From:   UK Guardian, website:  

US puts its missile plan on fast track
 

Special report: George Bush's America

 Julian Borger in Washington
Saturday June 9, 2001
The Guardian

 The Bush administration is considering the possibility of speeding up the deployment of its missile defence anti-ballistic system, even though the underlying technology is unproved and the scheme faces entrenched opposition from Washington's rivals and its allies.

Under a plan put forward by Boeing, the main contractor for the scheme, which was reported in the Washington Post yesterday, the US could deploy the first five missile interceptors in Alaska by 2004 without the new "X-band" radar they need to target incoming missiles.

The Post quotes a senior defence official as saying: "It is a simple question: Is something better than nothing?... The president and the [defence] secretary have made it pretty clear they believe that some missile defence is in fact better than nothing."

The news will send shock waves through Europe, where Washington's sceptical allies had assumed that the system was unfeasible. Its deployment would violate the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty - seen in Europe as a pillar of stability but dismissed by the Bush administration as outdated.

Both China and Russia have denounced the plans and have warned that they could trigger a new arms race.

Any early deployment would require technological progress. The last test of the system failed dismally, and the next test has been put off until August. It is also unclear where the money for new tests, costing up to $100m each, will come from. There is no specific allocation for them in the budget, and the new Democratic majority in the Senate could slow any attempt to reallocate resources.

Defence analysts said yesterday the motivation for fast-track deployment was primarily political; it would enable Mr Bush to campaign for reelection having fulfilled one of his key campaign promises.

Under the plan, 50 interceptor missiles would be deployed by 2007 - only half the number originally planned under the Clinton administration. It had been assumed that the timetable had been set back at least five years by the failure of test missiles. The Bush administration appears to be hoping that the required technological breakthroughs will have been achieved by the time the deployment deadlines fall due.

The news that the Pentagon might move so quickly will make the concept much harder to sell to the Nato allies. On Thursday the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, warned that new technologies were "putting unprecedented power in the hands of small countries and terrorist groups".

However, European strategists believe that Washington's fear of "rogue states" like North Korea, Iraq and Iran is exaggerated and that terrorist groups are highly unlikely to attack using ballistic missiles.

According to the Post, Boeing's presentation of alternative deployment schemes in April, included an assumption that "treaty constraints" would be "removed", a reference to the abrogation or renegotiation of the ABM treaty.

Richard Norton-Taylor writes: A consortium of some of the world's biggest military companies, including Britain's largest arms company, has won a potentially lucrative Nato contract to draw up plans for regional missile defence systems, it was revealed yesterday.

The consortium, called Janus, is led by the American company Lockheed Martin, and includes Britain's BAE Systems and France's Aerospatiale Matra Missiles. A second contract was won by Science Applications International Corporation of the US.

The contracts, for feasibility studies, awarded by Nato's consultation, command and control agency, are worth $27m. They place the companies at the forefront of Nato's multibillion pound plans for "theatre ballistic missile defence", with the prospect of further huge contracts from the Bush administration.

Initial feasibility studies will identify land- sea- and air-based projects, a "layered" system of the kind proposed this week by Mr Rumsfeld.

The plan is for the Nato systems to be operational from 2010. BAE Systems declined to comment on the contracts.

Useful links

 US Ballistic Missile Defense Organisation
CND briefing on NMD
Federation of American Scientists NMD discussion
US defence department