NMD plan could
offer them little protection.”

The Heritage Foundation’s Commission on Missile Defense made, among others, the
following
key recommendations about a sea-based defense:

“Remove the constraints on the Navy Theater Wide missile defense
system. The U.S.
taxpayers have invested $50 billion in the U.S. Navy’s AEGIS system; for about 5 percent
more ($2.5 billion to $3 billion), in three to four years the Navy could deploy 650 fast, capable
missile interceptors on 22 AEGIS cruisers already patrolling the oceans and seas, covering
almost 70 percent of the earth’s surface. By linking, or ‘internetting,’ space-based and other
sensors with its command-and-control system, the Navy Theater Wide (NTW) defense system
could provide an effective global defense against most long-range ballistic missiles.”

“Build a space-based sensor system as a companion to the Navy’s missile defense
system.
Space-based sensors would be needed to provide target detection and tracking data directly to
the ship-borne interceptors. These data would allow the NTW system to maximize its potential
to protect the widest possible area.”

“Expedite the sea-based system and space-based sensor systems with streamlined
management modeled after the successful Polaris program. If anti-missile protection
were
made a top national priority and enabled with streamlined management and full funding, the
first bloc of an effective NTW system should cost less than $3 billion and could begin
operation as early as 2003.”

“End the self-imposed restraints of the now defunct ABM Treaty. The
United States must
face the fact that there can be no decisive anti-missile protection for the American homeland or
for U.S. troops and allies overseas so long as the ABM Treaty continues to be observed.”

“Engage U.S. allies in building effective global missiles defense. U.S.
allies could help the
United States to achieve an effective global defense by deploying a network of defensive
sensors and interceptors around the world.”

The Bottom Line

The Nation’s security requires that the Cochran-Inouye bill and its House
counterpart be a
catalyst for more concrete action on deploying missile defenses, not a substitute for such
action — something opponents of missile defense will try to impede at every turn. As a
result, the
relevant congressional committees should immediately afford an opportunity for the
Administration’s spokesmen and for the proponents of a sea-based alternative to
implementing the new U.S. policy on defending America to address their differences
jointly, forthrightly and in public. Such a debate would go a long way towards ensuring
that
the public is afforded the sort of effective anti-missile protection that it deserves, expects and — by
and large — thinks is already in place. Let the debate begin!

1The House version of bill passed by a vote of 317-105.

2 See the Center’s Decision Briefs entitled
The Clinton-Cohen Missile Defense Initiative:
Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back? (No. 99-D
10, 20 January 1999) and Clinton’s
Opposition To Cochran-Inouye Missile Defense Bill Offers Proof Of His Abiding Hostility To
Defending America (No. 99-D 21, 10 February
1999).

3See Center’s Decision Brief entitled
National Missile Defense Act To Hit Senate Floor: Will
the Nation Be Defended, At Last?: Blue-Ribbon Heritage Commission Shows How To Do
It
(No. 99-P 32, 11 March 1999).