READ WILLIAM PERRY’S LIPS: NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE IS DEFINITELY ‘NECESSARY’

(Washington, D.C.): In an interview published in today’s Washington
Times, Secretary of Defense William Perry complained about
the title attached to a news article published recently by the
newspaper: “Perry finds missile defense unnecessary.”
Perry said, “I would change that to say ‘Perry finds
missile defense necessary.’”

This clarification is particularly helpful as the House of
Representatives prepares to debate H.R. 3144, the
“Defend America Act of 1996.”
After all, many Democrats (and perhaps even a few Republicans)
are under the illusion that the United States has no need for
ballistic missile defenses.

‘What, Me Worry?’

To be sure, Secretary Perry went on to opine that “the
threat [of ballistic missile attack against the United States]
does not exist today” and, therefore, that there is no need
to decide now to deploy an effective anti-missile
system. He proposes, instead, to continue developing for the next
three years a very limited ground-based missile defense utilizing
a small number of modified Minuteman intercontinental ballistic
missiles. The Secretary claims that this system will be available
three years after making a deployment decision — ample time if
U.S. intelligence estimates are correct that the ballistic
missile threat to this country is ten-to-fifteen years away.

Interestingly, the next topic in the Times’
interview prompted Secretary Perry to confirm that China is
soliciting SS-18 technology from Russia and Ukraine. As
the Defense Intelligence Agency noted in a recent, secret report
warning about these transactions, the SS-18 is Russia’s
“most lethal” ICBM. According to an article published
“above the fold” in yesterday’s Washington Times,
the DIA study concluded that: “Incorporating
SS-18-related military guidance or warhead technologies into
China’s strategic missile forces would greatly improve Beijing’s
ability to threaten targets in the United States.”

While the Secretary declared that the Administration has
“vigorously opposed such transfers,” it is far from
clear whether its demarches will prevent them — any
more than previous diplomatic protests have halted the sale of
Russian and Chinese nuclear weapons- related technology to
dangerous third countries like Iran. The prospects are made even
less clear given the blurred “line in the sand” drawn
by Mr. Perry in his interview:

“There is the related question as to whether SS-18
boosters could be used commercially to boost space vehicles
into orbit, and there I guess our answer would be
‘only if its very tightly controlled,’ so you can have great
confidence this technology is not being diverted to some
other application….”

The truth of the matter is that there is no way to
ensure that SS-18 technology — or that of other advanced
ballistic missile systems — is “not being diverted to some
other application.” Worse yet, an amendment to the
START I Treaty negotiated by the Clinton Administration without
Senate advice and consent actually legitimates these sorts
of transfers by Russia and Ukraine under the guise of “space
launch vehicles.”

In short, Secretary of Defense Perry has not only made
the case for deploying national missile defenses. He has
inadvertently undercut his own argument that there is no need to
do so anytime soon. If anything, China’s success in
acquiring, selling and wielding ballistic missile systems — with
the Clinton Administration all the while determinedly pursuing a
“don’t-defend-America-until-we-see-the-whites-of-their-eyes”
policy — is likely to inspire malevolent behavior in others. If
the United States is lucky, it might just be able to get a
missile defense in place before it needs one but only if it
gets started on deployment right away.

The CBO — The Anti-Defense Crowd’s ‘Old Faithful’

Perhaps sensing that the momentum for effective national
missile defenses is becoming irresistible, the opponents have
turned to a reliable ally in assailing national security programs
— the Congressional Budget Office. Although under new
management, the timing and content of a just-released assessment
of the budgetary impact of the Defend America Act suggests that
the CBO’s institutional biases have not changed.

According to a report in Defense Week, this
assessment concludes: “Through 2010, total acquisition costs
would range from $31 billion to $60 billion for a layered defense
that would include both ground- and space-based weapons.”
Secretary Perry is unlikely to complain about the headline of
this article — “CBO: ‘Defend America Act’ Could Cost Up to
$60 Billion.” It is predictable that many who do not know
better will be alarmed at the prospect that protecting the
American people against missile attack will entail huge costs.

Fortunately, it ain’t necessarily so. A newly released report size=”-1″>⁽¹⁾ by
the Heritage Foundation’s blue-ribbon Missile Defense Study Team
(“Team B”) establishes that effective near-term
defenses can be acquired for vastly smaller sums. Specifically, an
early, global anti-missile capability can be put into place for
as little as $2-3 billion spent over the next five years,
thanks to an investment of nearly $50 billion already made in the
U.S. Navy’s AEGIS fleet air defense system. This sum would allow
the first of 22 cruisers and 650 modified interceptor missiles to
come on line in just three years. It is simply
untenable to claim that robust protection against the sorts of
small-size ballistic missile attacks likely to confront the
United States in the near-term is unaffordable.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy urges the Congress to operate
on the premise that Secretary of Defense Perry is correct in his
judgment that the United States must deploy a ballistic missile
defense. It behooves legislators, however, to exercise their own
judgment with respect to the prudence of Secretary Perry’s
recommendation that the deployment decision be postponed for
years into the future. Should they do so, the Center is confident
that the majority will determine that there is no time to waste
in putting effective missile defenses in place — the object and
purpose of the Defend America Act.

1. The report is entitled Defending
America: Ending America’s Vulnerability to Ballistic Missiles.