Mr. Speaker, today I submit the following article from Vital Speeches into the Congressional Record. ``U.S. Needs Space-Based Missile Defense'' is a speech given by my highly respected predecessor, Representative Bob Schaffer. [From Vital…
Mr. Speaker, today I submit the following article from Vital Speeches into the Congressional Record. ``U.S. Needs Space-Based Missile Defense'' is a speech given by my highly respected predecessor, Representative Bob Schaffer.
[From Vital Speeches, Oct. 15, 2003]
U.S. Needs Spaced-Based Missile Defense
address by bob schaffer, former u.s. congressman from colorado,
delivered to the council for national policy, colorado springs,
colorado, september 26, 2003
Thank you, Ambassador Cooper. Good afternoon ladies and
gentlemen. I have been a long-time admirer of Ambassador Hank
Cooper since before I went to Congress in 1996. As a Member
of Congress, I relied on the Ambassador's judgment and vision
for guidance when considering questions of America's defense
against those who would threaten our liberty.
The district I represented, up until January of this year,
in Congress was essentially the entire eastern half of
Colorado--very rural. Consequently, the committees to which I
was assigned in Congress had to do with agriculture, natural
resources and education. I served on no committees that had
direct involvement with national defense, foreign affairs or
military preparedness.
But as one who represented a constituency of broad
interests, I endeavored to learn as much as I could about
national defense. And the more I learned about the very real
threat America faces with respect to long-range missile
attack, the more I became convinced that there are not enough
leaders in Congress paying attention to this vital national
security concern.
As Ambassador Cooper mentioned, my interest led me around
the world meeting with parliamentarians and defense leaders
of other nations. I made eight trips to Russia, as many to
Ukraine, and others to Asia, Central Asia, and Europe.
Since September 11th, America has been focused on combating
terrorism in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. We have been
reorienting our national defense to address the weakness
exploited by the terrorists who killed Americans on American
soil, and toward protecting Americans abroad from similar
potential attacks. This, of course, is necessary and exactly
what we should be doing.
America is not focused enough on conventional threats.
Let me explain my concern for national security through an
analogy of home security. As homeowners, we put the toughest
lock, where, on the front door, right? Well, the burglars
have figured out how to get in through the windows. In
response,we are now fortifying our windows, doubling them up,
and locking down the smaller points of access. This maks
perfect sense.
However, my friends, we are leaving the front door wide
open to conventional attack from potential threats far more
sophisticated and direct than the terrorists of rogue
nations. We can't forget that countries like China still
maintain arsenals of long-range ballistic missiles targeted
at American cities like the one we're in right now. From
their current launch sites, these missiles are just a half-
an-hour away from their American targets. Once launched, we
have no defense against them.
Good leadership is essential.
As a suggestion, I was asked to speak on what it will take
for us to build the effective defenses we need, to defend us
from the increasing threat and proliferation of ballistic
missiles of all types, whether short-range, intermediate-
range, and long-range, capable of attacking our homes and
cities.
Two words will do. Good leadership.
In one way, the current Bush administration has displayed
good leadership in its missile defense program. It has
exerted the will to deploy a missile defense as seen in its
decisions to withdraw from the 1972 ABM Treaty, deploy a
National Missile Defense system, and increase funding.
As a result of President Bush's leadership, the 1972 ABM
Treaty resides in the dustbin of history. As a result of
President Bush's leadership, the United States stands on the
verge of deploying a National Missile Defense system, which
is expected to reach initial operation in the next few years.
It may be helpful to review some highlights of the National
Missile Defense program, if only to point how Americans not
only have the desire to defend themselves from ballistic
missile attack, they also have the commitment and ability to
build a defense.
Highlights include how:
In early September Northrop Grumman submitted a bid to
compete for the Missile Defense Agency's Targets and
Countermeasures prime integration program, valued at more
than $1 billion for an initial four-year program. The Bush
administration takes the issue of mid-course-phase decoys and
countermeasures seriously.
In August this year, progress was reported on the
construction of a $900 million sea-based X-band radar, which
will be home ported at Adak, Alaska, in the Aleutian Islands
superceding earlier plans to build a ground-based Xband radar
on Shemya Island, also in the Aleutians.
This sea-based X-band radar will be self-propelled, using a
semi-submersible oilrig being modified at shipyards in
Brownsville and Corpus Christi. The radar will weigh 50,000
tons and be 390 feet long and 250 feet high. Scheduled to
begin operation in 2005, this sea-based X band radar will
hand off ballistic missile tracking information to
interceptors located at For Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg
Air Force Base.
Also in August, Orbital Sciences Corporation test launched
from Vandenberg a prototype of the three-stage booster to be
used in the ground-based interceptor for our National Missile
Defense system.
President Bush's plan calls for deploying by 2004, four
ground-based interceptors at Vandenberg, and six groundbased
interceptors at Fort Greely, increasing the number of ground-
based interceptors deployed at Fort Greely to a total of 20
by the end of 2005.
Contracts have been let for pouring concrete for the
missile silos at Fort Greely, and
for refurbishing existing missile silos at Vandenberg Air
Force Base. In June 2002, for example, it was reported how a
contract for $325 million was issued to build six underground
missile silos at Fort Greely.
These are significant steps to our deployment of a National
Missile Defense. The deployment of X-band radar, development
of a booster for the ground-based interceptor, testing of the
kinetic kill vehicle, and fielding of interceptors are coming
together.
Intelligent design.
But good leadership involves more than the will to deploy a
defense. While the will to deploy a missile defense is a key
ingredient, an ingredient missing from the preceding Clinton
administration, which believed in the ABM Treaty as the
cornerstone of arms control, good leadership also needs to
point the way of how to build an effective defense.
Building an effective defense requires more than spending
money. It requires an intelligent design.
Speaking of money, Congress and the Bush administration
have recognized the importance of funding missile defense.
For example, in June of this year the House Appropriations
Committee approved a budget of about $8.9 billion for missile
defense, an increase of about $1.3 billion. Real money is
being spent.
Congress has shown increasing willingness to fund a missile
defense, and for good reason. Not only has the threat of
ballistic missile attack increased from China's buildup of
ballistic missiles of all types, but the proliferation of
ballistic missiles continues to increase.
The proliferation of ballistic missiles poses a grave
threat internationally. India and Pakistan look at each other
in terms of increasing numbers of ballistic missiles, some of
which are presumably armed with nuclear weapons.
Japan is losing any sense of complacency over the
increasing ballistic missile threat it faces as it was
reported in June how North Korea has fielded between 160
and 170 intermediate-range Nodong missiles that can reach
nearly all of Japan.
In June it was also reported how Japan, in response to
this hostile buildup of ballistic missiles by North Korea,
requested an additional $1.2 billion for the next fiscal year
to deploy a two layer missile defense system, consisting of
PAC-3 missiles produced under license, and upgrading its four
Aegis destroyers to deploy the SM-3 interceptor.
From our experience in Iraq we know that the PAC-3 missile
works very well, both as an interceptor of short-range
ballistic missiles and of aircraft, using hit-to-kill
technology based on radar guidance. PAC-3 performed with a
high probability of intercept, unlike the earlier improved
PAC-2, which although successful from a strategic viewpoint
in the 1991 Gulf War, was essentially jury-rigged for its
mission of intercepting Scuds.
The Navy's SM-3 ballistic missile interceptor has proved
itself positively, achieving three interceptions out of four
attempts. The four interception test in June 2003, while
unsuccessful, demonstrated the ability of naval ships to
share target cuing information as the firing of the SM-3 from
the U.S.S. Lake Erie was reportedly cued from another ship
up-range.
The test failure of the SM-3 evidently occurred when one
of the cells of its solid fuel Divert and Attitude Control
System failed to ignite--a problem of quality control rather
than the underlying technology.
The United States has over twenty years of experience in
testing hit-to-kill technology for missile defense, achieving
its first successful interception of an ICBM target in the
June 1984 Homing Overlay Experiment.
The time has come to deploy hit-to-kill technology in an
effective defense.
But building an effective missile defense requires an
intelligent design. It requires the same elements of good
strategy that have always formed an essential part of
military victory, whether victory through a policy of peace
through strength, or a policy of determination to achieve
victory and lasting peace.
An effective defense requires good position.
No small part of military strategy is devoted to the
maneuver and positioning of troops. Good position, good
location, holding the high ground, whether the top of a hill
or a mountain top, being able to look down and fire at an
approaching enemy, is a key element of military strategy.
For this reason U.S. military strategy emphasizes air
superiority, the high ground of combined air, land, and sea
operations. There is also the high ground of space, which
U.S. military forces recognize as vital to the operation of
our intelligence, communications, reconnaissance, and
navigation systems, which rely heavily on satellites.
Building an effective missile defense also requires good
position. But this position isn't found on the ground, it is
found in space where the ballistic missile operates.
Building an effective missile defense requires a strategy
that deploys a missile defense in the high ground of space.
Good leadership would deploy a missile defense in space. Good
leadership would point the way to space.
Both the Strategic Defense Initiative of the 1980's and
early 1990's and Project Defender of the later 1950's and
early 1960's pointed the way to space, recognizing the
inherent advantages of deploying a missile defense in space.
The earlier Project Argus nuclear test shots in 1958 and
Starfish 1962 also pointed to space. Dr. Nicholas
Christofilos from Lawrence Livermore realized space provides
a position with global coverage against ballistic missile
threats.
The strategic advantages of deploying a missile defense in
space are considerable.
Global coverage, the capability for boost-phase
interception, the use of robotics minimizing operational
costs, and the potential of high-energy lasers and particle
beams led these earlier missile defense programs to emphasize
the development of defenses based in space.
Even the Clinton administration was aware of the
advantages that accrue from deployment of a missile defense
in space, as seen in its decision to complete the termination
of the Brilliant Pebbles program for deploying a space-based
interceptor defense, and attempt to terminate the Space Based
Laser.
Believing in the ABM Treaty as the cornerstone of arms
control, the Clinton administration was not interested in
building effective defenses.
While Brilliant Pebbles had been approved fro acquisition
in 1991, it was subsequently opposed by key Democrats in
Congress, who sought a technological regression, unwilling to
change the strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction embodied in
the ABM Treaty.
Technological leadership and space superiority.
Building an effective missile defense requires the United
States to deploy its kinetic kill interceptors in space like
Brilliant Pebbles, not in the underground concrete missile
silos.
An intelligent design would utilize the advantages that
deployment in space offers in providing global coverage,
boost-phase interception, the use of robotics, minimal
operational costs, and the ability to use high-energy lasers
for boost phase interception and active discrimination of
decoys.
There is a third ingredient for building an effective
missile defense. This ingredient is technological leadership,
including the ability to manage programs involving technology
to produce timely results.
Good leadership needs to manage the effort to build a
missile defense effectively, to produce timely results rather
than create an endless cycle of studies, delays, testing, and
indecision.
In the past the United States has exhibited bursts of
technological leadership, including President Reagan's
Strategic Defense Initiative, which supported a vast program
of research and development for missile defense technology.
We need to remember those times and examples of technology
leadership to build an effective missile defense.
Good leadership involves more than creating program
momentum by funding a single program with more dollars. It
includes the ability to manage technology, and lead a
fundamentally strong program to completion and success.
It includes the ability to concurrently manage technology
development programs with acquisition, to allow for
improvements in current acquisition and the development of
second- and third-generation defenses.
It includes the ability to concurrently manage a variety of
technology programs, pursuing at the same time different
avenues of basing and technology, recognizing the wealth of
ideas and technology developed under the Strategic Defense
Initiative, giving the United States the ability to construct
a missile defense in multiple layers.
It includes the ability to match an intelligent design for
building an effective missile defense with the pursuit of
technology, seeking a technological momentum designed to
defeat the ballistic missile.
It includes an understanding of how the strategy of
``Mutual Assured Destruction'' which was behind the ABM
Treaty was designed to restrain the use and development of
new technology.
Notably, space not only offers a position of advantage for
deploying a missile defense, it stimulates the development of
new technology.
Technological leadership includes the ability to resolve
problems.
Highlights of where technological leadership has been
lacking in the current program for building a missile
defense, include:
The termination in 2001 of the Navy Area Wide defense
program, which would have provided Aegis cruisers and
destroyers with a defense against short-range ballistic
missiles and aircraft like PAC-3.
While the proposed SM-2 Block VIA interceptor for Navy Area
Wide would have relied on a blast fragmentation warhead
rather than hit-to-kill, differentiating it from PAC-3, its
program termination may be viewed with disappointment.
The termination in 2001 and 2002 of the Space Based Laser
program, which would have provided a very effective boost
phase defense against ballistic missiles of all types, short,
intermediate, and long-range.
Notably, the Space Based Laser program successfully
demonstrated its end-to-end beam generation and training back
in 1997. From the point on, the program's next step was to
test a scalable high-energy laser in space.
Presumably, the termination of the Space Based Laser
program came as a result of opposition in the Senate to the
deployment of missile defenses in space.
Apparently lacking in the current administration was an
understanding of the advantages of technological readiness of
the Space Based Laser, unwilling to overcome apparent
political opposition at a time when most Americans support
missile defenses.
Technolgocial leadership also includes the ability to
communicate the advantages of
technology, as well as the ability to develop it.
While the current adminsitration has demonstrated its
commitment to fund a missile defense and support the
deployment of a ground-based defense, and has withdrawn from
the ABM Treaty, it has yet to support a design to build an
effective defense, much less insist on technological
leadership.
America's current plans include a virtual technological
regression in any planning for a space-based interceptor
defense, unwilling or unable to use past technology developed
for Brilliant Pebbles.
Unwilling or unable to use Brilliant Pebbles technology for
space-based interceptors, the current administration and the
Congress have been unwilling or unable to employ
technological advances that have occurred in:
The increasing use of robotics, including autonomous
operation and data fusing and joint decision making between
independently operating robots, which NASA has developed for
missions on Mars.
The development and increasing use of photonic or fiber
optics for sensors, communications, and computer processing,
which provide a means to defend against electromagnetic
pulse.
The development of three-dimensional computer chips,
allowing for the integration of different processes, whether
computer processing communications, processing of sensor
data, and active response within the same chip.
These advances in photonics and computer chips, combined
with continuing advances in nanotechnology, including Micro
Electro Mechanical Systems or MEMS, could potentially allow
for the development of kinetic kill vehicles smaller than
Brilliant Pebbles, which were essentially based on late
1980's technology.
Instead of building kinetic kill vehicles that weigh in the
tens of kilograms, the United States could potentially be
building kinetic kill vehicles that weigh under a
kilogram, perhaps in the tens of grams, approaching the
theoretical limits for kinetic kill vehicles suggested by
Lowell Wood at Lawrence Livermore when he proposed the
idea of Genius Sand as an advance generation Brilliant
Pebble.
America's defense planners seem to have a striking aversion
to the development of advanced technology systems, especially
those taking advantage of deployment in space, as seen not
only in its termination of the Space Based Laser, but its
very low level of funding for the development of a system of
space-based relay mirrors that could utilize a high-energy
laser to strike at targets around the world.
This system of relay mirrors, suggested in the Strategic
Defense Initiative as a way to take advantage of high energy
laser technology that was ground-based or air-based, is being
funded at a level of around $1 million when it should be
funded at the billion-dollar level.
The state of U.S. technological leadership is also seen by
Pentagon planning to deploy a system of optical communication
satellites, in other words, satellites using laser
communications, which would provide much needed bandwidth and
high security. These had been proposed in the early 1980's
and the Air Force had performed some early demonstrations.
More than twenty years after this exciting concept was
proposed, the Pentagon is finally planning to spend hundreds
of millions of dollars to develop a satellite laser
communications system. This comes after the European Union
successfully demonstrated the use of laser communications
with its Artemis satellite.
I was asked to speak about what it will take for us to
build the effective defenses we need. Good leadership is the
answer.
Three key ingredients to good leadership include not only
the will to build a defense, but an intelligent design and
technological leadership.
Over the past three years, our country has clearly
demonstrated its will to build a missile defense; I strongly
suggest to you that we still need an intelligent design and
technological leadership to build an effective defense.