Unhappy Birthday: 15th Anniversary of Reagan SDI Speech Sees U.S. Still Undefended, Warnings of 'Haste' in Fielding Defenses

(Washington, D.C.): There is something absurd about a new report prepared by a panel
chaired
by former Air Force Chief of Staff General Larry Welch. This 76-page study lambastes the
United States government for acting recklessly, in the words of the Washington Post
— to whom
this report was leaked — “to hasten inauguration of the [anti-missile] defensive systems” that were
“inspired by President Ronald Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ proposal.”

Haste is not exactly the word that springs to mind to characterize U.S. missile
defense
programs that have been under development for fifteen years, cost upwards of $40 billion
and have yet to be allowed to field even a single device capable to shooting down long-range
ballistic missiles. In fact, the American people are today every bit as vulnerable to even
accidental or unauthorized ballistic missile attack as they were on 23 March 1983, when President
Reagan called for Mutual Assured Destruction to be replaced by Assured Survivability.

Nonetheless, according to the Post, the Welch panel:

The vulnerability the Welch panel would further extend is not a function of the United
States lacking competent engineers and technicians to produce effective missile defenses. Neither
is it the case that the $40 billion and decade-and-a-half devoted thus far to research and
development of such defenses have been insufficient to produce a competent, global anti-missile
system.

The Problem

Rather, the problem lies with the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. This
accord, signed with
the Soviet Union — a nation, it bears repeating, that no longer exists —
explicitly denies anti-missile protection to the American people. As a practical matter,
implementation of such a
prohibition by the United States has impinged upon nearly every aspect of the design, testing and
preparation for deployment of defenses against long-range ballistic missiles.

In fact, as long as the United States permits its anti-missile programs to be constrained by the
ABM Treaty, the Nation could easily spend two-or-three times the amount it has sunk in
Research and Development on missile defenses and take another fifteen years — and still
have no
effective defenses fielded. If adopted, the recommendations of Gen. Welch and his
colleagues
further to slow-down the pace of work on a variety of defenses against shorter-range (that is,
“theater”) and longer-range (i.e., “strategic) missiles would be a start down that road.

The Stakes

If the next fifteen years turn out to be like the last fifteen, perhaps it will not matter that the
United States remains absolutely vulnerable to even a single nuclear, chemical or biological
weapon-equipped missile, while research into corrective measures plods ponderously and
inconclusively along.

Few knowledgeable observers would agree, however, that a world increasingly awash with
weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile-related technology is likely to prove as benign
for vital U.S. interests as has been true of the previous decade-and-a-half.

In fact, we are surely living on borrowed time. It is nothing short of
miraculous that someone
has not succeeded before now in exploiting the posture of “assured vulnerability” that the United
States embraced in the aftermath of the 1972 ABM Treaty. While some believe that it made sense
at that point not only to leave the American people unprotected against missiles but also against
air-delivered attack or the effects of chemical, biological and/or radiological weapons, further
perpetuating this state of affairs simply invites calamity.

What Needs to be Done Now

This is, in short, no time to be slowing the pace of fielding the best missile defenses
so as to
ensure they become available at the earliest possible time. Today, this would include the
adaptation of the Navy’s AEGIS system, so as to give it the capability to
intercept not only
aircraft and cruise missiles but ballistic missiles, as well.

A blue-ribbon commission sponsored by the Heritage Foundation href=”#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾ recognized something that
may have eluded Gen. Welch’s team: This approach to defending against shorter- and
longer-range ballistic missiles would benefit hugely from the fact that virtually all of the necessary
infrastructure for a global, robust missile defense has already been bought and paid for — and is
operating right now worldwide. Best of all, thanks to the fact that we are dealing with known
systems with established performance and resource track records (important ingredients in
reducing programmatic risk), the Heritage team concluded such an option for near-term missile
defense could begin to be deployed as soon as three years from now, for as little as $2-3 billion in
additional expenditures. The only problem is that the ABM Treaty prohibits sea-based defenses
(and all other highly effective anti-missile systems).

Even the Clinton Administration — in the person of the newly minted Under
Secretary of
Defense for Acquisition, Dr. Jacques Gansler — has indicated that it is now a matter of
when,
not whether, the United States will deploy national missile defenses. Unless we act promptly, and
begin doing what can be done most quickly (namely, modifying existing missile defense systems),
however, it seems ever more probable that we will field such defenses after the
destruction of
some major American or allied population center. No critic of President Clinton’s repudiation and
sabotaging of initiatives aimed at producing the needed missile defenses relishes the prospect of
such costly vindication.

Neither is there a moment to lose in repudiating the wildly exaggerated — and unilaterally held
—
view of the “spirit” of the ABM Treaty. Just as the United States can no longer indulge in the
notion that its security depends upon continued defenselessness against missile attack, so too must
it abandon its quasi-official/quasi-subconscious posture of assured vulnerability toward other
threats. Concrete steps must be taken at once to re-establish a civil defense program in this
country geared toward massively upgrading the Nation’s capacity to detect, treat and otherwise
counteract the horrifying effects of chemical, biological and radiological weapons that might be
delivered to our shores by means other than ballistic missiles.

The Bottom Line

General Welch and his colleagues will have rendered a valuable service if their report helps to
accelerate, not to retard, the deployment of valuable missile defense options. If not,
their
recommendations will provide technical cover to those who adhere to a theological commitment
to assured U.S. vulnerability. Under those circumstances, when — not if — someone takes
advantage of such a posture at the expense of perhaps many thousands of Americans’ lives, the
Welch panel will bear no small share of the responsibility for the ghastly consequences.

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1. The Heritage Foundation’s blue-ribbon study can be accessed via the World Wide Web at
the following address: www.nationalsecurity.or
g/heritage/nationalsecurity/teamb. Please note
that if
you “click” on this site, you will leave the Center for Security Policy’s
site.