NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE

The Bush Administration has placed a high priority on fielding a National Missile Defense (NMD) system, and has added billions of dollars to the program, now called the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system. This is despite the fact that an attack against the United States using a ballistic missile is considered by the U.S. Intelligence Community to be highly unlikely, while a terrorist attack against the United States with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons using non-ballistic missile means of delivery, such as a truck, or ship or plane, is judged to be far more likely. The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks underscored this assessment.

In December 2002, President Bush decided to field an NMD capability in 2004, despite the fact that the actual system had never been tested successfully, and that the Pentagon's chief tester concluded that the system �has not yet demonstrated operational capability.� Until September 2006 � two years after it was deployed � the system had never had a successful intercept test, and had never even been tested in an operationally realistic manner. It has not been tested against realistic countermeasures that any potential enemy with long-range ballistic missiles might be expected to use, and many more operationally realistic tests are needed.

In his report to Congress in December 2006, the Pentagon's operational test director said that "the lack of flight test data�limits confidence in assessments of Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) defensive capabilities." Consequently, even though we are fielding the system, we do not know with confidence if it would work effectively, and likely will not know for several years. It is still a developmental system. Yet the Pentagon has already requested funding for all the planned operational GMD interceptors. That is not a good precedent for future defense programs.

In December 2004, and again in February 2005, the GMD system suffered flight test failures in which the interceptors failed to launch from their silos. Following these serious failures, the Pentagon established independent review teams to diagnose the problems and recommend test program improvements. Over the last three years, Congress has passed legislation supported by Senator Levin to require increased operational realism in flight tests to demonstrate whether our missile defense system would work effectively, and to require reports from the independent Director of Operational Test and Evaluation on the operational capability of the Ballistic Missile Defense System.

The Pentagon plans to spend about ten billion dollars each year to research, develop, deploy and operate a wide variety of ballistic missile defense technologies, including ground-based, sea-based, airborne, and space-based systems. We will not be able to afford, nor do we need, to build and deploy all of those systems. There needs to be a process in place to determine which systems are most needed and which will be the most cost-effective for our security, based on current and near-term threats. Funding should be prioritized accordingly, although the Bush Administration has not done so. For example, many hundreds of short-range Scud missiles exist today in regions where US military forces are deployed. Yet the Administration has not placed sufficient priority on defending against such existing threats. We should make sure that our ballistic missile defense efforts are focused to ensure effective defense of our military personnel deployed overseas against such missiles. If a system will not work effectively, or will not add significant military capability against a real threat, we should not spend large sums of money on it.

In 2006 Congress enacted legislation supported by Senator Levin to place a priority on the development, testing, and fielding of effective near-term missile defense systems, including the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system, the Patriot PAC-3 system, and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system � all of which are designed to defend against current and near-term regional missiles.

Ballistic missile defense is one among many components of our overall defense effort. It needs to be evaluated in the context of the full spectrum of threats and risks to our security, and balanced against other defense priorities.