Try, Try Again: In Light of Threat, the Appropriate Response to Missile Defense Test Failure is a Redoubled Effort

(Washington, D.C.): With the as-yet-unexplained failure of the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) to intercept a mock warhead during its second flight test last night, it is predictable that opponents of missile defenses will argue for significant delay, if not outright cancellation, of this program. The right response is exactly the opposite: Press on. Given the urgent need for the Nation to protect its people against emerging ballistic missile threats, those responsible for building missile defenses should be given additional resources and programmatic latitude to test and otherwise ready them for deployment as soon as technologically possible.

After all, a successful development program is intended to wring out technical difficulties. If political or other considerations effectively rule out setbacks, program managers are unlikely to take the risks associated with incorporating needed — but unproven — technology and/or to perform the sorts of realistic tests required to validate it. The United States might still not have intercontinental ballistic missiles and reliable space launchers today if it had responded to the succession of early flight test failures in those programs by terminating, instead of redoubling, the effort.

The need for a similar, redoubled initiative to bring effective anti-missile systems on-line should be, if anything, given greater national priority. Even the Clinton-Gore Administration professes to perceive a real danger of ballistic missile threats from rogue states like North Korea and Iran now aggressively acquiring long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction. And its National Missile Defense (NMD) program plays an important role as a technology feeder for other missile defense programs. The performance of critical subsystems and other lessons learned during its tests — even those that prove to be less than fully successful — contribute significantly to the maturing of urgently systems that can defend against short-, medium- and long-range missiles.

Intensify the Development of Missile Defenses, Deploy Them First at Sea

While last night’s failure does not argue for slowing down, let alone canceling, the development of the EKV and other necessary components of a National Missile Defense system, it does suggest that missile defense capabilities beyond those contemplated by the Clinton Administration will be required. Rather than rely upon a “silver bullet” NMD program — whose numbers of interceptors, siting and other characteristics are artificially constrained in the hope that such a limited deployment will meet with the approval of the Russians (and/or the Chinese) — the United States requires a more robust, more flexible and more comprehensive defensive capability than the Administration envisions.

For this reason, Republican presidential candidates George W. Bush, John McCain and Steve Forbes have endorsed the idea of utilizing Navy AEGIS fleet air defense assets as platforms for an early, sea-based anti-missile system. According to a blue-ribbon commission sponsored last year by the Heritage Foundation, 650 missiles (versus the 20-100 contemplated by the Clinton plan) could be deployed far faster (i.e., in five years’ time, versus the 11 years now envisioned for an Alaska-based system) and at a fraction of the cost (i.e., $2-3 billion versus what is conservatively estimated to be $12.5 billion for the baseline ground-based program).¹ If properly configured, such a system could begin to provide a defense for U.S. forces and allies overseas, as well as for the American people here at home (unlike the artificially constrained system planned for Alaska, which will be able to protect only the United States’ homeland, and not all of it at that, and certainly not against much of threat).

Ultimately, if the ballistic missile threat continues to grow, the Nation will likely require space-based sensors and defenses, as well. Under no circumstances should the Clinton-Gore Administration make it still more difficult to deploy effective anti-missile systems at sea and in space through arms control negotiations with the Russians.²

The Bottom Line

The test of leadership — and of our leaders’ commitment to safeguard their people — will lie in their determination to stay the course on developing and deploying effective missile defenses as soon as technologically possible. That is the statutory requirement signed into law by President Clinton last August. It is also what the national security dictates. As President Kennedy said in connection with an earlier, seemingly insurmountable technical challenge: “We do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard.” Today, we must do whatever is needed to field competent anti-missile systems not simply because it is hard, but because our future safety at home and our interests overseas demand it.

¹See The Heritage Foundation’s study entitled Defending America. This study can be accessed via the world wide web at (www.heritage.org/missile_defense/).

²See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled Beware the ‘Grand Compromise’: Arms Control Deal Threatens Effective U.S. Missile Defenses, Nuclear Deterrence (No. 00-D 06, 17 January 2000).