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THE ANTI-BALLISTIC MISSILE TREATY:
THE PROBLEM DISGUISED AS THE SOLUTION

PREPARED STATEMENT OF WILLIAM R. GRAHAM
BEFORE THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1996

THE BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT

On November 14, 1994, President Clinton issued Executive Order 12938. "Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction," which read in part: "I. William J. Clinton. President of the United States of America, find that the proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons ("weapons of mass destruction") and of the means of delivering such weapons, constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security. foreign policy, and economy of the United States, and hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat."

On November 9, 1995, President Clinton issued a "Notice of Continuation of Emergency Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction", which stated. in part: "Because the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States, the national emergency declared on November 14, 1994, must continue in effect beyond November 14, 1995."

These two Presidential Executive Orders provide a clear and concise statement of the immediate danger posed to the U.S. and its interests by "the proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and the means of delivering such weapons." (Emphasis added). In view of the President's excellent characterization of the proliferation problem, the message he sent to Congress with the veto of the first 1996 Defense Authorization should be noted. It said, in pan. "First, the bill requires deployment by 2003 of a costly missile defense system able to defend all fifty states from a long range missile threat that our intelligence community does not foresee in the coming decade .... The missile defense provisions would also jeopardize our current efforts to agree on an ABM/TMD demarcation with the Russian Federation."

President Clinton's 1996 Defense Authorization Bill veto statement, and more generally the terms of the administration's position on when the absence of need to deploy a national missile defense, reflect a fundamental tension in its views on the importance of ballistic missile defense.

The intelligence community bears some responsibility in the matter. A new National Intelligence Estimate reportedly projects no ballistic missile threat to the U.S.for 10-15 years. Yet in 1994, when Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch was the Deputy Secretary of Defense, he reported to Congress that a ballistic missile threat to U.S. territory could emerge by the end of the decade. That statement of Dr. Deutch is highly credible. In fact, the threat of ballistic missile attack against the U.S. and its allies already must be factored into responsible policy formulation. Since the U.S. values allied cooperation, deterring our allies can also deter the U.S. by indirect means. Russian threats against NATO expansion and Chinese threats over Taiwan are directed at U.S. allies as well as the U.S.

Many in the threat assessment community discount the value of acquiring key technical personnel, and the possibility of modifying existing ballistic missiles to extend their range. However, this position ignores the way in which the U.S. itself advanced its ballistic missile objectives. During 1945 and 1946, the U.S. conducted "Operation Paperclip" in order to employ Dr. Wernher yon Braun and his team of German scientists and technicians, who were the same people who had been responsible for the Germany's V-2 rocket program. The transfer of these experts, along with their equipment, provided the U.S. with nearly instant ballistic missile capability. Under the HERMES Project, the U.S. soon began launching German V-2 rockets with the technical help and support of yon Braun and his team. These early experiments helped infuse German technical expertise into the U.S. Army.

A year later, the development of a two-stage vehicle based on the V-2 was begun. The so-called "BUMPER" vehicle went on to establish range, altitude and speed records. By the late 1950s, frustrated by difficulties in the Atlas program, General Bernard Schriever, a pioneer of U.S. ballistic missile deployment, ordered the modification of the existing THOR IRBM to include a second stage as a means to achieve a strategic range capability. The resulting THOR-ABLE configuration was ready within a year and a half. THOR-ABLE extended the range of the THOR from 1500 miles to approximately 5000 miles. Shortly thereafter, another configuration, the THOR-AGENA, was ready.

The lessons to be learned from the U.S. history of Ballistic missile advancement are straightforward. The acquisition of key technical experts can move a country rapidly forward in advancing balIistic missile capability. In addition, the range of existing systems can be rapidly increased by incorporating additional stages.

In the 1940s, designing and fabricating ballistic missiles was challenging, but with focus, determination, and national-level support it was done very rapidly, even though new types of inertial guidance instruments had to be developed, new rocket engines and missile structures fabricated, and new fuels produced. By contrast, in the 1980s and 90s, the West' s schools and universities teach advanced technology to students from all over the world, missile designs are well understood, missile components are available on the world market, and whole missile systems can be bought and delivered, as in the case of the Soviet SCUDs to China, the North Korean SCUDs to Iraq, Chinese M-11 s to Pakistan, Chinese CSS-2s to Saudi Arabia, and so forth. Since most of today's ballistic missiles are mobile, training and launching by customer nation crews can take place in the missile's country of origin, so that the first launch of a missile from a customer country may occur without advance warning.North Korea is one of the smallest, poorest countries on earth and one of the most isolated geopolitically. Yet it is able to produce and export ballistic missiles. If North Korea can accomplish this, there are few countries that cannot.

Ballistic missiles do not need to have a long range to threaten the United States. In the 1950s, the U.S. launched several ballistic missiles from the deck of a ship, and sent them to high altitudes where their nuclear weapon payloads were detonated. Most of the population of the U.S. lives near the East and West coasts, and thus is highly vulnerable to a ship-launched missile that could be covertly deployed in the merchant traffic several hundred miles at sea. The modifications to such a ship would not need to be obvious, and a few missile test launches could be performed in remote locations to avoid detection.

In view of the concerns discussed above, there is no reason to believe that the U.S. cannot threatened by ballistic missile attack today at home and abroad by a determined adversary.

THE ABM TREATY: PROBLEM OR SOLUTION?

Twenty-three years ago, the U.S. and the Soviet Union negotiated an offensive arms control treaty--SALT I.--which the U.S. intended to limit the build-up of the Soviet ICBM force. In conjunction with that treaty, the two adversaries also negotiated the ABM Treaty, which was specifically intended to assure the continuing vulnerability of the people of both the U.S. and Soviet Union to ballistic missile attack.

The SALT I Agreement was a failure in limiting the Soviet ICBM force: the Soviets increased that force massively in both number and capability after the SALT I Agreement went into effect. Reductions in the number of Soviet ICBMs did not actually occur until the end of the decade of the 1980s, well after President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative had been put in place.

In 1983, President Reagan called for an end to U.S. vulnerability to ballistic missile attack, and to that end directed that the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) be pursued. Since that time, the SDI and the subsequent Ballistic Missile Defense program have continually been undermined by the ABM Treaty.

It is difficult to overestimate how profound this undermining has been. Not only has the ABM Treaty prohibited the deployment of national missile defenses, it has led to the prohibition of funding for research and development on systems which might, if deployed, conflict with the ABM Treaty. Moreover, it has made Defense Department program managers unwilling even to propose missile defense systems and test programs which in some arcane, legalistic way might be viewed as conflicting with the largely ambiguous details of ABM Treaty. even though the systems are designed expressly for purposes other than strategic missile defense.

The ABM Treaty attempted to constrain the ballistic missile defense capabilities of only two parties: The United States and the Soviet Union. (Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Administration has sought to broaden the Treaty's signatories to include several states of the former Soviet Union.) Although not the conscious intention of its architects, the Treaty leaves the U.S. and its people vulnerable to ballistic missiles fired from anywhere in the world. This includes ballistic missile attacks from China, Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and any other hostile country, as well as from rogue missile commanders, terrorist groups, and accidental launches from any source. The Treaty'sguarantee that the U.S. will not defend itself from ballistic missile attack can only act as a strong incentive for hostile countries and groups to develop long-range missiles armed with biological, chemical, or nuclear warheads.

This phenomenon is alarmingly analogous to the efforts by Western nations --and particularly the United States-- to limit the development of armaments in the aftermath of World War I. The 1920s disarmament movement resulted only in providing a strong incentive to those nations --such as Germany and Japan-- that clearly did not subscribe to disarmament theories to develop the weapons necessary for long-range power projection. Walter Lippman, in his book U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic, summed up the Allied experiment in self-imposed vulnerability when he observed that the inter-war "disarmament movement was, as the event has shown, tragically successful in disarming the nations that believed in disarmament. The net effect was...to reduce them to almost disastrous impotence" in the face of overseas threats.

The ABM Treaty also is having a corrosive effect on the design and development of U.S. theater missile defenses. Even though the ABM Treaty does not address theater defense systems specifically, it has a strong influence upon U.S. efforts to develop such capabilities. This comes about again through legalistic interpretations of the ABM Treaty, which attempt to establish a "bright line" distinction between theater ballistic missile defense capabilities and intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) defense capabilities. Although labored attempts are being made to distinguish between these two capabilities, in fact no such distinction exists. All reasonably cost-effective theater missile defense systems, both nuclear and non-nuclear, will be able to defend some region of the earth's surface against intercontinental ballistic missile attack. The problem is not with the definition of theater versus intercontinental ballistic missile defense, the problem is the fundamental fallacy that theater missile defense systems are distinct and incapable of providing any defense against intercontinental ballistic missiles. It is a basic property of ballistic missile defense systems that constraints imposed to limit their ability to defend against longer range offensive missiles also limit their ability to defend against shorter range offensive missiles.

There is a fundamental contradiction in the logic of the treaty. For example, in order to adhere to ABM treaty limitations as interpreted by the current administration, the THAAD development program is not allowed to development either the hardware or the software that would allow the THAAD system to use information obtained from any sensor other that the Ground Based Radar associated with the individual THAAD missile and the sensor on the missile itself.

Prohibiting the use of external sensor data imposes a very large performance penalty on the THAAD system. That performance penalty can be parameterized in terms of the area on the surface of the ground, or "footprint", that the THAAD can defend. The effect of the ABM treaty- related prohibition on the use of external sensors can be summarized on a graph by showing the ratio of the surface area that could be defended by a THAAD missile under no ABM treaty constraint (the kinematic limit of the THAAD missile) compared with the area that can be defended under the ABM treaty-related prohibition on external sensing that is now being imposed on the system design and implementation. That ratio is shown in the accompanying graph as a

plot of the defended area ratio vs. offensive missile range for existing offensive theater ballistic missiles.As the range and therefore the speed on an offensive ballistic missile increases, the effect of the ABM treaty limitation becomes greater, since there is less and less time for the radar to track the offensive ballistic missile, launch the THAAD missile, and direct it to intercept the incoming missile. When the incoming offensive ballistic missile has a range of about 1500 Km, the ratio of defended areas is about 10; when the range increases to 3000 Kin, the ratio rises to about 35, and should reach 50 against offensive ballistic missiles whose range is in the vicinity of 4000 Km.

Of course, an ABM treaty-limited deployment of the THAAD system could defend the same area as the unconstrained system against a 1500 Krn offensive ballistic missile if 10 times as many THAAD interceptor missiles and Ground Based Radars were deployed. Such a deployment would cost the country approximately ten times as much money. Therefore, the accompanying graph also shows the cost multiplier incurred by the imposition of the ABM treaty on the THAAD theater ballistic missile defense system. That cost multiplier is large against all but the shortest range offensive ballistic missiles.

It is important to understand that the high system performance penalty and cost of imposing ABM treaty constraints on ballistic missile defense systems are not limited to the THAAD system. Since the radar on the AEGIS system has a lower power-aperture product that the THAAD Ground Based Radar, and is therefore a shorter range sensor, the defended area ratio and associated cost will be even larger for the AEGIS-based ballistic missile defense system, and will become significant at even shorter offensive ballistic missile ranges than was the case for the THAAD system.

The efforts to force theater missile defense systems to have no ICBM defense capability will only result in their being "dumbed down" to significantly less capability, and even then the distinction will be arbitrary. When approached on a rational basis, the attempt to create a distinction between theater missile defense systems and ICBM defense systems is a technological dead end. The reality is that we can have either substantial defenses or substantial vulnerability. To date, the United States has been left substantially vulnerable.

DOES THE ABM TREATY ALSO OBSTRUCT RUSSIAN EFFORTS TO DEVELOP MISSILE DEFENSES?

The argument has been made by proponents of the ABM Treaty that while it may place unanticipated limitations on U.S. theater ballistic missile defenses as well as intended limitations national missile defenses, the treaty applied equally to the Soviet Union in past years and still applies equally to the Russians today, and therefore whatever limitations it places on the U.S. are also placed on Russia. While this is the impression given in the form of the treaty, it is far from the truth in the Treaty's consequences to date for the U.S. and Russia.

More than a decade before the ABM Treaty was negotiated, the Soviet Union was fully committed to the development of the SA-5 "Tallinn" system (named for the city in Estonia where the system was first seen by the U.S.). As intelligence analyst William T. Lee discusses in his monograph BalliStic Missile Defense and ?Arms Control" Follies (attached as an Appendix to this testimony), the SA-5 was both a high altitude air defense system and national ballistic missile defense system from the outset. (Since this system isarmed with nuclear warheads, it does not require sophisticated "hit-to-kill" fire control and guidance technology to defend against ballistic missiles.

Mr. Lee notes the significance of ballistic missile defense discussions held at the U.S.-U.S.S.R. summit meeting at Glassboro, N.J., in June 1967 as described by then U.S.S.R. Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Dobrynin in his book In Confidence. During the meeting, the leadership of the Johnson Administration attempted to persuade the Soviet leadership of the undesirability of either side building national missile defenses. U.S.S.R. Prime Minister Kosygin responded by "pointing out the Soviet missile defense systems around Moscow and Tallinn were designed to save the lives of Soviet Citizens". As noted by Mr. Lee, Dobrynin concludes "Thus the Soviet Government did not recognize a historic opportunity and responded by continuing the ABM construction around Moscow and Tallinn." In view of these comments, there can be no doubt that the SA-5 was part of the Soviet National Missile Defense capability from its initial deployment around 1967 and that the leadership of the Johnson Administration was informed of this fact at that time.

In 1980, in conjunction with continued modernization of the SA-5 system, the Soviets began deploying another defensive system, designated by the U.S. as the SA-10, which was itself later upgraded and further deployed as the SA-12. In an article in Comparative Strategy, 15:251-259, 1966, Mr. Lee notes that since the demise of the Soviet Union, "the Russians have consistently touted the tactical anti-ballistic missile capabilities of the SA-10 in foreign sales efforts, and in 1994 admitted that the SA-10 had been designed against the full threat spectrum from stealthy aircraft and cruise missiles through intercontinental ballistic missiles" in a Moscow publication. Mr. Lee goes on to note that "by the time the Soviet Union collapsed, more than 10,000 dual purpose SAM/ABM interceptor missiles were deployed at SA-5/10 complexes" along with a national network of early warning and battle management radars.

A factual reading today of the history of the ABM Treaty can leave little doubt that it was used by the Soviet Union to block the development of U.S. missile defenses while the Soviet Union carried out a massive missile defense buildup. That buildup largely remains in place today.

WHAT SHOULD THE U.S. DO ABOUT THE ABM TREATY?

To understand the role of national missile defense, one must first understand the most important mission of the U.S. military. The primary mission of the military is not to fight wars, although the U.S. military trains constantly to be able, if necessary, to do just that. Its mission is not even to win wars, although this is certainly the objective in fighting them.

The single most important mission of the U.S. military is neither to fight nor win wars, but to resolve conflicting interests on terms favorable to the United States, while avoiding the need to resort to warfare. This primary mission is focused on supporting the goals of the U.S. and the other democracies by peaceful means.

Historically, the U.S. has been forced to go to war, with great loss of life and resources, not because its military capability was too strong, clear and certain; but when the U,S. military was weak, as it was during the era leading up to W.W.II, or when theU.S. was confused about ils own national interests, as it was in the antecedents of the conflict with Korea and China, the war with Iraq, and most recently in the current administration's reported answers to Chinese questions on the probable U.S. response to an attack on Taiwan.

This same principle applies to the role of U.S. ballistic missile defense. The primary purpose of a ballistic missile defense, both national and theater--that is, national for the U.S., or national for our friends and allies--is to discourage countries from developing offensive ballistic missiles and the chemical, biological, or nuclear warheads that make them able to produce masses of casualties. It is essential to recognize that countries are most susceptible to being discouraged from developing offensive missiles before they have made major national commitments to such programs, when they are still considering the alternatives, and when they have maximum flexibility in their future course of action. Therefore, the best opportunity for avoiding offensive ballistic missile threats is squarely before the U.S. today - not tomorrow, not next year, not 15 years from now, but today.

The problem is not to estimate the last possible time when the U.S. could deploy missile defenses. Historically, the U.S. has proven poor at making such intelligence estimates for many reasons. The challenge before the U.S. is to deploy theater and national missile defenses as rapidly as possible to discourage potential proliferators from developing, building, buying, or otherwise obtaining offensive ballistic missiles, as well as to counter the many ballistic missile threats that already exist.

Most one-time skeptics of the need for theater missile defenses became supporters after attacks on the U.S. and our allies caused loss of life in the war with Iraq. There can be little doubt that a ballistic missile attack on the U.S. would produce similar support for national missile defense. The question before the Congress is: must the U.S. wait until it is attacked by ballistic missiles before it deploys such missile defenses?

During the debate on the broad vs. narrow interpretation of the ABM Treaty in the late 1980s, some members of the Senate took the position that the Treaty had to be forever interpreted by the U.S. as it was presented to the Senate at the time of its ratification. This "locked in" the U.S. position on the Treaty at that time. If that is good national policy, then some provision must be made for addressing events that materially change the Treaty or its consequences but take place or are learned by the Senate after the Treaty is ratified. In such event, sound policy warrants that the Treaty be resubmitted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for reconsideration, either at the initiative of the Administration or of the Committee itself.