Operational Deployment of the Ground-Based Missile System

OPERATIONAL DEPLOYMENT OF THE GROUND-BASED MISSILE SYSTEM

Mr. REED. Madam President, I am going to spend a few moments talking about a policy which I do not consider to be the wisest and the most thoughtful, and that is the President's likely declaration, within a few days, of the operational deployment of the ground-based missile system. We have constructed a test bed in Alaska. We are trying to assemble a system that will work to protect this country. I think operational testing is in order. In fact, I would hope that the administration would actually follow the law more rigorously and provide for a scheme of operational testing. But that is not the case.

To declare this immature, technologically challenged system as deployed and operational today is a political judgment, not a military judgment. I think we should refrain from blatant political judgments when the security of the United States is in the balance.

Simply stated, this system is so immature and technologically challenged that they canceled the last test. And it defies me to understand how, after cancelling the test, you can turn around and say: It will work. It is operational. It defies common sense. It defies logic. It is something I think, again, that simply is a political statement.

Now, intercept tests are the critical means by which a missile system, any military system that is technologically sophisticated, must be validated, must be tested. It is the only way we can truly assess whether a system will work, whether it meets a minimum criteria for deployment, to put it in the hands of American fighting forces.

The last intercept flight test of the system was conducted almost 2 years ago in December 2002. It was a failure.

Six days after the test failed, the President announced that the U.S. would deploy the missile defense system by the end of 2004. It is almost like watching a piece of military equipment crash and burn and then suddenly say it is operational. Again, it defies logic. It defies common sense.

Since the time of the last test failure in 2002, there have been seven other planned tests. They have all been canceled. Again, we are not able to test this system. How in good faith can we say it is operationally workable? The tests have been postponed, deferred. None of these tests have taken place.

None of the major components of the system, neither the new operational interceptor, nor the operational radar, nor the operational battle management system have ever been tested at all against a real test target. Yet the President will say, I assume in a few days, this system is capable of protecting the United States.

In addition to all these test delays and cancellations, the administration has essentially eliminated any effective oversight over the missile defense test program, avoiding standards and laws that have been on the books for at least 20 years.

Years of hard experience have shown that it is much more expensive to fix a problem with a military system after you have built and deployed it than it is to fix it before it is deployed. Because of this, more than 20 years ago, Congress passed laws which required all major defense systems to undergo a full set of realistic operational tests prior to spending large amounts of money on full production and deployment of the system. These tests were to be judged by an independent test authority called the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation. This law is still in effect today.

Thanks to this law, we have been able to avoid some of the mistakes we made in the 1970s and the 1980s, where we declared systems deployed and operational without adequate testing. These are high-profile systems, like the B-1 bomber, the Sergeant York gun, and the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. We were able to make certain corrections to the B-1 and the Bradley. They were eventually fixed at a cost of billions of dollars. The Sergeant York gun was unable to be fixed. That was canceled. But we wasted billions of dollars by deploying these systems prematurely.

If the missile system is truly as important as the administration thinks, then we should take the time to test this system to make sure it works instead of trying to convince people, by press release, that it does work.

The missile system has been exempted by the administration from the oversight of the independent Director of Operational Testing, and they have plunged ahead with full-rate production of the program with no independent testing at all. Incredibly, the administration has no plans to ever conduct realistic independent operational tests on this missile defense system. This avoids 20 years of law, practice, and indeed common sense. The politics of deploying a missile defense at any cost prior to the election has trumped any desire to make sure the system actually works and, if history is any guide, will likely result in the waste of a large amount of money to fix the system after it has been deployed.

If we can-and I think we should, indeed, with deliberate speed-deploy a system that is operationally effective, we should do that. But to take a system where the major components haven't even been tested and say it works is being intellectually dishonest and deceptive to the American people.

On August 18, Secretary Rumsfeld described the missile defense deployment as the "triumph of hope and vision over pessimism and skepticism." Actually it is a triumph of best wishes over reality. And hope is not a plan. We found that out in Iraq. Only a system that is rigorously tested, where improvements are made test by test by test, will get us to where we want to go and must be, a system that we are confident will work if it is called upon to defend the country.

Now this lack of testing is not a result of any lack of funds. The administration has lavished funding on this system. The budget request for fiscal year 2005 is $10.2 billion. It is the largest single-year budget request for any weapons program in the history of the United States. For perspective, the fiscal year 2005 budget request for missile defense is more than the Army's total research and development budget for this year. And we know we have an Army engaged in combat, in trying circumstances, that needs to develop new approaches, new sensors for the troops, new observation devices, new ways to deal with insurgencies in built-up areas, new ways to deter and defend against improvised explosive devices. Their budget is a fraction of the budget that is being lavished upon this system. It is twice the budget for the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection in the Department of Homeland Security, and it is nearly twice the Department's allocation for the Coast Guard-two times Coast Guard, two times Customs and Border Protection.

The ultimate costs of this system are unknown because the administration steadfastly refuses to provide to Congress any information on how much missile defense they want to buy and how much it will cost. Recent estimates by the Congressional Budget Office indicate the Bush administration's Missile Defense Program could exceed $100 billion. Nowhere is that $100 billion being factored into ongoing defense budgets as we move forward over the next 5 to 10 years, and it will have to come from somewhere. Again, we need a system, but we have to be honest about how much it will work and how we are going to pay for it. That honesty is not present today.

The other factor-and this is interesting-in contrast to the numbers that are being allocated for the Coast Guard and the Customs Service is that an intercontinental launch against the United States is probably less likely than other means of detonating a weapon of mass destruction in the United States. First of all, there are only two countries that currently have the capability: Russia and China. The Bush administration points-and I think rightfully so-with concern to North Korea. But that country has never successfully launched any missile capable of reaching the United States. Furthermore, North Korea has observed a self-imposed moratorium on long-range missile testing for 6 years since their last test failed in 1998.

But even if North Korea develops such a capacity, why would they launch a missile against the United States? Our early warning satellites will pick up the launch. It will tell us definitely and decisively where it is coming from, and we will retaliate swiftly and with devastating force that will likely destroy that regime. Why would they want to do that, particularly if they could attack us by other means, perhaps concealing a weapon of mass destruction in a container that comes to the United States since only a small percentage are opened?

Again, the budget for the Customs Service and the Border Protection Service is a fraction of what we are spending on this particular threat.

Now, that is not just my conceptual view. In December 2001, the U.S. intelligence community completed an assessment of the foreign ballistic missile threat to this country. The assessment was entitled "Foreign Missile Development and the Ballistic Missile Threat Through 2015." Their conclusions:

[T]he intelligence community judges that U.S. territory is more likely to be attacked with [weapons of mass destruction] using nonmissile means, primarily because such means: Are less expensive than developing and producing ICBMs; can be covertly developed and employed; the source of the weapon could be masked in an attempt to evade retaliation; it probably would be more reliable than ICBMs that have not completed rigorous testing and validation programs; and probably would be much more accurate than emerging ICBMs over the next 15 years.

This is what the intelligence community said in 2001 looking forward to 2015. Yet since that time, the Bush administration has spent billions of dollars more on the development of this untested, unproven missile defense than it has on protection of our ports and borders where the real threats are likely to come from.

We should be very careful about making sure we take scarce dollars and apply them to the most likely threats. Some have said: Well, don't make those comparisons. We to have defend against every threat. Frankly, the simple contrast between the money we are spending on missile defense versus the Coast Guard and border patrol seems to be directly in contradiction to the intelligence community estimate of what the most likely threat would be. That is not wise policy.

There is also a huge opportunity cost for us. While we are lavishing money on this system, there are other programs-for example, the Department of Energy program called the Global Threat Reduction Initiative-which are not being adequately funded. This Department of Energy program is designed to help secure loose nuclear materials that are around the globe so that terrorists don't get their hands on them. And what is the most vital threat to the United States today? A terrorist group could obtain nuclear materials or a nuclear device, smuggle those materials into the United States, and attack us here. That is what the intelligence community assumes is the most likely threat. Yet we are not going to the source and securing and eliminating the nuclear material that is too abundant in the world.

There is another program that the administration is proposing, which is the airborne laser program, another part of this elaborate construct of missile defenses. The airborne lasers are designed to shoot down ballistic missiles in their first stage as they blast off and start going into space. This program has been plagued by problems throughout, problems which have delayed the program by a year, reduced the laser power by more than half, and have many wondering whether this program is doomed to fail.

By the way, using the same criteria of missile defense-i.e., test failures followed by numerous cancellations-I wonder why the administration doesn't declare the airborne laser operational. It works perhaps as well as our national missile defense.

During the same time the administration has been spending far less on security for our Nation's ports, it has been spending a great deal of money on the airborne laser. The Bush administration's fiscal year 2005 budget proposes a $50 million cut to the 2004 level of U.S. port security funding, the grant funding that we use to help our ports all across this country. Yet there they are still investing extraordinary amounts, almost a half a billion dollars, in the airborne laser. So while it is a risky, possibly doomed program, the money keeps flowing while we do not have adequate resources to protect our ports.

The other aspect of this dilemma is that the administration has never been able to open up this process to a transparent approach, where scientists can look at this data. Of course, we are going to protect the security and the proprietary information here, but they have been overly secretive. And the reason is obvious: it doesn't seem to work, and they don't want that information out as they are getting ready to declare it operational.

They also never really had the opportunity or the will to have realistic tests. All of these tests have been carefully scripted. All of these tests have relied upon nonrealistic scenarios. The incoming missile has a homing beacon on it to help guide the interceptor to it. They don't use realistic decoys, which any country attacking the United States, you would have to assume, would have decoys as well as a real warhead. And there is no element of surprise. A real enemy missile attack would not be scripted, would not have a convenient homing beacon on the target, would likely have realistic decoys and would be a surprise attack.

Frankly, if we had warning of the pending attack, we would take preemptive action immediately, take out the missile on the launch pad.

During the entire time of the Bush administration, there has been essentially no progress made toward the goal of realistic missile defense tests against realistic targets.

An effective missile defense is something we should all work for. But a missile defense that is based upon a press release and not tested is not an effective missile defense. Saying it is operational doesn't make it operational. What makes it operational is rigorous testing under realistic circumstances. This administration has never done that.

I believe we should proceed forward with all deliberate speed to develop and deploy a missile system. I don't think we
should allow ourselves to make a political judgment and declare it operational by press release and not validation through testing.

I yield the floor.