Frank J. Gaffney, Director, Center for Security Policy

Ballistic Missile Defense
30 May 1996 - House Government Reform and Oversight
Subcommittee on National Security

THE CASE FOR PROMPT DEPLOYMENT OF
EFFECTIVE, GLOBAL MISSILE DEFENSES

I appreciate the opportunity to appear before this distinguished Committee to address what I regard as the single most serious national security problem we face: our present, utter inability to prevent even a single ballistic missile launched at the United States from reaching its target. It is a particular privilege to do so in the company of Jim Woolsey -- a man whose realistic appraisal of the growing threat posed by ballistic missiles to this country, as well as to its forces and allies overseas, has been an invaluable antidote to the pollyannish intelligence assessments served up recently by the Clinton Administration.

Permit me to say at the outset how much I and my colleagues at the Center for Security Policy and the other participants in the Coalition to Defend America appreciate the leadership Speaker Gingrich, Majority Leader Armey, Majority Whip DeLay, and you and other relevant committee and subcommittee chairmen -- notably, Reps. Spence, Livingston, Young, Hyde, Hunter, Weldon and Cox -- are providing on this issue. You and like-minded members of the Senate leadership are to be commended for the determination, vision and courage you are exhibiting in the face of widespread hostility from the press and Washington policy elites to the Defend America Act of 1996 and related missile defense initiatives.

The Historical Significance of this Debate

As you know, House Speaker Newt Gingrich has correctly described the ongoing deliberations about defending America as "the most important national defense debate since Churchill argued for building radar" in the peacetime years before World War II. This seems to me to be both an accurate depiction of the stakes and a particularly apt analogy: Had the British government not taken steps to develop radar before hostilities broke out, the course of the Battle of Britain and the Second World War might well have been different. Certainly, the devastation wrought by the Luftwaffe would have been substantially greater.

Today, if we fail to put into place effective missile defenses, it is probable that the United States will also sustain otherwise avoidable, immense casualties. The following are among the grounds for such a grim forecast: o The trend in the proliferation of ballistic missile technology is unmistakably in the direction of longer- and longer-range missiles coming into the hands of ever more dangerous nations. o In the absence of effective, global American anti-missile defenses, there is little if any disincentive to rogue states' pursuit of increasingly capable ballistic missiles. Such weapons currently promise to make them instant world powers, able to blackmail their neighbors and even the great United States. If anything, the Clinton Administration's policies of rewarding proliferating nations like North Korea for trying to "go nuclear" has created incentives for doing so. (Interestingly, South Korean press reports indicate that Pyongyang now expects the United States to offer fresh concessions in order to slow the North's ballistic missile program.)

Some contend that U.S. defenses will only spur the North Koreans and others to build more missiles. I must tell you that I was not among those during the Cold War who believed the Soviet Union would be either willing or able to afford the vast expenditure needed to overhaul their ballistic missile force so as to counter U.S. strategic defenses. I think it even more unlikely that, in the face of American defenses, a rogue developing nation will deem it worthwhile to sink more of its limited resources trying to end-run us by adding to the quantity and/or the quality of its vulnerable ballistic missile force. o There are lots of ways rogue nations can reduce the time it would take to have deployable long-range ballistic missiles. The transfer of militarily relevant technologies by the U.S. and other Western nations, by Russia and by China is one short-cut.

Another way is through the sale of so-called "Space Launch Vehicles" (SLV) or related technology. We have recently learned of Russian and Ukrainian efforts to sell SS-18 ICBM components to China. For some time, Moscow has also been offering for sale a "START" SLV -- a missile that appears to be functionally identical to road-mobile Soviet SS-25 ICBMs. Incredibly, these transactions have been legitimated by an amendment to the START I Treaty negotiated by the same Clinton Administration that is publicly minimizing the missile threat!

• It should be remembered that even relatively primitive and inaccurate ballistic missile systems can pose a lethal threat to populous areas like the East and West Coasts and other major urban centers of the United States. The majority of Americans living within several hundred miles of the shoreline could be at risk even from short- range ballistic missiles launched from seagoing vessels.
• And arguably most important of all, a nation that already has deployed ballistic missiles of sufficient range and accuracy to reach this country has begun engaging in "nuclear blackmail" of the United States. As you know, within the past few months, communist China has communicated to the highest levels of our government the threat of devastating attacks against Los Angeles if the U.S. interfered with its campaign of intimidation against Taiwan.

In short, Mr. Chairman, it is simply no longer possible to describe the threat of long-range ballistic missile attack on the United States as a distant possibility. It is literally a present danger.

As to the reasons why the Clinton Administration would be commissioning -- and aggressively publicizing -- National Intelligence Estimates whose assumptions are artificially circumscribed as to produce a contrary conclusion, I would refer you to recent remarks by a senior Clinton Administration official -- National Security Council staff member Robert Bell. On May 8, 1996, Mr. Bell declared to a Washington audience:

"...Why 15 years? .... What the analysts did was to say, 'Let's take a time frame and look at it, and see what we think could occur between now and then.' And the question was what time frame to pick, recognizing that it's ultimately an arbitrary decision. If you picked ten years, you're not helping the policy or acquisition communities, because the life-cycle...for an acquisition program is on the order of twelve to fifteen years."

Needed: A Second Opinion

So out of touch with reality does the latest National Intelligence Estimate appear to be that it begs an urgent recommendation to this Committee and to the Congress as a whole: Get a second opinion!

This sensible medical practice has a precedent in national security policy: Faced in 1975 with growing concerns from serious national security experts outside the U.S.

S. government that the official assessment significantly understated the Soviet Union's military build-up, then-CIA Director George Bush arranged to have the Agency's estimates formally second-guessed. This so-called "Team B" initiative produced a much more sober, pessimistic and accurate evaluation of the Soviet threat. I am pleased that the House-passed version of the FY1997 Defense authorization bill directs that a similar, independent review be mounted to provide a second opinion on the missile defense threat.

In the meantime, an unofficial effort along these lines has been undertaken thanks to the sponsorship of the Heritage Foundation. This Missile Defense Study Team (dubbed "Team B") included two of the former directors of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization -- Lieutenant General James Abrahamson (USAF, Ret.) and Dr. Henry Cooper -- and a number of former senior civilian and military officials, scientists and other experts in the field. They joined together initially in 1995 to critique the Clinton Administration's ballistic missile threat estimates and to offer recommendations concerning the best way to protect against such threats. This Team B has just updated the original findings to reflect threat, programmatic and arms control developments that have subsequently occurred. I would respectfully request that this updated report be printed in full at the appropriate place in the record.

I would like to call the Committee's attention to our key finding with respect to the relatively robust threat assessment the Administration subscribed to prior to the adoption of the latest NIE:"The Clinton Administration's portrayal of the ballistic missile threat is unjustifiably sanguine, particularly with regard to threats to the territory of the United States. On the one hand, Administration officials have expressed alarm at the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles with which to deliver them. On the other hand, the Administration's official view mutes any sense of urgency about protecting the American people from that proliferation threat ....

"This optimistic view of the threat is not consistent with the observable pace and nature of proliferation, the technical facts of missile development or the political instabilities of the former Soviet states and China. The Administration's assessment of the threat is consistent with its slow approach to developing ballistic missile defenses, raising concerns that the Administration's estimate of the threat may have been tailored to match its leisurely pace in building missile defenses. This is a huge mistake. The failure to respond to clear and ominous signs is, in fact, a failure of strategic proportions, potentially threatening U.S. interests worldwide and American security at home." (Emphasis added.)

An Affordable Near-Term Response to the Growing Threat

Permit me also to call your attention to another important finding of the Heritage sponsored Team B: The reason the United States does not currently have a deployed defense capable of defending the American people against the sorts of ballistic missile attacks presently in prospect (i.e., that of small numbers of missiles with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons) is not because the technology is unavailable or because it is unaffordable. In fact, thanks to an investment of nearly $50 billion already made in the U.S. Navy's AEGIS fleet air defense system, the United States actually has already deployed virtually all of the ingredients for a global missile defense system. Team B determined that, for an additional investment of just $2-3 billion spent over the next five years, 22 cruisers and 650 of their surface-to-air missiles could be modified to enable them to intercept ballistic missiles in flight. The typical deployment pattern of such ships allows them to provide a layered defense -- with several ships having an opportunity to take one or more shots along an intercontinental missile's ballistic trajectory.

In short, Mr. Chairman, by acting promptly to deploy AEGIS-based anti- missile systems, the United States could begin providing protection for the American people as well as U.S. troops and allies abroad - within three years' time. What is more, it could do so for an additional investment over the next five years that is less than the Clinton Administration proposes to spend on research and development of various missile defense technologies.

To give you a concrete example of what this means, consider the following: Had the U. S.S. Bunker Hill -- an AEGIS cruiser deployed off Taiwan during the recent crisis -- been equipped with this Wide- Area Defense capability, that ship could have protected not only Taiwan against the missiles Beijing fired in the direction of the island's two main ports. It could also have defended the American people had China acted on its threat to Los Angeles by launching an ICBM toward the United States.

What About The ABM Treaty?

The real reason the United States remains undefended against missile attack is the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty -- an agreement signed twenty-four years ago with a country, the Soviet Union, that no longer exists. The ABM Treaty prohibits effective territorial anti- missile defenses, a posture of assured vulnerability once justified as a formula for strategic stability when the other power in a bipolar world promised to remain equally exposed. In today's word, such a posture is not only immoral; it is a reckless invitation to disaster.

After all, the ABM Treaty (and, for that matter, other bilateral U.S.- Russian arrangements like the START I and II Treaties or the Nunn- Lugar program) have no bearing on the threats emerging from China, Iran, North Korea, Syria, etc. Instead, such rogue states may actually be given an incentive to pursue threatening capabilities, thanks to the U.S. vulnerability thus fostered.

For these reasons, the House Republican Policy Committee -- led by a distinguished participant in the Coalition to Defend America, Rep. Chris Cox (R-CA) -- issued a policy statement on May 9th declaring:

"Since the ABM Treaty does not permit the United States to protect our people and our territory, Republicans recognize that it no longer serves our national security interests. Either the Treaty's restrictions on legitimate U.S. defense efforts should be lifted, or America should exercise our right to withdraw under [the Treaty's] Article XV."

For those who worry that taking such steps might traumatize the U.S.- Russian relationship, one consideration should be borne in mind: It is hard to imagine a more severe and lasting trauma to that relationship than the reaction of Americans to an incident in which a U.S. or allied city is destroyed by a ballistic missile because a de facto Russian veto had prevented the United States from putting into place the defenses that would have protected it. Matters will only be made worse if the party launching such a missile were a long-time Russian client state and/or if the missile in question had been supplied by Russia. Anyone who wishes to insulate ties between Washington and Moscow from undue stress has a powerful incentive to eliminate the stranglehold the Kremlin currently exercises over needed American programs.

The American People Expect - and Deserve - To be Defended

Permit me to close with one final observation. If for no other reason, Members of Congress must take the threat of ballistic missile attack seriously because opinion research conducted for the Coalition to Defend America indicates that your constituents do.

More to the point, our research demonstrates that most of your constituents think their government is already protecting them against missile attack. Indeed, the five focus groups we have conducted around the country over the past fifteen months powerfully showed that most Americans are incredulous and many actually become angry when they learn the truth -- namely, that we cannot stop even a single ballistic missile launched at the United States.

That posture is ever more untenable militarily and irresponsible strategically. To those in the executive and legislative branches who still oppose defending America, I would argue that such a posture will increasingly become a serious political liability -- one that I encourage you to eliminate promptly, for your own sake if not for that of our country.

The Bottom Line

In a sense, the question no longer is whether the United States will be defended against missile attack. It now seems clear that America will have a global missile defense; in all likelihood, it will begin with the deployment of a Navy Wide Area system based on AEGIS infrastructure.

The only question yet to be decided is: Will we have it in place before we need it? Or will we, instead, acquire it on a crash basis after someplace we care about -- perhaps overseas, perhaps here -- has been devastated by a ballistic missile? I urge you to continue to work, through the adoption of the Defend America Act of 1996 and other steps, to ensure that we do not wait for an avoidable catastrophe to strike before we deploy effective, affordable global missile defenses.