Ambitious Plan Urged for U.S. Missile Defense

WASHINGTON —  The Bush administration should embark on an ambitious missile defense program that includes core elements of the Clinton antimissile plan, despite daunting technical challenges, a Pentagon advisory panel is recommending.

The key advisory committee organized by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is urging the new administration to continue funding the Clinton team’s limited, ground-based system, while supplementing it with antimissile systems based in the sea, on aircraft and in space.

While the committee’s recommendations were rendered in only the broadest strokes, they clearly would result in a system that would be implemented on a vast scale. Critics say it would cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, though missile defense supporters contend that a large-scale system could be built on an annual budget of about $10 billion. The Clinton administration’s program was expected to cost about $60 billion.

Bush administration officials have made missile defense a priority. But their efforts to develop a blueprint have been complicated by the fact that the Clinton administration’s system, which they have criticized, is furthest along in development, while there has been relatively little progress on the sea-based and space-based technologies they prefer.

The administration is not expected to unveil its final plan for several months. But the panel’s March 30 report, which has not been made public, is generally consistent with the approach that has been sketched out by President Bush and his aides since last year’s presidential campaign. They have argued that former President Clinton’s plan is not ambitious enough and that the administration should seek to go further to explore the other deployment options.

Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, downplayed the panel’s findings, describing the recommendations as “the interim report of one group of individuals.” He said Rumsfeld has his own in-house team working on missile defense, adding that, while “all the committees are important,” the secretary is not obliged to follow their advice.

Missile defense critics who oppose the system include arms control advocacy groups and those who fear it will result in the casting aside of international arms control treaties.

Many of those critics have predicted that the plan also would run into insurmountable technical problems and run up huge costs.

“You can’t do more than this,” said Tom Collina, of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “This is sort of at the extreme end of what I would expect Rumsfeld to do.”

The blueprint reflects closely the desires of missile defense advocates, who want the administration to quickly commit the nation to a large system.

The advisory panel’s report said that, though an aggressive missile defense program would carry risk of technical failure and unforeseen costs, the administration should “accept program risk to facilitate early deployment.” It urges the administration to develop systems that can destroy enemy missiles at three stages of flight--just after launch, in mid-flight and at the end of the trajectory.

The panel is one of the most important of 16 committees conducting a secret top-to-bottom review of the U.S. military. The administration is not bound to follow the advice of the panel, known as the “Transformation Task Force.” But the committee has had access to the latest Pentagon information on the subject and may have significant influence on the administration’s final decision.

The committee was organized to explore technologies that promise to help the U.S. military make rapid advances.

The group is headed by retired Air Force Gen. James McCarthy and includes such other prominent figures as former Pentagon technology chief Paul Kaminski, Reagan administration science advisor Bill Graham, retired Air Force Gen. Larry Welch, retired Marine commandant Gen. Carl Mundy, retired Army Gen. William Hartzog and retired Adms. Stanley Arthur and Bill Studeman.

Graham has been a leading advocate of missile defense. Welch, a former Air Force chief of staff, became prominent in the missile defense debate in 1998, when he headed a Pentagon-appointed panel that warned that a hasty development program could be caught in a “rush to failure.”

As a first step, missile defense system advocates argue that a stopgap system, even if not perfect, could knock down missiles and give pause to “rogue” nations that might be considering attacking the United States.

“This is very promising, from my perspective,” said Jack Spencer, a defense analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington that has been a prime advocate of missile defense.

Spencer said he saw particular significance in the panel’s recommendation that the administration “accept program risk to facilitate early deployment.”

The Clinton administration had been hobbled by a “risk-averse environment,” he said. “We’ve got to get things out there” for experimentation and testing. “That’s the way to develop things,” he said.

The defense panel urged the administration to “field the first mid-course system as soon as possible,” then expand it later.

Analysts say it is unclear how much defense business the system could generate in Southern California, although some research already is being conducted in the region and the state typically gets a substantial share of any new military project.

The Clinton administration’s proposed ground-based system, which was to deploy a field of 20 interceptor missiles in Alaska by 2005, is the most developed mid-course system. But missile defense advocates contend the Navy also could develop a ship-based system to strike missiles in mid-course.

The panel urged the Pentagon to begin development of a “robust sea-based boost-phase system.” Many analysts have recommended development of a system, based on ships, that could fire interceptor missiles to destroy enemy missiles in their so-called boost phase, just after they are launched.

Such a system has important advantages because it seeks to strike missiles when they are easiest to spot and before they deploy decoys that can throw off the interceptors.

The panel said the Pentagon should assess systems that are built to strike warheads just before they hit the Earth, in their so-called terminal phase. The Pentagon should choose the terminal-phase system that has the “highest potential,” then “focus resources, to field as soon as possible,” according to the report. The report urged continued work in the Airborne Laser program, which is seeking to developing a weapon small enough to be carried in an airplane and capable of destroying enemy missiles early in their flight.

The report also said the Pentagon should continue to fund the Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser airborne program, while branching out with more research and development for “follow-on” laser technologies.

The panel also recommends that the Pentagon continue with development of a space-based laser. These weapons were the controversial key component of the antimissile program that President Reagan promoted in the early 1980s. The committee said the Pentagon should focus the first flight test--currently scheduled for 2012--on gathering “engineering and design” information. Simultaneously, it should branch out into another space-based laser technology.