- DELMAR, NY - On Christmas
Eve 2004, the Russian Strategic Missile Force test fired an advanced SS-27
Topol-M road-mobile intercontinental ballistic Missile (ICBM). This test
probably invalidated the entire premise and technology used in the National
Missile Defense (NMD) system currently being developed and deployed by
the Bush administration, and at the same time called into question the
validity of the administration's entire approach to arms control and disarmament.
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- From 1988 to 1990, I served as one of the American weapons
inspectors at the Votkinsk Machine Building Plant in Russia, where the
SS-27 and its predecessor, the SS-25, were assembled. When I started my
work in Votkinsk, the SS-25 missile was viewed by many in the US intelligence
community as the primary ICBM threat facing the United States. A great
deal of effort was placed on learning as much as possible about this missile
and its capabilities.
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- Through the work of the inspectors at Votkinsk, as well
as several related inspections where US experts were able to view the SS-25
missile system in its operating bases in Siberia, a great deal of data
was collected that assisted the US intelligence community in refining its
understanding of how the SS-25 operated. This understanding was translated
into several countermissile strategies, including aerial interdiction operations
and missile-defense concepts.
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- The abysmal performance of American counter-SCUD operations
during the Gulf War in 1991 highlighted the deficiencies of the US military
regarding the aerial interdiction of road-mobile missiles. Iraqi Al-Hussein
mobile missiles were virtually impossible to detect and interdict, even
with total American air supremacy. Despite all the effort put into counter-SCUD
operations during that war, not a single Iraqi mobile missile launcher
was destroyed by hostile fire, a fact I can certify not only as a participant
in the counter-SCUD effort, but also as a chief inspector in Iraq, where
I led the United Nations investigations into the Iraqi missile program.
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- The rapid collapse of the Soviet Union did not leave
much time for reflection on the American counter-mobile missile launcher
deficiencies. In mid-1993, the Department of Defense conducted a comprehensive
review to select the strategy and force structure for the post-cold war
era. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the threat to the US from
a deliberate or accidental ballistic missile attack by former Soviet states
or by China was judged highly unlikely. In Votkinsk, US inspectors observed
a Soviet-era defense industry in decline. SS-25 missiles were produced
at a greatly reduced rate, and the next generation missile, a joint Russian-Ukrainian
design, was scrapped after a few prototypes were produced, but never launched.
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- After the resounding Republican victory in the midterm
1994 congressional elections, a new program for missile defense was proposed
covering three distinct "threat" capabilities ranging from "unsophisticated
threats" (an attack of five single-warhead missiles with simple decoys),
to highly sophisticated threats (an attack of 20 single-warhead SS-25 type
missiles, each with decoys or other defensive countermeasures). Funding
for this program ran to some $10.8 billion from 1993 to 2000.
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- When President Bush came to power in 2001, there was
a dramatic change in posture regarding ballistic missile defense. The administration
announced it was withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, clearing
away development and operational constraints. At the same time, the administration
laid out a comprehensive plan that envisioned a layered missile-defense
system. After studying the SS-25 missile for years, the US military believed
it finally had a solution in the form of a multitiered antiballistic missile
system that focused on boost-phase intercept (firing antimissile missiles
that would home in on an ICBM shortly after launch), space-based laser
systems designed to knock out a missile in flight, and terminal missile
intercept systems, which would destroy a missile as it reentered the earth's
atmosphere.
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- The NMD system being fielded to counter the SS-25, and
any similar or less sophisticated threats that may emerge from China, Iran,
North Korea, and elsewhere, will probably have cumulative costs between
$800 billion and $1.2 trillion by the time it reaches completion in 2015.
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- However, the Bush administration's dream of a viable
NMD has been rendered fantasy by the Russian test of the SS-27 Topol-M.
According to the Russians, the Topol-M has high-speed solid-fuel boosters
that rapidly lift the missile into the atmosphere, making boost-phase interception
impossible unless one is located practically next door to the launcher.
The SS-27 has been hardened against laser weapons and has a highly maneuverable
post-boost vehicle that can defeat any intercept capability as it dispenses
up to three warheads and four sophisticated decoys.
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- To counter the SS-27 threat, the US will need to start
from scratch. And even if a viable defense could be mustered, by that time
the Russians may have fielded an even more sophisticated missile, remaining
one step ahead of any US countermeasures. The US cannot afford to spend
billions of dollars on a missile-defense system that will never achieve
the level of defense envisioned. The Bush administration's embrace of technology,
and rejection of diplomacy, when it comes to arms control has failed.
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- If America continues down the current path of trying
to field a viable missile-defense system, significant cuts will need to
be made in other areas of the defense budget, or funds reallocated from
other nonmilitary spending programs. With America already engaged in a
costly war in Iraq, and with the possibility of additional conflict with
Iran, Syria, or North Korea looming on the horizon, funding a missile-defense
system that not only does not work as designed, but even if it did, would
not be capable of defending America from threats such as the Topol-M missile,
makes no sense.
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- The Bush administration would do well to reconsider its
commitment to a national missile-defense system, and instead reengage in
the kind of treaty-based diplomacy that in the past produced arms control
results that were both real and lasting. This would not only save billions,
it would make America, and the world, a safer place.
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- -- Scott Ritter is a former intelligence officer and
weapons inspector in the Soviet Union (1988-1990) and Iraq (1991-1998).
He is author of 'Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the
Bushwhacking of America.'
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- http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0104/p09s02-coop.html
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