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[H.A.S.C. No. 106–60]
U.S. PLANS AND POLICY REGARDING NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
HEARING HELD
JUNE 28, 2000
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HOUSE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
One Hundred Sixth Congress
FLOYD D. SPENCE, South Carolina, Chairman
BOB STUMP, Arizona
DUNCAN HUNTER, California
JOHN R. KASICH, Ohio
HERBERT H. BATEMAN, Virginia
JAMES V. HANSEN, Utah
CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania
JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado
JIM SAXTON, New Jersey
STEVE BUYER, Indiana
TILLIE K. FOWLER, Florida
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York
JAMES TALENT, Missouri
TERRY EVERETT, Alabama
ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
HOWARD ''BUCK'' McKEON, California
J.C. WATTS, Jr., Oklahoma
MAC THORNBERRY, Texas
JOHN N. HOSTETTLER, Indiana
SAXBY CHAMBLISS, Georgia
VAN HILLEARY, Tennessee
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JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida
WALTER B. JONES, Jr., North Carolina
LINDSEY GRAHAM, South Carolina
JIM RYUN, Kansas
BOB RILEY, Alabama
JIM GIBBONS, Nevada
MARY BONO, California
JOSEPH PITTS, Pennsylvania
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
STEVEN KUYKENDALL, California
DONALD SHERWOOD, Pennsylvania
IKE SKELTON, Missouri
NORMAN SISISKY, Virginia
JOHN M. SPRATT, Jr., South Carolina
SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas
OWEN PICKETT, Virginia
LANE EVANS, Illinois
GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi
NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii
MARTIN T. MEEHAN, Massachusetts
ROBERT A. UNDERWOOD, Guam
PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island
ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
SILVESTRE REYES, Texas
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TOM ALLEN, Maine
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas
JIM TURNER, Texas
ADAM SMITH, Washington
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California
JAMES H. MALONEY, Connecticut
MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina
CIRO D. RODRIGUEZ, Texas
CYNTHIA A. McKINNEY, Georgia
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
ROBERT BRADY, Pennsylvania
ROBERT E. ANDREWS, New Jersey
BARON P. HILL, Indiana
MIKE THOMPSON, California
JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut
Robert S. Rangel, Staff Director
Laura Truesdell, Staff Assistant
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2000
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HEARING:
Wednesday, June 28, 2000, U.S. Plans and Policy Regarding National Missile Defense
APPENDIX:
Wednesday, June 28, 2000
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 28, 2000
U.S. PLANS AND POLICY REGARDING NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Skelton, Hon. Ike, a Representative from Missouri, Ranking Member, Committee on Armed Services
Spence, Hon. Floyd D., a Representative from South Carolina, Chairman, Committee on Armed Services
WITNESSES
Cambone, Dr. Stephen A., Director of Research, Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, Washington, DC
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Gansler, Jacques S., Under Secretary of Defense, Acquisition, and Technology; accompanied by Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, USAF, Director, Ballistic Missile Defense Organization; and Gen. Larry D. Welch, USAF (Ret.), President, Institute for Defense Analyses
Joseph, Robert G., Director, Center for Counterproliferation Research, National Defense University
APPENDIX
PREPARED STATEMENTS:
[The Prepared Statements can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Cambone, Dr. Stephen A.
Gansler, Secretary Jacques S.
Joseph, Robert G.
Skelton, Hon. Ike
Spence, Hon. Floyd D.
DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
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[The Documents for the Record are pending.]
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[The Questions and Answers are pending.]
U.S. PLANS AND POLICY REGARDING NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE (NMD)
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC, Wednesday, June 28, 2000.
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m. in room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Floyd Spence (Chairman of the Committee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. FLOYD D. SPENCE, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM SOUTH CAROLINA, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
The CHAIRMAN. The meeting will please come to order.
Today, the Committee meets to examine the U.S. National Missile Defense Program and to review Administration policy toward missile defenses.
Last week, the Research and Development Subcommittee heard testimony from the Director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization regarding the technical feasibility of the administration's preferred National Missile Defense (NMD) architecture. This morning, the Committee will hear from the administration in more detail about its plans to develop for deployment a limited ground-based NMD system capable defending the United States against accidental, unauthorized or small-scale ballistic missile attacks from rogue states or, to use the latest terminology of the day, ''states of concern.''
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At the outset, I am compelled to reflect on how we arrived at this point. It is ironic that this administration, after years of opposing NMD, is now deciding whether to move forward with the deployment of just such a system. The past five years, the Congress has sought to move the Clinton Administration towards support for National Missile Defense deployment. Congress added funds to the Administration's NMD budget request each year since 1995. However, our efforts were met with administration resistance at every turn. In fact, in December of 1995, the President vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act, declaring that deploying a national missile defense would, and I quote, waste tens of billions of dollars, unquote, set United States policy, quote, on a collision course with the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, unquote, and jeopardize further Russian strategic arms reductions.
Many in Congress, myself included, criticized the administration's misuse of a fatally flawed 1995 intelligence estimate to argue that the United States would not face a long-range ballistic missile threat from rogue states for 15 years. This faulty estimate led the Congress, in the Fiscal Year 1997 National Defense Authorization Act, to mandate creation of the so-called Rumsfeld Commission, which was tasked with providing an independent and bipartisan assessment of the ballistic missile threat.
The Rumsfeld Commission's unanimous conclusions were sobering. It found the threat to be broader, more mature and evolving more rapidly than the intelligence community had predicted and warned that future ballistic missile threats to the United States could emerge with little or no warning. This warning was confirmed shortly after the Commission issued its report, when North Korea unexpectedly demonstrated the capability of launching a 3-stage missile of intercontinental range.
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Despite the Rumsfeld Commission's warning, the United States today lacks the ability to defend Americans against even a single ballistic missile launched in our direction. This is because the administration has continued to be guided by the desire to preserve the 28-year-old Anti-Ballistic Missile, or ABM, Treaty—a treaty signed with a country that no longer exists, in a Cold War strategic environment, and which was designed to perpetuate America's vulnerability to ballistic missile attack.
Last year, the Congress acted to end America's vulnerability by passing the National Missile Defense Act of 1999 with an overwhelming bipartisan majority. The President signed the Act into law on July 23rd, 1999. This law makes it the policy of the United States to deploy a national missile defense, quote, as soon as is technologically possible, unquote. The Committee looks to our distinguished witness this morning, Under Secretary of Defense Jack Gansler, to tell us whether the administration's plan for national missile defense is, in fact, technologically possible and, if so, whether we can expect the policy established by law to be implemented.
Following Secretary Gansler's testimony, the Committee will hear from a separate panel of witnesses who will address the political and strategic dimensions of the administration's NMD program. Those witnesses are Ambassador Robert Joseph, Director of the Center for Counterproliferation Research at the National Defense University; and Dr. Steven Cambone, Director of Research at the Institute for National Strategic Studies.
Secretary Gansler, welcome; and thank you for taking the time to appear before us today. I am looking forward to your testimony.
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I would also like to note that Secretary Gansler is accompanied at the witness table this morning by General Ronald Kadish, Director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization; and retired General Larry Welch, the head of an independent review team tasked by the Secretary of Defense to assess the technical feasibility of the administration's planned NMD architecture. That panel recently issued its report. Although not delivering prepared testimony, both General Kadish and General Welch will be available to answer any questions members may have.
Before we begin, Secretary Gansler, I would like to recognize the Committee's ranking democrat, Mr. Skelton, for any remarks he would like to make.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Spence can be found in the Appendix.]
STATEMENT OF HON. IKE SKELTON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM MISSOURI, RANKING MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
Mr. SKELTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, let me point out that you and I have a fair bit in common. You and I both grew up in Lexington, although in different states. We both were State senators. We were both practicing lawyers. So you will understand that when I was a young prosecutor back in my Lexington, I found it useful to stipulate.
A stipulation means that you agree to some things in advance so you can spend more time exploring more significant matters.
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In that spirit, let me stipulate two things in advance of the testimony. The first is that the Department of Defense has a duty to protect the citizens of our country from known threats, and it is this Committee's duty to support that. And the other is the people of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization have done a remarkable job in designing and beginning to test a system without technical precedent or parallel on unusually taxing schedules. I agree with those facts without reservation.
But, Mr. Chairman, you know as I do that there is trouble ahead. I won't try your patience by repeating the whole story I told the Procurement Subcommittee yesterday, but the upshot is we are headed for a train wreck.
The Army has embarked on a visionary but arduous transformation. It is necessary, but it is expensive. The Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy are in the midst of procuring a new generation of tactical fighters. They are excellent but expensive. The Navy just yesterday reiterated the view of the Joint Chiefs that the changed world situation requires another 13 to 19 submarines. It is a strong case, but they are expensive. And this year we are headed toward a 200 ship Navy unless we change the procurement schedule.
All these bills will come due about the same time, and so will the bill for defending the American people against limited launches of ballistic missiles. Some critics, Mr. Chairman, have made charges that would require classified data to refute; and I don't think that is quite fair.
General Kadish spent time with us last week in both open and classified session to address the technical concerns. We appreciate him being here today.
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The issue of what to spend on missile defense is a hard question for many members. With the Koreans apparently trying to warm their relations, it is harder to convince the public of the threat from that quarter. And with civilian and uniformed Department of Defense officials presenting a plethora of programs as essential and underfunded, I look forward to the testimony on how we can carry out this system, carry it forward and still stay in the train without it being wrecked.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Skelton can be found in the Appendix.]
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Skelton; and thank you for those stipulations, too.
Without objection, the entirety of the prepared remarks of our witnesses today will be made a part of the record.
Secretary Gansler, I think we have got a vote on, so maybe we should just go and vote first without interrupting you. We will be right back.
[Recess.]
The CHAIRMAN. The meeting will please be in order.
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Mr. Secretary and our other guests, we are going to have an interesting day today. I understand we are going to have some—I don't know what you would characterize it—maybe slowdown procedures on the floor, and we have votes pretty often. I think, as a matter of fact, we might have another one within the next 10 minutes. So bear with us, and we will try to get through this one way or another. We have been there before, and we usually kind of work through it.
Mr. SISISKY. Mr. Chairman, they wanted me to march over there. I told them that was for the young guys.
The CHAIRMAN. When we were in the minority, we did all of these kind of things, too.
I never will forget Mr. Dickinson, who was our ranking member back then, every time we did one of these things—it hurts just not the other side but yourself, too; and it works on people when they get up in age, too, especially. And he said—after every time we do something like that, we come right back and hurt both sides—he would say, by golly, I reckon we showed them, didn't we? So that is way it is. It hurts both sides.
The CHAIRMAN. With that, Mr. Secretary, the floor is yours; and we will go from there.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. JACQUES S. GANSLER, UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR ACQUISITION AND TECHNOLOGY; ACCOMPANIED BY LT. GEN. RONALD KADISH, USAF, DIRECTOR, BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE ORGANIZATION; AND GEN. LARRY D. WELCH, USAF (RET.), PRESIDENT, INSTITUTE FOR DEFENSE ANALYSES
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Secretary GANSLER. Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, thank you very much for this opportunity to appear today to report on the National Missile Defense Program; and also I want to highlight the fact that we have our fifth flight test coming up on July 7th, just 9 days from today.
As you know, and as General Kadish outlined for the Subcommittee on Research and Development last week, the schedule for our National Missile Defense Program presents a complex and very high-risk undertaking but one we believe clearly is worth the effort. The threat of an attack on United States territory will become increasingly likely during the next few years, as states of concern continue to acquire the technology to launch a small number of intercontinental ballistic missiles against distant targets. The National Missile Defense system is designed, first and foremost, to offer protection against such a limited attack but also, simply by its presence, to discourage these nations from committing their limited resources to develop or acquire the technology necessary to launch a strike against our Nation or to use the threat of such a strike against us.
The National Missile Defense Program and our plans for the Integrated Flight Test 5 are discussed at great length in my prepared testimony, and General Kadish and General Welch and I are looking forward to answering your questions. So, rather than going through that, what I would like to do today is to briefly address what I feel are several destructive and distracting misconceptions about our National Missile Defense Program and to correct some of the confusion about the technology and the test program.
These misconceptions fall into five broad categories. Let me list them, then go through the five.
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First, that the system will not be able to distinguish between the actual targets and the decoys launched with the target vehicle, nor are we testing against the likely decoys.
Second, that we are committing ourselves to purchase a multi-billion-dollar system after only a few tests.
Third, that the NMD program is committing fraud and deception because it rigs the test to facilitate target location and destruction.
Fourth, that it would be more practical to develop a ''boost-phase'' system that would hit the oncoming target shortly after lift-off, and that the boost-phase concept is easy and could be quickly put into place.
And, fifth, that the system won't work. Period.
Let me explain why each of these five is wrong.
First, let me address the topic of decoys—whether we are even testing with decoys and whether the system will be able to discriminate between decoys and the target. Since discrimination between decoys and target reentry vehicles is the obvious questionable element of a mid-course intercept system such as ours, it is the area that had been looked at now for 40 years. Our discrimination abilities have been among the earliest design considerations and tested aspects of this program. Each and every flight has had and will continue to have decoys present. Not only are we using decoys as part of the test program, we are actually adding increasing sophistication to the decoys and to the system to counter those decoys as the system evolves.
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As you know, we have had four flight tests of the system to date, the first two of which were not structured to achieve intercept but were instead fly-by flights designed to gather information on complex target and decoy clusters and to calibrate and further design our sensors against them.
Additionally, there is a whole series of so-called risk-reduction flights. These are target flights without interceptors which will put up additional decoys and carry out additional target demonstrations just to test the system's discrimination capabilities against such objects. One of these risk-reduction flights has already flown, actually had 22 different objects in space to test the radar's discrimination capabilities. Over time, our discrimination capabilities will increase with new software tools and technologies that enter the system, later including the infrared sensors on the Space Based Infrared Radar System (SBIRS) Low satellites, which will be used to help identify and track the warhead.
Second, some have claimed that we are committing ourselves to purchase a multi-billion-dollar system after only a few tests. On the contrary, the National Missile Defense development process actually contains four distinct decision points where critical judgments are made regarding the system's maturity and the additional investments to be made. This is simply not a one point, one decision, one investment situation.
The first of the these decisions, the Deployment Readiness Review this summer, will involve Secretary Cohen making a recommendation to the President as to whether or not we have made technical progress adequate to show that we could, if the decision is made and if the President addresses all four of the criteria, achieve a deployment within a fiscal year 2005 time frame. The primary actions necessary at that point would be the selection of a site for the interceptors and authorization for the design and construction of the radar site at Shemya, Alaska, with site construction beginning in the summer of 2001.
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The second decision point is next year when—again, to make the 2005 time frame demanded by our understanding of the current threat—we must actually make a release to begin building the radar and the communications structures.
The third decision scheduled to be made in 2003 would commit us to building the interceptors, in essence, building the weapon.
The fourth—and the last—development decision point simply asks whether the system, in its entirety, is ready to go to operation.
Each of these points gives us a moment to assess technical feasibility and investment as well as threat. Between today and that last decision there are currently 17 more flights scheduled, of which nine more are prior to the missile build decision.
One associated issue is the continuing discussion and decision of how much the National Missile Defense Program will cost us—with some very inflated numbers floating around, I might add. The investment in the current land-based NMD system—now that is in contrast to the original space-based SDI system—has sunk costs attributable back to 1991 to this system. These costs, plus current and planned spending, put the estimated acquisition cost of the current NMD system, through full deployment of the 100 missiles in fiscal year '07, at approximately $20 billion in then-year dollars. By the end of this fiscal year, Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) will have invested approximately $5.7 billion towards that figure. Costs beyond '07 will, of course, depend upon any further system upgrades and outyear operating costs.
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Next, some have claimed that the NMD program is committing fraud and deception because it rigs the test to facilitate target location and destruction. These allegations are blatantly untrue. Some of those allegations may result from simple misunderstandings about the systems that are involved in the test—particularly the C-band beacon and the Global Positioning System (GPS) equipment attached to the target warhead, as well as the surrogate radars that are involved in this test because of the range in instrumentation limitations. None—I repeat, none—of this equipment in any way aids the kill vehicle in finding or discriminating or intercepting the target during the final stages of the flight test. The C-band beacon is necessary for a surrogate radar in Hawaii to act as if it were an Updated Early Warning Radar, since there is no such radar down range for the test.
The GPS system allows the manager controlling the test to monitor the location of the target for range safety reasons and the engineers examining critical data following the test so that they can know what they saw or thought they saw at any precise time versus the target's actual location. These beacons answer two of the most critical needs of any test program: insuring the safety of all in the area, in this case, the South Pacific, and ensuring a comprehensive and accurate set of data—truth data.
Should our other tracking systems fail during the test and thus provide the target's location—and not provide the target's location adequately, we would, as a last resort, use the GPS data to direct the kill vehicle to its sensor acquisition area so we could salvage this very expensive flight and at least do the end game of the test, recognizing it would no longer be a successful integrated system test, but it would provide useful information on the autonomous homing and discrimination capability of the kill vehicle. But, again, this is only a back-up in the event of a radar failure in the middle of an expensive test flight.
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I also—with regard to the issue of potential fraud and deception—want to highlight the independent reviews on the NMD program taking place since its inception and the scrutiny that the program is under within the Department. I can tell you that General Kadish and I meet weekly, in addition to other many frequent specific program-oriented meetings. We have asked for independent reviews of the program, and we have acted on the constructive criticisms that they have produced. For example, based on the findings of General Welch's earlier task force investigations, we answered claims of a ''rush to failure'' by modifying the schedule from 2003 to 2005, giving us more time. We also made a major change philosophically to be event driven rather than schedule driven, and we followed his other suggestions by adding additional flight tests and ground tests and by planning a flight test program that evolved the system over time.
Other critics have said that ''it would be much easier to develop a boost-phase system that would hit the oncoming target shortly after lift-off and that our decision to proceed with a mid-course intercept of an incoming target is much too expensive and much too complicated.'' for a boost-phase intercept, it would be necessary to place the intercept system in close proximity to the booster. This would require a nearby land-based interceptor, such as the recently discussed Russia-based—joint U.S. and Russian-based—intercept system, or a sea-based system, either surface or subsurface, in close-to-the-target waters, and, therefore, highly vulnerable. In any case, it would be necessary to initiate a very quick response.
The first signal that a booster has been launched comes from a satellite detection. With instant reaction and a very high-speed interceptor, which we do not have at this time, we could try to get out and shoot down the booster. But this assumes that you recognize or don't consider the type of launch that is occurring, that it is actually carrying a warhead directed at the United States and is not simply a satellite launch or a test launch. Certainly there is no time for human decision-making as there is in our approach.
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Another boost-phase option, a space-based interceptor—another high-speed system that we do not have—would require even more significant development time. Brilliant Pebbles was such a potential system.
Finally, as another boost-phase option, our space-based laser currently under development is not scheduled for its first space experiments until 2012 time period.
All such boost-phase systems warrant further study, but they are neither easy nor inexpensive, nor would they be available for in the 2005 time period of the projected threat.
Finally, and the last of the criticisms, there are simply those who say the system won't work. The only response to this allegation is that not only can it work, but it has worked at an experimental level already. On the first intercept test, that was our third flight test, we achieved a direct hit.
I would also like to highlight the fact that during this intercept the kill vehicle had first locked on to a decoy and then identified it as a decoy and continued its search for the target, found the target and autonomously intercepted it. Though our next test did not achieve an intercept—unfortunately failing in the last 5 seconds of flight—it did show the successful operation of key and extremely complex elements of the system—transferring data from the launch warning satellites to one radar to another radar to the command and control center and then to the boost vehicle.
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The NMD program is far from a one-test, one-parameter operation to see if the system works. It is truly a system of systems, from satellites to radars, to command and control, to the kill vehicle, each of which must work, must communicate with one another, and must contribute to a successful intercept. The test phase we have scheduled—our four past flight tests and some 17 more before 2005—is designed to continually add elements and continually increase the complexity. This is an experimental process of incremental steps involving a myriad of elements, but we have already had success in watching those systems work together. All our analysis, our ground tests, our risk reduction flights and our intercept flights, these are ultimately the proof of the pudding; and the judgment of the independent experts, such as the Welch Task Force, indicate that the system design is solid. There is, of course, still a lot of risk, particularly in the schedule, but there are apparently no fatal flaws.
In summary, the mission of our National Missile Defense Program is clear: to develop and to test a missile defense system that will be able to protect our Nation from either the threat or limited use of intercontinental ballistic missiles by states of concern and to be able to deploy that system following a decision by the Commander-in-Chief. The technical challenges and technology development tasks involved in this mission are truly daunting. We are, however, meeting those challenges and working hard and very carefully to achieve the incremental successes needed to produce a strong and effective NMD system.
Some of the most critical efforts in developing this time, however, do not appear to be in the laboratories or over the test ranges of the Pacific. Specifically, I would like to thank you, Mr. Chairman, and this Committee for the leadership and support it has shown the Department as we continue in our National Missile Defense Program. I look forward to continuing that invaluable partnership, and I thank you for the chance to appear today.
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Now we are ready for your questions.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
[The prepared statement of Secretary Gansler can be found in the Appendix.]
The CHAIRMAN. One of the things you have always said, the reason we are having this hearing today, to try to get straight some of these misconceptions that we have that are floating around—more than floating by now I think—in the public arena.
One of the things, too, that has been put forth as being a problem to deal with in us developing a system and deploying it is the criticism from both Russia and China as to the action they will take as a result of us deploying such a system and also some of our European allies. I have been visited by many delegations from some of our European allies, and they are very concerned about it. And even our Canadian friends have mixed emotions about it. They have part of their people in favor of it and some opposed to it.
But, in any event, I tried to explain to them that they were concerned about the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with the Soviet Union. I tried to explain to them that was a Cold War relic. It was entered into with a country that doesn't exist any longer. But, aside from that, that was something that dealt with a problem with Russia, the Soviet Union rather than the United States.
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But now we have threats from other sources, China, North Korea and others; and we have no defense or no treaty with these countries that would put us in the same position. So we have got to deal with that.
They also said that they were afraid that they would be unprotected while we are protecting ourselves. I tried to explain to them, too, that what we were faced with was intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. They were not intercontinental in that respect, and no one was trying to do harm to these people. They were concerned about us. We are the targets of these countries, not the other countries.
I tried to tell them that their main concern should be their missile defense systems, because that is a big threat to all of our European allies; and they ought to put most of their effort into some kind of a missile defense system to protect them from all these threats that they are facing.
In any event, I don't know how that goes over, but you could tell us what the administration's position is in dealing with these questions that we have from our friends and allies sometimes.
Secretary GANSLER. Certainly.
As you observe, our system is not designed or in fact not capable of dealing with the Russian threat, particularly in terms of the quantities of systems that they are capable of against us. Our system is designed to deal with these countries of concern, North Korea, Iran, and with the growing proliferation of these—both the delivery vehicles, the Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBMs), as you suggested, and the warheads that they could have, not only nuclear but also biological and chemical that they could be threatening or sending against us. So we have begun to think about these issues that you have raised as well.
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I found it particularly interesting that the Russians seem to have first acknowledged the existence of this threat from the countries of concern to them, and that I thought was a very important statement. And then they even suggested maybe we would go into some joint ventures with them. We have to take those seriously in terms of the potential that they offer as a complement to our systems.
But when they talked about theater threats, that certainly isn't a threat to the United States, so that would be considered a complement. When they have talked about a possible boost-phase intercept located on Russian soil, we have to consider the command and control considerations as to whether a U.S. joint system on Russian soil would fully satisfy us. But those are things that we have to take very seriously and are giving thought to.
China is a different question in terms of their development process. They seem to be going ahead with their development and in a wide variety of different directions from the military build-up, and whether or not our deployment would have any impact on that is something that people are evaluating and considering.
Europe is the one that I think is one we have to absolutely consider; and we have been talking for, actually, a number of years now to the Europeans about development of systems that would probably be some combination of systems that would have both the theater and a continental capability. It depends on where you are located in Europe and where the threat is coming from and how that might be integrated into our systems and how we might look at complements to our system to work with the Europeans.
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We have increased the discussions and, in fact, some even preliminary design work. There are a couple of studies out now that NATO is sponsoring in this area, and we are talking much more actively with our European allies about joint systems that might be deployed.
Ultimately, we also have to consider and the driving factor for us, of course, is defending our 50 States. And so these I think, in all of the cases we just talked about, are more of a complement to the systems that we were talking about before than a replacement for those systems.
The CHAIRMAN. One thing further, too, if I might. We seem to be going to great pains to allay the concerns of Russia and China, saying this system is not designed to counter a threat from either of those countries. Of course, they are the main ones I guess that have not only the capability but the real capability right now of doing us harm.
But, also, we are at least threatened openly by the Chinese, for instance; and we still tell them that—don't worry about it; we aren't going to protect ourselves against you. And that doesn't seem quite right.
And, also, what about an accidental launch from these countries, whether we are targeted or not? An accidental launch, we aren't capable of handling that. So what do you tell people about that?
Secretary GANSLER. Some of the inadvertent launches—the accidental launch, first of all, is a very low probability. We have obviously had and certainly Russia has had ICBMs for a number of years, decades; and we haven't had an accidental launch. So the probability of that occurring is very low; and, depending upon the circumstances, this system might be able to handle that accidental launch.
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But the focus of the system is clearly not in that direction. It is a much higher likelihood that, as you mentioned, from the Rumsfeld Commission and from other intelligence information that says that we need to be capable of these smaller quantity systems—it is the quantity difference that is the primary distinction here, thousands of Russian systems capable of coming to the United States. It has been the situation all along, and it remains the situation, a very unlikely situation. Of course, we have the retaliatory capability against that, and that is what prevents it.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Sisisky.
Mr. SISISKY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You mentioned a figure $5.5 billion. Is that the current cost of national missile defense?
Secretary GANSLER. That was the dollar spent to date on this particular system—since 1991 to date.
Mr. SISISKY. Okay. What do you estimate the budget to be for deployment date of 2005?
Secretary GANSLER. The number that I gave you is through '07, because that included the 100 missile deployment. So—and that is the $20 billion including the $5.5 billion. So, in other words, another $14.5 billion that we have between now and 2007, that covers through the initial plan for the deployment of the first 20, and then taking it on to the 100 which is the current concept. And that has the one radar in it.
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Mr. SISISKY. Would you explain how this acquisition program differs from the acquisition programs we have in the Department of Defense?
Secretary GANSLER. Typically, the first major difference is that most of our systems that we acquire in the Department of Defense have a major element to them, you know, whether it be a missile or a radar communications system. This system has all of those in combination. That is the reason I referred to it as the system of systems, which complicates the acquisition process.
Second, you normally would try to go through the development of that system and then make a decision for the deployment. In this case, because we do have a schedule constraint, we are trying to get it out there early. We looked at what are the long lead items that you would want to consider. And, as I suggested in the paper—in my speech, I mean—that it depends on getting that radar into Shemya, Alaska, unbelievably, just because of the weather there that is the long lead item.
So where we normally might like to have completed all of our flight tests before we committed to a missile build, we are still doing that on this program, but we are saying that we might want to commit the—the President may want to commit to building the—to making a commitment to go ahead with the program. So we maintain the schedule at 2005 by starting the construction of a site for radar in Shemya as an earlier decision.
The CHAIRMAN. We are going to have to stop right there. That vote is on, and we have about five minutes.
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Mr. SISISKY. I am finished.
The CHAIRMAN. We will be right back.
[Recess.]
The CHAIRMAN. The meeting will please be in order. We still are subject to other votes on a regular basis, it looks like. We have about 15 minutes. We are going to go to Mr. Bateman and see if he can get his questions in.
Mr. BATEMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Gansler, it is nice to have you back today having enjoyed yesterday afternoon, all afternoon with you. And General Kadish and General Welch, it is nice to have you back before the Committee and especially looking so well.
I am intrigued about the rhetoric from President Putin about a cooperative venture with the Russians and the United States for a missile defense system to protect presumably the continent of Europe. I don't know what else he thought it might protect, and what the official position of the administration is on this, quote, initiative.
Secretary GANSLER. As the President and the Secretary both have commented, the initial ideas that Russia had proposed in terms of a theater defense system were certainly not going to cover the United States, in fact not parts of Europe as well. There may be some possibility of some kind of joint activity in the theater area but not certainly in any way a replacement for the ICBM capability.
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The Russians have also alluded to a possible boost intercept system that somehow relates to ICBMs but doesn't violate the treaty. We haven't quite figured out how that works yet. But in general we have to take seriously the suggestions and to look at each one that they make to explore them. We actually have people now in the process of exploring these with them to try to first understand what it is they are talking about because there has been a lot of vagueness associated with it, and then to try to see if there is anything that makes sense to go about doing. We certainly are not going to have that slow down anything that we are doing. It is not influencing our program and primarily because it is not in many cases even relevant. But we also want to continue to work with our European allies so that we jointly go about trying to see what makes sense collectively between Europe and the United States and not have this be a diversion of that activity, either.
So we are pursuing—exploring things with the Russians, we are certainly exploring things very seriously with our European allies, and we are continuing with our own development.
Mr. BATEMAN. I am certainly encouraged by what I read as being a very reasoned response and approach.
General Welch, I am not as well read in this arcane subject as I have ever needed to be, but your name is thrown around by some people who say they are opposed to the system and the system is unworkable. Tell me what you really think.
General WELCH. Well, any time you write a reasonably balanced report, you will find both sides can use it to their purposes. But, as you know, this is our third independent review. We have found in each case the program has responded to those reviews. Our finding this time, unanimous finding, is that we believe that the technical capabilities are in hand to field a system that meets the C–1 requirements. We say that without caveats. Certainly there is a lot of work to be done. It remains high risk. That is acknowledged. But we believe the technical capability is here.
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Mr. BATEMAN. I am glad I asked the question. I liked and appreciated the succinct and pointed answer. Thank you, gentlemen. That is all I have, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Pickett.
Mr. PICKETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome to our witnesses here today. I would like to start off with having you tell the Committee where this program is in relation—that is, the National Missile Defense Program that you have described to us today in relation to the ABM Treaty. Can this system be produced or tested, produced and deployed without violating the treaty?
Secretary GANSLER. No. The intent of the administration is to negotiate with the Russians to try to come up with a modification to the treaty that would address the uniqueness of the capability of this system. At some point if we go ahead and continue to develop and deploy this system, if the President makes that decision in the fall, then you raised the question, of well, when do you break the treaty, and that is the second part of the question, I think. That is undoubtedly at some point, because of the long lead item in terms of making the schedule is the radar that I mentioned earlier on Shemya in Alaska, at some point in the process of putting up the construction just for the site, the interpretation by a variety of different lawyers varies quite a bit but it is some time during that process of building the site that you will violate the treaty.
Mr. PICKETT. Is there any time frame within which the administration has set to conclude the negotiations or potential negotiations to modify the treaty to make the system that we are talking about here permissible under the treaty?
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Secretary GANSLER. That is exactly what they are working on now, to modify the treaty so the treaty remains in effect but is modified to handle this system. The time period is now and into the time in which you have to notify. The notification is 6 months before the point at which you would threaten to break the treaty. As I said, that point at which you threaten to break the treaty is the thing that is subject to legal interpretations, primarily because it is precedent establishing. This is not something that you can go back to other precedents and say whether you have met the test or not. And so the lawyers are coming up with recommendations, the President will evaluate those in the fall. In addition, he will receive a recommendation from the Secretary of Defense and a lot of these legal opinions. Then you work to the point at which you decide that the treaty might be broken by some of the construction of the radar site and work back 6 months, and that is the time at which the President would have to notify the Russians of the intent to break the treaty.
Mr. PICKETT. That leads to the next question, allegations from some of our European allies that going ahead with this system, and particularly going ahead with this system in violation of the ABM Treaty, is going to lead to proliferation and another arms race with regard to missiles and the use of space and warfare. What kind of response do you have on that?
Secretary GANSLER. Certainly in the case of Russia, they already have the capability to overcome this system in terms of quantities of systems so that is not, I don't think, the primary issue. There are concerns, of course, with regard to Russia. There have been other statements with regard to concerns about the Chinese doing something differently. As I indicated earlier, they continue to not only build up their forces but to proliferate. Whether the building of this system would have any impact on proliferation by Korea or other countries is certainly subject to question.
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There are people, as you would expect, who are going through in the Intelligence Community and outside trying to do analyses of what is the likely impact of if we have to break the treaty, what would this do in terms of potential proliferations. I think no one knows the answer to those questions but as I indicated I think the assumptions are that if we are able to develop a modification to the treaty, which is what we are striving for, that this would not have a significant impact on proliferation.
Mr. PICKETT. Going back to an issue that still troubles me somewhat, it is my understanding or recollection just a couple of years ago that we had established priorities for where we were going with missile defense. At that time my understanding was that we wanted to move ahead with the theater and area defenses as a priority in that the national missile defense was somewhere maybe close on to but yet behind the theater and area. It seems now that we have reversed those priorities, although I have heard no discussion about such action being taken. Could you tell us where we are with the theater and area missile defense systems vis-a-vis the national missile defense and where the priority is today?
Secretary GANSLER. Actually our priorities have not changed. In fact, we are starting to reach the deployment stage on first the area systems, this is the Navy lower tier and the PAC-3 systems for the Army lower tier. We are well along on the Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) program. We have started now the full scale development of that for the upper tier system. We are going through the experimental phases on the Navy upper tier system. Hopefully that will be successful and that can go into the full development as well.
The priority has to be first, I think because there are real threats today for the theater, to address the area theater systems. If you look at Korea, there are missiles lined up there and they have to be addressed. We are talking about the NMD as the third, if you will, priority, but it is a time phase more priority than it is a question of do you protect the troops, do you protect the population. Because we have systems that have been demonstrated already in terms of the troop protection question, the area and theater systems, the PAC-3, the Navy lower tier, the THAAD system at least have gone through the demonstration phases, we want to get those systems out into the field and we want to continue the development of the national missile defense.
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And frankly, we have a fourth priority, which is also the continued technology development efforts for the next generation of systems. This is some of the laser work and some of the other activities that we have under way for next generation discrimination and next generation kill systems.
Mr. PICKETT. Just to follow up, Mr. Chairman, very briefly, you are telling the Committee that the priorities haven't changed, and I take it that implicit in that response is that the theater and area defense programs are not being constrained by money, they are not being resource constrained, they are moving ahead and they are not being starved by what we are putting into national missile defense?
Secretary GANSLER. No, I don't think that is a fair statement. I think it is fair to say—in fact this Committee has been extremely helpful in getting resources to try to keep those other programs adequately funded. I might also point out that this Committee along with the rest of the Congress has legislated a law that directs itself to national missile defense, so we have the requirement to pursue that aggressively, and frankly we have been very appreciative of the added resources that we have been getting to keep the area and theater systems continuing to be pursued.
So it is very clear, as Mr. Skelton said a few minutes ago, we have lots of resource constraints beyond even the missile defense systems in terms of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine needs for additional billions of dollars. We are attempting to do a balance here, and this is General Kadish's challenge, to do a balance within the overall ballistic missile defense organization of the resources to keep a priority on the area and theater systems while still pursuing the national missile defense requirements.
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Mr. PICKETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Spratt, we have about five minutes. Do you want to go ahead and start or come back?
Mr. SPRATT. I will go ahead. I may even miss a vote. I don't think that my constituents will hold me too much at fault for that.
Dr. Gansler, one of the criticisms or observations made by Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA) and General Welch in their report issued several months ago was that the Deployment Readiness Review, (DRR) was a misnomer, it was more of a configuration review and a decision whether or not to proceed with the configuration we have right now in the test phase.
Do you think we have elevated this decision to a significance in status it doesn't deserve? You yourself said the booster won't be strapped to the Electronic Kill Vehicle (EKV), the real booster for, what, about four or five more tests? There will be nine more tests before we really make the decision to go with this particular system and put it into procurement. Do you think we have given it a status that it doesn't really deserve?
Secretary GANSLER. No, I think it deserves a lot of status because of the point that Congressman Pickett raised, which is the impact on the arms control agreements as contrasted to simply the technical question. It is because of the treaty potential that it is a very critical issue. In terms of the technology—.
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Mr. SPRATT. I understand that, but what I am suggesting is maybe you are forcing the treaty issue by calling this a deployment decision when it is not really a deployment decision. And in the case of Shemya really pouring concrete, you are not at some irreversible point of no return when you do that. You haven't really deployed or installed the X-Band radar. Are you sort of forcing a decision on the ABM Treaty and creating a problem that you might avoid?
Secretary GANSLER. I should say I am not a lawyer. That is not an apology, it is just a statement. So I really can't comment on whether this is the right interpretation or the wrong interpretation of when one breaks the treaty. But on the other hand, the lawyers do seem to feel that at some point during that site construction that the current interpretations of the treaty would say that you in fact will break the treaty if you don't get a modification, which of course is what we are trying to do. I think that is what highlights this particular decision. As you properly point out, the decision to build missiles for this defense system is a decision we make in 2003, not a decision we are making now. But it is a decision to begin the deployment and it is a very important decision that the President will be making in the fall.
Mr. SPRATT. You have also made the decision difficult for yourself by picking Shemya rather than staying at Grand Forks and picking a very forbidding environment in addition. What is gained by going to Shemya as opposed to staying at Grand Forks?
Secretary GANSLER. That is really a geometry problem. If you put it at Grand Forks, you don't have the radar way down range to pick up the targets early. What you like is to have it in a location such that it picks them up early and does the discrimination as it flies by overhead and discriminates between the decoys and the target. You want to do that early, you want to have as much time to do that as you can because you are going to take that data to help assure that you can kill the target and discriminate the target.
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So you then sort of look at well, where are the likely launches going to take place from and if we are assuming that North Korea, for example, would be one of the early potential launch sites, you want something headed in that direction, rather than something way back. The real problem here is that the Earth is round and we can't correct that. And so you want to be able to get something that is up-front so you take care of the horizon limitations. It turns out that you suggest that Shemya is not an ideal location in terms of environment. It is a terrible location in terms of environment, winds and—.
Mr. SPRATT. Just from a layman's perspective, it would seem to me that you are inviting a lot of operational problems, high winds and frigid weather.
Secretary GANSLER. We have radars there now. We have people there now. Once built and under operation, it is not a great location, but people operate there quite effectively. There is an airstrip there and so forth. And so yes, there are operational problems that don't make it an ideal location to send people to or to have people located at, but the real challenge is bringing in barges in the bad weather and high winds and then doing construction in the bad weather and high winds.
Mr. SPRATT. Aren't you more vulnerable there to sabotage than you would be say at Grand Forks?
Secretary GANSLER. Probably in terms of potential attacks more than at Grand Forks, but probably not less than at San Francisco or anyplace along the water areas. It is certainly an area that from a force protection viewpoint, you do have to be concerned about it and the equipment protection. But you also don't have a lot of civilian population to worry about in that area and you can introduce force protection to the area. Basically it is a restricted area by definition.
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Mr. SPRATT. You mentioned boost phase and dealt with that as an alternative and came back to the midcourse as the best way to begin, and I agree with you. Some years ago, Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) concluded that if the boost phase burnout time were 180 seconds and if you wanted a man in the loop so that you didn't accidentally launch something, that boost phase intercept was practically fruitless. Would you agree with that? You have got 250 seconds on your charts for boost phase. Some of that is under the clouds.
Secretary GANSLER. You have to take the time—first, you have to detect from the satellite and then use that information to launch. You have to then have a very high speed interceptor in order to get there if you are trying to do it during the boost phase. Basically that does take the man out of the loop as well, as I suggested, developing the high speed interceptor, it does make it extremely difficult.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Spratt, we have about 5 minutes to get there.
Mr. SPRATT. Okay.
The CHAIRMAN. Do you want to come back?
Mr. SPRATT. Fine.
The CHAIRMAN. Go ahead, sir.
Secretary GANSLER. I have got a comment that we haven't eliminated the boost phase intercept because there is an alternative, which is the space-based laser, but that is much further downstream and we are pursuing that as an alternative. There you do have the very fast response capability.
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Mr. SPRATT. But you have got a platform in space at a known location and an Advanced Satellite Antenna Technology (ASAT) as a countermeasure that has to be contended with, too, which just makes a point that everything you can put in the field has a countermeasure. There are measures and there are countermeasures. That is the nature of warfare.
Secretary GANSLER. Correct.
Mr. WELDON [presiding]. We apologize for these interruptions. We appreciate you sitting here and bearing with us. We are going to try to keep the hearing moving as members come back and forth so you are not totally inconvenienced. I was pleasantly—not pleasantly surprised, I expected it—but, Dr. Gansler, when you mentioned your response to the Russians offering to work with us. I think that is something that to me has always been very important. As you know, I was very disappointed back in 1993 when we stopped the Razamodov talks with the Russians, which was their challenge by Yeltsin to then President Bush to work together on missile defense. And then abruptly in 1993 we stopped those talks which Kokoshu would always remind me about when I would go to Russia. He would say, Congressman, it was your side that cut off the discussions on joint cooperation.
As you know, I was extremely disappointed when John Hamre announced that the Administration was going to cancel the funding for the RAMOS project but because of the help of people like you and General Kadish, that program is now back on track again, the Russians are very happy and it is a confidence builder because the U.S. and Russia are working together in a very important way to build confidence. It was also unfortunate when we concluded negotiations in Geneva on the two protocols, which should have been brought to the Senate in 1997 and unfortunately weren't brought, then let the Duma attach them to the START II ratification.
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Now the Russians are wondering, what is America doing? They told us in 1997 they supported these changes and now START II is not going to be ratified. It is because of the fact that they weren't brought forward and the serious questions members have. So we have sent some bad signals to the Russians. Your offer to work with them is extremely important.
As you know, I accompanied Secretary Cohen on his recent trip to Moscow at his invitation. I was impressed with the way he handled the discussions with all the Russian leaders, and in a separate meeting with the Deputy Minister Mikhailov and a series of Russian generals, we talked about the work the Russians are doing. First of all, I don't think they have another ABM system. We all know they have the existing GALOSH system around Moscow, but Putin's announcement does not appear to be a substantive one from the standpoint of ABM and ICBMs. What it appears is, though, and what they have announced to us is that they have completed design work and all the financial work on a new system called the S–500, which I tried to prod them to get information on and they did not offer it but offered to work with us. Interestingly enough, they said we can't move ahead with the S–500 because we don't have any funding. I suggested that perhaps that is an area we can work together.
Secretary Cohen and I talked about that, I have had discussions with General Kadish on that issue. I would just wonder what your response would be to looking at, no commitment obviously until we know what we are talking about, but looking at the possibility of working with the Russians on this new system they supposedly have called the S–500. And the other irony is, since the S–400 is right below the threshold of the demarcation that was negotiated, I would surmise that the S–500 probably exceeds the demarcation which the Administration agreed to in Geneva, which is kind of interesting since we are not allowed to build a theater missile defense system that goes beyond the range and the interceptor speed defined by the protocol. But what is your response to the Russians specifically? Is this something that you support, General Kadish, and are people pursuing in terms of the possibility of working together with the Russians in these areas?
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Secretary GANSLER. We definitely encourage him to find out more about it. That is basically where we are today, is trying to understand what it is that they are alleging, how they feel that it does or does not affect either the treaties or any other considerations and also what it is that they are asking for from us and what kind of exchanges we could have. There obviously are significant security concerns here. Then you get down to even command and control considerations, how we work that together with them, but it is definitely worth our exploring and trying to develop a better relationship with them.
Mr. WELDON. Dr. Gansler, there has been some what I call unfounded and trivialized criticism, in my opinion, of where we are going with this program. It is very unfortunate because the person reading this I have offered and met with on several occasions and supported some of his ideas. If I thought he was substantive, he would have come to me and I would have given him a forum to address those concerns. Instead he chose to go to the New York Times, which to me indicates that there really was no serious nature to his charges, it was just a grandstanding plea to appease those who oppose missile defense. One of the charges that were made, which I think was scandalous and scurrilous, was that this is a lie, a fraud on the American people. In fact, there were some Members of Congress who are totally against missile defense who asked the FBI to investigate the charges, which is absolutely ridiculous on its face.
What is your response to someone who would—do you have total confidence in General Kadish and the way we are going in terms of missile defense? And is there any reason for you to suspect that anyone has rigged tests, lied or somehow manipulated data or kept it away from Members of Congress in this process?
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Secretary GANSLER. None. In fact, during my earlier comments, in my oral testimony, I think you came in a little late and missed that, I explicitly addressed that point. There is absolutely no basis for that claim. I not only have total confidence in General Kadish but in all of the people who are involved in this. Frankly, we have a lot of internal reviews and external reviews, and General Welch has reviewed it as well but other people as well have reviewed it. There is no basis for that. It is unfortunate that these accusations are being made in such a broad kind of inclusive, accusatory fashion rather than in a scientific way and saying here is why we think it does or doesn't do its job and we could then—in fact, he happened to have a clearance. We could actually give him a briefing in detail on the performance of the system and how it works and what it is intended to do.
Of course, that is what the experts that General Welch has put together have been doing. He even has a separate subgroup looking at discrimination with a number of senior scientists and analyzing whether or not the system will do the job, what its capacity is, what its current design is, and whether it has the growth potential to even handle some of the future threats to us.
The part about the lying and the fraud and all that, I just think is frankly the wrong approach to take. There is absolutely no basis to that at all.
Mr. WELDON. I think it undercuts the integrity of anyone who makes those kinds of charges and shows the shallowness, their lack of really some substantive disagreement with where we are going. In fact, in response, we had a hearing last week and General Kadish testified for a couple of hours, but prior to that, the day before, we had a closed session at the classified level, and I specifically invited personally, with personal notes, those Members of Congress, some of whom were the leaders on this fraud FBI allegation, who are friends of mine, to come in. Two of them came. The others who are the most vocal ones didn't bother to show, even though it was a two and a half hour classified session with about 40 Members or 35 Members of Congress from both parties in attendance where they could have asked any question, raised any objection and had any opportunity to interface with General Kadish on any issue that they wanted.
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Yet I think the best evidence of the lack of substance here are the number of the opponents that are out front making all the noise who didn't bother to come to that briefing where they could be presented with the facts in an intelligent way without the media watching them, but with their colleagues watching them and ask the tough questions they want to ask, because I would agree there is nothing to hide.
We have been totally fair in this process. We have been critical of the contractor base in missile defense, as you know. When the THAAD program was having problems, the Congress stepped up and told the contractor, ''We'll penalize you if you don't get your quality control issues addressed.'' we have been very aggressive. I just find that whole attack mode despicable, but understandable because there are those who will never be convinced even when the facts are there.
In fact, they love to characterize SDI as Star Wars. I characterize them as the Flat Earth Society. They under any circumstance would never support anything we do and the lack of substance in their arguments and their factual presentations are indicative of their unwillingness to look at what we are really doing.
In terms of instability with the Russians, that is hogwash. We spend a lot of time working with the Russians. The Russians know that. One other question and then, Mr. Skelton, you may have some others. Floyd asked us to carry this on while we are having these crazy votes.
We have been criticized in the Congress maybe for trying to push missile defense too quickly. I personally resent that because I don't want to push anything. I don't want artificial dates. Now, I do disagree with the President, we have already made a decision to deploy, and in my opinion when the President signed H.R. 4 into law, which he did not have to do, he could have vetoed it. He in fact made it the law of the land that we will deploy a national missile defense. The only decision left to make in my mind is for the technical leadership, General Kadish and you, to tell us what the next steps are. And if you tell us based on your professional judgment that we ought to maybe do some more testing or slip the date, I am willing to accept that. But I don't want an artificial political decision imposed, and I think that is what it is, to a decision that we as a country have made. Now, the criticism of the Congress is that we are rushing in some cases our missile defense initiatives. Isn't it true, Dr. Gansler, and you have been around for how many years now?
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Secretary GANSLER. In this position, a little over three.
Mr. WELDON. Even before you came, I am sure you know the history, I think you would agree that the Congress has plused up missile defense funding by about a billion dollars a year for six years. Would you agree with that?
Secretary GANSLER. You certainly have been a great help in keeping that program well funded.
Mr. WELDON. And the funding increase was for increased testing. So the problem I have is that we are criticized for not doing enough testing when some of the very people criticizing us were in a position of power criticizing us for giving more money to missile defense to do, guess what, more testing. You can't have it both ways.
If we are not doing enough testing, fine, but don't criticize us where for six years we have put a billion dollars a year more into missile defense for testing. I want to give General Kadish all the money he needs for testing because we need a robust testing program. But this Congress has been there. Democrats and Republicans joining together have supported more money for reducing the possibilities of failure, risk reduction efforts, and we are supporting that again this year. We have consistently supported more money for testing. And I would say the majority of the members on this Committee don't want us to rush into any artificial time frame or artificial architecture. We want to allow you all to tell us what will work.
Along that line there have been other suggestions for other programs, the possibility of a boost phase program that perhaps would be sea launched. Former CIA Director Woolsey repeated the idea of perhaps a low orbit space-based program that would have low orbit satellites traverse the 43rd parallel over what you cannot now call the rogue states but which I can now call the rogue states because Madeleine Albright has all of a sudden decided that she is going to magically rename Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Libya. To me they are still rogue states. I guess to the White House they are nations of concern. I don't know what happened within a one-day time period to change that classification, but to me they are still rogue states.
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Anyway, the point is that there are a couple of different ideas. When General Kadish testified, I don't want to put words in his mouth, he can respond very capably for himself, but I got the impression that you are looking at all of these options, that they are not locked into just one, that as the technology evolves, we may in fact move into other possible complements. Is that a correct assessment of your own position?
Secretary GANSLER. Yes, we definitely are considering the boost phase alternative systems as complements to our system. I covered earlier some of the concerns relative to boost phase systems in terms of schedules and capabilities and particularly cost but they are definitely a part of what we are evaluating.
Mr. WELDON. I will turn it back over to my boss.
The CHAIRMAN. I think we interrupted Mr. Spratt a while ago. Mr. Spratt.
Mr. SPRATT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Gansler, towards the end of your testimony, in fact in the last paragraph you indicated that there are things about countermeasures you simply can't discuss in a session like this, in open session. Is that an indication, also, is that if we shared technology with a potential adversary, the potential adversary would learn the Achilles' heels or weak spots and be able to exploit these and possibly defeat our system?
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Secretary GANSLER. That is exactly why we keep it classified. In other words, the ability of the system to deal with certain things, not ability to do other things, is the aspect that makes it classified. And so in terms of the ability to discuss what we can do, can't do today, what we will be able to do tomorrow or not able to do tomorrow, what we think the adversary can do today or could do tomorrow are all things that unfortunately do remain classified just for the reason you gave.
Now, if we started to work with a potential adversary, such as Russia, we would have the same kinds of issues that would come up. But in terms of being able to share that data with anybody who is a critic of our system who is cleared, we have no problem whatsoever. In other words, we want to be fully open and discuss that with anybody who wants to understand how the system works.
Mr. SPRATT. My point, though, is sometimes in the discussion of how to do a deal with the Russians, it is suggested that we simply share with them the technology and we both erect a missile defense system based upon kind of a common architecture. Do you see that as a feasible proposal?
Secretary GANSLER. I think it would be very difficult. I think we shouldn't just outright dismiss it. There may be some ways to be able to have restrictions on what we share with them or they share with us and there may be some portions that we could do in common. For example, if their interceptor had a new high propulsion, high acceleration capability that they were willing to share with us that we didn't have, it might be of interest to us to learn about that.
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Mr. SPRATT. Pieces of the system but not the whole system?
Secretary GANSLER. I think you would get to the point where you would have very serious security questions come up definitely in terms of the capability, the design, the technology. But there may be pieces that we would be able to share and each have our own designs based upon that.
Mr. SPRATT. General Welch has said in his report that probably what you are doing with respect to discriminating for the C–1 threat is adequate or will be adequate by the time you have completed your testing. But you still, General Welch, if I correctly recall, if I am correctly characterizing you, you still have concerns about the C–2 and C–3, the progressively more sophisticated threats and whether or not we have enough arrays of different decoys and countermeasures integrated into our testing regimen for the next several years. Have you done anything to make the tests more rigorous and difficult, particularly with respect to discriminations, so you can handle this problem?
Secretary GANSLER. We are doing a lot of testing, both in terms of intercept tests and also our risk reduction tests which are intended to try to get much more data on other types of decoys. There is an important distinction here between what the current system as being built will do against the currently anticipated threats, and then the ability to expand that system as the threat grows.
I think General Welch may want to comment on this, but the way I had interpreted what he said was the system has the inherent capability to go much further than what we are building into it right now because we don't have to do it now because the threat doesn't exist, but the important thing is you don't hit a barrier that says now the system is worthless because the threat has grown. So we want to have that capability for expansion, which is very important to us.
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Mr. SPRATT. General Welch, could you comment on your thoughts about the adequacy of the testing regimen to deal with increasingly sophisticated countermeasures?
General WELCH. Yes, I would. I also would point out that in one of our earlier reports, we had very much counseled the program to first demonstrate you can do hit to kill, because that was the most challenging technical task. So we weren't particularly encouraging a lot of decoys and countermeasures on these earliest tests. First things first. First demonstrate the system will work, and then get to more sophisticated tests of more sophisticated countermeasures. The program has been very much focused on meeting the C–1 requirement. We think that is the proper focus.
The concern we expressed is that it will be necessary to grow this capability over time as more sophisticated countermeasures emerge, and you don't want to fall behind. So we need a program that exploits these countermeasures potential or the discrimination potential that is already designed into the system. That is what we were urging, that there be a more vigorous program to exploit those design features to ensure that the system can stay ahead of emerging countermeasures.
Mr. SPRATT. Looking at the integrated flight tests that are planned for, say, the next 10 or dozen tests, do you think that they need as they proceed to stiffen and make more rigorous the countermeasure challenge as they move through this testing regimen?
General WELCH. When we look at the series of tests between now and the 13th test, which is the first real test of the C–1 Ground Based Interceptor (GBI), I think those tests are very challenging as they stand and that we should add countermeasures to those as we have better visibility of the emerging threat. I do not necessarily counsel making those measures more complex than they currently are. It is still a very complex task to finish this development program.
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Mr. SPRATT. Just do hit to kill itself.
We used to fund a red team or adversarial team within SDIO and we used to have an item in the budget for Sandia to develop countermeasure challenges so you would have an independent, disinterested party trying to stress the system and make the proponents of it prove that they could achieve their mission. Do we have anything like that today at BMD? If so, do you think it is a good idea to incorporate it if not?
General KADISH. We have an effort that I started called the Hercules, it is a programmatic term that we are using, to look at the algorithms and countermeasure issue. I am expanding that now to include a red, white and blue team to balance and make sure there is balance in the program aspect. So the red team addresses what you suggest, the blue team does the defensive response to the red team and then the white team keeps them both honest, if you will, in the theoretical approach.
We have not had that rigorously employed to date because, as General Welch has said, we have been focused on the C–1 threat. But that effort is growing and we will resource it properly to make sure that it addresses the issue of countermeasures.
Secretary GANSLER. Just so there is no misunderstanding, the C–1 threat does still include decoys. It is a hit to kill but in the presence of decoys. It is just that it is not as sophisticated as later threats will become.
Mr. SPRATT. General Welch, you have had some experience with red teams in the B–2. Was that a good idea there?
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General WELCH. Of course when you are an independent outsider, you really love red teams. At the time when we were concerned with stealth, we thought red teams were absolutely essential. They turned out to be very, very valuable but we never learned to love them.
The CHAIRMAN. We are going to have to move on.
Mr. SPRATT. Okay.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Skelton.
Mr. SKELTON. Dr. Gansler, you recall my comments earlier about resources and a potential train wreck in the very near future. How does this proposed missile defense system fit among the many competing priorities that all of us have to wrestle with?
Secretary GANSLER. That is, of course, the challenge that we have in this whole look at the train wreck that you are talking about.
Mr. SKELTON. You can spread money around like butter and end up with pablum. Where is the priority on this list, including, of course, taking care of the troops which we have to have as high on the list somewhere?
Secretary GANSLER. As you know, the Secretary normally goes through his list of priorities which begin with readiness and quality of life for the troops, the point you are making. Readiness clearly because you can expect something tomorrow, you have to be ready for that, that is training and so forth. But you do get into the modernization, which is really the category that this fits into. I would say within that category that the overall Ballistic Missile Defense Program is a very high priority. We were talking earlier about the fact that—.
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Mr. SKELTON. Would it be ahead of the joint strike fighter?
Secretary GANSLER. We haven't really gotten to the ability to be able to balance two things that are both high priority. I would say that the joint strike fighter is clearly one of the high priorities, because in the 2010–2012 time period, we start running out of airplanes in the Air Force and in the Marines, so that has got to be a very high priority.
Mr. SKELTON. Would it be ahead of additional submarines per the hearing yesterday?
Secretary GANSLER. The way we have been approaching this is to try to—.
Mr. SKELTON. Dr. Gansler, you are not answering my question.
Secretary GANSLER. I can't. That is the reason I am not. I can't give you a priority. I can give you a set of items that are very high priority.
Mr. SKELTON. Do that, then.
Secretary GANSLER. I can't give you a set that says the national missile defense or the ballistic missile defense is a lower priority.
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Mr. SKELTON. Go ahead and do that. Please understand that this Committee at one point or another has to make that decision, unless there is an infusion of a great deal of resources.
Secretary GANSLER. The problem, as you well know, it is not a matter of saying this program is higher than that but it is the second question, the one you were probing before, which is how much do you want to spend on this program versus this one or that one. I don't think there is a program in our budget that we don't think is a program that we should be funding.
We have to then get to the second and more difficult question, the one you raised with your train wreck, which is how many dollars are you going to spend on those programs that you think are high priority, submarines, joint strike fighters, ballistic missile defense, and that is where the difficult decisions come. I would argue that—I can't think of any program in any one of the services or in BMDO that we don't consider is sufficiently high priority. Our problem comes in we don't have enough money, as you pointed out, to fund those.
Mr. WELDON. Will the gentleman yield? It builds on his question.
Mr. SKELTON. Go ahead.
Mr. WELDON. It builds on our distinguished leader's question. He is hitting the nut here but maybe characterizing it this way, which is the way General Kadish handled this last week, with every other threat platform, we have replacements, we are simply replacing existing platforms. Do we have anything—if we don't build NMD, do we have any other way to handle that threat?
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Secretary GANSLER. No. We have a series of, quote, emerging threats that this is designed to do in the case of chemical, biological, nuclear, ballistic missiles. That is a threat we have to address. That is why I say it is in our list of the high priority, essential things. From that perspective, most of the other ones are at least replacing something but in the case of something like the joint strike fighter, the thing it is replacing is something that the wings are going to fall off so you have to make the replacement. So even though it is a replacement, you can't say it is a lower priority. But there are systems where at least the systems that we have today would be adequate to do the job, and that is where you might address the priority question.
Mr. SKELTON. Dr. Gansler, you live with these problems every day.
Secretary GANSLER. Every day.
Mr. SKELTON. Would you help us in giving us as best you can today your list of priorities that are in essence in competition with each other for resources.
Secretary GANSLER. The Army's transformation I think is an extremely high priority effort. I would certainly strongly support that. I think as you pointed out, the Navy's submarine and ship program is an essential one for the type of strategy that we have. I certainly think, as you pointed out, the joint strike fighter is an extremely high priority program for us. And I think the Ballistic Missile Defense Program. These are some of our highest priority programs. They are expensive, but something we have to be able to afford.
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I am not eliminating things by not mentioning them. But those are the ones that immediately occur to me as absolutely essential, high priority programs.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Would the gentleman yield to me a moment?
Mr. SKELTON. You bet.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Gansler, I realize you are under a lot of difficulty. You have to answer Mr. Skelton's question or I submit to you that what you are saying and what I have written in a note to me, the Administration has no priorities. You can't give the answer that you are giving and get away with it. That is not an accusation. I am not trying to get into a confrontation with you. Certainly Mr. Skelton is not. But you have to put this into some kind of category.
Mr. Weldon is right and Mr. Skelton has to have an answer. We can't do this. You folks will not consider capital budgeting. You haven't done anything about trying to get to the question of actually financing any of this. He deserves an answer on this because this is a crucial, fundamental, seminal issue that has to be decided by this Nation. It involves foreign relations, it involves our entire position in the world. It certainly involves what the thrust of the DOD is going to be.
If you are not prepared to do it today, I think you should tell him that and then give him an answer. But to simply list things like you just listed is not an answer.
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Secretary GANSLER. I am prepared to answer right now and I think my answer is perfectly straightforward and complete. What we submitted in the budget, what the President submitted to you is our priorities, in the order in which we submitted them with the dollars associated with them. All the things that are not in there are not our priorities. All the dollar levels at which we submitted them represent the priorities we have placed on those items. I think that is a full and complete answer, Congressman.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Skelton.
Mr. SKELTON. Thank you, sir.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Abercrombie.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Gansler, Secretary Gansler, in listing those approaches to missile defense, sea-based, space-based including space-based laser, please grant me for conversation sake, I am pulling out of your testimony certain words and phrases, not because I am trying to trap you but because they are triggers for what I want to get to. The sea-based, highly vulnerable, no time for human decision making. Space-based, including the space-based laser, system we do not yet have, in the experimental stage, sometime down the line. Further study required. Neither easy, nor inexpensive. The time period is extensive. Isn't the same thing essentially true, though, for the national missile defense exposition that is now before us?
Secretary GANSLER. Yes. And, in fact, the reason for that discussion in that paper was to try to say that we did give serious thought to the boost phase, that we traded off some of the considerations. But a lot of these decisions were made in 1991 and subsequently in the decisions that were made to go with the midcourse for the reasons that I gave. That committed us in a certain sense to the schedule and to the risk. So that by now, we have gone much further. This is nine years later and we have gotten now to the point where we have eliminated a lot of that risk, still have a lot of risk left, certainly a lot of risk in the schedule aspect.
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Mr. ABERCROMBIE. But in relation to those other, including the space-based and sea-based and laser, you seem to indicate, or the flavor or the thrust of your testimony was, is that, well, they are still kind of on hold with lots of demurrers that might be made with respect to where the floor was. We are more ready to go with this other one. Is that your testimony, that these others really are kind of behind and that this is more capable of moving forward at the present time?
Secretary GANSLER. Some of those systems, the space-based laser, for example, we actually increased the funding on that as we are going ahead with it and Congress has also done that. That one is certainly going ahead. But it is a much longer time period and much greater risk. Some of the other ones, we are exploring those in terms of their value. But if you have—and the point that was made here very clearly in terms of resource constraints, if you have resource constraints, if we took the money off of the midcourse intercept system and put it onto the boost phase to see if that would work, we would then not complete having any system.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. It possibly depends on what our priorities are and where we put the money. But let me ask you this question, then, because when you went to the National Missile Defense, as you outlined it in relation to the others, your testimony was, and again I am extrapolating words, I hope what was meant, can it be done without violating the treaty, and your answer was no. So my question to you, because of all the things you stated in your testimony, which I accept. What about, let me just pick one, the sea-based missile defense. If we went ahead with the sea-based missile defense, trying to get them into boost phase, utilizing the technology of theater missile defense as modified in whatever way was necessary in order to be able to deal with that, would that violate the treaty?
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Secretary GANSLER. It is my understanding that it would.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Would all the rest of these systems violate the treaty?
Secretary GANSLER. Yes.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. So if we go to any missile defense at all—.
Secretary GANSLER. With the exception of the one that is approved by the treaty. A single site.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Just so I make sure that I understand completely, is theater based missile defense research leading towards a violation of the treaty?
Secretary GANSLER. Theater missile defense is not a violation. National missile defense is the violation.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Okay. Would a sea-based defense—could a sea-based defense be configured in such a way as to not violate the treaty and still be effective as a defense at the boost phase, particularly say off North Korea as an example? Or is that a question that is a little too technical to get an answer on?
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Secretary GANSLER. I would actually prefer to have somebody who is really a treaty expert. But my understanding is that it would be in compliance.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Would you take a look at that question?
Secretary GANSLER. Yeah.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Do I have any more time, Mr. Chairman? One more question.
The CHAIRMAN. We have got to move on, though, if you can get this one question in. We have got other people coming in.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Let me ask how is it with the islands. Shemya, the islands question. Is it possible are you taking into account the neutralization of that island with respect to its ability to utilize the radar and so on? When people talk about terrorism, only thing I have ever heard was somebody landing on the island or something along that nature. Why can't a submarine simply be in the ocean somewhere off from the island and send a missile to neutralize it?
Secretary GANSLER. Somebody informed me about the treaty, so let me go back to your last question, save writing it in. The treaty explicitly prohibits sea-based and space-based anti-ICBM systems. So it is an explicit call.
On the force protection of the islands, as I said earlier, that is one of the things we are specifically looking at now.
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Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Submarines.
Secretary GANSLER. Well, other things, airplanes, submarines, ships, terrorists, whatever, you have to consider all of these and how realistic and how remote and what you would do to deploy against them. I mean, you would probably have antisubmarine aircraft if it got into heightened conditions and things like that. So I think—.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Excuse me. I didn't understand what you said. Heightened conditions? You mean, if it looked like there might be a missile launch or something like that?
Secretary GANSLER. Yeah.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. So you are expecting some kind of warning?
Secretary GANSLER. Intelligence would be of great value in a situation of this sort. And you would expect that you wouldn't have a launch out of the blue as much likely as one under conditions—.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Last point then, and you don't have to answer. It is not necessary to answer. I offer it as an observation. If we get to a stage where we have intelligence that works, and it looks like somebody might be thinking of launching it, and we have sufficiently sophisticated methodologies of acquiring and analyzing data to recognize that maybe such a launch might be in the—in the offing, is it—do we really have to go to $60 or 100 billion worth of defensive operations as opposed to simply informing the North Koreans or whoever might be doing it, if you proceed with this any further, you will get a first strike, and you will be eliminated?
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Secretary GANSLER. Again, you could go through a series of hypotheses to the value and the deterrent nature of this system. And this, of course, is not the area that I am responsible for, but I could hypothesize situations in which the—say, Korea was going to or some other country of concern might want to start a conflict and might threaten to keep the U.S. out by the threat of an attack. If we have no deterrent capability against that other than the fact that we have a deterrent that says we will wipe out your country, and we will launch first, I am not sure that that is as credible as having a defense system.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Well, I will conclude simply by saying they have all of those things. They have the capability, they have heavy armor, they have missiles in North Korea right now. They have had them for a number of years. We have 37,000 troops immediately next to that. They haven't used it. I am not sure what our deterrent value is by going into the billions with this particular configuration, but that is a conversational piece for another time.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. We are going to have to hurry along. As I said, we have other people coming, too.
Mr. Bartlett.
Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much.
Let me return to a question that Mr. Spratt asked about cooperating with the Russians. As I understand it, that we are conceding that any system we might develop could not be effective against a determined Russian attack. Is that correct?
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Secretary GANSLER. I think I would slightly modify what you said. The system we are developing would not be designed against the large-quantity Russian threat. That doesn't say that someday someone couldn't design and develop a system capable of that, but this system is not designed or capable of that.
Mr. BARTLETT. Yes, that caveat that you mentioned is just the reason that the Russians are opposed to us doing this, because they believe that this is going to be a stepping stone to developing a system which could be effective against a mass attack from Russia. I am not sure that we could ever do that, but wouldn't this world be the safest place if every country had a ballistic missile defense system that would protect it against everybody else's weapons?
Secretary GANSLER. It would certainly be a system that one might have more comfort with than simply counting on a mutually assured destruction as the staple.
Mr. BARTLETT. This was Ronald Reagan's approach, that if everybody had a system that protected them from everybody else, then the use of nuclear weapons and these long-range missiles would—their efficacy would just be evaporated. And why would you go to the expense of maintaining things that would ultimately do you no good?
The argument I am making is I don't see why we shouldn't share development with Russia. If we were doing that, they might be more conciliatory to working with us. Last summer, Mr. Weldon and I and nine other of our Congresspersons sat in a room in Vienna with members of the Russian Duma and a personal representative of Slobodan Milosevic during the Kosovo conflict. During those two days of intense discussions, Vladimir Lukin, who was ambassador here at the beginning of this Administration and is chairman of their foreign affairs Committee, made a rather shocking statement. He said, if we really wanted to hurt you, without any fear of retaliation, we would launch an Submarine Launch Ballistic Missile (SLBM), nuclear-tipped, detonate the weapon at high altitude over your country, and shut down your power grid and your communications for six months or so. This is Vladimir Lukin. This is not a low-level Duma member.
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Two questions relative to that: If the—if we establish such a system in Alaska as we are proposing, couldn't the Russians or anybody else with a nearby ship or a submarine simply launch a high-altitude burst of a nuclear weapon and create an electromagnetic pulse which would blind and perhaps totally disable our system?
And my second question is if you were a rogue state and had a few missiles, and you knew how effective the United States was in detecting a missile launch, and you wanted to do some harm to this country, why would you launch that missile from your soil, inviting certain retaliation, when you could put it on a ship, as the Rumsfeld Commission determined rogue nations are already considering and, in fact, doing; why would you want to put it on a ship, throw a canvas over it, get it pretty close to the United States, in which case our ballistic missile defense system in Canada is totally ineffective.
Now, I am a very strong proponent of ballistic missile defense. I think we got to do it. My question is how we do it. I think that how we are proposing to do it will not give us very much protection because of the very probable scenarios that I mentioned. First of all, it could be very easily blinded, and second—or disabled by an Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP) lay-down; and second, why would any rogue state want to launch a weapon against us from their soil? Why wouldn't they launch it from a submarine if they had one, and several do, or from a surface ship, which any of them can do, throw a canvas over it, and we wouldn't know it from a container of sardines or something on the ship? Would you comment, please.
Secretary GANSLER. Let me take the first part, which is the precursor blast and the electromagnetic pulse. That is a design consideration. The security levels of how much of it we have is classified. But the fact that we are addressing that as a viable threat, as you properly point out, is one that we are addressing.
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In terms of the ship-launched, that is—you know, a ship launch is—not against our system, but against San Francisco or New York—is one that increasingly has come up and been mentioned, and we actually have a group looking at what it would take to do that. It is a very difficult challenge, as you properly point out, and we would have to marshal a lot more resources than simply a missile defense system. You need—again, the intelligence is going to be a key element of that, how you sense where the ships are and who they belong to, and what you can do to turn them off as they are coming towards you. But it is not—it certainly is not a trivial problem, it is a very difficult problem. It is one that we are starting to address.
I would argue on the other hand that because you know they can launch the ICBM and are building systems to be able to do it from their territory, that that—it seems to me you don't ignore that threat because you have hypothesized some other one. I try to figure out a way to deal with each of them as they come up and as they are likely.
The one right now that is the most likely for which we have seen evidence that they are doing it is the one launched from their country or associated other countries, and, therefore one we need to able to defend against.
Mr. BARTLETT. Let me close by just quoting, I think, an appropriate passage from Scripture: This ought you to have done and not to have left the other undone. Thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Kuykendall.
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Mr. KUYKENDALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don't think I missed it, but could you go in and describe again the geography of choosing—this election to mount this defensive position, this defensive position in Alaska? I mean, we talk about threats. The only thing I see in common with them so far is most of the countries we view as might be a threat to us all are in the Northern Hemisphere, I believe. Aside from that, does this location give us the capability—for instance, I mean, there is China, there is Korea, there is Iran, there is Iraq, there is, you know, Libya maybe, I don't know, but all those countries are in the Northern Hemisphere. I don't see any threats off the top of my head from the southern side. Is that the reason this is the good location to put it, or did we need more than one to cover that marketplace of potential adversaries?
Secretary GANSLER. There are two items of location. One, of course, is the radar in Shemya, and the other is the location of the interceptors. As you properly point out, the reason that it is up in Alaska is because all of them from the Northern Hemisphere will go over the pole, and therefore that is—you get the best intercept condition for it. The Shemya location way at the end of the Aleutians, almost actually in Asia, gives you a good location for things coming from—you can pick up much earlier rather than being back in Alaska.
Mr. KUYKENDALL. So this Shemya location is only going to be the radar location. The interceptor location would be in other places around the country, depending upon where we might need them.
Secretary GANSLER. No, this deployment would actually have them in Alaska. You might have one other location later. We are investigating, you know, a second location. But they both would be—one or two would be certainly in the Northern Hemisphere because of the fact that they will all come over the poles.
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General KADISH. I might add to that, sir, if I could, is that Shemya is 1,500 miles from where we are going to put the ground-based interceptor or the proposed site in central Alaska. So these distances, although we say Alaska, are pretty vast.
Mr. KUYKENDALL. Yeah, they are. Another question, which is a change in tack a little bit. We have talked about giving this technology to other countries. I think the President even mentioned it when he was talking with the Russians. He may have opened that door up a little bit just recently. We have had other people comment on it in questions here. What kind of response do we get from our other allies particularly and then some of our adversaries, Russia being the only one that I know of? I don't think we have offered it to the Koreans or to the North Koreans or the Iranians or the Iraqis or the people like that. What kind of response are we getting from these people when we say, folks, to try to allay your fears, we think it is in the best interest of the world to prevent this from happening, and we are willing to share that technology. Just a little of your insight on that.
Secretary GANSLER. Well, we have found in the last couple of years is an increasing awareness, particularly from our European and Japanese allies, is the recognition that this is a viable threat, and they ought to be concerned about it. I would say a few years ago that was not the case. Now that there is considerable interest in it, we have now had much more extensive discussions with them about sharing the programs, technologies. We actually have a funded effort now with the Japanese on a Navy Upper Tier program which we are jointly doing, and we have been having much more extensive discussions with our European allies in terms of sharing of technology and development of systems.
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With the Russian approach, we are exploring there, and obviously we would do the technology sharing at a much more careful basis. But there may be some good possibilities of being able to figure out some ways that they would be willing to share with us and we would be willing to share with them.
The early time periods, clearly it is the European and the Japanese have expressed considerable interest in this idea of the technology sharing and of possible joint developments.
Mr. KUYKENDALL. Thank you. I think it is very interesting and instructive to us all that we are now talking about a defensive system rather than the mutually assured destruction of the world. And I think that is a major step in the right direction for all of us to be going down that path. And the cost will be expensive for this, just like they were to develop our strategic missile forces, and the other countries have done so as well, but I think in the long run the world stands a better chance. Thank you.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you Mr. Kuykendall.
Time for our second panel, I think. I know you feel a lot of relief, I bet, Mr. Secretary.
General Welch, thank you very much for being with us. You have helped a whole lot.
We are going to proceed to the second panel now and get their views on this thing. Thank you.
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Secretary GANSLER. Thank you for your help with this overall program.
The CHAIRMAN. Yes, sir. We are on the same side.
Mr. WELDON [presiding]. We appreciate you both being here, as was mentioned, as we are all aware we have two distinguished panels here. Ambassador Joseph, who was, I believe, the leader on the Standing Consultative Commission for a period of time and provided a great service to our country; and Dr. Cambone was the Executive Director of the Rumsfeld Commission, among other things, which has probably been the single biggest thing that has driven the world to understand the nature of the threats that are emerging around. We welcome you both here, and we will now proceed.
Mr. Ambassador, you may go first.
STATEMENT OF ROBERT G. JOSEPH, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR COUNTERPROLIFERATION RESEARCH, NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY
Mr. JOSEPH. Thank you for the invitation to testify today. It is a pleasure to appear before this Committee because of the leading role that it has played in promoting sound policies and programs that are essential to achieving effective defenses against the growing missile threat both to our forces abroad as well as to our homeland. The views that I will express are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense or any agency of the U.S. Government.
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I have a prepared statement that I will, with your permission, submit for the record.
Mr. WELDON. Without objection.
Mr. JOSEPH. In these opening remarks I will simply summarize the main points contained in that statement.
I can be very brief on the threat. Given the unanimous findings of the Rumsfeld Commission, and given the reassessment by the Intelligence Community last fall, I believe it is accurate to say that this is an area in which there is substantial agreement. The overwhelming vote in favor of the National Missile Defense Act, making it both U.S. policy and law to deploy a national missile defense as soon as is technologically possible, reflects a consensus that the threat of weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles is both real and expanding. To counter this threat we require a comprehensive strategy. The United States must, in my view, support and lead international efforts, such as the missile technology control regime, to prevent and slow further proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and missiles. These efforts are essential, but as is evident from the threat, they are also insufficient. As a consequence we must also pursue defenses.
Most observers agree with this conclusion, at least with regard to theater missile defense, but when it comes to long-range missiles and especially national missile defense, agreement breaks down. The most popular argument, the argument du jour, if you will, against missile defense, does not deny the growing capability of states like North Korea to attack the United States. Instead it focuses on their intentions. Opponents of a national missile defense are increasingly fond of asserting that the United States doesn't need to defend against missile attacks because we can rely on deterrence through the threat of massive retaliation, and specifically the threat of nuclear annihilation. In short, because regimes like North Korea are rational and want to survive, they wouldn't dare strike our cities because they know if they did, their countries would be obliterated.
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To me this line of argument simply misses the point and is based on a dangerous misunderstanding of today's threat. Our work at the National Defense University, which includes extensive red teaming and case studies, suggests that deterrence, while remaining our first line of defense, is fundamentally different from the Cold War deterrence of the past. We deterred the Soviet Union principally through the prospect of mutual assured destruction. We based our doctrine, our force structure and arms control policies on the concept that as long as American and Russian cities were vulnerable to attack in a retaliatory strike, neither side would be tempted to use nuclear weapons against the other in a disarming first strike.
Few today would openly advocate this same concept as a desirable basis for deterrence of regional states. The differences, I believe, are apparent. We face a much more diverse and less predictable set of countries than we did in the Cold War. These states are governed by individuals that are much more prone to taking risks than were Soviet leaders. That doesn't make them irrational, it only makes them gamblers, like Hitler and the Japanese militarists of the 1930s.
Moreover, the conditions that we valued for deterrence in the U.S.-Soviet relationship, such as effective communications and agreed or mutual understandings, are not likely to pertain with states like North Korea. In addition, these states see weapons of mass destruction as their best means of overcoming our technological advantages that they know will defeat them in a conventional conflict. Weapons of mass destruction and especially biological weapons are becoming their weapons of choice to deter us from intervening in their region to stop their aggression, unlike in the Cold War when we sought to deter the Soviets from expanding outwards.
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Long-range missiles become particularly valuable as instruments of coercion to hold American and allied cities hostage and thereby deter us from intervention. Their tremendous disparity in our favor in both conventional capabilities and nuclear weapons stockpiles simply don't matter in this type of calculation. They need only hold a handful of our cities at risk. This is not irrational. In fact, it is very well thought out. If you can't compete conventionally, and you have territorial or political or perhaps even religious goals that require the use of force, you must find a means of keeping the United States out of the fight.
Failing that, even if we do intervene, long-range missiles can still retain deterrent value. Under these circumstances, and, again, in the calculations of regional adversaries, their missiles can reduce the risk of massive retaliation by the United States if they use chemical and biological weapons in their regions, even if against U.S. forces. This is what I believe it is all about. It is not about a North Korea conducting a first strike against us.
Deterrence of these new and different threats requires new and different concepts and capabilities. Cold War concepts simply don't apply. The threat of retaliation, while essential, is not sufficient. Denial capabilities such as passive defenses against chemical and biological weapons and counterforce means to attack mobile and deep underground targets are central to deterrence. Perhaps most critical, the importance of missile defenses stand out in our research.
A second argument often heard against national missile defense is that such a deployment, even if very limited in scope, would be undesirable because the costs would outweigh the benefits. Perhaps the most frequently heard version of this argument is the assertion that NMD would threaten strategic stability, a phrase that passes the focus group test, but that obscures the underlying old thinking on which it is based.
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What is being said is we must continue to base our relationship with Russia on the same footing that we did with the former Soviet Union. Those taking this view are usually willing to extend mutually assured destruction to China. And although it has never been stated explicitly, they are willing to expend at least partial vulnerability to states like North Korea. The problem, of course, is that in a deterrence context, partial vulnerability is like partial pregnancy.
A third argument is that missile defenses are not technologically feasible. The Russians, of course, have an operational ABM system with nuclear-tipped interceptors that protect Moscow and a large portion of their territory against the Chinese-size threat. The recently deployed Israeli Arrow is conventionally armed. Although it is not hit to kill, it does demonstrate the feasibility of a national program based on interceptors with conventional front ends.
In other words, there are different approaches to missile defense, and I am confident that our scientific community is up to the task, as they always have been in the past.
While independent reviews of the current programs such as that headed by General Welch have emphasized the risk inherent in meeting the established deployment schedule, they have generally confirmed the soundness of the technologies being pursued. This is despite the fact that the U.S. approach has been the most technically challenging.
In fact, we have, for ABM treaty reasons, ruled out the most promising and cost-effective avenues to defense including sea-based and space-based ABM systems. These are the capabilities that could provide for boost and ascent phase intercepts that offer the greatest potential for countering the missile threat as it continues to grow both quantitatively and qualitatively, including through the introduction of countermeasures. The fact that we have not pursued ABM sea and space-based approaches, and the fact that we are now embarked on a very accelerated schedule to deploy even a minimalist land-based system is the direct result of policy choices. In 1993, in what the new Administration declared to be an effort to strengthen the ABM treaty, the ongoing national missile defense programs were downgraded in priority, and funding was significantly reduced. Programs such as space-based sensors were cut back. Others, such as space-based interceptors, were killed altogether. Even funding for ground-based interceptors and radars was slashed and essentially reduced to life support systems. In short, we lost seven critical years during which time our most likely adversaries have worked hard to acquire the capabilities to strike our cities with ballistic missiles.
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Today U.S. arms control policies remain based on Cold War precepts and continue to create roadblocks that prevent us from moving forward to acquire capabilities that strengthen deterrence and defense against today's threats. There can be no better example than the positions we are taking in the ABM treaty negotiations. Present policy is to preserve intact the central provisions of that treaty while deploying a very limited but totally effective national missile defense, which until recently has been called the rogue missile threat.
The problem is that these two objectives are mutually exclusive. As a result, in an attempt to retain the ABM treaty as the primary goal, the NMD architecture has become so contrived that it will only have a minimal capability against the near-term threat. While the official position is that we will go back to Russia to seek its permission to expand our defenses as the threat evolves, I think few see this as a serious prospect.
In an attempt to have it both ways, U.S. policy has had another equally unsubtle influence. For almost eight years we have proclaimed the ABM treaty to be the cornerstone of strategic stability with Russia in a way that has served to perpetuate, if not recreate, Cold War suspicions and distrust. This has had two effects. First, along with other policies that Moscow has seen as directed at Russia, it has contributed to a reversal of our political relations. Promoting Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) as an official policy and at the center of our relationship has a very corrosive influence that necessarily imprisons us in an adversarial box. Second, if, in fact, the ABM treaty and MAD do guide our relations, nuclear weapons become the most important currency, at least for a state like Russia that can ill afford alternatives. We see this in Russia's declaratory statements and defense planning priorities where nuclear weapons have become more prominent than ever in its security policy. This may help explain the lack of progress made in achieving further reductions in nuclear weapons.
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How Russia will react to the deployment of a missile defense is an important question. A number of U.S. and Russian officials have predicted dire consequences if we insist on amending the ABM treaty or withdraw from the treaty. In particular, some have predicted that deploying NMD will threaten the so-called fabric of arms control and lead to an end in further reductions in nuclear weapons. Such predictions are inconsistent with Moscow's reaction to the Bush Administration's proposals in 1992 that sought fundamental changes to the treaty and an end of MAD as the foundation of our political relationship. The Russian reaction at that time was to sign START II and to explore cooperative means for deploying what President Yeltsin called the global protection system in a speech to the United Nations.
These predictions also ignore Russia's own approach to arms control as seen most recently in the Conventional Forces Europe (CFE) experience. Here the principle was clear: Russia assesses the value of arms control agreements in the context of its defense requirements, a truly sound concept. When the security conditions change, it acts with determination to change the treaties. For the United States the parallel to the ABM treaty should be evident.
Although it will not like it, Moscow will most likely understand our position and will most likely not act contrary to its own interests. Arms control negotiations to reduce nuclear stockpiles are important to Russia. To end the negotiations would end Moscow's best means to stay at perceived parity. The Russians, according to almost all assessments, will be compelled by economics to go to much lower levels of offensive forces independent of arms control outcomes. Yet even at the lowest level speculated for Russia, a missile defense deployed to protect against limited attacks and accidental or unauthorized launches would not undermine Russia's nuclear deterrent, and this is a critical point. If Moscow knows that U.S. defenses will not undermine the Russian nuclear offensive capability, it will have what it requires.
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The views of U.S. allies on national missile defense and the ABM treaty are somewhat more complex. Our friends in Asia, having in recent years experienced the overflight of ballistic missiles, appear supportive both of our need and their need for defenses. In Europe, however, allies continue to express concerns about possible Russian reactions and in some cases about what is described as the decoupling effects of a missile defense that would protect American cities, but not those of our NATO allies.
This latter argument has it exactly wrong. U.S. credibility as an ally would be undercut if the United States were vulnerable to blackmail from weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles. On the other hand, if the United States could protect itself from this threat, its credibility would be strengthened.
Also significant, the concerns and in some cases objections of allies can be traced to their doubts about the seriousness of the U.S. commitment to missile defense. This is not to say that allies would rush to support NMD if they thought we were serious. However, I sense that they question the depth of the Administration's commitment to deploy defenses and wonder whether or not this is just the next American initiative that will go unfulfilled, but in the process will upset the old framework to guide relations with Moscow without replacing it with the new structure.
Moreover, and almost assuredly because of ABM treaty concerns, the allies are not protected under the current architecture and have little to gain from supporting our missile defense deployment. What is clearly required is American leadership. Without leadership of the type that we had in 1983 in the Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) context, we have been unable and unwilling to make the intellectual case in European capitals for missile defense. This failure, I believe, can be explained in part by the internal contradictions in U.S. policy between the stated goals of deploying defenses and retaining the central provisions of the ABM treaty. Any comprehensive approach to meeting the missile proliferation threat must reconcile these inconsistencies. In doing so we will be better able to protect against the growing threat and establish a more stable basis for our relations with Russia and others.
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Thank you. I will stop there. I look forward to your comments and questions.
Mr. WELDON. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Joseph can be found in the Appendix.]
Mr. WELDON. Dr. Cambone.
STATEMENT OF DR. STEPHEN A. CAMBONE, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH, INSTITUTE FOR NATIONAL STRATEGIC STUDIES, NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY
Dr. CAMBONE. Thank you, Mr. Weldon. It is a pleasure to be here in front of the Committee and an opportunity to put to you a number of thoughts. I would ask that the prepared statement be included as part of the record.
Mr. WELDON. Without objection.
Dr. CAMBONE. What I will do is rather than read from it, because there are a number of points where I overlap in points made with Ambassador Joseph, I would like to pick out four points, make them relatively quickly, and then perhaps leave some time for questions. The four points that I would like to turn attention to are these: One, that there is a persistence threat, and it is not, as a result of reserve diplomatic activity, a threat that we should dismiss. Second, I would like to spend a few moments on what I think the objectives should be for a missile defense as we go to the decision to deploy. Third, I would like to relate what I think the appropriate elements then are of a defense to those objectives, and last turn to one or two of these critical political questions at the end.
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On the threat, let me just say that diplomatic activity is not sufficient, in my view, to assuage our concerns about that threat. As the North Koreans are engaged with the South, and as they engage with us, and as they engage both with others in Europe and Asia, they are selling equipment. They are preparing for their own tests. We don't know where this process is going to end. And even if we had some prospect of an end to this process, we don't know very much about where their program sits now or what other potential they possess.
Similarly with Iran, their program is proceeding apace. They have just imported a number of engines from the North Koreans to improve their own programs. So these are ongoing programs, and we should be conscious that the dynamic international situation we now live in is full of quick turns in policy by other countries. And the availability of the technology in the international system means that there can be nasty surprises that can pop up very quickly and with little warning.
With respect to objectives for a system, here I want to be sort of confined to what it is you would want the system to do if you are to deploy it, and I think there are three. Clearly we want it to be able to defend the American homeland. That is the first and most important priority. But related to that and consistent with our strategic commitments abroad, we would like to have a system that could extend its defensive capability to our allies as well, much in the same way that our strategic offensive potential during the Cold War was meant to defend and deter an attack on the United States, but nevertheless was extended to our allies.
As part of that defense, I believe we need to be concerned about accidental and unauthorized launch. At the present time there is little concern with respect to the Russians, but their financial conditions make one concerned about the long-term health of their warning system, and one needs to worry about the future of their command and control system.
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And China, as it moves to a mobile missile system and a new command and control system, and in its own rudimentary warning system, will have its own warning difficulties with control over its forces, and therefore I think we should have some attention paid to the accidental and the unauthorized launch.
Second, I think we ought to pay attention to deterring further acquisition or the acquisition by additional states of ballistic missile capabilities, and Ambassador Joseph has covered that point, and I don't need to go any further except to say this: There are some who will argue that there are secondary effects to our deploying a missile system. One example that is often given is that the Chinese will react by building more systems, which in turn will spur both the Russians and the Indians in turn to build more missile systems to counteract Chinese systems, not necessarily American defensive systems. I think this misses an important point.
The dynamic that is of concern here has already taken place. China today could threaten India if it chose with Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs) that it presently possesses. It needn't build new systems to do. So the Chinese are already attempting to address the problems that China poses with its own ballistic systems.
And clearly the Russian position, as it has been put forward in the context of START III, takes into account its concerns about China in the future. So I think that we are posing difficulties and problems that others have already addressed in a great deal to their satisfaction.
The third objective for a system is that it should be designed and deployed in such a way that it discourages the development of countermeasures. It is at this point that I part company in part with the Administration's position, and I would like to explore that by relating what I think might be a slightly different approach on deployment in a way that would match the three objectives I have just laid out here for you.
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Mr. Bartlett, you did raise the question where ought we to start, how ought we proceed, and where might we end. In my view, I think we do have to move forward with the land-based system as it is presently being proposed for the reasons Ambassador Joseph has given us. The development over the program over the last eight years has left us with little choice. The threat is imminent, and it is present, and we need to address it now. The land-based system that is being proposed is a necessary first step and, therefore, one that needs to be taken, but by itself I don't believe it adequately meets the three objectives I have laid out, to defend the United States, to be able to discourage countermeasures, and to deter further acquisition.
And, therefore, I do think we need to pay attention to boost-phase intercepts, whether we do them from the surface that is by ship or based on land, but ultimately we have to be able to demonstrate that we can do those intercepts from space. I don't think there is any alternative to being able to demonstrate the potential for boost-phase intercepts.
The question that is raised, however, is do we need to commit to deploying each and every one of those systems now, and that, I think, is a question that is worth considering, but one that I think the answer is we have to be prepared, but needn't necessarily decide now. As we watch the land-based system unfold, as we watch the way in which the potential adversaries react to the system and our testing—and this is critical—our testing of these other boost-phase capabilities, we will know what it is we need to do. But the point is that we can't develop these systems as was mentioned in the earlier session under the ABM treaty. We simply cannot do so, and therefore, in the end we have got to get out from the constraints of the ABM treaty in order to be able to have a reasonably capable defense able to meet the objectives I described.
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Now, having said that, an issue that was raised earlier was—and Mr. Bartlett, I think, again it was a question raised by you—how do others know that we will stop? How do they know that a system would be limited? I think the answer to that rests in these hearings and in the decisions made by the Congress. The Members of the United States Congress are perfectly well aware of what the implications are for the deployment of missile defenses. They know, being politicians, which is to say that they understand, how others are going to react and how they understand affairs. They know what the limits of others reactions are going to be. And I think that Congress will make that decision by the way that they decide to fund the program to be deployed and the emphasis they put on future systems. And I think that the others can rely—others can rely on the credibility of the Congress to make those decisions and to stick by them.
We are ten years in this debate to this point. This is not a decision that will be taken lightly, nor without consequences. And I think this Congress will, in fact, be the best guarantee to others that this system will, in fact, be limited in its purposes. And I think that saying that, and being clear about its limitations, is important then to the question of addressing Russian concern and Chinese concern. And we can come back to that in the question-and-answer session if you would like, but I think it is most important in addressing the concerns of our allies.
They offer three reasons why they are concerned with a missile defense deployment. One they say is deterrence. This is going to threaten deterrence as a concept, and it is going to threaten deterrence or the ability of the French and British systems to act in a deterrent fashion. They also say that it could decouple the United States from its relationships with allies.
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I must say I have had, like many of you, conversations with senior members of allied governments. They have told me that those two arguments, frankly, are not the heart of the matter. They offer those arguments because they know they have effect here, not necessarily because they believe them at home.
It is the third argument they offer that we need to take seriously, and that is the destabilization of the international system, and here I have to agree with Ambassador Joseph. The more certain we are in what we intend to do, the more explicit we are in our intentions, and the more that they understand that this has a limited scope and that we are determined to see it through, that all three objectives for defense that I described are to be met, that the countermeasures testing will be in place and so forth, the more that they will see that we will have in our own minds the need to address the destabilization questions that concern them, and that is what they want to know. Are we seriously addressing these questions? We may disagree over time about the proper answer, but what is critical to them is that we are paying attention.
Mr. Chairman, there is more that can be said on this subject, but let me stop there, please, and take your questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Cambone can be found in the Appendix.]
Mr. WELDON. First of all, thank you both. They were outstanding statements, and I can tell you I agree entirely with your assessments and the concerns you have raised. If fact, I think we have consistently sent mixed signals to the Russians about what we really are about, and we have not had the bully pulpit used to lay out a clear view of where America is going, and that is a major problem.
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I wish the President would give a major foreign policy speech. In fact, when he made the decision to reverse and support missile defense, it wasn't the President who made that speech, it was Bill Cohen the day after the State of the Union speech. If the President would have laid that out in the State of the Union for the American people, I think it would have been a much different approach and from our allies had a much different feeling. In fact, at the summit that just occurred, the President made a statement about Putin and Clinton reinforced the ABM treaty in four specific items of that summit statement, which obviously sends mixed signals.
And, Ambassador Joseph, your comments about the concern of our allies about our seriousness and whether or not—you are right on the nail. Last week I met with European Parliamentarians. I meet with Russians all the time. Many of them are convinced this is only a political ploy to remove the whole debate over missile defense from the agenda this year. To be honest, if I were a Russian, I would agree with that. The day our bill came up for a vote, the President opposed it. Similar to every Member saying, I am against this. All of a sudden after sending these signals, cancellation of the Ramos program, negotiating two changes in the ABM treaty without the support of the Congress, all of a sudden we make a determination that—the President doesn't announce, he has Secretary Cohen announce—that day after the State of the Union speech that we are now in favor of supporting missiles. That is not the way to get our allies on board. It is not the way to build confidence with the Russians.
Let me ask some specific questions. The cost issue is always raised. Is it safe to say that we are spending less than 1 percent of the entire defense budget on this program? Is that your understanding of what the actual costs are now in terms of what we are spending?
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Mr. JOSEPH. Sir, I am not an expert on cost. That is my understanding of what we are currently spending.
Mr. WELDON. Is there any alternative if we don't—as we heard from the Secretary before, the previous panel—is there an alternative if we don't build missile defense—if we don't build the Joint Strike Fighter, which I support, the marines don't have a vertical lift platform, which is critically important. If we don't build the FA–18, then we have got to use older Navy planes. If we don't build the F–22, we have to extend the life of Air Force fighter planes. If we don't build the Comanche, we have to use an older version of the Army's helicopter. If we don't build more ships, we have to use or replenish the ships. Is there any replacement if we don't build missile defense?
Dr. CAMBONE. No, I don't see one. And I think Mr. Skelton was driving at the right point, as was Mr. Abercrombie. The question is priority and whether we are prepared to do this, and I think there are two distinctions that need to be made. One is the fiscal and programmatic priority that has been placed against this program, and the second is the political priority that has been placed against the program. I believe from the point of view and based on the testimony you heard today that the Administration in terms of programmatics and where it found itself technically as a consequence of earlier decisions has done as much as it could. It has funded this program and provided as much money to it as they think they can spend, in a program that is relatively reduced in risk, to deploy by 2005. I think that is their view.
Have they given it the political priority? The answer there, I think, is no, they have not. And that is reflected as much in the relationship with allies and the way that we have negotiated and in the failure in past years to lend the same technical and programmatic priorities and, therefore, leave us at this moment with so few options than the ones that they have been able to bring forward.
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Mr. JOSEPH. Could I just follow that up? It seems to me that it is very evident that difficult choices, difficult decisions need to be made based on priorities, because resources are limited. But in another dimension, I mean one can't force a choice, for example, between a police department and a fire department. You need them both. Clearly we need a missile defense. What are the costs of not deploying a missile defense? What are the costs of being self-deterred in the context of a regional conflict, and we don't come to the assistance of a critical ally? Or, God forbid, what is the cost of losing even a single city to a missile?
Mr. WELDON. Good point.
Two quick questions, and I will turn it over to the distinguished Ranking Member.
The other issue that is raised is while this is not really a serious threat because no person in their right mind is going to fire a missile at America or our troops or allies, but, in fact, it is the weapon of choice. When Saddam Hussein chose to challenge America's presence, he didn't send a truck bomb into Israel. He didn't send a truck bomb into our barracks in Saudi Arabia. He sent a low-complexity SCUD missile, knowing full well that it would create terrible feelings in America, and we had two dozen young Americans come home in body bags because we didn't defend against it.
And for those who have said that we are not dealing with the real threats, which are weapons of mass destruction, I would add for the record in this year's defense bill we are spending $11 billion on weapons of mass destruction; $11 billion. That is consequence management, that is research technology, that is intelligence systems, all designed to deal with the growing threat of terrorist devices, but that does not discount the threat posed by what appears to be the weapon of choice.
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Do you share the concern that it is, in fact, the weapon of choice of rogue state leaders today? I shouldn't call them rogue state leaders. That is not politically correct, but I am going to call them rogue state leaders. Do you share this is still something they consider to be the way to intimidate America and our allies?
Mr. JOSEPH. I absolutely agree with that assessment. At the university we have a very active gaming program. It has now involved some 3,000 defense analysts in groups of 10 to 12. That is a lot of experience. And we configure these groups as adversary planners. This is a red teaming effort. We give them either political or military operational objectives, and we give them the types of missiles and the types of chemical and biological weapons that are assessed to be possessed by states like North Korea and Iran. Time after time these groups use these weapons as weapons of choice, and they use them early. They use them to counter our conventional capability or to bust coalitions. These are the only weapons that they have for overcoming our advantages. And if they are to pursue the types of goals that we know they have, they use these weapons. They use them in theater, and they use them as tools of intimidation to deter us from intervening in their regions.
Mr. WELDON. One final question. You are both policy experts on arms control and the issues involving this whole decision process we are going through. I, for the life of me, have not been able to figure out why we were in Geneva negotiating the two protocols that we negotiated. Now, unlike my colleagues, I went to Geneva and I sat across the table from Koltunov, the Russian negotiator, for two and a half hours. I came away less convinced than before I went over of what our objectives were.
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Let me have your assessments of why in the world we negotiated the multilateralization of the treaty and an artificial demarkation that now limits us from developing a theater missile defense system against the emerging Iranian threat of the Shahab-5, which will have a range of 4- to 6,000 kilometers, which by that protocol we couldn't defend against. So give me the benefit of your assessment of the two protocols that were negotiated in Geneva in the year 1997.
Mr. JOSEPH. As one who sat across the table from Mr. Koltunov for two and a half years, let me say I think it was very clear why we negotiated these two protocols. It was declared a policy, and that policy was to strengthen the ABM treaty. It is that simple. We want to strengthen the ABM treaty, and make it more difficult at the time you remember, more difficult to deploy effective defenses against strategic-type weapons.
Mr. WELDON. Dr. Cambone.
Dr. CAMBONE. I think it is a consequence of Bob's point about policy preferences and miscalculation. The enlargement of the numbers of members to—the parties to the treaty was thought to be a necessary prerequisite to get agreement on the demarcation agreements for Theater Missile Defense (TMD). The reason we were in a negotiation over demarcation agreements for TMD is because the Clinton Administration early on came to the determination that the issue of compliance, that is whether a theater missile defense system is in compliance with the ABM treaty, could no longer be decided by the United States; that the treaty was, in their view, sufficiently unclear that they required a negotiation.
That was not the view of the Bush Administration as it was leaving. Its view was that we could, in fact, make that interpretation and should. But consistent with the point that Ambassador Joseph has made, the Administration believed it had to be done with the Russians and not on our own, and I think it was a miscalculation.
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Mr. WELDON. Thank you both.
Mr. Skelton.
Mr. SKELTON. By the way, let me compliment both of you, just excellent statements. I appreciate them.
Dr. Joseph, let me ask you, did you say that our adherence to treaties is an obstruction to the national missile defense?
Mr. JOSEPH. Yes, sir. The ABM treaty, which is a treaty that runs about three pages, is very clear. It prohibits the defense of the territory of the parties.
Mr. SKELTON. And if Russia doesn't agree, are you saying we should abrogate the treaty?
Mr. JOSEPH. My view, sir, is that the best approach is to withdraw from the treaty in accordance with the provisions of the treaty. It is perfectly legal under Article 15 of the treaty to give 6 months' notice and withdraw. My view is also that we need to address Russian concerns outside the treaty, not in a confrontational way, but in a way that goes to their concerns. I believe—.
Mr. SKELTON. So you are not just saying abrogate the treaty. There is a legal way to end the treaty; is that correct?
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Mr. JOSEPH. Absolutely. I do not believe that we should violate any treaty.
Mr. SKELTON. Thank you.
Mr. WELDON. Is the gentleman finished?
Mr. Abercrombie.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. I realize we are down to the short strokes here. Mr. Chairman, are any of you prepared to address the original question that Mr. Skelton put forward about these priorities? The reason I ask the question is that it is all well and good to say all of this is important. Some things need to be replaced. This is brand new, all of those things. In the end we still have to make the decisions here about what we authorize and what we appropriate and how we handle that.
I—as Mr. Weldon knows, I have voted to say, look, if we could put something together—I am going to use the word ''feasible.'' I know technologically possible, but I am going to use the world ''feasible''—that of course you should try and move ahead with that and find the way to finance it and so on. But if we are getting to a point where we have to argue about whether or not we have sufficient intelligence to be able to thwart a submarine attack that might result in electromagnetic pulse attack over an island in the Aleutians somewhere, that kind of esoterica, as opposed to moving ahead vigorously with theater and other missile defense, including sea-based missile defense, on a priority basis, shouldn't we be concentrating on something like sea-based defense so that we could deal with the various areas of concern, regional areas of concern that contain these so-called rogue or states of concern? Shouldn't we be concentrating there if we had to make a choice, and we probably will at some point?
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Mr. JOSEPH. Sir, my position is that the deployment of a national missile defense is a national imperative. We must have that defense if we are to continue with the role that we currently play.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Excuse me. Excuse me, Ambassador, because maybe I did not state myself clearly. I am not trying to juxtapose one against the other. What I am saying is couldn't a national missile defense be considered if we did say a sea-based missile defense is the equivalent of or is a methodology whereby the same thing can be accomplished? If we do it strategic—if we understand the geography and the strategic implications of it sufficiently, are we able to build a system like that?
Mr. JOSEPH. Sir, I think because of the deliberate policy choices that were made in 1993 in terms of the cancellation of some of the ongoing national missile defense programs, including space-based assets, but also the ground-based interceptor programs and sensor programs, we have now created a predicament for ourselves where we have only one choice in terms of meeting the threat in the time frame that the Intelligence Community tells us that it will exist; that is, the 2005, 2006 time frame. That is the land-based system. It is my sense that that is an important element in the layered defense that we will require. The threat is not static. The threat will continue to evolve. We do need boost-phase capabilities. We do need ascent-phase capabilities.
I believe that the space-based options and the sea-based options are possible, and they are possible at a cost that is, relative to the land-based, much less than that. But we are where we are.
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Mr. ABERCROMBIE. That is a fair answer. It needs certainly more discussion than we are able to devote right at the moment, Mr. Chairman. Would you like to comment, also?
Dr. CAMBONE. No, sir, I can only concur. We are where we are based on prior decisions.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. That said, we really do need to pursue the discussion a bit further. I will say, Mr. Weldon, I just find it, and I think the public probably has a tough time getting ahold of the idea that at the same time we are at looking at these rather dire consequences and really sobering contexts, that we are now talking about trade and food and witnessing pictures and captions in newspapers about the North Korean leader in his role as a jolly elf or something of that nature, which has suddenly manifested itself, and then go into this discussion that we are having today.
I hope in the end, Mr. Chairman, that we can continue on the level of discussion that you have encouraged at this point, and this does not descend into a kind of 2000 version of the missile gap or the Kemoy and Matsu presidential debates. The issue is far too important to let that kind of thing take place. I do appreciate the witnesses' sobering and reasoned assessment.
Mr. WELDON. Thank you, Mr. Abercrombie. With the enlightened involvement of people like you, that will be the discourse that we continue to move forward on and we have an enlightened discussion and debate over what our policy should be. I guess—he is correct and many members have cited the new relationship that hopefully will evolve between North and South Korea. I wasn't around when this occurred, but I understand there were some nice pictures of Hitler holding up babies back in the 1930s and everyone said, let's give Hitler a chance, and we know the price we had to pay for that. We never want a repeat of that. The reason we are moving down this direction is so that no one ever has the opportunity to intimidate or threaten America and its people and its allies.
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We thank you. We apologize for the delay in the hearing today. We have got a series of four votes. We will not hold you through. I will welcome you to continue to provide your input. Your thoughts were very helpful today and very concise. We appreciate that. With that, the hearing now stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:20 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
June 28, 2000
[This information is pending.]