WASHINGTON, June 18: With the anti-ballistic missile treaty dead, a Pentagon agency said on Tuesday it hoped to deploy the initial, sea-based leg of a system to protect America and its allies from missile attack as early as 2004.
But private analysts quickly warned that a two-year goal for deploying a warship-based system was unrealistic even with accelerated testing planned in the wake of last week’s scrapping by Washington of the 1972 US-Russia ABM treaty
Any reliable defense against intercontinental missile attack was still a decade away due to technology hurdles, they said.
“There are still a lot of hurdles and ‘what ifs,’ but if everything were to come together it might be a possibility” by 2004, Pentagon Missile Defense Agency spokesman Chris Taylor said of the initial step in an interview with Reuters.
“It (sea-based system) is very promising. The general is cautiously optimistic,” Taylor added in response to questions about a Wall Street Journal interview on Monday with Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, who heads the Pentagon agency.
Taylor and Kadish stressed that even if a sea-based system could be fielded soon, it would be only a part of an eventual layered set of defenses to protect the United States, its allies and US troops overseas from short- and long-range ballistic missiles.
Only a week after Washington withdrew from the ABM pact, Kadish told the Journal his agency planned to push for accelerating development of a missile defense shield based at sea and that he might recommend such a system be deployed on warships as early as 2004.
The ABM treaty would have prevented more aggressive missile defense testing now planned by the United States.
Taylor said the agency would wait for full analysis of last week’s successful US test in the Pacific in which a target test missile was shot down in space by a Standard Missile fired from a sophisticated US Navy Aegis cruiser.
Critics noted that while Standard Missiles were fast enough to track and hit enemy missiles with a range of 1,800 miles to 3,000 miles (2,900 to 4,830 km), they were too slow by half to defend against speeding intercontinental missiles moving at thousands of miles (km) an hour.
“I think two years is not a lot of time. I just don’t see how they can do this,” said Philip Coyle, who was director of operational test and evaluation at the Pentagon under former President Bill Clinton.
Both Coyle, now with the Washington-based Center for Defense Information, and analyst John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Liveable World, told Reuters that new missiles and even new Navy ships to launch them would be needed to defend against longer-range attack.
ATTACKS SPARKED PRESSURE: The Sept. 11 attacks on the United States reinforced President George W. Bush’s commitment to defense against possible missile attack from “rogue states” such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
Taylor said on Tuesday the US military had already had good success with the testing of its shorter-range PAC-3 missile system, an upgraded version of Patriot missiles used against Iraqi Scud missiles during the 1991 Gulf War.
He said good progress was also being made on a land-based system to shoot down long-range ballistic missiles in midcourse in space.
“The goal is to get to a viable, layered defense system,” he said. “We have had some good success with the PAC-3.”
Both the missile defense agency and opponents say a “boost-phase” defense would also add a major part to missile defense by hitting enemy missiles as they lift off from launch pads. Such a system is considered far from development.
“The agency is very pleased with the test results last week. There is a lot of aggressive work that needs to be done to see how things come together as early as 2004,” Taylor said.
“With the next sea-based test, we can use some additional radar which would have been prohibited by the ABM treaty. With the next ground-based test we’re going to use the Aegis weapons system radar to incorporate in that test to see what kind of additional tools we have for the toolbox.”—Reuters