May 4, 1999
Ballistic Missile Defense Technology: Is the United States Ready for A
Decision to Deploy?
Biden, Hon. Joseph R., Jr., U.S. Senator from Delaware, prepared
statement...................................................... 92
Garwin, Dr. Richard L., Philip D. Reed senior fellow for science
and technology, Council on Foreign Relations................... 74
Prepared statement of........................................ 78
Graham, Dr. William R., former Director of the White House Office
of Science and Technology Policy............................... 63
Prepared statement of........................................ 66
Helms, Hon. Jesse, U.S. Senator from North Carolina, prepared
statement...................................................... 60
Piotrowski, Gen. John, former Commander in Chief, Space Command,
Colorado Springs, CO........................................... 73
Shelby, Hon. Richard C., U.S. Senator from Alabama............... 61
Prepared statement of........................................ 62
Wright, Dr. David C., research fellow, Security Studies Program,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA........... 81
Prepared statement of........................................ 85
S. Hrg. 106-339
BALLISTIC MISSILES: THREAT AND RESPONSE
=======================================================================
HEARINGS
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
APRIL 15 AND 20, MAY 4, 5, 13, 25, 26, AND SEPTEMBER 16, 1999
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations
<snowflake>
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
56-777 CC WASHINGTON : 2000
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
JESSE HELMS, North Carolina, Chairman
RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware
PAUL COVERDELL, Georgia PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland
CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut
GORDON H. SMITH, Oregon JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts
ROD GRAMS, Minnesota RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas PAUL D. WELLSTONE, Minnesota
CRAIG THOMAS, Wyoming BARBARA BOXER, California
JOHN ASHCROFT, Missouri ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey
BILL FRIST, Tennessee
Stephen E. Biegun, Staff Director
Edwin K. Hall, Minority Staff Director
(ii)
BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY: IS THE UNITED STATES READY FOR A
DECISION TO DEPLOY?
----------
TUESDAY, MAY 4, 1999
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room
SD-562, Dirksen Senate Office Building, the Hon. Jesse Helms
(chairman of the committee) presiding.
Present: Senators Helms, Biden and Lugar.
The Chairman. Today's hearing is the third hearing in the
Foreign Relations Committee's series on the 1972 Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty. Today the committee will move from an
examination of the missile threat to a discussion of the
technological feasibility of missile defense.
We are privileged to have with us today to open this
hearing the very distinguished chairman of the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence, Senator Richard Shelby.
As chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Shelby
knows the urgency of the missile threat better than anyone
else, certainly anyone else in the Senate. As the senior
Senator from Alabama, home of the Ballistic Missile Defense
Organization of the Department of Defense, he knows the
programmatic aspects of national missile defense inside and
out, and if you want to find out how much he knows, engage him
in a conversation. I do that occasionally, and I learn more
from Richard Shelby than anybody in this general field.
Following Chairman Shelby, we will hear from several other
distinguished experts: Dr. Bill Graham, former Director of the
White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and
General John Piotrowski, former Commander in Chief of Space
Command. If I have mispronounced your name, I am sorry. We also
welcome Dr. Richard L. Garwin, a fellow at the Council on
Foreign Relations, and Dr. David Wright, a fellow at MIT.
As I noted, this hearing is devoted to an examination of
the technological feasibility of national missile defense, and
I am convinced that after years of investment in the SDI
Program, a national missile defense is eminently doable. The
United States has proven that missiles can be intercepted with
other missiles, but the task now is to do it consistently and
reliably. The task is also to make certain that we can
consistently strike incoming reentry vehicles even as other
countries take countermeasures to penetrate our defenses.
The technological path our NMD program is taking, since it
was first initiated by Dr. Graham under SDI, is the natural
course for all technological developments. Consider, for
example, the effort to break the sound barrier, and so forth
and so on.
In the interest of time, I am going to ask unanimous
consent, and I think I will get it, that the balance of my
statement be made a part of the record. Senator Shelby, we
welcome you and appreciate you coming.
[The prepared statement of Senator Helms follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Jesse Helms
Today's hearing is the third hearing in the Foreign Relations
Committee's series on the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty. Today the
committee will move from an examination of the missile threat to a
discussion of the technological feasibility of missile defense.
We are privileged to have with us today, to open this hearing, the
very distinguished chairman of the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence, Senator Shelby. As chairman of the Intelligence
Committee, Senator Shelby knows the urgency of the missile threat
better than anyone else. And as the senior Senator from Alabama--home
of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization of the Department of
Defense (BMDO)--he knows the programmatic aspects of national missile
defense inside and out.
Following Chairman Shelby, we will hear from several other
distinguished experts: Dr. Bill Graham, former Director of the White
House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and General John
Piotrowski, former Commander in Chief of Space Command. We also welcome
Dr. Richard L. Garwin, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations,
and Dr. David Wright, a fellow at MIT.
As I noted, this hearing is devoted to an examination of the
technological feasibility of national missile defense. I am convinced
that, after years of investment in the SDI program, a national missile
defense is eminently ``doable;'' in fact, the United States has proven
that missiles can be intercepted with other missiles. But the task now
is to do it consistently and reliably. And the task is to make certain
that we can consistently strike incoming reentry vehicles (RV's) even
as other countries take counter-measures to penetrate our defenses.
The technological path our NMD program is taking, since first
initiated by Dr. Graham under SDI, is the natural course for all
technological developments. Consider, for example, the effort to break
the sound barrier. Even as of the late 1940's, many scientists thought
this technically impossible. Yet we ultimately succeeded despite the
dangers, and failures, and--in this case--the tragic loss of life. Now
the sound barrier is broken routinely, day in and day out, by passenger
airplanes flying the Atlantic.
No doubt, we may hear today from scientists who don't think that a
national missile defense can be done successfully. But as we consider
these matters, I hope that the American people will recognize that the
fact that the U.S. is defenseless today has nothing to do with
technological issues. Instead, it has everything to do with political
willpower and adherence to a ludicrous arms control treaty.
The NMD program has had notable successes despite dramatic funding
cuts by the Clinton administration. Successes also have occurred in
theater missile defense programs which demonstrate the feasibility of
the same basic principles over 130 launches from 1960-1972.
So I must conclude that some who oppose NMD would have concluded at
the turn of the century that, given the early failures of Samuel
Langley and the Wright brothers, efforts to build an airplane should be
shelved.
Now, before we turn to our first witness, I want to address the
matter of ``countermeasures.'' Some have begun putting forward the
argument that any NMD built can be defeated easily by countermeasures.
I must caution, however, that countermeasures are not a reality simply
because someone draws a picture of one.
I am confident that a good many scientists can draw equally as
compelling pictures of things to counter the counter-measures. But we
need not get into an ``art contest'' at this hearing. I hope we can
confine our discussion to the realm of the possible and not allow
flights of fancy to lead us to predict either that missile defenses can
do nothing to protect our country, or that they will be perfect in
affording such protection.
STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD C. SHELBY, U.S. SENATOR FROM ALABAMA
Senator Shelby. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman. I
ask that my complete statement be made part of the record in
its entirety.
The Chairman. Without objection.
Senator Shelby. Mr. Chairman, it is a pleasure to appear
before the Committee on Foreign Relations as you continue your
series of hearings on missile defense. I believe that this
Nation needs a national missile defense system, and Mr.
Chairman, we need it now. The threat is real and can no longer
be ignored.
As this Nation formulates a national security strategy for
the uncertainty of the post-cold war world, one key assumption
which must be considered is that our future adversaries will
plan to attack the United States where we are most vulnerable.
Today the United States stands vulnerable to a ballistic
missile attack. Until recently, this fact was downplayed by
this administration.
There was a presumption, and perhaps a hope, that no real
threat existed. As recently as 1995, intelligence estimates
were predicting that no credible ballistic missile threat from
other than the major declared nuclear powers would likely
appear before the year 2010.
However, last year the bipartisan Ballistic Missile Threat
Commission, lead by former Secretary of Defense, Donald
Rumsfeld, reached a very different conclusion. The commission
concluded that long-range missile threats to the United States
might materialize much earlier than had been predicted. The
report stated that within 5 years of a decision to do so, North
Korea and Iran might be able to deploy missiles of sufficient
range to strike parts of the continental United States, and
that Iraq may be able to do so within 10 years.
The Rumsfeld Commission also determined that countries may
be able to conceal ballistic missile development programs from
our intelligence assets until shortly before deployment. This
concealment will give the United States little or no warning of
an imminent threat, Mr. Chairman.
The events of the past year appear to validate the findings
of the Rumsfeld Commission and reinforce my belief that the
threat is real. This past July, Mr. Chairman, Iran launched a
900-mile range missile capable of striking Israel.
In August, North Korea fired a three-stage ballistic
missile over Japan that was estimated to have a maximum range
of 3,700 miles. If perfected, this missile could reach Hawaii
and Alaska, and just 10 days ago India and Pakistan each tested
intermediate-range ballistic missiles with ranges of over 1,200
miles.
Additionally, Communist China has developed a force of
ballistic missiles capable of striking the continental United
States, and as we are learning, China has been persistent in
its efforts to acquire advanced missile technology.
Mr. Chairman, how do we counter this threat? I recommend
two courses of action. The first was completed when the Senate
passed the National Missile Defense Act of 1999. This historic
yet simple piece of legislation, along with a similar measure
passed in the House, will make it the policy of the United
States to deploy as soon as it is technologically possible an
effective national missile defense system capable of defending
the territory of the United States against limited ballistic
missile attack.
The second course of action, Mr. Chairman, is to continue
our efforts to develop such a system. I support, as does a
recent report by the Kado Institute, the deployment of a
limited ground-based national missile system. If we continue
our investment in advanced technologies, an effective ground-
based system will soon be a reality.
Mr. Chairman, some opponents of the national missile
defense have argued that treaties and superior intelligence
gathering will protect this Nation from a future ballistic
missile attack. I do not agree.
A treaty must add to a nation's security, not limit it, and
as chairman of the Committee on Intelligence I can assure you
that although our intelligence gathering is very good, it is
not perfect by any means. I believe that the security of the
American people should not depend solely on our ability to
negotiate treaties or to conduct reconnaissance. We must have
the ability, I believe, Mr. Chairman, to defend ourselves from
the growing threat. The deployment of a limited ground-based
national missile defense system would provide that ability.
Mr. Chairman, I appreciate what you are doing, and I
appreciate your time and your courtesy here today. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Senator Shelby follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Richard Shelby
Good morning Mr. Chairman, Senator Biden and members of the
committee. It is a pleasure to appear before the Committee on Foreign
Relations as you continue your series of hearings on missile defense. I
believe that this Nation needs a national missile defense system and we
need it now. The threat is real and can no longer be ignored.
As this Nation formulates a national security strategy for the
uncertainty of the post-Cold War world, one key assumption which must
be considered is that our future adversaries will plan to attack the
United States where we are most vulnerable. Today, the United States
stands vulnerable to a ballistic missile attack. Until recently, this
fact was downplayed by the Administration. There was a presumption and
a hope that no real threat existed. As recently as 1995, intelligence
estimates were predicting that no credible ballistic missile threat,
from other than the major declared nuclear powers, would likely appear
before the year 2010. However, last year the bipartisan Ballistic
Missile Threat Commission, led by former Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld, reached a different conclusion. The commission concluded that
long-range missile threats to the United States might materialize much
earlier than had been predicted. The report stated that within five
years of a decision to do so, North Korea and Iran might be able to
deploy missiles of sufficient range to strike parts of the continental
United States, and that Iraq may be able to do so within ten years. The
Rumsfeld Commission also determined that countries may be able to
conceal ballistic missile development programs from our intelligence
assets until shortly before deployment. This concealment will give the
United States little or no warning of an imminent threat.
The events of the past year appear to validate the findings of the
Rumsfeld Commission and reinforce my belief that the threat is real.
This past July, Iran launched the Shahab-3, a 900 mile range missile
capable of striking Israel. In August, North Korea fired a three stage
ballistic missile over Japan that was estimated to have a maximum range
of 3,700 miles. When perfected, this missile could reach Hawaii and
Alaska. And just ten days ago, India and Pakistan each tested
intermediate range ballistic missiles with ranges of over 1,200 miles.
Additionally, Communist China has developed a force of ballistic
missiles capable of striking the continental United States. And as we
are learning, China has been persistent in its efforts to acquire
advanced missile technology.
Mr. Chairman, how do we counter this threat? I recommend two
courses of action. The first was completed last month when the Senate
passed the National Missile Defense Act of 1999. This historic yet
simple piece of legislation, along with a similar measure passed in the
House, will make it the policy of the United States to deploy, as soon
as is technologically possible, an effective national missile defense
system capable of defending the territory of the United States against
limited ballistic missile attack.
The second course of action is to continue our efforts to develop
such a system. I support, as does a recent report by the CATO
Institute, the deployment of a limited ground based national missile
defense system. If we continue our investment in advanced technologies,
an effective ground based system will soon be a reality.
Mr. Chairman, some opponents of National Missile Defense have
argued that treaties and superior intelligence gathering will protect
this Nation from a future ballistic missile attack. I do not agree. A
treaty must add to a nation's security, not limit it. And as Chairman
of the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence, I can assure you that
although our intelligence gathering is very good, it is not perfect. I
believe that the security of the American people should not depend
solely on our ability to negotiate treaties or conduct reconnaissance.
We must have the ability to defend ourselves from the growing threat.
The deployment of a limited ground based national missile defense
system provides that ability.
The Chairman. Senator, I thank you and the committee thanks
you, and the Senate and the American people ought to be mighty
grateful to you for what you are doing. What you have done in
your statement today is what badly needs doing, and that is to
underscore how little time we have to deploy a missile defense,
and if we do not get ready, when a missile comes, it will be
too late, will it not?
Senator Shelby. It will be.
The Chairman. I am not going to question you further, but I
am going to ask the staff to circulate your statement very
widely, because I think the American people ought to know what
you have said.
Senator Shelby. Thank you, sir.
The Chairman. Thank you for being with us. Now then, I have
already identified panel No. 2. Dr. Graham, the former Director
of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. We
have a lot of brain power here this morning, and I am equally
grateful to each of you for coming here.
I usually do not start on the left, as policy, but I am
going to do it this morning.
I call you the father of all this, Dr. Graham, and we will
hear from you first.
STATEMENT OF DR. WILLIAM R. GRAHAM, FORMER DIRECTOR OF THE
WHITE HOUSE OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY
Dr. Graham. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you
for the opportunity to testify this morning. I would
particularly like to address briefly the status of technology
and some of the history of our experience in providing for the
defense of the United States against ballistic missiles, and
also the defense of our forces, allies, and friends in the
world today.
Of course, much has happened in the world since March 23,
1983, when President Reagan first proposed that the United
States address the protection of these interests against
ballistic missile attack, and I would like to say a few words
in my oral statement, and then ask that my written comments be
made available for you.
The technologies and systems of both offensive ballistic
missiles and the defenses against them have undergone much
change over the last 30 years. As the threats evolve, the
technical challenges and capabilities for defensive systems
also have evolved.
During each era the challenges were formidable, only to be
overcome and replaced by new challenges; however, during this
evolution, the balance of the offense/defense capabilities has
gradually been moving from the offense having the advantage to
the defense having the advantage, and to place the use of
ballistic missile defense technology in perspective, my written
testimony reviews the challenges that confronted ballistic
missile defense in each of the last three decades, and
identifies the technologies that played key roles in overcoming
those challenges.
Nonetheless, the U.S. is today at a substantial
disadvantage compared with where we could be had we pursued
ballistic missile defense in a more vigorous manner. The U.S.
has not built an ABM system since the early 1970's, and, in
fact, beginning in the late eighties the U.S. has downsized the
defense industrial base very substantially by over half.
That downsizing accelerated in the first half of this
decade, and in the process of downsizing, the U.S. lost many of
the most knowledgeable and experienced technologists that we
had in the fields of rocketry, sensing, and other related
fields that are key to building viable defense systems.
Many of the problems that we have experienced in the THAAD
flight test program to date, in fact, are typical of the
development of the new technology, only in this case we have
many new technologists who are learning to do advanced designs,
so we are making the entry-level mistakes and learning from
them.
We are paying the price of that downsizing and the loss of
many of the lead engineers and senior technicians that we have
been able to draw on in the past.
Second, on the negative side of the ledger, the ABM Treaty
has had since 1972 a pervasive chilling effect on the U.S.'s
ability to make full use of its technological capability to
provide for our defense. Many examples exist, but I will give
you one. There is a process and a group in the government, and
it has been there for many years, called the Compliance Review
Group, that examines systems and design for their compliance
with the ABM Treaty.
It is composed primarily of lawyers, and they try to make
legal interpretations of this diplomatically negotiated ABM
Treaty. However, they do not review preliminary design
concepts, they refuse to look at those. They insist on having a
fully fleshed out design before they take a look at it. That in
itself is a multi-year process just to get to the Compliance
Review Group, and then the Compliance Review Group takes a
substantial part of a year to conduct its review.
The fact is that you are down the road a few years before
you get the word from the Compliance Review Group as to whether
you have a design that you can proceed with or not.
Well, the message that sends to the engineers and
technologists is stay away from anything that might be viewed
as a limitation by the ABM Treaty, and we treat the ABM Treaty
as a third rail in technical design processes, and that places
a very severe constraint on us using our full technical
potential for designing ABM systems.
An example of this is the fact that today the ABM system
design that is being pursued by the administration suggests
that we put our ballistic missile interceptors in Alaska, but
among other things, use them to defend Miami, FL. This is a
long way, and it takes an enormous amount of technical
performance that is unnecessary if we built more interceptors
and placed them in more locations either on shore or off shore
around the country.
One more comment, and that is the lack of the now 24 years
of experience since we deactivated the safeguard ABM system
means that on both the operational front and on the technical
design front there is a big gap in our experience in dealing
with ABM systems, in building them, designing them, testing
them, and operating them, and we are today trying to recover
from that lack, but it will be several years before we make up
for the education and the continuous learning that we did not
obtain during the last 24 years when we could have been
operating at least a rudimentary ABM system and chose not to.
Admiral Crowell used to make the case that it was against
the U.S. interest to abandon the ABM Treaty, because the
Russians, the Soviets, in that case, had gained so much more
experience by operating their ABM system continuously since the
early seventies, compared to us, that they could break out
faster than we could.
I think he was right, at least in part, that we did lose a
lot of experience during that time and we have to make it up
now.
On the positive side, the advantage in the perpetual
contest between offense and defense has over the last two
decades, as I mentioned, been shifting toward the defense, at
least in the technologies underlying our ballistic missile
defense capability.
To mention some of the areas where the advantage is
shifted, certainly, the capabilities of our radar systems have
improved substantially, both in the transmit-receive function
and also in the data processing, which I will come to in a
moment.
Miniaturized spacecraft and spacecraft optical systems have
made great progress in the last two decades, as have spacecraft
infrared, visible, and ultraviolet sensors. Lasers, based on
aircraft and satellite platforms have made enormous progress,
and that progress is being used both in the airborne laser
program being pursued by the Air Force today and in the space-
based laser that is being pursued by the Ballistic Missile
Defense Organization.
Small rocket propulsion, which is used, among other things,
for maneuvering and diverting kinetic interceptors, or rocket-
based interceptors, has improved greatly, and we can now build
small thrusters with the thrust-to-weight ratio of over a
thousand, but most important, our capability in computing has
increased both by the decrease in the size of computers, but
also simultaneously in the increase in their capability. In
fact, these are related, and we have gone from an era when we
had computers weighing several tons in the early 1960's or mid-
1960's, like the Control Data-6600, and able to perform 10
million operations per second, to computers built on a single
chip, which weighs a small fraction of an ounce, and are able
to perform hundreds of millions of operations per second, and,
in fact, when connected properly in groups and operated with
the appropriate software, they can now do hundreds of billions
and in some cases even thousands of billions of operations per
second.
Nothing has advanced like the speed and memory capacity of
our computers in this last 20 years, and that is one of the key
areas that benefits the defense far more than it benefits the
offense. So in summary I would say the technology balance,
while it will be an eternal challenge, and one can always
invent an offense that will overcome a given defense, and one
can always conceive of a defense that will overcome a given
offense, the technology balance is moving toward the defense,
and the U.S. should be taking full advantage of that. Today we
are taking advantage of it under the serious constraints of the
ABM Treaty. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Graham follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. William R. Graham
the status of technology for defense of the united states, its forces,
and its interests against ballistic missile attack
Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the committee, thank you
for the opportunity to testify on the status of technology for defense
of the United States, its forces, its allies and friends, and its
interests throughout the world today, against ballistic missile attack
Much has happened in the world since March 23, 1983, when President
Reagan first proposed that the United States address the protection of
our vital interests against the threat of ballistic missile attack. I
would like to address the results of the investment that our country
has made in the technology of ballistic missile defense through the
Strategic Defense Initiative and its successor, the Ballistic Missile
Defense Organization.
results of the u.s. investment in ballistic missile defenses
The technologies and systems of both offensive ballistic missiles
and defenses against them have undergone dynamic change over the last
thirty years. As the threats evolved, the technical challenges and
capabilities for defense systems also evolved. During its own era, each
of the challenges was formidable, only to be overcome and replaced by
new challenges. However, during this evolution, the balance of
capability has gradually been moving from the offense to the defense.
To place the use of ballistic missile defense technology in
perspective, this testimony reviews the challenges that confronted
missile defense in each of the last three decades, and identifies the
technologies that played critical roles in overcoming those challenges.
The 1950s
In the post-World War II era, the first strategic threat to the
continental U.S. arose from Soviet long-range bombers carrying nuclear
weapons. Defenses against aircraft--particularly bombers--had undergone
extensive development as a matter of necessity in World War II, when
allied forces in Europe employed a combination of radar for early
warning, aircraft for high-altitude and standoff interception, and
barrage balloons and ground-based anti-aircraft guns for local defense,
all integrated using point-to-point voice communications over telephone
and radio links.
As the strategic aircraft threat to the U.S. developed in the
1950s, the need grew for higher performance, more integrated air
defenses. Air defense performance was improved through the development
of several generations of jet interceptor aircraft of progressively
greater speed, better armament for these aircraft including air-to-air
missiles, and surface-to-air missiles. These latter missiles were
usually tracked along with the target aircraft and command-guided to
intercept by ground-based radars that were usually co-located with the
missile launchers. The guidance loop went from the radar to the target
and the interceptor missile, back to the radar, through an electrical
analog computer, and to the interceptor missile with guidance commands.
The systems were not sufficiently accurate to rely on a hit-to-kill
intercept, so the interceptor missile carried either a proximity-fused
high explosive warhead or a small nuclear warhead. The NIKE series of
surface-to-air missiles, developed under the leadership of Bell
Laboratories and deployed widely in the U.S. during this era, were
examples of this technical approach. Countermeasures that had to be
overcome included chaff jammers, and both passive and active decoys.
The 1960s
By the beginning of the 1960s, the progress that the Soviet Union
was making in the development of long-range ballistic missiles, along
with their ability to make large-yield thermonuclear weapons as
demonstrated in their atmospheric tests, stimulated serious
consideration in the U.S. of a national missile defense. The point of
departure for such a system was the NIKE anti-aircraft system, which by
that time had evolved through several generations of design and
deployment. Bell Laboratories redirected its anti-aircraft work to the
ABM problem, and drew upon its extensive experience to develop what
became the NIKE X and then the SAFEGUARD ABM system that was deployed
at a single site near Grand Forks, North Dakota, in 1975.
The SAFEGUARD ABM system consisted of a long-range surveillance
Perimeter Acquisition Radar (PAR), a shorter range but more precise
Missile Site Radar (MSR), ground-based digital computers, ground-based
SPARTAN missiles for exo-atmospheric intercepts, and Sprint missiles
for endo-atmospheric intercepts. Both missiles carried nuclear
warheads, although of quite different types, with each optimized to be
most effective in its altitude range of operation. The overall
interceptor control loop was the same as it had been for earlier air
defense missiles, other than the change from analog to large digital
computers to solve the fire control equations and guide the interceptor
to the vicinity of its target.
The SAFEGUARD system was linked to the Ballistic Missile Early
Warning System (BMEWS) of radars and communications that had been
established in the 1960s to monitor Soviet ballistic missile and space
launches. It was interconnected by commercial long-line telephone
carriers and military surface-to-surface microwave links, and was
interconnected and controlled from the NORAD facilities inside Cheyenne
Mountain near Colorado Springs, Colorado.
The SAFEGUARD system faced three major technical challenges. The
first of these was traffic capacity. In the 1960s, digital computers
were built from discrete components: individual transistors, resistors,
etc. This form of electronics technology produced several inherent
limitations on the speed of computation, and also imposed what by
today's computer standards are severe practical limitations on the
memory and processor size of the computer. These limitations in 1960s
computer technology translated mid limitations in the ability of the
SAFEGUARD system to handle multiple ballistic missiles and other
objects such as chaff, jammers, or decoys simultaneously, which in turn
gave rise to the possibility of defeating its defensive capabilities by
saturating its processors with a barrage or countermeasure attack.
However, such an attack had drawbacks for the attacker. To produce
a high-traffic attack, the offense would have to coordinate its
launches so that the offensive missiles would arrive in the battle
space of the radar and its associated computers nearly simultaneously.
This degree of synchronization of the attack not only would place an
additional requirement on the offense, but would also subject the
offensive missiles to various forms of fratricide--the destruction or
disabling of one offensive missile warhead by another.
To avoid multiple intercepts from a single defensive missile, the
attacking warheads would have to be spaced sufficiently far apart so
that one interceptor could not destroy more than one offensive warhead,
and if the offensive warheads were fused to detonate when attacked,
sometimes referred to as salvage fusing, the spacing would have to be
sufficiently large that the salvage explosion of one offensive warhead
would not kill another in the attack. Even if a following warhead were
not killed, the anomalous aerodynamic conditions within the fireball
created by either an offensive or defensive nuclear explosion could
induce a substantial error in the targeting accuracy of a latter
warhead--a particularly significant effect when the attack was directed
against hardencd targets such as missile silos that required
considerable offensive warhead accuracy to kill. Finally, crater ejecta
from earlier warheads would still be airborne when later warheads
arrived and that debris could be struck by rapidly moving incoming
warheads, causing them to pre-detonate or even to be destroyed.
Countermeasures had always been a problem for radar-guided anti-
aircraft. As Soviet missile defenses came into operation, U.S.
strategic missiles began to incorporate similar countermeasures, and
there was a concern that Soviet missiles might do the same. Some
countermeasures, such as lightweight chaff, would only be effective
outside the atmosphere, but others, such as replica decoys, could be
designed to look somewhat like offensive warheads from deployment until
they began penetrating the upper atmosphere and could quickly add still
more traffic to the defended battlespace. To overcome such
countermeasures, the performance of both the radar and the computers
had to be sufficiently accurate to distinguish between the signatures
and the trajectories and other dynamics of the decoys and the actual
warheads. This, in turn, put additional requirements on the defensive
hardware and software capabilities.
Blackout and other nuclear explosion-induced radar propagation
problems were another technical challenge. Blackout is caused by the
ionization created by an atmospheric or exo-atmospheric nuclear
explosion. That ionization can absorb or distort the radar signal as it
passes through the region around the explosion, and result in either no
return signal or a signal improperly directed back to the radar.
Blackout and related effects would be caused by the explosion of a
nuclear interceptor warhead, and could be caused by the offensive
warhead as well if it were salvage-fused. To overcome these problems,
the defensive system had to maintain a good model of the battlespace
and the events occurring in it, and had to be able to correct for
problems less than a total blackout of the radar signal. These
phenomena imposed additional loads on the radar and its computers.
Finally, while not solely a technology problem, the siting issues
associated with SAFEGUARD became a major impediment to its deployment
in some areas. Missile and radar range limitations of the SAFEGUARD
system necessitated the deployment of several radar/computer/missile
installations around the country to protect the entire continental U.S.
The most stressful threats in terms of battlespace available were not
the Soviet ICBMs, but rather their sub-launched ballistic missiles--
SLBMs. SLBMs could be fired from only a few hundred kilometers off the
U. S. coastline, and could have flight times of ten minutes or less to
the population centers along the coasts, and to the bomber bases and
other military facilities inland. However, deploying any systems armed
with nuclear warheads close to coastal population centers met with
public and political resistance in some areas.
The 1970s
In February 1976, after ten months of operation at the Grand Forks
site, the SAFEGUARD system was deactivated by Act of Congress. For the
next seven years, ballistic missile defense activities were focused on
R&D carried out primarily by the Army's Redstone Arsenal at Huntsville,
Alabama; the organization that had directed the development of the
SAFEGUARD system. During that time, substantial progress was made in
the development of high-powered laser systems suitable for weapons
applications and multi-spectral space-based sensors by the Defense
Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), and by the Air
Force.
During this era, great progress was also made first by the military
and then by commercial initiatives in computer hardware technology.
ARPA and other organizations carried out initiatives to develop large-
scale, high-speed integrated digital circuits, which took the
technology from a few tens of transistors on a single semiconductor
chip in 1970 to tens of thousands in 1980 to numbers approaching ten
million today. Equally impressive were the gains made in computer
speeds. In the early 1960s, the world's foremost supercomputer--the
Control Data Corporation's 6600--had a clock speed of ten million
operations per second. By the late 1980s, personal computer
microprocessors had reached this speed, and have continued to advance
to today's speeds of 500 million operations per second, with good
prospects for still higher speeds in the near future. Special purpose
computers have recently been built that operate at speeds of hundreds
of billions to trillions of operations per second. Integrated circuit
semiconductor memories have experienced similar advances in capacity
and speed.
The enormous progress made in computers during this era resolved
several of the challenges encountered in the 1970s in the design and
development of ballistic missile defense systems, including traffic
handling capacity, nuclear effects modeling, and more countermeasure
discrimination.
The 1980s
The establishment of the Strategic Defense Initiative by President
Reagan in 1983 was a seminal event in the development of ballistic
missile defense technology. Diverse activities that could contribute to
missile defense were brought together from many Defense Department
organizations, and focused in the Strategic Defense Initiative Office.
With a new infusion of national interest and funding, rapid progress
began to be made in the development of lightweight, high-powered laser
systems and neutral particle beam devices. Early successes included the
destruction of a TITAN booster structure in a static test stand by the
Mid-Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser in 1985 and the first test in
space of a neutral particle beam accelerator--the Beam Experiment
Aboard Rocket (BEAR) in 1989.
In the 1960s and '70s, the limitations of ground-based radar
tracking, relatively slow ground-based computing, and ground-based
command guidance of the interceptors made it technically impractical
for the interceptors to be maneuvered with sufficient accuracy to
actually hit high speed offensive ballistic missile warheads. This
situation was overcome in the SAFEGUARD system by using nuclear
explosives on the interceptors to extend their lethal range by at least
a factor of a thousand over non-nuclear interceptors.
In June, 1984, the Army demonstrated the feasibility of a hit-to-
kill ballistic missile interceptor with its Homing Overlay Experiment.
This experiment used pre-SDI technology, resulting in a kill vehicle
mass on the order of 1000 kg. The first formative reductions in
component miniaturization gave rise to the highly successful Delta
series (Delta 180-183). This sequence of experiments established the
feasibility of the fundamental operations necessary to enable the
space-based operation of a ballistic missile defense system. Operations
ranging from target detection and acquisition to space based intercept
were conducted. The mass of the kill vehicle used in the Delta series
was of the order of a few hundred kilograms. The combination of
miniaturized high-performance components, the large amount of computer
power that could now be placed on a small interceptor, and the ability
to integrate advanced components into a semiautonomous hit-to-kill
interceptor made it possible for the first time to consider deploying a
ballistic missile defense system composed of interceptors that could
function with sufficient autonomy and precision so that each could
intercept a warhead using only its on-board sensors, thrusters, and
computers once it had been given the battlespace it was to defend and
the authority to act.
The miniaturization of sensors, propulsion systems, and computers
also progressed rapidly; for example, small rocket engines well suited
for maneuvering either ground-based interceptors or satellites into
hit-to-kill trajectories were developed that had thrust-to-weight
ratios of one thousand. Advances in these technologies represented
major progress, and opened significant new opportunities in the design
of interceptors and space systems. This progress has been so profound
that it is revolutionizing the design of both military and non-military
space systems, and has already strongly influenced the plans, designs,
and hardware of commercial, NASA, and military satellites.
The drastic reduction in the size and weight of the components
which make up hit-to-kill interceptors has enabled new families of
endoatmospheric and exoatmospheric kinetic kill vehicles. Taken
together, this family of vehicles is known as LEAP (Lightweight
ExoAtmospheric Projectile). The mass of these vehicles is as low as 10
kg in a package roughly the size of a coffee can. These vehicles are
fully self-contained units which include the seeker, processor,
guidance, and divert propulsion system--in short, a fully integrated
projectile with enough computational capability to perform intercepts
autonomously. Under other technology programs, liquid and solid axial
engines have been developed which are specifically designed to propel
the kill vehicles into the target.
The emergence of the LEAP capability has created the opportunity to
leverage the AEGIS air defense weapon system currently deployed aboard
dozens of Navy ships. This approach uses existing investments in
hardware, infrastructure and training to provide a range of potentially
near-term ballistic missile defense options.
A notable example of the ingenious use of SDI technologies was the
design of the Brilliant Pebbles space-based interceptor in 1987.
Brilliant Pebbles had been preceded by Project BAMBI, an Air Force
concept of the early 1960s using space-based ABM kill vehicles that
would guide themselves to intercept boosting ballistic missiles. But it
would take another twenty-five years of technical development to make
BAMBI feasible as Brilliant Pebbles. The BAMBI concept was reborn as
Brilliant Pebbles of necessity in response to the projected cost of the
first phase of deployment of a strategic defense system. The cost of
this system was dominated by the space segment and was driven by
survivability considerations and the use of technology proven in the
Delta series. Brilliant Pebbles enabled a drastic reduction in the cost
of the space segment while meeting all requirements. Brilliant Pebbles
achieved survivability through proliferation, thereby distributing the
intercept function across a number of elements. This approach obviated
the need for expensive measures designed to ensure that every
individual space-based asset be capable of surviving a direct attack.
The proliferated nature of the Brilliant Pebbles concept enabled a
production line approach, allowing dramatic cost reductions through
economies-of-scale.
The difference between the earlier space-based interceptor and
Brilliant Pebbles is akin to the difference between the MILSTAR and
IRIDIUM communications systems. The Brilliant Pebbles interceptor was
designed to weigh about 50 kilograms, and be deployed in a
constellation of a few thousand satellites that, when commanded, could
conduct autonomous hit-to-kill intercepts of offensive missiles and
warheads. While the Brilliant Pebbles system was designed to operate
exo-atmospherically as a defense against longer range missiles, it
could also intercept missiles with ranges as short as 1000 kilometers.
Unfortunately, the development of the system was terminated in 1993, at
the direction of the Administration that took office that year.
While the production and deployment of Brilliant Pebbles was never
undertaken, the technology continued to be developed, and was
ultimately proven with a space system called Clementine. The Clementine
satellite was composed of all the components of a Brilliant Pebble and
assembled into a configuration designed to demonstrate surveillance and
interception for missile defense applications as well as a variety of
civil space applications. The Clementine satellite was the first
satellite to orbit the moon since the Apollo program over 25 years ago.
Using SDI-developed sensors, Clementine produced the first complete
photographic map of the surface of the moon, and it did so at a variety
of visible and infrared wavebands. It also found the first indications
of ice at the south pole of the moon.
Beginning concurrently with the Brilliant Pebbles development and
continuing through the present, the Army has pursued development of
miniature ground-based hit-to-kill interceptors and associated ground-
based radars, designed to use cueing from space-based sensors for both
theater ballistic missile defense and national missile defense. These
interceptors would have a range of from tens to hundreds of kilometers
depending on their booster velocity at burnout and--most importantly--
the external sensor and command and control capabilities of the system.
The Navy also began development of miniaturized ship-based interceptors
that could be integrated into the AEGIS air defense system and used in
conjunction with its shipborne SPY-1 radars, their advanced battle
management system, and space-based sensors.
To a much greater degree than the space-based interceptor systems,
the ground and sea-based systems have radar range and horizon
limitations that in turn limit the performance of interceptors to
ranges substantially less than the kinematic range of the interceptor
itself. However, this limitation can be offset to a limited extent by
using forward based early warning radars and to a large extent by using
space-based sensors. Drawing from the technological advantages
exploited by Brilliant Pebbles, the MSTI satellite series (MSTI I--MSTI
III) demonstrated the feasibility and practicality of such an approach,
gathered key background data, and demonstrated all the key sensor
functions--such as target detection, acquisition and tracking. The
``footprint'' or defended area of surface-based systems depends very
strongly on the availability and use of external sensing and tracking
of offensive missiles.
Following the conceptual development of the Brilliant Pebbles
interceptors, and in view of the rapid progress being made in the
development of small, lightweight sensors and satellites, Dr. Gregory
Canavan proposed the development and deployment of a constellation of
about twenty to forty surveillance, tracking, and attack assessment
satellites, communicating through satellite-to-satellite links with
downlinks to ground stations from any satellite within line of site, in
orbits about 1000 kilometers in altitude. The system was called
Brilliant Eyes, since it used much of the same technology as the
Brilliant Pebbles interceptor satellites. The Brilliant Eyes system is
currently being addressed in an Air Force program called the Space and
Missile Tracking System (SMTS). Unfortunately, that program has
recently been started for the third time and is proceeding slowly if at
all.
The importance of Brilliant Eyes, or SMTS, can hardly be
overestimated. For example, Figure 1 shows the ratio of the areas that
could potentially be defended by the THAAD ground-based theater defense
missile limited only by the kinematics of the missile compared with the
area defended using only the planned ground-based radar located with
the missile launcher. For offensive missiles of over about 1,500
kilometers range, the ratio of defended areas is more than a factor of
10.
<GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT>
The significance of space-based sensing such as Brilliant Eyes
becomes even clearer when the benefits are characterized in terms of
relative dollar costs to obtain an equal capability. In the case
mentioned above, the area that a surface-based interceptor system can
defend using only its co-located radar is one-tenth the area that the
same interceptor can defend using space-based sensing. Therefore, to
defend the same area without space-based sensing, ten times as many
missile/radar systems would have to be deployed, at a cost that would
be approximately ten times as much as the same capability using space-
based sensing to its fullest potential.
The shift in emphasis from the multi-thousand warhead threat that
could be deployed by the Soviet Union (or its successor, Russia) to a
much smaller threat that could be deployed today by China, and in the
near future by other states, has shifted the ballistic missile defense
focus to smaller scale deployments. A change begun with the Global
Protection Against Limited Strikes (GPALS) in January 1992, and
continued through May 1993. With the increase in computer power and the
absence of nuclear explosives on the interceptors, together with the
advances in multi-spectral infra-red, optical, and ultraviolet sensors,
problems of traffic management, discrimination, and blackout have been
substantially reduced and in some cases eliminated.
Recent Technical Challenges
Soon after the Strategic Defense Initiative was begun, a new
problem was put forward as a potential fundamental limitation to the
capability of strategic missile defenses. Since the time available for
operator intervention during an attack would be minimal, the potential
problem was software--the underlying logical instructions that govern
the operation of the system's computers, and therefore the system
itself. Some asserted that it would be infeasible to construct software
of tens of millions of instructions without introducing errors that
would only appear during attack and would render the missile defense
ineffective. However, over the last decade, computer software
technology has also advanced at a rapid rate, and the ability to test
software has kept pace, so that today it is routine for people not
expert in software to install and operate reliable programs of tens of
millions of instructions on personal computers.
The cost of missile defenses is periodically raised as another
barrier to the deployment of effective systems. Fortunately, the use of
the SDI's miniaturization technologies had a very significant effect on
reducing systems cost. At the same time that the Brilliant Pebbles
system was proposed, another military organization proposed a space-
based system using earlier technologies. Cost estimates of the latter
system indicated that it would be prohibitively expensive, and raised
the prospect of terminating space-based interceptor systems. However,
initial cost estimates of the Brilliant Pebbles system indicated that
it would have a much lower cost than the system using more conventional
technology.
For chemical and biological offensive warheads, submunitions remain
a concern. They can be dealt with most directly by intercepting the
offensive missile while it is still in boosted flight, before it can
deploy the submunitions. Such defensive systems are referred to as
boost phase interceptors. Since powered flight of an offensive missile
usually extends through the first one to five minutes of its
trajectory, only that amount of time is available for performing a
boost phase intercept. Intercepting an offensive missile in such a
short time after launch requires both a close proximity and rapid
response for a rocket-propelled kinetic interceptor. While such a
capability is technically feasible, for many situations of interest to
the U.S., kinetic boost-phase interceptors are not being pursued as a
system development program.
The Air Force is pursuing another approach to boost phase
intercept. Building on the progress that has been made in high power
laser systems, it is developing a system that can be carried in a large
aircraft and uses a laser beam to destroy missiles in boost phase at
distances greater than can be achieved with kinetic interceptors. Rapid
progress has been made in compensating for beam imperfections and
atmospheric propagation effects, both of which can limit the effective
range of such a system.
The U.S. missile defense program has successfully overcome a series
of formidable technological and systemic challenges. Major hardware and
software obstacles have been resolved, and miniaturization of sensor,
propulsion system, and computer technologies have greatly reduced cost
issues. The diminished size of the anticipated missile threat also has
significantly facilitated the resolution of technological and
operational problems. The principal challenge today is not in the
technology, which has made great progress and continues to advance, but
in the national commitment to proceed with deploying effective missile
defenses, and to do so in an efficient and expeditious manner.
The substantial accomplishments of the Strategic Defense Initiative
and its successor Ballistic Missile Defense Organization have brought
about revolutionary advances in other areas of military space
capabilities and in scientific and commercial space enterprises as
well. For example, in the military area, the development of small,
inexpensive, highly capable satellites has given the U.S. the
opportunity to move away from dependence upon the infrequent coverage
of specific ground areas by a few large satellites for weather
observation, reconnaissance, and other functions, and toward nearly
continuous coverage of all ground areas by constellations of small
satellites.
In the scientific exploration and exploitation of space, SDI
technology has changed the paradigm for spacecraft systems. Before SDI,
scientific spacecraft built by NASA and other organizations typically
weighed thousands to tens of thousands of pounds and cost in the range
of a billion dollars. Today, both deep space and earth-orbiting
scientific satellites typically weigh in the hundreds of pounds and
cost about 10% of their predecessors. Clementine, the first U.S.
spacecraft to orbit the moon in 25 years, and made the initial
discovery that ice might be present at the lunar southern pole, could
not have been built without SDI technology. Future scientific
spacecraft will be even smaller, less expensive, and deployed in
greater numbers than Clementine and its peers.
The recent progress in commercial spacecraft and their applications
is also the result of SDI technology. The constellations of small, low-
orbit communications satellites such as the Iridium and Teledesic
systems depend upon highly capable, inexpensive, miniaturized,
autonomous spacecraft for their commercial feasibility. Today, billions
of dollars are being invested in these systems, and many billions of
dollars will be earned over their lifetimes.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
General, is it ``Piotrowski''----
General Piotrowski. Sir, you pronounced it exactly correct.
The Chairman. Did I?
General Piotrowski. Yes, sir.
The Chairman. General, it is a pleasure to have you. Thank
you very much for coming. You may proceed.
STATEMENT OF GEN. JOHN PIOTROWSKI, FORMER COMMANDER IN CHIEF,
SPACE COMMAND, COLORADO SPRINGS, CO
General Piotrowski. Mr. Chairman, thank you so much for
asking me.
I would like to draw a historical perspective. My
background is operational and programmatic, and as you are well
aware, Mr. Chairman, program success is often largely dependent
on the goals established, the motivation behind the program,
and where it sits in the national priorities.
For example, if President Kennedy in the decade of the
sixties had said, ``It may be necessary to go to the moon, I am
not sure, but what I would like to do is develop the
technology, and by the end of the decade I will review it, and
if I find the need, then I will make a decision to go to the
moon.''
The greatest technological achievement, certainly in my
lifetime, was the Apollo program. It was not structured that
way. It was a top national priority. There was an instate, put
a man on the moon by the end of the decade and bring him back
to earth, and it was properly funded. I have something the NASA
administrator used about a month ago in a presentation, and it
shows that in year 2000 dollars the Saturn rocket alone was $48
billion. At the same time, the lunar escape module cost the
Nation about $16 billion in current year dollars.
As the Senators will remember, that was a time when we were
building the Great Society, we were fighting a major war in
Vietnam with a million or so people on the ground, and
modernizing our weapon systems at a rapid rate. This Nation can
do daunting technological programs and do them well if they are
prioritized, if there is an instate, and if we are motivated.
The motivation is there. As panel one and Senator Shelby
stated, there is a threat.
From an operational perspective, I am absolutely convinced
as an operator that our senior military leaders today, if given
the tools, can defend America. There is another operational
advantage to having a ballistic missile defense, whether it is
national, theater, or global. It devalues ballistic missiles.
Today they are immutable.
They are very attractive, because they cannot be stopped,
but if we could stop them, it would, first, devalue ballistic
missiles at all levels, and second, open up other operational
avenues to pursue. For example, if North Korea decided to
blackmail the United States by threatening Oahu or Los Angeles,
if we had a ballistic missile defense, the Nation's leaders
could take a decision to preempt, knowing that if some escaped
or if some were launched out from under attack, they could be
defeated, and we could eliminate that scourge permanently.
Now, again, I would like to end by saying I am convinced
that our military leaders of today can do this job, do it
right, make the right decisions and defend America, if given
the tools.
Thank you, sir.
The Chairman. Before Dr. Garwin proceeds, I would like to
ask the distinguished ranking member of the committee, Senator
Biden, if he has an opening statement, and I hope he does.
Senator Biden. Mr. Chairman, I do, and I appreciate your
graciousness, I apologize for being late, I was still on the
floor in the aftermath of the last vote, and I will wait with
your permission until the rest of the panel----
The Chairman. Very well.
Senator Biden [continuing]. Goes and then make my
statement.
The Chairman. You may proceed.
Senator Biden. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF DR. RICHARD L. GARWIN, PHILIP D. REED SENIOR
FELLOW FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN
RELATIONS, NEW YORK, NY
Dr. Garwin. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before
you. I request that my written testimony be included in the
record, and I'll summarize it.
The Chairman. Without objection.
Dr. Garwin. Thank you. Senator Shelby indicated that an
enemy would attack the United States where it is most
vulnerable, and presumably where they can achieve such an
attack, but unlike Russia, these countries that we are talking
about today, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, have no capability to
destroy the United States as a whole. They can nibble around
the edges, where it is easiest for them, and most difficult for
us to defend.
So given a will to damage the United States and our
geography, Hawaii would be struck by North Korea with short-
range cruise missiles or ballistic missiles from ships, Los
Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Washington, Seattle, San
Diego, are all vulnerable, and we have absolutely no defense,
and no proposal to defend against these cruise missiles or
short-range ballistic missiles, or nuclear weapons detonated in
harbors.
So my problem with the national missile defense is that it
defends against a threat which is most difficult for the other
side to prepare, and as I will indicate, does not do that at
all either.
Now, with Dr. Graham, I was a member of the Rumsfeld
Commission, and with the other eight members, we unanimously
endorsed the threat that could appear within 5 years by these
three stated countries, joining the thousands of ballistic
missile nuclear warheads present in Russia and the ten or
twenty in China, and, of course, the hundreds available to the
French and the British. A few other countries could do the
same, but they are not classed as enemies.
Rather than give my view of the history of the national
missile defense program, I want to render a judgment. In the
early stages of the program it is contemplated that 75 ground-
based interceptors would be built, and about 25 deployed to
counter a relatively few warheads. The system specifications
require an extremely high confidence that not a single warhead
penetrate to U.S. soil. In my opinion, no system thus far
proposed could achieve such confidence even against cooperating
warheads.
Senator Biden. I am sorry. What kind of warheads?
Dr. Garwin. Cooperating warheads.
Senator Biden. Cooperating warheads.
Dr. Garwin. Warheads that would be launched like puppy
dogs----
Senator Biden. I got it.
Dr. Garwin [continuing]. Wagging their tails, and wanting
to be slapped with hit-to-kill interceptors. But the problem
with the national missile defense is not simply that it would
not fulfill the stated requirement, but that it would have
essentially no capability against a long-range missile system
that would be deployed by North Korea, Iraq, or Iran to strike
the United States with biological weapons or with nuclear
weapons.
The problem is really simple. Consider the use of
biological weapons, a country could put a payload of a hundred
kilograms or a ton of anthrax or other germs into a reentry
vehicle, have it come down in the middle of Washington, (or
upwind would be better), strike the ground, and deliver all of
these germs.
The result would be a very narrow plume carried by the
breeze, which would kill most of the people in its path, but
would leave those outside the plume untouched, except in the
case of extremely contagious germs, such as small pox, where
one carrier could cause an epidemic.
But a country would make much better use of their payload
capacity by packaging the biological weapon in the form of
individual bomblets that would be released just after boost,
when the ICBM would reach its full velocity, and these would
fall through space and reenter individually with a limited
amount of heat shield protection against the reentry heat, and
after the heat of reentry the shield would be shed, as was the
case with the reentry of the film capsule in the first U.S.
strategic reconnaissance system, CORONA; the bomblets would
fall to earth, where a thoroughly tested device would expel the
biological agents. Given this approach to increased military
effectiveness, the planned national missile defense system has
no possibility of making its intercept so early in the
trajectory.
Now, let us look at nuclear warheads. You cannot break up
nuclear warheads into one-kilogram bomblets, but there is
something else that could be done against these hit-to-kill
interceptors which would be equally effective. That is for the
offense to arrange for the nuclear warhead to be enclosed in a
balloon, a large balloon made of plastic Mylar, coated with
aluminum foil, a balloon that could be almost the size of this
room, and a warhead somewhat bigger than me would be hidden in
there someplace.
Everything would work according to plan, the launch would
be seen by the defense support program, DSP satellites; an
alert would be sent to the upgraded early warning radars; they
would see eventually this big balloon containing the warhead or
not; the interceptors would be launched; an interceptor would
strike the balloon, it would not strike the warhead, because
the balloon is so much bigger. It might even, we do not know,
because of the shock of the collision of the thin balloon
against the interceptor, it might create enough gas really to
blow the whole balloon away, but another balloon could have
been shrunk down on the reentry vehicle and now deployed within
a second or so, and once again, hide the warhead from further
intercept.
If they did not like that particular approach--and people
often do not use my ideas until 20 or 30 years later, but
eventually they often do, as with the global positioning
system, or the cruise missiles, or the laser-guided bomb that
we pushed so hard in the 1960's--if they do not like that
particular approach, they could do another countermeasure which
would be different, using smaller balloons, not much bigger
than the warhead, so striking the balloon might strike the
warhead, if the balloon contained a warhead. But in this case
they could have perhaps ten or twenty balloons made of the same
plastic, coated with aluminum.
The purpose of the aluminum is to keep the radar from
looking in the interior and to keep the infrared or the visible
from seeing through the balloon. But the reentry vehicle has a
lot of heat, because it is an object at room temperature, and
it would be radiating to the balloon, so this balloon would be
warmer than the other balloons, the decoys, that would have no
reentry vehicles. No problem.
You go to your local store, you buy a one-pound lithium
battery, it might cost you $50, and you put it in these other
balloons so that they are being warmed just as the reentry
vehicle warms its balloons.
Now, we have always from the very beginning ``spun up'' our
warheads so that they reenter more accurately, but other
countries have not done that. If you are going to discriminate
a warhead which is spinning from decoys that are not, well,
that is an easy thing to do; but if you do not spin your
warhead, if you have anti-simulation, that is, you make the
warhead easier to simulate, because it is coated with a lumpy
aluminum-covered balloon rather than showing its beautiful
machined surface, then these decoys become much more feasible.
So the national missile defense would have no capability
against bomblets carrying biological agents dispersed on
ascent, or against a nuclear weapon in a large enclosing
balloon; nor would it discriminate a warhead in a small
balloon, properly done, from perhaps ten empty decoy small
balloons; it would neither see nor be able to intercept short-
range ballistic missiles launched from ships near U.S. shores;
and it would neither see nor be able to intercept short-range
cruise missiles launched from ships. Nevertheless, it is still
possible to protect the United States against attack by long-
range ballistic missiles.
Now, first, we have to really believe and attend to our
deterrent, that is, to ensure that people who strike the United
States realize that they will be struck back. They may even be
struck preemptively, as General Piotrowski says, and that is
something that I would favor under many circumstances.
Even so, they might build a limited ICBM capability for
political reasons, despite the insecurity that it would pose to
them. In addition to devaluing ballistic missiles, building a
defense against them actually values them, it shows you take
them seriously. So it is not clear to me which of these
arguments outweighs the other.
But if you want to intercept an ICBM, you can do it in
boost phase. That will handle this nuclear weapon inside its
enclosing balloon; That would handle the biological weapons
before they are disseminated, and the task of a homing
interceptor is a lot easier in boost phase, because it sees the
rocket plume rather than having to see the----
Senator Biden. Dr. Garwin, may I ask a question. How long
is boost phase? When you say boost phase, most people are not
technically proficient. I assume it means just at the moment it
is lifting off the pad. Is that all it is, or to what height
is----
Dr. Garwin. Thank you. The boost phase typically extends
for 4 or 5 minutes for an ICBM, because there are three stages
or so, and the ICBM cannot go too fast in the lower portions of
the atmosphere, so that is a pretty good number. It is
possible--we have considered making ICBM's that would reach
their full speed in 100 seconds.
They go quite a ways down range, maybe several hundred
miles, before they reach their full speed, and that is the key
to the intercept, because the interceptor can launch more
rapidly, get up to its full speed--the same speed as an ICBM--
in 100 seconds; and that means that it has this extra 150
seconds or so to catch up with it if it is launched from
behind, but if it is launched from the side, then it can be
launched down range a thousand miles or so, and intercept from
any region, which might be a thousand miles or more in
diameter.
So there is a vast area from which interceptors could be
deployed, and still make an intercept of a North Korean-
launched ICBM, launched north, as they must be, against the
United States, in boost phase.
We could even, if the Russians cooperate, make a joint ABM
test range south of Vladivostok, really close. We could use, in
fact, much simpler interceptors from there, but we could also
do it from ships or other places in a vast range of
neighborhoods there.
VC-based capabilities might be useful for defense of Japan,
against boost phase, against theater-range missiles launched
from North Korea. We already have an agreement with Russia and
three other countries, of September 26, 1997, which I hope will
be ratified soon, a provision by which the parties to the ABM
Treaty of 1972 accept the deployment of ballistic missile
defenses that do not, quote, ``Pose a realistic threat to the
strategic nuclear force of another party.''
That is ``another party'' to the 1972 ABM Treaty; but North
Korea is not a party, there is no reason why we should not have
a defense against North Korea. China is not a party, but China
raises different questions.
So in conclusion, we should not deploy the proposed
national missile defense unless it is proved capable of
handling the countermeasures that can realistically be employed
by the potential adversary, and I really do mean these
countermeasures of enclosing balloons, and anti-simulation, and
biological weapons dispersed on ascent.
Furthermore, the evaluation of national missile defense
should start from scratch, not to prove that the thing that we
have proposed will work, because it will not; to start with
scratch with the use of ground-based or ship-based interceptors
that will destroy the offensive missiles in boost phase before
they can release bomblets or separate a warhead that could then
provide itself with an enclosing balloon.
Finally, there is no reason to abandon the protection of
the ABM Treaty that constrains Russian defenses and thus allows
the United States to deter Russia with modest numbers of
nuclear weapons, thus facilitating great reductions in the only
nuclear threat to the survival of the United States. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Garwin follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Richard L. Garwin
introduction
This Committee knows well the characteristics of the threat facing
the United States, which were reviewed in part by the Rumsfeld
Commission in 1998. As one of the nine members of that Commission, I
concurred in the unanimous report published July 15, 1998, which
assessed the ballistic missile threat to the United States.
In brief, we considered both nuclear weapons and biological weapon
payloads as strategic threats. We noted the thousands of warheads still
available and deliverable by long-range missile from Russia; the 10 to
20 ICBMs available to China, armed with nuclear weapons; and the
possibility that any of three additional nations with which the United
States is not on friendly terms--North Korea, Iran, or Iraq--could
within five years of a decision to do so have an ICBM that could strike
some of the 50 United States. This judgment was based on the assumption
of a concerted program, well funded and given priority, with due
attention to denial and deception, as it has been increasingly
practiced by countries that wish to hide the scope of their activities
from U.S. intelligence.
Of course, other nations have much greater capabilities than these
three; for instance, Britain or France could deliver hundreds of
nuclear warheads against the United States, but we have no fear that
they would do so. With its space launch vehicle, India could also
deliver a nuclear weapon, and Israel has apparently quite a few nuclear
or thermonuclear weapons, but they are also not classed as threats to
the United States.
The Rumsfeld Commission further noted that short-range ballistic
missiles based on ships and armed with nuclear or biological payloads
would constitute a threat more readily available than ICBMs to North
Korea, Iran, or Iraq; and that ship-launched cruise missiles available
commercially would add to that threat. The Rumsfeld Commission did not
consider as a group the vulnerability of the U.S. to BW attack from
ships off shore, from cars or trucks disseminating BW, from unmanned
helicopter crop dusters, or from smuggled nuclear weapons or nuclear
weapons detonated in a U.S. harbor while still in a shipping container
on a cargo ship; but these capabilities are more easily acquired and
more reliable than are ICBMs.
In January 1999, Secretary of Defense William Cohen announced that
a decision to deploy a National Missile Defense would be considered in
summer of the year 2000, based on the existence of the threat and the
technological readiness of an NMD system to counter it. He modified the
Administration's ``3 + 3'' program which had promised that within three
years (by the year 2000) an NMD would be developed capable of
deployment within the following three years (2003), so that deployment
would now take place in 2005 in case of a favorable decision in summer,
2000.
The ``3 + 3'' program had intended that development would continue
in the case that deployment was not authorized, so that year by year
what could be deployed within three years of a decision to do so would
be increasingly capable. A decision to deploy would need to freeze the
technology in order to build a system within three (or five years).
national missile defense
Rather than recount my view of the history of the NMD program, let
me just give a judgment on the program as it is now defined. It is
contemplated that to counter a relatively few warheads, 75 ground-based
interceptors (GBI) would be built, and some 20 deployed. The system
specifications require extremely high confidence that not a single
warhead penetrate to U.S. soil. In my opinion, no system thus far
proposed could achieve such confidence, even against cooperating
warheads.
Nevertheless, the problem with the NMD system is not simply that it
could not fulfill its stated requirement, but that it would have
essentially no capability against a long-range missile system deployed
by North Korea, Iraq, or Iran to strike the United States with
biological weapons or with nuclear weapons.
I make this judgment on the basis of a substantial knowledge of the
NMD system as it is proposed, of previous efforts to develop a system
of missile defense of the nation (and of Theater Missile Defense), and
of a close look over the decades at countermeasures that are feasible
to defeat missile defenses.
The problem is a simple one. Begin, for instance, with North Korea.
If North Korea wished to maximize its capability to cause death or
damage in the United States by the launch of a first-generation ICBM,
it would not use a so-called unitary payload of BW, which would perhaps
deliver tens or hundreds of kilograms of anthrax or other infectious or
even contagious microbe on some city. The result would be a very narrow
plume carried by the breeze, which would kill most of the people in its
path, but would leave those outside the plume untouched, except in the
case of extremely contagious germs such as smallpox.
Rather, a country could make much better use of a limited payload
capacity by packaging the BW agent in the form of individual bomblets
that would weigh a kilogram or so, and that would be released by the
missile just as soon as it had reached its full velocity on ascent.
That is, just after boost phase. The bomblets would fall separately
through the arc of the trajectory to their target, and would reenter
the atmosphere without incident, having been provided with a thin
ablative reentry shield. After the heat of reentry, the shield could be
shed, as was the case with the reentry of the film buckets of the first
U.S. strategic reconnaissance system--CORONA, and the bomblets would
fall to Earth, where a thoroughly tested device would expel the BW
agent. This could be a mild explosive burster charge or some other
mechanism.
Given this approach to increased military effectiveness, the
planned National Missile Defense system has no possibility of making an
intercept so early in the trajectory.
If the adversary has a nuclear weapon that can be delivered by
ICBM, it can evidently not break it up into 1-kg bomblets. A first-
generation nuclear weapon would probably have a yield of 10 to 20
kilotons (like those U.S. nuclear weapons that devastated Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in August 1945). So the NMD system would have a chance to
observe the flight--first the DSP satellites would see the booster
flame (as in the case of BW as well); then the upgraded early warning
radars would see the warhead in mid-course, together with whatever
simple countermeasures might have been used (and the spent final-stage
fuel tank); and X-band radars would perhaps help to discriminate the
real warhead from decoys or junk. A sufficient number of ground-based
interceptors would be launched to obtain (in principle) the desired
damage expectancy by their hit-to-kill intercept against the incoming
nuclear warhead. If the interceptors were based at Grand Forks, ND,
there would in general not be time to observe the success of an
intercept before launching a second GBI. If the interceptors were based
in Alaska, a launch from North Korea would provide some time for such
shoot-look-shoot. To my mind, there is no significant difference
between the protection of the country offered by interceptors based in
Alaska compared with those based in North Dakota. Protection would be
negligible in either case. The reason is that a simple countermeasure
would defeat the system as planned.
Depending on the preferences of the adversary, this countermeasure
could take the form of a large enclosing balloon around the reentry
vehicle that contains the nuclear warhead. Immediately after achieving
full velocity, the warhead would separate from the final stage of the
missile, and a simple gas generator containing a few grams of material
(like that in every airbag in modern automobiles) would gently inflate
a metallized plastic balloon that had been crumpled down onto the
warhead by a simple vacuum cleaner exhausting most of the air. Or
inflation could be done simply by compressed gas. A warhead that might
be five feet long could be enclosed in a balloon 30 ft. in diameter, so
that it would be perfectly well visible to the radars and to the hit-
to-kill homing vehicle of the ground-based interceptor. But the homing
vehicle which would strike the balloon (if all goes according to plan)
would have very little probability of striking the warhead contained
within. A thin aluminum coat on the plastic is opaque to radar and also
to infrared invisible light, which are the means by which the homing
kill vehicle (HKV) is expected to strike its target.
Depending upon the characteristics of an isolated target, such
intercept might take place in principle with an accuracy of one foot or
less, providing high probability of kill (if the equipment and software
is reliable--which it is not yet). But with the aimpoint hidden, the
chance of striking the warhead would be tiny, considering its small
size compared with the enclosing balloon.
One might imagine that the collision of the warhead with the
balloon would generate sufficient gas from the very high velocity
impact of the thin balloon on the interceptor as it is going by, to
blow away most of the remainder of the balloon and thus to expose the
warhead, bare, to the other interceptors that may follow. This is a
possibility, and the United States would no doubt wish to test this
prospect (following the best analysis we can do), but unfortunately for
the effectiveness of the defense, this approach is readily defeated by
the offense, without testing in space. The offense could have several
such balloons shrunk down one over the other, and independently
expanded when the outermost balloon is blown away.
It is not necessary to define the countermeasures that an adversary
nation might use, but only to understand those that might work. They
could choose among several others.
Another simple countermeasure that might have greater appeal to
some, would be to use not a large balloon but a small one, not much
bigger than the warhead itself. Then additional small balloons would
serve as decoys, if the HKV could not tell them apart by means of its
multi-spectral sensor. More than 30 years ago, the Strategic Military
Panel of the President's Science Advisory Committee, of which I was a
member, observed that an adversary would no doubt use ``anti-
simulation'' rather than rely strictly on a decoy's simulating the
characteristics of the warhead.
Thus, if the warhead were to be coasting bare through space,
perhaps spinning in a stable fashion, decoys in order to be credible
would need to be pretty much the same size and have the same spin.
However, with anti-simulation, the idea is that the warhead would be
modified or clothed, so as to make it easier to simulate. The warhead
would simulate a cheap decoy, rather than the decoys being required to
simulate an expensive and precise warhead.
An easy way to begin anti-simulation is to put the warhead in a
small lumpy balloon. This would take care of the radar simulation quite
well. It might be better also to have a warhead that is not spun up, as
was the case with warheads of other countries for a long time. Spinning
the warhead improves the reentry accuracy, because a displacement of
the external reentry vehicle from the center of mass of the warhead
otherwise leads to substantial error. But the first-generation ICBMs
are so inaccurate that this will not be a significant impairment of
their accuracy. In any case, it is entirely possible for a warhead to
be spun up just as it begins to reenter and after all possibility of
intercept by the NMD system has passed. When to spin is simply a design
choice, and if spinup before reentry helps to penetrate an NMD system,
it can readily be done.
The warhead itself has substantial mass (perhaps 500-1000 lbs.) and
so does not cool appreciably in its passage through space. Thin empty
balloons, on the other hand, have no such heat capacity. Nevertheless,
it takes less than a pound of lithium battery within such a balloon to
supply as much heat radiation to the interior of the balloon as the
warhead itself would provide, if the warhead were shrouded in
commercially available multi-layer insulation, widely used in
refrigerators, transport of liquid nitrogen, and in space applications.
While the NMD
would have no capability against bomblets carrying BW
dispersed on ascent, or against a nuclear weapon in a large
enclosing balloon,
nor could it discriminate a warhead in a small balloon,
properly done, from perhaps 10 empty small balloons,
would neither see nor be able to intercept short-range
ballistic missiles launched from ships near U.S. shores,
would neither see nor be able to intercept short-range
cruise missiles launched from ships near U.S. shores,
it is possible to protect the United States against the attack by long-
range ballistic missiles.
The beginning of protection lies with deterrence of such attack,
and even deterrence of building such a capability. Deterrence against
use comes from the certainty of nuclear response to nuclear attack
against the United States, and such a response would be overwhelming.
Deterrence against building such a capability derives from its lack of
utility, since its use is likely to be deterred by the threat of
retaliation. Furthermore, a nation deploying an ICBM system to threaten
the United States would surely feel vulnerable to preemptive attack, if
the United States learned where the missiles were based.
Nevertheless, a limited ICBM capability might be built for
political reasons, despite the insecurity that it would pose.
It is possible to intercept the ICBM in boost-phase--while the main
rocket engines are still burning, so that the task of a homing
interceptor is far simpler than that posed to the ground-based
interceptor that must see a cool warhead at great distances in space.
But such a system has essentially nothing in common with the National
Missile Defense that is proposed. It would use the existing DSP
satellites to determine the time and rough direction for launch of a
ground or sea-based interceptor. But the fundamental characteristic of
that interceptor is that it should reach ICBM velocity of 7 km/s and
should do it in about 100 s rather than the 250 s of a typical ICBM.
Under these circumstances, there is a vast area in which the
interceptor could be deployed and still make the intercept in boost
phase. Specifically, against North Korea, such interceptors could be
deployed at a joint U.S.-Russian test range south of Vladivostok (if
Russia wished to cooperate with the United States in this regard) or,
in principle, from military cargo ships in a vast range of ocean area.
Because such sea-based capabilities might be useful for defense of
Japan, for instance, against theater-range missiles launched from North
Korea, and because there is already in the September 26, 1997,
``Agreement on Confidence-building Measures Related to Systems to
Counter Ballistic Missiles Other Than Strategic Ballistic Missiles''
(signed but unratified) a provision by which the Parties to the ABM
Treaty of 1972 accept the deployment of ballistic missile defenses that
do not ``pose a realistic threat to the strategic nuclear force of
another Party,'' it is possible that Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and
Ukraine would agree specifically to a few large interceptors based on
ships to carry out boost-phase intercept of missiles launched from
North Korea--which is, after all, not a Party to the ABM Treaty.
conclusion
We should not deploy the proposed National Missile Defense
unless it is proved capable of handling the countermeasures that can
realistically be employed by the potential adversary.
The evaluation of NMD should start from scratch with the
use of ground-based or ship-based interceptors that will destroy the
offensive missiles in boost phase--before they can release bomblets or
separate a warhead that could then provide itself with an enclosing
balloon.
There is no reason to abandon the protection of the ABM
Treaty, that constrains Russian defenses and thus allows the United
States to deter Russia with modest numbers of nuclear weapons, thus
facilitating further great reductions in the only nuclear threat to the
survival of the United States.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Dr. Wright.
STATEMENT OF DR. DAVID WRIGHT, RESEARCH FELLOW, SECURITY
STUDIES PROGRAM, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY,
CAMBRIDGE, MA
Dr. Wright. It is a pleasure today to appear before the
committee. I will summarize my written remarks, which I would
ask would be put in the record.
Both the administration and the Senate have singled out
technical readiness as the key criteria that will affect next
year's decision on whether or not to begin deployment of the
national missile defense system. Is the technology ready to
deploy? I will argue the answer is no. Will it be ready to
deploy by next summer, when the Deployment Readiness Review is
schedule? Again, I will argue the answer is no.
I will then discuss what the United States needs to do to
find out if the technology is ready to deploy at some point in
the future.
When you develop a technology and want to know if it is
ready for production, you need to do three things. First, you
need to build a prototype and test it on the test range or in
the lab under controlled conditions to determine if the basic
technology is in hand and whether it will work in a benign
environment.
Second, once you have demonstrated that the technology
works under controlled conditions, you need to test it under
conditions that approximate as closely as possible those you
would expect to find in the real world, and to assess its
operational effectiveness in the real world. Three, you need to
do enough testing to assess the reliability of the technology.
Satisfying the first criteria is clearly important and
necessary, but it does not demonstrate technical readiness to
deploy. The other two criteria must be satisfied as well. In
fact, satisfying the first condition and demonstrating the
basic technology may tell you essentially nothing about whether
the second criteria will be met and how well the technology
will do in the real world.
It is obviously important to test for operational
effectiveness when developing a military technology which an
adversary will be trying to defeat. Thus, for an NMD system,
satisfying the second criteria would in part require making a
best guess about the types of warheads that North Korea, Iran,
and Iraq would be likely to use in their ballistic missiles,
and then conducting tests against those types of targets.
Since the NMD system is in intended to counter ballistic
missiles carrying weapons of mass destruction, satisfying the
third criteria and demonstrating reliability is extremely
important.
If the United States is going to count on its NMD system,
it has to know how reliable the system is. Some argue it is
important to employ an NMD system as soon as possible, and the
United States should, therefore, be willing to take high risks
by developing subsystems concurrently and using surrogate
components and tests, but experience shows that this rarely
works. In fact, by taking such risks, you are more likely to
delay deployment than speed it up.
As the Welch report stated, ``The virtually universal
experience of the study group members has been that high
technical risk is not likely to accelerate fielded capability.
It is far more likely to cause program slips, increased costs,
and even program failure.''
No matter what development strategy is adopted, it is
essential that the United States not cut corners on testing,
because testing is the only way to find out if the technology
is ready. The more urgent one believes NMD deployment is, the
more one should support and insist on an adequate and complete
test program that satisfies the three criteria outlined I have
listed above.
Now, what is the current situation? Well, let us look first
at whether the United States has satisfied my first criteria.
There have been no intercept tests of the NMD system, but since
1982, the United States has conducted 16 intercept tests of
exo-atmospheric hit-to-kill interceptors, which operate in a
similar manner to the planned NMD interceptor.
To date only 2 of those 16 intercept tests have scored
hits, a 13 percent success rate, and the test record is not
getting better with time. The most recent successful high-
altitude test occurred in January, 1991, and the last 11 such
intercept tests have failed.
What this test record shows is that learning to do high-
speed hit-to-kill, commonly called hitting a bullet with a
bullet, is very hard. General Lyles testified in January that
one thing that had changed in the previous year was an
appreciation of ``The reality of how difficult this job is, the
reality of how tough it is to try and do missile defense, and
how tough it is to try to get hit-to-kill technology.''
Thus, as of today, the technology does not justify making a
decision to begin deployment. Indeed, a year ago the Welch
report stated, ``After more than a dozen flight tests, we are
still on step one in demonstrating and validating the hit-to-
kill system.'' Mr. Welch's report appeared, two more flight
tests of exo-atmospheric hit-to-kill intercepts have taken
place, and both failed to hit their targets. Thus, the more
recent tests only strengthen the Welch panel's conclusion.
What is the program status likely to be next summer when
the Deployment Readiness Review is scheduled? The United States
is planning to conduct four NMD intercept tests between now and
then. Even if all four of these intercept tests take place
between now and next June, and are successful, would that
satisfy the first criteria?
It would certainly demonstrate the principle of hit-to-kill
under test conditions, and would be a necessary first step for
the testing program; however, it would still not indicate that
the technology had fully satisfied the first criteria, because
these tests will be performed using surrogate boosters and kill
vehicles, and not prototypes of the components that would
actually be deployed.
A full prototype of the interceptor technology that is
intended for deployment will not be flight tested until fiscal
year 2003. Thus, the tests planned for the next year will not
assess the performance of two of the most important and least
mature components of the system.
More importantly, the second criteria will not have been
met, since apparently none of these tests will simulate real-
world conditions.
As the fiscal year 1998 DOT&E report states, ``The NMD test
and evaluation program is building a target suite that, while
an adequate representation of one or two reentry vehicles, may
not be representative of threat penetration aids, booster or
post-boost vehicles. Test targets of the current program do not
represent the complete design-to threat space and are not
representative of the full sensor requirements spectrum,'' that
is, discrimination requirements.
It is quite possible for a technology to work well in tests
and fail in the real world. For example, the Patriot system
used in the Gulf war did phenomenally well in tests, it had a
perfect 17 for 17 record in intercept tests prior to the Gulf
war, yet the Army claims only a 61 percent success rate for the
Patriot during the Gulf war, and independent assessments of its
performance as well as statements by the Israeli officials
indicate that the success rate was actually much lower.
One reason for the failure of the Patriot to destroy the
Iraqi al Huseyn missiles is that the Iraqi missiles broke up on
reentry, creating multiple targets that maneuvered as they fell
to the ground. These proved to be very effective
countermeasures, albeit inadvertent ones. Future missiles must
be expected to incorporate intentional countermeasures to
confuse or overwhelm the defense.
Let me make a couple of short points about countermeasures.
Ultimately, the U.S. NMD system will succeed or fail, based on
its ability to deal with countermeasures, so before deciding to
deploy, the U.S. must understand whether the NMD system it is
developing is likely to work against plausible real-world
threats. Members of the Rumsfeld Commission have stressed that
absence of evidence is not evidence of absence when considering
ballistic missile development. This advice must also be heeded
relative to countermeasure development for these missiles.
While some see the Iraqi use of ballistic missiles in the
1991 Gulf war as a wake-up call to the United States about the
future ballistic missile threat, it was also no doubt a wake-up
call to other countries about the future deployment of U.S.
missile defenses. Those countermeasures should not be thought
of as an optional add-on that the country might or might not
decide to put in its long-range missiles at the last minute.
A country that is developing or trying to acquire
intercontinental ballistic missiles would no doubt see the
parallel development or the purchase of countermeasures as an
integral part of its missile program.
The bottom line is that none of the three criteria outlined
above will have been fully satisfied by next summer. At best,
the first criteria may be partially satisfied, and I think it
is clear then that by next summer the technology will not
justify making a decision to begin deployment, but in the
longer term, what kind of test program would the United States
need to deploy to determine whether its NMD system is
technically ready to deploy?
First, the United States should not set an unrealistic time
scale for its testing program. The testing schedules should not
be predetermined, but should be set by the outcome of previous
tests. There must be sufficient time between tests to
assimilate the results of one test before conducting the next
test.
Second, the United States should set up a red team, whose
job it is to devise countermeasures using the kind of
information and technology that is available to developing
countries. Some of this is already being done, but it must
become a top priority of the program.
Third, the NMD testing program should include flight tests
of the interceptor against the best countermeasures potentially
available to a threat nation, as devised by the red team, and
the United States should not deploy an NMD system before it is
proved effective against the countermeasures devised by the red
team.
Fourth, the United States should conduct enough tests to
assess the reliability of a system. The number of tests
required will depend on both the system reliability
requirements and the test record.
Finally, there should be an independent oversight of the
overall NMD testing program, and in particular, there must be
careful oversight to ensure that the red team is independent
and adequately supported, and that its ideas are incorporated
in tests.
Let me conclude by noting that national missile defense is
a highly politicized issue, and there is great political
pressure on decisionmakers to do something, but the political
response must not get too far ahead of what the technology can
deliver.
In January, 1999, General Lyles stated, when talking about
the newly revised NMD program and test schedule, he said, ``You
will find no programs at all in the Department of Defense that
have the limited amount of testing and the aggressive schedule
that we have embarked upon here, even with this revised
schedule.''
If the United States is serious about deploying a defense
against ballistic missiles launched to its territory, then it
should be serious about finding out if the technology is ready.
The only way to find that out is by a rigorous and realistic
testing program. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Wright follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. David C. Wright
Mr Chairman, distinguished Senators, it is a pleasure to appear
before the Committee today.
Both the Administration and the Senate have singled out technical
readiness as a key criteria that will affect the decision next year on
whether or not to begin deployment of a national missile defense (NMD)
system.
Is the technology ready to deploy? In this testimony, I will argue
the answer is no. Will it be ready to deploy by next summer, when the
Deployment Readiness Review (DRR) is scheduled? Again, I will argue the
answer is no. I will then discuss what the United States needs to do to
find out if the technology is ready to deploy at some point in the
future.
Thus, I will consider three questions in turn. First, does the
United States now know enough about the capability of the technology to
make a commitment to deploy a national missile defense? Second, will
the United States know enough by next summer? And finally, what will it
take for the United States to know at any point beyond next summer?
That is, what does the United States have to do to understand enough
about the capability of the technology to be able to make a commitment
to deploy an NMD system that it can expect to be effective?
``Fly before you buy'' is an oft-heard dictum regarding the
Pentagon's acquisition policy. It is important to be clear about what
kind of flying the United States needs to do before buying NMD.
When you develop a technology--any technology--and want to know if
it is ready for production, you need to do three things:
1. You need to build a prototype and test it on the test
range or in the lab under controlled conditions to determine if
the basic technology is in hand and whether it will work in a
benign environment.
2. Once you have demonstrated that the technology works under
controlled conditions, you need to test it under conditions
that approximate as closely as possible those you expect to
find in the real world. This is necessary to assess the
operational effectiveness of the technology in the real world,
which will not be a benign environment,
3. You need to do enough testing to assess the reliability of
the technology.
Satisfying the first of these criteria is clearly important and
necessary, but does not demonstrate technical readiness to deploy. It
is necessary but not sufficient; the other two criteria must be
satisfied as well. In fact, satisfying the first condition and
demonstrating the basic technology may tell you essentially nothing
about whether the second criteria will be met and how well the
technology will do in the real world.
It should go without saying that it is especially important to test
for operational effectiveness if the technology you are developing is a
military technology, which an adversary will be trying to defeat. Thus,
for an NMD system, satisfying the second criterion would in part
require making a best guess about the types of warheads that North
Korea, Iran and Iraq would be likely to use on their ballistic
missiles, and then conducting tests against targets of those types.
After all, one of the key things an NMD system is supposed to do is to
defend the United States from long-range missiles launched by one of
these countries.
Since the NMD system is intended to counter ballistic missiles
carrying weapons of mass destruction, satisfying the third condition
and demonstrating reliability is extremely important. If the United
States is going to--in any sense of the word--count on its NMD system,
it has to know that the system is reliable.
Some have argued that it is important that the United States deploy
an NMD system as soon as possible, and that the United States should
therefore be willing to take high risks by developing subsystems
concurrently and using surrogate components in tests. But experience
shows that this rarely works. In fact, by taking such risks, you are
more likely to delay deployment than speed it up. As the Welch Report
\1\ stated ``The virtually universal experience of the study group
members has been that high technical risk is not likely to accelerate
fielded capability. It is far more likely to cause program slips,
increased costs, and even program failure.'' Similarly, in discussing
the sense of urgency behind the THAAD program, the FY 1998 Report of
the Director, Operational Testing & Evaluation (DOT&E) \2\ stated that
``The ultimate result, ironically, is a schedule slip of seven years.''
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\1\ Report of the Panel on Reducing Risk In Ballistic Missile
Defense Flight Test Programs, 27 February 1998.
\2\ FY98 Annual Report of the Director, Operational Test &
Evaluation, submitted to Congress February 1999.
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No matter what development strategy is adopted, it is essential
that the United States not cut corners on testing, because testing is
the only way to find out if the technology is ready. The more urgent
one believes NMD deployment is, the more one should support and insist
on an adequate and complete test program that satisfies the three
criteria outlined above.
where is the program now?
What is the current situation? First, let's look at whether the
United States has satisfied the first criteria.
There have been no intercept tests of the NMD system, but since
1982 the United States has conducted 16 intercept tests of exo-
atmospheric hit-to-kill interceptors, which operate in a similar manner
to the planned NMD interceptor. To date, the test record of such
interceptors has been abysmal. Only 2 of these 16 intercept tests
scored hits, for a 13 percent success rate. And the test record is not
getting better with time; the most recent successful high-altitude test
occurred in January 1991 and the last 11 such intercept tests have been
failures.
What can we learn from this test record? What it shows is that
learning to do high-speed hit-to-kill commonly dubbed ``hitting a
bullet with a bullet''--is very hard. Indeed, the Director of the
Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, General Lyles, stated in his
Senate testimony \3\ in January 1999 that one thing that had changed in
the previous year was an appreciation of ``the reality of how difficult
this job is . . . The reality of how tough it is to try to do missile
defense and how tough it is to try to get hit-to-kill technology . .
.''
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\3\ Lt. General Lester Lyles, testimony before the Subcommittee on
Strategic Forces, Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate,
February 24, 1999.
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It is clear that the technology has not satisfied even the first
criteria listed above--demonstrating a capability against cooperative
targets. Thus, as of today the technology does not exist to justify
making a decision to begin deployment. Anyone asserting otherwise is
basing their assertion on something other than the demonstrated facts.
Indeed, a year ago, the Welch Report \4\ stated that ``After more
than a dozen flight tests . . . we are still on `step one' in
demonstrating and validating HTK [hit-to-kill] systems. . . . And even
when this first step is achieved, these programs will have to go
through steps two and three: demonstrating reliable HTK at a weapon
system level and demonstrating reliable HTK against likely real-world
targets.''
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\4\ Report of the Panel on Reducing Risk In Ballistic Missile
Defense Flight Test Programs.
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Since the Welch Report appeared, two more flight tests of exo-
atmospheric hit-to-kill interceptors have taken place,\5\ and both
failed to hit their target. Thus, the more recent tests only strengthen
the Welch Panel's conclusion.
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\5\ Both of these tests were of THAAD interceptors.
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where will the program be next summer?
What is the program status likely to be next summer, when the
Deployment Readiness Review is scheduled? The United States is planning
to conduct four NMD intercept tests between now and then. However, the
date of the first intercept test has recently slipped by several
months, and it is not clear how many of these tests will actually take
place by June 2000.
Even if all four of these intercept tests take place between now
and next June, and are successful, would that satisfy the first
criteria? It would certainly help demonstrate the principle of hit-to-
kill under test conditions, which would be a necessary first step for
the testing program.
However, it would still not indicate that the technology had
satisfied the first criteria because these tests will be performed
using surrogate boosters and kill vehicles and not prototypes of the
components that would actually be deployed. Prototypes of the
interceptor technology that is intended for deployment will not be
tested until FY2003. (The first tests of the prototype interceptor
booster and kill vehicle are planned for FY2001 and FY2003,
respectively.)
Thus, the tests planned for the next year will not assess the
performance of two of the most important components of the system. Yet,
as General Lyles testified in February of this year, ``The ground-based
interceptor (GBI) weapon is the least mature element of the system and
entails the highest technological development risks.'' \6\
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\6\ Lt. General Lester Lyles, testimony before the Subcommittee on
Strategic Forces, Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate,
February 24, 1999.
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More importantly, the second criteria will not have been met since
apparently none of these four planned tests will simulate real-world
conditions. According to the FY 1998 DOT&E Report. ``The NMD T&E
[testing and evaluation] program is building a target suite that, while
an adequate representation of one or two reentry vehicles, may not be
representative of threat penetration aids, booster, or post-boost
vehicles. Test targets of the current program do not represent the
complete `design-to' threat space and are not representative of the
full sensor requirements spectrum.'' \7\
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\7\ FY98 Annual Report of the Director, Operational Test &
Evaluation, submitted to Congress February 1999.
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And it is quite possible for a technology to work well in tests and
fail in the real world. For example, recall that the Patriot system
used in the Gulf War did phenomenally well in tests against ballistic
missiles--it had a perfect 17 for 17 record in intercept tests prior to
the Gulf War. Yet the Army claims only a 61% success rate for Patriot
during the Gulf War, and independent assessments of its performance \8\
(as well as statements by Israeli officials \9\) indicate that the
success rate was actually much lower--and perhaps close to zero.
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\8\ George N. Lewis and Theodore A. Postol, ``Video Evidence on the
Effectiveness of Patriot during the 1991 Gulf War.'' Science and Global
Security, Vol. 4, pp.1-63, 1993. The Panel on Public Affairs of the
American Physical Society appointed a panel to review the Lewis-Postol
analysis and criticisms of it; the panel found that the Lewis-Postol
methodology was sound and that none of the criticisms stood up to
scrutiny. These findings are reported in Jeremiah D. Sullivan, Dan
Fenstermacher, Daniel Fisher, Ruth Howes, O'Dean Judd, Roger Speed,
``Technical Debate over Patriot Performance in the Gulf War,'' Science
and Global Security, Vol. 8, pp.1-55, 1998.
\9\ Moshe Arens, former Israeli Minister of Defense, and General
Dan Shomron, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Force during the
1991 Gulf War, stated in interviews conducted by Reuven Pedatzur on an
Israeli TV documentary (21 November 1993) that the Patriot successfully
intercepted at most one Scud over Israel. Highlights of these
interviews are reported in Tim Weiner, New York Times, 21 November
1993, and Newsweek, November 1993.
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One reason for the failure of the Patriot to destroy the Iraqi al
Huseyn missiles is that the Iraqi missiles broke up on reentry,
creating multiple targets that maneuvered as they fell to the ground.
These proved to be very effective countermeasures, albeit inadvertent
ones. Future missiles must be expected to incorporate intentional
countermeasures to confuse or overwhelm the defense.
Indeed, the U.S. NMD system will succeed or fail based on its
ability to deal with countermeasures. So before deciding to deploy, the
U.S. must understand whether the NMD system it is developing is likely
to be able to work against plausible real-world threats.
Members of the Rumsfeld Commission have stressed that ``absence of
evidence is not evidence of absence'' for ballistic missile
development; this advice must also be heeded relative to countermeasure
development for those missiles. Dr. William Graham and others have
emphasized the importance of using ``Try Intelligence'' or ``TRYINT''
to assess potential ballistic missile threats. This would involve
trying to build ballistic missiles using only the kind of information
and technology assumed to be available to potential adversaries to see
what is possible. The United States must also use TRYINT in assessing
potential countermeasures and must test the NMD system against such
countermeasures. While a countermeasure TRYINT program--the
Countermeasures Hands-On Program (CHOP)--exists, the level of effort
devoted to it is likely inadequate.\10\ Moreover, it is not clear at
what level its results will be incorporated into intercept tests.
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\10\ According to Michael C. Sirak, `` `Chop'' shop helps create
robust missile defenses,'' Inside Missile Defense, Vol. 5. No. 8, April
21, 1999, pp. 1, 8-12, CHOP brings together teams of four engineers to
work on developing countermeasures for nine to twelve months. Yet a
country serious about developing countermeasures could work for many
years on the problem.
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It turns out that the type of interceptor the U.S. NMD system will
use--a hit-to-kill interceptor that is designed to intercept outside
the atmosphere in the vacuum of space--is particularly vulnerable to
certain kinds of simple countermeasures. I will not go into detail
here, but countermeasures that are technically simple (such as
lightweight balloon decoys with the warhead also enclosed in a balloon)
can make the system fail catastrophically.
Will these types of simple countermeasures be available to
developing countries such as North Korea? Yes. It is logically
inconsistent to assert that developing countries will be able to build
or otherwise acquire the technology for intercontinental ballistic
missiles, and at the same time will not have access to the far simpler
technology to equip these missiles with effective countermeasures. (If
one assumes these countries are receiving technology and/or assistance
for ballistic missiles from more advanced missile states, such as
Russia, one must also assume they would receive assistance on
countermeasures.)
Are ballistic missiles equipped with countermeasures merely a
theoretical threat? Some people argue that developing countries may not
bother to use countermeasures. But it is also logically inconsistent to
assert that countries like North Korea or Iran will go to all the
trouble to build or acquire intercontinental ballistic missiles--
largely to be able to target the United States--and at the same time
will not be motivated to use simple countermeasures to defeat a U.S.
NMD system deployed to counter their ballistic missiles.
While some see the Iraqi use of ballistic missiles in the 1991 Gulf
War as a wake-up call to the United States about the future ballistic
missile threat, it was also no doubt a wake-up call to other countries
about the future deployment of U.S. missile defenses. Thus,
countermeasures should not be thought of as an optional add-on that a
country might or might not decide to put on its long-range missile at
the last minute. A country that is developing or trying to acquire
intercontinental ballistic missiles would no doubt see the parallel
development or purchase of countermeasures as an integral part of its
missile program.
Thus, asserting that countries deploying intercontinental ballistic
missiles either will not be able to or will not bother to use effective
countermeasures amounts to wishful thinking and should not be the basis
for military planning.
Two sensor fly-by tests have been done that have reportedly
distinguished decoys from a mock warhead. What does this mean? From a
technical point of view, there is no doubt that sensors can detect
temperature differences between objects in space, or differences in
wobbling motions. But this capability is only useful in discriminating
between warhead and decoys if the attacker does not manipulate the heat
or motion signals in a way to confuse the defense. Rather than using
decoys that look and behave differently from the warhead, the attacker
would disguise the warhead to make it look like a decoy, or make all
the objects dissimilar in appearance.
The bottom line is that none of the three criteria outlined above
will have been satisfied by next summer. At best, the first criteria
may be partially satisfied. Thus, it is clear that by next summer the
technology will not justify making a decision to begin deployment of an
NMD system.
recommendations for the future
What should the United States do to find out if the technology is
ready in the longer term? In particular, what kind of a test program
would the United States need to determine whether its NMD system is
technically ready to deploy?
First, the United States should not set an unrealistic time
scale for its testing program. The testing schedule should not
be predetermined, but should be set by the outcome of previous
tests. There must be sufficient time between tests to
assimilate the results of one test before conducting the next
test.
Second, the United States should set up a Red Team whose job
it is to devise countermeasures using the kind of information
and technology available to developing countries.
Third, the NMD testing program should include flight tests
of the interceptor against the best countermeasures potentially
available to a threat nation, as devised by the Red Team. The
United States should not decide to deploy an NMD system before
it is proved effective against the Red Team countermeasures.
Fourth, the United States should conduct enough tests to
assess the reliability of the system. The number of tests
required will depend both on the system reliability
requirements and the test record.
Finally, there should be independent oversight of the
overall NMD testing program. In particular, there must be
careful oversight to ensure that the Red Team is independent
and adequately supported, and that its ideas are incorporated
in tests.
conclusion
National Missile Defense is a highly politicized issue and there is
great political pressure on decision-makers to do something. But the
political response must not get too far ahead of what the technology
can deliver.
General Lyles stated in January 1999 \11\ about the newly revised
NMD program, ``You will find no programs at all [in the Department of
Defense] that have the limited amount of testing and the aggressive
schedule that we've embarked upon here even with this revised program.
. . .''
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\11\ Lt. Gen. Lester Lyles, Director, BMDO, DOD News Briefing,
January 20, 1999.
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If the United States is serious about deploying a defense against
ballistic missiles launched at its territory then it should be serious
about finding out if the technology is ready. The only way to find out
is by a rigorous and realistic testing program.
Appendix A
Following are excerpts from the section on NMD of the FY 1998
Annual Report by the Director, Operational Testing and Evaluation
(DOT&E), available at
http://www.dote.osd.mil/reports/FY98/98JTETOC1.html#jte
test & evaluation assessment
The aggressive schedule established for the NMD Deployment
Readiness Program presents a major challenge. For instance, if a
deployment is required by 2003, the NMD program will have to compress
the work of 10 to 12 years into 6 years. As a result, many of the
design and T&E activities will be done concurrcntly. Program delays
have already caused IFT-3 to move to June 1999. This represents almost
an 18-month slip over the last year and a half. This clearly
demonstrates an extremely high-risk schedule and DOT&E considers the
probability of meeting the DRR on time with the currently planned T&E
program as highly unlikely.
The complex operating characteristics and environments of the NMD
T&E Program make it necessary to plan and conduct IFTs that are limited
in scope. DRR information based on a few flight tests with immature
elements will be limited. As a result, the T&E program will rely
heavily on ground testing and the execution of simulations for
assessing the maturity and performance of the NMD system concept. For
example, the decision to downselect the EKV contract early eliminates
the benefit of intercept flight data to support that decision. This
warrants a rigorous ground hardware-in-the-loop simulator test program
to assess competing seeker design. It does not appear, however, that
the LSI will increase the scope of that grown testing in the absence of
the fli