Will Clinton-Gore Get Away with Killing the Most Promising Near-term Missile Defense System - The AEGIS Option?

(Washington, D.C.): Published press reports indicate that the Clinton Pentagon is actively
considering seven options that would remove up to $2.5 billion over the next few years from the
Navy Theater Wide (NTW) anti-missile system, dramatically slowing the program, if not killing
it outright. ¹ A preliminary decision could emerge as early
as today as the result of a meeting
between the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization’s director, Lieutenant General
Ronald
Kadish and Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition Jacques
Gansler.

BMDO’s top official and the Under Secretary should be on notice, however: If they
opt to
cancel or otherwise prevent deployment of the NTW program at a pace that is “accelerated
to the maximum extent practicable,” they will not only be making a strategically disastrous
mistake; they will be violating the law.

What’s Going on Here?

The ostensible purpose for doing such violence to a missile defense program utilizing the
Navy’s
AEGIS air defense assets is to free-up funds for other anti-missile systems — systems judged by
the Administration to enjoy higher priority. The principal beneficiary would be the Army’s
Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD). ²

Sluicing away funds needed for development and early deployment of the NTW program is
also
seen as a way of easing somewhat the serious shortfall in the budget for the Administration’s
so-called National Missile Defense program. This NMD system is supposed to be
deployed in the
middle of the next decade at a single, fixed ground-based site in Alaska — assuming, that is, that
Mr. Clinton actually does decide in the summer of 2000 to proceed with such a step.

While it is certainly true that the Administration has not requested sufficient funding to pay
for
its myriad missile defense programs, another reason seems to be a driving factor in the effort to
kill off the AEGIS-based missile defense program: A weapon system with the inherent
military capability, flexibility of deployment, potentially expansive coverage and
remarkably low costs — thanks to the Navy’s existing infrastructure — is so obvious a way
to go that its deployment has inherent appeal for all those it could defend, namely,
forward-deployed U.S. forces, American allies and the public here at home.

The A.B.M. Black Hole

There is only one problem: A sea-based anti-missile defense of the territory of the United
States,
and some aspects of a robust naval “theater” missile defense system, as well, would be
impermissible under the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. And, since the Clinton-Gore
Administration regards that accord as still in effect and sacrosanct, neither the uniformed Navy,
its civilian counterparts nor any other Pentagon agency has to date been willing to fight for what
is needed — a procurement program designed to let the AEGIS Option be all it can be. ³

The silver lining may be that a decision by the Clinton-Gore Administration to strangle the
Navy
Theater Wide program in its crib is likely to be met by strenuous opposition from the
field of
Republican presidential candidates, each and every one of whom favors early
deployment of
missile defense. Each has, in his own way moreover, supported deploying such defenses aboard
AEGIS ships. For example, in his 18 November column in the New York Times,
William Safire
said Governor George W. Bush mentioned in an interview that he would “deploy the
AEGIS
cruiser system.” Six days earlier, Steve Forbes made a very similar commitment,
saying: “We
will also deploy state-of-the-art missile defense systems — such as the sea-based AEGIS
system — to protect our allies and ourselves.” ⁴

Speaking of allies, a number of them have lately begun denouncing Mr. Clinton’s scheme for
defending the United States from Alaska. Their criticism appears to be motivated, not
unreasonably, by a concern that such an American NMD system could leave them, but not
the
U.S., vulnerable to missile threats and attack — with deleterious implications for
deterrence,
alliance solidarity and the common defense.

The AEGIS missile defense architecture lends itself to addressing such concerns by
permitting
friendly navies to cooperate with ours in developing and deploying anti-missile capabilities
relevant to their theater of operations and ours. To its credit, the U.S. Navy is
already working,
according to Defense News, to integrate such cooperation into ongoing navy-to-navy
collaboration. ⁵ These initiatives — especially one
involving Japan, which has four of its own
AEGIS cruisers — should be assiduously promoted, not undercut by signs from
Washington that
it is not serious about cooperation in this area.

It’s the Law

If the Clinton-Gore team cannot bring itself to keep the Navy’s NTW program fully funded
and
on track for the earliest practicable deployment — whether out of concern for national need, allied
relations or even rank political self-interest, one other consideration should govern:
Congress
has just enacted, and the President signed the FY2000 defense authorization bill whose
Section 232 reads as follows:

retains funding for both of the upper tier systems in separate,
independently managed program elements

on
the performance of each system independent of the performance of the other
system;

to
the maximum extent practicable.

It would, at the very least, amount to contempt of the Congress that
just enacted this
legislation were the executive branch now to treat the two “upper tier” Theater Missile Defense
programs — NTW and THAAD — as though they have a single funding stream, as though
permitted progress on one depends upon that of the other, or on the basis that technical readiness
is not the sole determinant of the pace of deployment. General Kadish and Under Secretary
Gansler ought not, as they say, to want to “go there.”

The Bottom Line

The truth of the matter is that far from allowing the Navy Theater Wide Program to
be
canceled or derailed at this juncture, it is time to accelerate this key initiative and
maximize
its performance. To be sure, the THAAD system is an important component of our
missile
defense strategy, and its near-term deployment should clearly be moved forward. An argument
can also be made for work on an Alaskan site for one component of a national missile defense.
These actions should not, and must not, be done at the expense of the Nation’s most promising
near-term way of addressing both theater and strategic missile threats — i.e.,
from the sea.

Whether the Clinton-Gore Administration accepts this reality or not, the Republican-led
Congress — whose strong support has, for years, basically kept the executive branch from
interring the AEGIS missile defense program ⁶ — must step
into the breach again. Specifically,
legislators need to ensure that additional funds are included wherever
necessary for both
THAAD and Navy Theater. They need also to consider ways to optimize the
performance of a
sea-based defense (e.g., by incorporating a new X-band radar for target discrimination) and to
streamline its deployment by creating an organizational structure in the Navy
designed to
succeed, not to fail (i.e., with a single, competent and responsible program manager).
There is
simply no other way to bring effective anti-missile defenses to bear anywhere near as quickly,
flexibly, effectively and inexpensively. If these steps are promptly taken, with luck, there may
yet be time to finish developing and deploying that system before we need it.

¹ See “Pentagon Slashes Navy Missile Defense Program,”
Defense News, 29 November 1999.

² For more about the THAAD program and the need for its early
deployment, see the Center’s
Decision Briefs entitled THAAD’s Second Successful Intercept
Confounds the Skeptics,
Argues for Program Acceleration (No. 99-D 87, 2
August 1999) and Today’s T.H.A.A.D. Test:
Close — And the Cigar (No. 99-D 40, 29 March
1999).

³ Evidence to the contrary is being assiduously ignored. See
Definitive Study Shows Russians
Have No Veto Over Defending U.S. (No. 99-P 11,
22 January 1999).

⁴ See The Emerging G.O.P. Alternative on Missile
Defense — Exercising the ‘AEGIS
Option’ (No. 99-D 135, 18 November 1999);
Mirabile Dictu: Even the Clinton Pentagon Now
Recognizes the Necessity for the ‘Aegis Option’ to Defend America ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=99-D_95″>No. 99-D 95, 2 September
1999); and Washington Post Misrepresents ‘Aegis Option’; New Study Says
Sea-Based Missile
Defenses Could be Effective, Affordable (No. 99-D
30, 5 March 1999).

⁵ See relevant “U.S. Allies Move on Maritime TMD Partnership
Plan,” Defense News, 29
November 1999.

⁶ This is scarcely an exaggeration. As one unnamed Defense
Department official told Defense
News last week, “[After the present budget drill is over,] NTW will be given such low
funding
that it will barely be on a respirator.”