12 March 2001 U.S. Missile Defense Director Cites Progress, Challenges (The following article by Lieutenant General Ronald Kadish, director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO), is adapted from a speech he made to the Greater Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce in Alaska on March 2.) As the Director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, I'm responsible for missile defense programs, the budget for which runs about $4 billion ($4,000 million) a year. The organization has about 500 employees working to turn technology into functioning systems. I want to talk about ballistic missile defense. There's a lot about it that is misunderstood. Let me take you back to September 8, 1944, when residents of London sat down to dinner. The quiet of that autumn evening was suddenly shattered by a terrific explosion that shook their world. Sixteen seconds later, just 15 miles to the northeast, a second German V-2 exploded in the village of Epping. The era of ballistic missiles had begun, and the world was changed forever. Over the next eight months, the Germans rained some 3,000 V-2 rockets on allied targets, mostly London and Antwerp, killing over 5,000 people and terrorizing hundreds of thousands more. According to Winston Churchill, "[They] imposed ... a burden perhaps even heavier than the air raids of 1940-1941. Suspense and strain were more prolonged. Dawn brought no relief, and cloud no comfort. ... The blind impersonal nature of the missile made the individual on the ground feel hopeless." Perhaps he put it best with his words: "The Angel of Death is abroad in the land, only you can't always hear the flutter of its wings." During World War II, the only effective defenses were to attack the V-2 factories and launching sites or to occupy the territory from which they could be launched. That fact hasn't changed in 50 years for the United States -- today we still have no defense against ballistic missiles after they've been launched. The current movie, "Thirteen Days," a recount of the 1963 Cuban missile crisis, is a reminder to a whole new generation of Americans how close this country came to nuclear war. Nuclear war, the unthinkable, almost happened. Former Secretary of Defense (Robert) McNamara, a principal at the time and an advisor to this film project, certainly believes so. Thirty years later, the Russians told McNamara that Fidel Castro and Che Guevara had urged the Soviets to launch their missiles at the United States despite the fact that America's overwhelming power was just 90 miles away. Castro was not deterred and was willing to sacrifice his country and "die beautifully" in the process. Anastas Mikoyan, the Soviet Vice-Premier at the time -- and happily more in control of the missiles than either Fidel or Che -- said, "We see your willingness to die beautifully, but we don't believe it's worth dying beautifully for." The Soviets were deterred. Castro was not. The missiles were removed from Cuba. While deterrence has worked in the standoff between the superpowers, this exchange emphasizes the fragility of deterrence in today's more complex world, and it raises questions today about relying solely on deterrence as a final measure of security. Now let's fast forward to the Gulf War, just 10 years ago. Televised images of Israeli citizens donning gas masks in anticipation of Scud raids illustrate just how well Saddam Hussein learned the lessons of the V-2. Who can forget the 28 U.S. service men and women killed when an Iraqi Scud hit their barracks outside Dhahran, well behind the front lines? What you may not remember is the very close call we had at El Jubayl, an important Saudi offloading and staging port within the range of Iraqi Scuds. A Scud missile landed just off the pier, narrowly missing an amphibious assault ship, the USS Tarawa, along with two tankers carrying aviation fuel, a cargo ship, a Polish hospital ship and a U.S. Army barge. The pier itself was crammed with ammunition and fuel trucks. As in World War II, to counter these attacks, a major portion of coalition aviation assets was consumed attempting to locate and destroy the launchers and support facilities. The lessons here seem pretty clear from a warfighting perspective, even without weapons of mass destruction. Ballistic missiles inflict major disruption on military operations on the front lines and behind. And they create great anxiety among civilian populations who happen to be within range -- ballistic missiles are indeed a terror weapon. Now let's consider the current debate about missile defense. Recalling what former Senator Sam Nunn said more than a decade ago, "We ought to do something unusual in Washington. We ought to let the facts speak for themselves." Just what are the key facts? Fact One: The missile threat our nation faces today is far different than the one we faced two or three decades ago. Yes, Russia still has the capability to launch a massive attack on the United States, but the likelihood of that happening has receded dramatically. Similarly, China has a limited but escalating ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) inventory. What is particularly worrisome, however, is the worldwide proliferation of ballistic missiles of all ranges, and of programs to develop weapons of mass destruction. When the ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaty was signed in 1972, there were only nine nations that had a ballistic missile capability. Today, almost three decades later, over 30 nations have such capability. Unfortunately, a number of these may pose a threat to the United States, to our allies, or to our troops overseas. In spite of our counter-proliferation policies, our efforts have merely slowed, not stopped, this proliferation. Some nations have played a catalytic role in pushing these technologies, but the fact of the matter is that over the past 50 years the world's knowledge of missiles and weapons has blossomed. What used to be on the shelves of a few select scientific libraries is now on the Internet, available to just about all who want it. What remains, of course, are the actual engineering challenges, the business of manufacturing and production, yet slowly but surely these are being overcome. In laying out this picture of the threat our nation faces, I'm reminded of the observation of the Marquis of Salisbury: "If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe." To extend this to the context of missile defense, let me go two further: If you believe our missile defense critics, nothing will work. If you believe passionate advocates, we can do it tomorrow. The truth is to be found somewhere between these two extremes. Fact Two: Intercepting a ballistic missile in space is a tough technical and management challenge -- tough science and tough engineering -- and has been ever since ballistic missiles were invented. But it is not impossible. We are now on the threshold of acquiring and deploying missile defenses, not just conducting research. We are, in fact, crossing over from rhetoric to reality, from scientific theory to engineering fact to deployed systems. The first systems we will deploy provide close-in defense to intercept a short-range missile in its terminal phase. These include the Army's PAC-3 (Patriot Advanced Capability 3), expected to be operational later this year. It is a greatly improved version of the Patriot missile that gained such notoriety in the Gulf. A few years later, we expect to deploy the Navy Area system that builds on existing fleet air defense capability. Both these systems are limited to defending a relatively small area. These systems will be followed by the Army's THAAD (Theater High Altitude Area Defense System) and Navy Theater Wide systems later in the decade. These will both reach out farther back along the ballistic missile's incoming trajectory and so defend a wider region. There's one inflexible rule about missile defense -- the later you detect and intercept an enemy missile, the closer it will be when you destroy it, and the smaller the area you can defend. Conversely, the earlier you can detect, decide, and act, the farther away it will be when you destroy it, and the greater the area you can defend. In this business, farther is better; it gives you enough time to gain a chance for a second or third shot if you miss. The National Missile Defense (NMD) system we've been working on destroys missile warheads in midcourse, the longest time of flight for a trajectory. Because it can reach so far out, it has the potential of defending a much larger area -- in this case, the United States. To do this we employ space-based and ground-based sensors, (the eyes, if you will, to see the launch and track the flight). We have a battle management system that interprets the information from the sensors, verifies if the missile is hostile, and determines the best point for intercept. Then, under human direction, it launches the interceptor, which we call a kinetic energy kill vehicle. Currently we have a small, 120 pound kill vehicle with its own guidance and sensing system. Once lifted into space and pointed in the right direction, on its final leg, it can steer itself into the target and obliterate the warhead by violent impact. That collision occurs at speeds of about 15,000 miles an hour or more, so there's not much left of the target reentry vehicle at those speeds. This is called hit-to-kill -- hitting a bullet with a bullet. Traditional explosives don't work well in space, and the nuclear tipped interceptors on which we relied 25 years ago -- and on which the Russians still rely -- have major political and operational drawbacks. We've achieved success with hit-to-kill not once, but seven times out of the last 10 attempts in the past two years, with three different systems. Nevertheless, the development road for missile defense has been bumpy. Despite the successes, we still haven't achieved the degree of reliability we need. Each of the major programs is behind schedule. Our NMD program, for example, has had one hit followed by two well-publicized failures in our three intercept flight tests so far. I relearned a basic truth in missile defense: that success occurs in private and failure in full view. That they were well publicized is an understatement. Despite our high profile failures, we have made significant progress in developing this system. So, to restate the second fact: This is rocket science, and it is difficult, but not impossible. Seven hundred years ago, the current wisdom held that sailors who ventured too far from land would fall off the edge of the Earth. Columbus proved them wrong. Seventy years ago, naysayers were saying that rockets wouldn't work in space because there was no air to push against. Robert Goddard proved them wrong. Seven years ago, critics were still saying we couldn't hit a missile in space. We've done it. Now they say, "OK, you can hit it. But it will be fooled by decoys and countermeasures, so you shouldn't build it." That leads to Fact Three: You need patience to bring about revolutionary technology. Testing, by its nature, lends itself both to failures and to the successes that rise from their ashes. Wernher von Braun, who served as the project leader for the German V-2 program and later pioneered America's space and missile program, experienced many failures. He named these setbacks "successful failures" because he and his teams learned so much from them -- a feature about high tech development our critics tend to forget. Do they remember that the Atlas ICBM program experienced 12 failures in its 2.5-year flight-testing history; that the Minuteman-1 ICBM program suffered 10 failures in a 3.5-year testing program; and that the Corona program, for our country's first operational reconnaissance satellite, survived 13 failures and mishaps before Discoverer 14 was orbited and its film recovered? Yet through it all, patience by our leadership was essential -- then and now -- despite frustrations resulting from these technical difficulties. I'm talking about national leadership here, the kind of support and patience shown by Senator Stevens, who has championed the cause of missile defense. And I'm talking about the local level support and leadership represented here in this room. This is leadership through vision and patience, the kind that pushed earlier programs through their trials to success. Our test program follows a deliberate step-by-step approach that builds on simulations, ground testing, and risk reduction flights that don't involve an intercept attempt. As you listen to the debate unfold, remember these facts. The threat is different today than 10 or 20 years ago. In their book on the "V" weapons, Impact, Benjamin King and Timothy Kutta said it best: ". . .the technology [of the 'V' weapons] is readily available to those who want it. The Scud is only one descendant of 'V' weapons. Today, there are literally thousands of them across the world. We live in their shadow and they will not go away." Missile defense is rocket science. We are on the threshold of solving the tough issues of defending against those ballistic missiles. We still have some stiff challenges ahead of us, but we are making remarkable progress. [A new report on harnessing technology for missile defense is available on the BMDO Web site at http://www.acq.osd.mil/bmdo/bmdolink/pdf/power.pdf] Return to the Washington File