Hit or Miss Tomorrow, T.H.A.A.D. Must Go Forward

(Washington, D.C.): If all goes according to plan, the United States Army will conduct
tomorrow
morning an intercept test involving its most advanced anti-missile defense system — the
Theater
High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD). If successful, this test is expected to
clear the
way for the rapid production and fielding of a User Operational Evaluation System (UOES): an
interim deployment capability involving forty missiles and associated launchers, radar and
battle-management equipment. The UOES system contemplates fitting out two THAAD batteries
by
the year 2000.

Such a capability would enable the United States to rectify one of its most serious battlefield
shortcomings: the vulnerability of America’s forces, bases and forward-deployed equipment
overseas — and the allied territory from which they operate — to shorter-range ballistic missiles.

The question is: What will happen if the test tomorrow proves to be another
partial success,
like the previous four THAAD intercept experiments? In particular, what will be the
response
of the executive and legislative branches, the press and the public if the system fails for some
unprecedented reason to effect a hit-to-kill intercept on the target vehicle? The temptation in
some quarters — doubtless vocally encouraged by professional arms controllers determined to
prevent the deployment of any U.S. missile defenses — will be that such a test failure
should
translate into the program’s termination.

‘Damn the Torpedoes’

Instead, the answer should be: Press on.

After all, there will still be an urgent requirement to field effective
anti-missile defenses.
And, unless some systemic problem emerges that has not been evident in the vast
experimentation, simulations and actual flight tests conducted to date on THAAD, the
United
States will have no better near-term option for theater missile defense of forward-deployed,
ground-based forces than to continue to perfect this system.

As with a number of other challenging military developments — notably, the difficult job of
producing and fielding the Nation’s first intercontinental ballistic missiles on a very truncated
schedule — as long as the fundamentals are sound, the technology will pan
out. Accordingly,
there should be no diminution of the resources or priority accorded to finding and fixing any
remaining problems with this weapon system.

The Bottom Line

More to the point, as Dr. Angelo Codevilla makes clear in an op-ed published in today’s
Washington Times, in the face of burgeoning proliferation of shorter- and,
increasingly, of longer-range ballistic missiles, the Nation simply cannot afford to
continue to invest billions of
dollars in missile defenses and never field anything. Neither the taxpayers’ nor the
national
security interest will be served should an effective Theater High Altitude Area Defense fail to be
made operational at the earliest possible time, no matter what happens with the next test flight.

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