Showdown On SDI: Senate To Debate The Ultimate ‘Killer Amendment’

Introduction

The United States Senate will shortly consider the FY1991 defense authorization bill, S. 2884, reported out of the Senate Armed Services Committee on 20 July 1990. The debate on this legislation promises to be among the most contentious in recent memory as floor amendments are offered to challenge — or augment — the Committee’s recommendations for programatic terminations, slowdowns and personnel cuts.

One such amendment will be offered by Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Richard Shelby (D-AL). It proposes to restructure fundamentally the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) with a view to preventing the executive branch from acquiring an option to deploy a layered, effective defensive system in the near-term. Specifically, it would reduce funding for Brilliant Pebbles, the highly promising and relatively inexpensive space-based interceptors currently envisioned by the Bush Administration as a key component of a deployable SDI system.

Instead, Senators Bingaman and Shelby wish to emphasize two other areas of defensive research: long-term, directed energy weapon systems (particularly those involving such exotic technologies as free electron and chemical lasers — devices in which national laboratories in New Mexico play a leading role) and ground-based kinetic-kill weapons (systems for which the Army’s Strategic Defense Command in Huntsville, Alabama has primary responsibility).

When combined with the draconian reductions in SDI’s top line (reduced by the Committee from the requested level of $4.7 billion to S3.7 billion), such restrictions would have the effect of precluding validation of Brilliant Pebbles. In so doing, the authors of the Bingaman-Shelby amendment would thwart President Bush’s policy direction to the Department of Defense to provide by 1992 the necessary technical base for a presidential decision on deployment of an effective SDI system.

A Cynical Marriage of Convenience

Even as Congress has systematically reduced the Pentagon’s funding, a number of legislators have reacted by trying to protect certain affected constituent interests. Senators Bingaman and Shelby have shown that SDI is no exception; their amendment would protect elements of the program in New Mexico and Alabama which would suffer if obliged to absorb proportionate shares of an across-the-board cut.

Two other impulses appear to be at work as well, however:

The Bingaman Agenda

 

For his part, Sen. Bingaman is among those in the Senate — a group that evidently now includes Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn — who have little (if any) interest in actually deploying a meaningful, nationwide defense against ballistic missile attack. A powerful impetus for their antipathy to SDI lies with arms control theology; the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which bans such a territorial defense, is simply regarded as holy writ. Its devotees believe that the Treaty must be observed by the United States in perpetuity even though it has been violated by the USSR and its central concept — mutual U.S. and Soviet vulnerability — is being rendered obsolete as the number of countries possessing ballistic missiles soars.

This purpose would, of course, be well served by an amendment like Senator Bingaman’s which would effectively gut near-term technologies that are inherently inconsistent with the ABM Treaty, such as the space-based Brilliant Pebbles.

A number of Democratic legislators, again notably Sen. Nunn, have nonetheless seemed a bit uncomfortable with being cast as opponents of any strategic defense whatsoever. While such that condition reflects the logic of the ABM Treaty — and was the Treaty’s consequence for the United States — its endorsement remains somewhat problematic politically in most of the country. This is likely to become increasingly the case as more and more Americans become seized with this country’s utter vulnerability to nuclear attack from hostile Third World nations newly equipped with ballistic missiles, not to mention an ever more unstable Soviet Union equipped with thousands of thermonuclear weapons.

The Shelby Gambit

 

Enter Senator Shelby. The Bingaman-Shelby amendment hedges against the charge that its sponsors want nothing more than to fritter away finite SDI resources on endless research and development — a sort of high-priced "hobby shop," designed to employ constituents but not to produce anything that might inconveniently prove to be deployable. It does so by increasing and fencing funds associated with ground-based kinetic-kill systems which could be deployed in a manner compatible with the ABM Treaty (i.e., 100 interceptors based at one location in the United States).

Unfortunately, ground-based systems alone simply cannot achieve the leverage needed to provide an effective strategic defense. While such systems may have some utility against accidental or unauthorized launches or very limited attacks, provided they are properly conceived and situated, and are certainly desirable as an underlay for a space-based defensive component, they have certain unavoidable limitations.

In contrast to space-based weapons like Brilliant Pebbles — which, thanks to their ability to attack ballistic missiles early in flight trajectory and, thereby, to destroy multiple warheads with a single interceptor, have the potential to be more cost-effective than offensive forces — stand-alone, ground-based defenses can only attack incoming warheads after they have been dispersed from the launching missile and in their final stage of flight. Without a layer of Brilliant Pebbles as envisioned by the Bush Administration’s SDI program, it would be a relatively trivial task for an attacker to overwhelm such ground-based kinetic kill defensive systems (particularly treaty-limited ones) by increasing the number of warheads employed in his assault.

In the past, this shortcoming of traditional territorial defenses proved fatal to U.S. efforts to deploy them. Not surprisingly, those who favor early deployment of an effective SDI system suspect that the Shelby approach (like the so-called Accidental Launch Protection System (ALPS) proposed several years ago by Sen. Nunn) is actually a subterfuge, designed to provide political cover and (in some cases) constituent jobs — not meaningful strategic defenses.

Conclusion and Recommendation

The Center for Security Policy believes that the reductions in funding for the Strategic Defense Initiative recommended by the Senate Armed Services Committee are unwarranted and ill-advised. The Center judges that — despite such reductions — a vigorous development effort could nonetheless be mounted leading to an early deployment option for effective defenses provided the Defense Department has the latitude to use resources efficiently.

The micromanaging of the SDI program contemplated by the Bingaman-Shelby amendment is calculated to deny the Pentagon such latitude, however. When combined with the deleterious effects of congressionally imposed budget cuts, the impact of this amendment will be even more insidious.

In fact, if enacted, the Bingaman-Shelby amendment can reliably be expected to produce the following:

• wholly inadequate funding for Brilliant Pebbles — thereby preventing the earliest possible realization and deployment of a robust U.S. defensive system;

 

• pursuit instead of a technical, strategic and, ultimately, political dead end — a single layered, ABM Treaty-limited ground-based interceptor program; and

 

• unwarranted spending on interesting but long-term and lower priority technologies — amounting to a make-work program for certain national laboratories.

The Center believes that the Bingaman-Shelby amendment and other efforts designed to deny the nation and President Bush the opportunity he has called for -namely to make a decision on deployment of an effective SDI system by 1992 — dictate a veto of any legislation to which they are attached. It calls upon the Bush Administration to convey that message to the Senate at once and urges members of that body to defeat such pernicious initiatives.