NP - Missle Defense Fraud

[David Morris]

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/191/oped/Pentagon_report_reveals_flaws_in_missile_defense+.shtml

Pentagon report reveals flaws in missile defense

By John F. Tierney, 7/10/2001

NOT TOO LONG ago, the Pentagon's purchase of $400 hammers and $640 toilets 
raised eyebrows in Congress and among the public. Yet few people claimed 
those deluxe hammers couldn't cleanly hit their targets - most likely 
overpriced nails. And the toilets were said to flush with exquisite 
efficiency.

Not so the Pentagon's latest folly - an obscenely expensive but flawed 
missile defense system the Bush administration appears determined to deploy 
as early as 2004, even though the individual who was charged with evaluating 
its readiness has declared that it will not be ready, even in a limited 
form, until 2011.

Philip Coyle, formerly the Pentagon's chief civilian test evaluator, 
testified last September at a hearing before the national security 
subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Reform, of which I am a 
member. Coyle outlined the findings of a report he prepared during the 
National Missile Defense Deployment Readiness Review a month earlier. I 
asked him to provide his report, which is unclassified, to the subcommittee. 
Neither he nor Lieutenant General Ronald Kadish, director of the missile 
defense program, expressed reservations about making the report public. The 
subcommittee voted unanimously to make the report part of the hearing 
record.

Finally pried free two weeks ago - after eight months, six official 
requests, threats of subpoenas, a letter to Defense Secretary Donald 
Rumsfeld from 55 House Democrats, and over the continuing objections of 
Pentagon officials - the report confirms the glaring deficiencies in the 
testing program that Coyle raised last September.

The report describes a phenomenon in simulation exercises called ''phantom 
tracks'' in which interceptors were accidentally launched against missiles 
that did not exist. Although operators attempted to take emergency actions 
to override these launches, they failed every time. The system ''simply was 
not behaving according to operator actions.''

Coyle concluded that the system's effectiveness is not yet proven, even in 
the most elementary sense. In fact, according to his report, the program is 
so immature that ''a rigorous assessment of potential system performance 
cannot be made.''

Yet the Pentagon has no plans to test basic elements of the system, not even 
to conduct flight tests with more than a single missile, even though the 
Pentagon concedes that multiple engagements are the most likely scenario. 
The testing program also ignores widely available decoys that adversaries 
would find simple to implement.''

The report describes how flight tests are being dumbed down to ensure the 
public perception of success. The Pentagon, for example, is reducing the 
number of decoys, operators are relying on artificially ''canned'' 
scenarios, and interceptors are being given advance information they won't 
have in real engagements. Even with these ''adjustments,'' the program has 
experienced embarrassing failures.

Significantly, the report finds that the system can't defend against 
accidental or unauthorized launches from major nuclear powers, as originally 
envisioned. The Pentagon has been backtracking on this issue and no longer 
considers it a key goal.

Despite these warnings, President Bush proposes accelerating deployment and 
spending $3 billion more for all missile defense next year - a 57 percent 
increase. The Pentagon will move to deploy a ''rudimentary'' system, even 
before this limited and flawed testing is complete, just to build 
''something'' by the politically significant date of 2004.

As Congress examines the president's missile defense program, and as the 
administration begins testing components of the system this weekend, I 
submit that the 52 recommendations in the Coyle report should be the minimum 
standard by which the new program is evaluated. And the Pentagon's 
''you-can't-handle-the-truth'' attitude that kept this report bottled up for 
eight months must give way to a constructive and reasoned public dialogue 
based on full disclosure and honest information.

Absent that, the Pentagon might consider those $640 toilets as a more 
reliable way to dispose of the $200 billion to $300 billion that this flawed 
system could cost our nation.

John F. Tierneyof Massachusetts is a Democratic member of the US House of 
Representatives.


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