[iwar] [fc:Secrecy.On.Missile.Defense.Grows]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2002-06-12 12:42:42


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Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 12:42:42 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [iwar] [fc:Secrecy.On.Missile.Defense.Grows]
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Washington Post
June 12, 2002
Secrecy On Missile Defense Grows 
Pentagon Shelves Timetables, Cost Estimates; Critics Say Oversight Imperiled
By Bradley Graham, Washington Post Staff Writer 
As the Pentagon boosts spending and intensifies development of a national
antimissile system, it is also taking steps to shield the program from
Congress and the public as well as traditional oversight measures within the
Defense Department.
In recent months, defense officials have exempted missile defense projects
from the planning and reporting requirements normally applied to major
acquisition programs. They have stopped providing Congress with detailed
cost estimates and timetables for antimissile systems. And they have
announced plans to restrict information about targets and decoys used in
flight tests of the most advanced option under development, the Ground-Based
Midcourse Defense.
The moves come against the formal demise Thursday of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty, allowing the United States for the first time in 30 years to
pursue a nationwide antimissile system -- and to do so by whatever means it
wishes. Driving home the point, Pentagon officials plan to break ground in
Alaska on Saturday for six interceptor missile silos at Fort Greely, about
80 miles southeast of Fairbanks.
The new missile site is portrayed by the Pentagon as primarily a "test bed"
for gauging how interceptors and command and control networks withstand the
Alaskan cold. But defense officials have made no secret of their intention
to be able to use the site as an operational antimissile system should the
need arise. The facility is scheduled for completion by September 2004, just
as the next presidential election campaign -- and Bush's expected run for a
second term -- will be peaking.
Citing the Pentagon's heightened guardedness about its antimissile programs,
Democratic lawmakers and other missile defense skeptics accuse the
administration of trying to pull a veil over a development effort long
troubled by test failures and cost overruns. Without the kind of standard
reports and disclosures used in the past to assess missile defense programs,
critics argue, it will be harder to hold the administration accountable for
the additional billions of dollars it is investing in the effort.
"These are disturbing trends," said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chairman of the
Armed Services subcommittee on strategic weapons. "You get the suspicion
this is as much to avoid scrutiny of the program as to shield it from
adversaries."
Pentagon officials counter that they are not trying to cover up anything.
They say the experimental nature of the missile defense effort and the need
for flexibility warrant exemption from traditional requirements and make it
virtually impossible to generate meaningful cost estimates or production
schedules.
Additionally, as the tests become more sophisticated and use more advanced
decoys, officials say, concerns about national security dictate disclosing
fewer specifics about system capabilities.
"The charge of excessive secrecy is wrong," said Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, who
oversees the antimissile programs as director of the Missile Defense Agency.
"Key decision-makers in the department will have more than adequate
information to act on, and Congress will have all it needs when times come
for decisions."
During its first 17 months in office, the Bush administration has embarked
on an expansive program for testing various technological approaches to
missile defense -- land- and sea-based interceptors, airborne lasers and
space-based weapons. In place of President Bill Clinton's plan for a
relatively simple architecture, consisting of land-based interceptors aimed
at knocking down enemy warheads in midcourse, Bush envisions a multilayered
defense encompassing all three major phases of flight -- boost, midcourse
and terminal.
Nonetheless, the ground-based midcourse option remains the furthest along in
development.
After missing two of its first three intercept attempts under Clinton, the
land-based system has scored hits in all three attempts under Bush and has
been able to hold closer to schedule, with the next test slated for August.
Even so, the system still faces substantial technical hurdles, including
development of effective means for distinguishing real warheads from decoys.
It was to foster greater flexibility that Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld in January granted Kadish extraordinarily broad discretion to set
performance goals and measure progress. Instead of trying to define a fixed
system to meet a specific missile threat, Rumsfeld and his aides adopted a
more open-ended course, marked by such new buzzwords as "spiral
development," "evolutionary acquisition," "block approaches" and
"capabilities-based" systems.
Kadish has offered assurances that the Missile Defense Agency will police
itself even more rigorously than before and will receive oversight within
the Pentagon from a panel of top-level civilians.
But Democrats counter that the new liberties afforded the agency -- and the
increased silence around it -- circumvent the checks and balances designed
to give Congress and others sufficient information to form technical and
budgetary assessments. While acknowledging the experimental nature of much
of the missile defense work, critics argue that the intent of the law was
nonetheless to compel the Pentagon to come up with plans and projected
milestones -- and not seem to be spending money blindly.
Questioning each of the service chiefs in March, Sen. Carl M. Levin
(D-Mich.), the Armed Services committee chairman, elicited testimony
revealing that none of the four-star officers had been consulted on the
Pentagon's missile defense budget for fiscal 2003.
"The committee is concerned that under the new Missile Defense Agency
organization, the military services have not been afforded the opportunity
to provide the proper guidance and advice on the missile defense budget,"
panel members concluded in their report on the 2003 defense authorization
bill last month.
In its bill, the committee included language that would require the Pentagon
to provide cost estimates, development schedules and planned procurement
timetables for the four biggest programs -- the ground-based midcourse
system, a sea-based version, the airborne laser and an intermediate-range
Army system called Theater High-Altitude Area Defense. The bill also would
mandate the Pentagon's chief test evaluator to conduct an annual operational
assessment of the missile defense programs, and would direct the service
vice chiefs to review cost and performance criteria for the programs.
"It wouldn't be such an issue if it weren't such an expensive program," said
Philip E. Coyle III, the Pentagon's chief test evaluator during the Clinton
years. At $7.8 billion in fiscal 2002, the Bush administration is spending
47 percent more than the Clinton administration did in its final year.
Democrats make no secret that behind their press for more budget information
is a strategy of getting the administration to scale back its programs. But
they argue that the absence of detailed reporting affects not just the
missile defense effort; it also calls into question the validity of the
Pentagon's projections for overall defense spending, masking the likely need
for cuts in other programs in order to afford missile defense.
Senate Democrats won committee approval of cuts of $812 million in the
administration's requested $7.8 billion for missile defense in 2003. The
Senate report cited items that were duplicative (such as multiple requests
for "systems engineering and integration"), premature (a second prototype
airborne laser aircraft) or undefined (sea- and space-based "critical
experiments" in boost-phase defenses).
The full Senate has yet to vote on the reductions. Meanwhile, the House has
approved about $21 million more for missile defense than the administration
sought, setting the stage for a likely conference battle. 

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