New Life for Sea-Based Defense?
A step forward.

By Henry F. Cooper, chairman of High Frontier. Cooper was SDI director during the first Bush administration and President Reagan's ambassador and chief negotiator at the Geneva defense and space talks with the Soviet Union.
January 30, 2002 10:10 a.m.

ast Friday, the Navy successfully tested its Navy Theater Wide interceptor by shooting down an Aries rocket fired from the island of Kauai. An Aegis Cruiser, the U.S.S. Lake Erie, acquired and tracked the target rocket from its location off the coast of Hawaii, computed an intercept solution, and launched its test interceptor — which destroyed the target by directly hitting it above the Earth's atmosphere.

This successful test is a major step forward for the Navy's efforts to improve its existing Aegis-based air-defense system to protect our overseas troops, friends, and allies against ballistic missile attack. Furthermore, President Bush has announced that the U.S. will withdraw from the ABM Treaty on June 13, 2002; so this sea-based system also can be made capable of defending the American homeland — for a relatively small investment and in the relatively near future.

But it is not yet clear that the Bush Pentagon will rapidly press ahead with this important program (which could exploit the existing Aegis fleet, already operating around the world) — so strong is the pent-up institutional resistance to sea-based defenses.

We have known for years that, for a small percentage of the $60 billion the U.S. taxpayer has invested in the Aegis system, we can rapidly begin operating a sea-based defense and improving it with block changes as new technology is tested and proven. I began such a program while serving as director of the Strategic Defense Initiative under the first President Bush — with then-defense secretary Dick Cheney's blessing, the Pentagon was fully budgeted to build and begin operations of such a capability years ago.

The Clinton administration scuttled that program — no doubt because of the higher priority they gave to the ABM Treaty than to building effective defenses. And they "dumbed down" the anemically funded sea-based defense programs they did reluctantly continue — under persistent pressure from Congress. The Clinton administration resisted spending the money Congress added year after year; instead, they conducted study after study of the merits of sea-based defenses.

Every study — over a dozen, by inside and outside experts — was positive. But the Clinton administration delayed and dissembled — and refused to provide even congressionally mandated study results to the Congress.

There was great hope this would all change with the arrival of President George W. Bush with his oft-stated commitment to missile defenses — and to moving beyond the ABM Treaty, which bans even testing effective sea-based defenses. But, so far, his administration has done little more than continue to study the possibilities, rather than moving out smartly with a serious development program to build a sea-based defense capability soon.

Indeed, the Pentagon took backward steps on December 14 by canceling, two-thirds of the way through development and on the eve of intensive testing in February, the Navy Area Missile Defense program, in which the taxpayers had invested over $2 billion. In overruling the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who had formally echoed the views of the chief of Naval Operations and commandant of the Marines in strongly endorsing this program, Pentagon officials pointed to cost growth and schedule delays as justifying cancellation of the Navy's top-priority missile defense program.

Such problems are not to be taken lightly, of course — but they are hardly unusual for successful Pentagon acquisition programs, and Pentagon authorities were very unwise to kill this program at a cost of several hundred million dollars of termination fees — perhaps more than the costs of the tests to see if the system would perform as designed.

Guess what? After killing Navy Area, the Pentagon is "studying" how to reorganize the development of sea-based defenses — to meet long-established requirements for such defenses, including of our coastal sea and airports of entry, providing "assured access to troubled regions allowing a smooth flow of follow-on troops and air forces," as JCS Chairman Air Force General Richard B. Meyers has articulated. What's wrong with all the past studies?

According to press accounts last summer, past Navy studies concluded that relatively inexpensive options can be exercised in a staged way to begin defending the United States homeland within a year:

In 12 months and for a few hundred million dollars, the Aegis system's existing air-defense missile can be made much more effective; an added boost-phase-intercept capability would make it possible to shoot down North Korean missiles as they rise from their launch pads. This capability could — in concert with existing coastal radar systems and Coast Guard operations — help protect metropolitan areas from short-range SCUDs that might be launched from tramp steamers off our coasts — e.g., near Boston, Annapolis, Norfolk, etc. In the context of September 11, this is an appropriate homeland security concern.

A second stage of sea-based defense could begin protecting American cities within two to three years, for about $2 billion more than already programmed for the Navy Theater Wide program (which conducted last Friday's test). Aegis cruisers operating normally around the world could be given the capability to destroy attacking missiles in their boost- and mid-course phases, and so protect a large portion of the United States — as well as our overseas troops, friends, and allies.

These near-term sea-based defenses could later be substantially improved, still for costs on the order of $10 billion.

Pentagon authorities should conclude their studies of sea-based defenses and begin building real capability — soon.