Mirabile Dictu: The Washington Post Acknowledges The ‘AEGIS Option’s’ Promise for Missile Defense
(Washington, D.C.): For the first time, the Washington Post gave front-page
treatment to an
article concerning the most promising option for providing near-term, effective and affordable
missile defense — the AEGIS Option.(1)
Under the headline “Navy Will Get a Shot at Missile
Defense,” the Post reported that: “A high-level Pentagon panel that
authorizes major defense
acquisition programs is due soon to approve the Navy’s concept for turning its fleet of
AEGIS cruisers and destroyers into mobile platforms for launching high-altitude
interceptors, a legacy of President Ronald Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ dream.”
The article describes what has commended the AEGIS Option to defense-minded analysts,
technologists and military planners for years:
- “The Navy’s concept rests on making the most of what the Navy already has lots of:
ships equipped with an integrated network of radars and weapon controls known as the
AEGIS combat system. Instead of trying to build an anti-missile weapon from scratch,
as the Army has attempted with its ill-fated Theater High-Altitude Area Defense
(THAAD), the Navy wants to capitalize on its $57 billion, 65-ship investment in
AEGIS gadgetry now used to track aircraft and vessels.”
Toward What End?
The Post article notes that, “The Navy is close to fielding a short-range
anti-missile system for
‘area’ defense, which would provide localized coverage of ports and coastal facilities from
distances up to about 120 miles.” It goes on to report (in a skeptical tone evident throughout the
article that seems to reflect both the antipathy the Clinton Administration has historically shown
for the AEGIS Option and the Post‘s traditional hostility to missile defense):
- “But those interceptors lack the precision and speed required of the Theater
Wide
system, which promises a range four- or five-times greater. The more advanced system
will involve adding a third stage to the booster rocket, inventing a front-end ‘kill
vehicle’ with infrared thermal sensors to serve as the interceptor’s eyes and writing
complicated computer software code to integrate all the parts.”
The question really is not whether the Navy Theater Wide (formerly known as Upper
Tier)
system will work. Ambassador Henry Cooper, President Bush’s Director of the Strategic Defense
Initiative Organization, has observed that when he left that post in January 1993, there was a fully
funded program for developing and deploying missile defenses at sea, including a plan for
adapting a proven Lightweight Exo-Atmospheric Projectile (LEAP) interceptor. Had
the Clinton
Administration executed its predecessors program, the Navy system would have been fielded by
now.
Rather the question is: Will the Clinton Pentagon permit these developmental efforts
to be
undertaken as rapidly as possible — and with a view to fielding defenses against not
only so-called “theater” ballistic missiles but longer-range (or “strategic”) ones, as well?
The Prognosis
Left to its own devices, the Administration is unlikely to do the former —
as evidenced by the
Post article’s anonymous, deprecating quotes about the AEGIS Option (e.g., “‘The
program has
been long on view graphs and short on engineering work,’ said one senior defense official
involved in supervising the Pentagon’s anti-missile efforts” and “Defense officials are mindful that
the history of missile defense is littered with projects that looked great on paper but failed to
perform”). Under congressional cross-examination, top Pentagon leaders have admitted that the
Navy Theater Wide development effort is the only funding-limited anti-missile
program. Imagine
how much less ready this option would be had legislators like the incoming Speaker of
the
House, Rep. Bob Livingston (R-LA) and Senate
Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted
Stevens (R-AK) not added $628 million out of the $1.1 billion spent on this initiative
since 1995!
Even more reprehensible is the Administration’s insistence that the Navy Theater
Wide
system be deliberately dumbed-down so as to make it less effective than it could be against
intercontinental-range ballistic missiles launched at the United States. At least the
Washington Post leaves its readers under no illusion why this is being done:
- “Using interceptors aboard ships to guard U.S. skies…would violate the 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty signed with the Soviet Union and in force with
Russia. In some measure, the strong Republican backing for the Navy’s project reflects
support within the GOP for scrapping the treaty as a Cold War relic. But the Clinton
administration intends to limit the Navy system to battlefield defense and argues
for preserving the ABM accord to keep Russia from reneging on commitments to
reduce its nuclear arsenal.” (Emphasis added.)
If this policy is allowed to stand, the skipper of an AEGIS ship in the Sea of Japan
could be
put in the odious, not to say absurd, position of being able to shoot down a North Korean missile
launched at a city in Japan but not one aimed at an American population
center.
The Bottom Line
The grudging recognition by the Washington Post and the Clinton Administration
that the Nation
has in prospect an eminently sensible, near-term and affordable means of defending against missile
attack may mark an important milestone in the debate about the need for and feasibility of
anti-missile defenses, a debate begun fifteen years ago by President Reagan. The time has come
for a
new Manhattan Project — one no less urgently required than that of World
War II. The Navy
should be charged with bringing its assets deployed today on the world’s oceans to bear as soon
as technologically possible against ballistic missile threats to America’s forces and allies overseas
and to its people here at home.
Such a project should be conceived of as complementary to — not a replacement for — the
ground-based THAAD program. Once an optimized AEGIS Option is deployed, further
decisions can be taken concerning whatever additional defenses (whether land-, air- or
space-based) the Nation may require for protection of its people and territory.
– 30 –
1. For more on this concept, see the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled Wanted: An End To The
‘Hollow’ Military — And A ‘Feasible,’ ‘Practical’ Missile Defense (
September 1998); and a Heritage Foundation blue-ribbon study which can be accessed via the
World Wide Web at the following address:
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