Tag Archives: Defense Procurement Policy

The Marshall Plan’

(Washington, D.C.):The Bush-Cheney Administration made a lot of its supporters very nervous last week when it signaled that there would be no immediate increase in defense spending — and perhaps none for the rest of Fiscal Year 2001. After all, study after study has shown that the armed forces have been seriously underfunded and over-utilized for the past decade and Mr. Bush had made a point during the campaign of pledging to fix what is known to ail the military.

By week’s end, however, the Administration was putting out the word that the promised “help” for the men and women in uniform was on the way, after all. The new team clarified that it would not only be seeking additional sums for pay, housing and re-enlistment incentives in next year’s budget. It would also be willing to seek additional funding in the course of this fiscal year — if warranted by a fresh review of strategy and force structure that was ordered by Mr. Bush and expected to catalyze a wholesale transformation of the Defense Department.

Enter Andy Marshall

Fortunately, the task of completing such a sweeping, yet expeditious review has been given to a man who has trained for most of the past fifty years for just this moment: Andrew Marshall, the Pentagon’s legendary Director of Net Assessment.

Dr. Marshall is one of the unsung heroes of the Cold War. Since he joined the Defense Department in the mid-1970s, and during his prior service at the Rand Corporation, he has been the principal patron of “outside-of-the-box” thinking within the U.S. national security community. He has consistently challenged the conventional wisdom, often recognizing before the rest of the military establishment the declining utility of existing weapon systems and the need to develop and field new capabilities suited to a changing world.

Working almost entirely outside of public view, Andy Marshall has spawned not only creative ideas; he has been a mentor to a generation of first-rate strategic thinkers and sponsored some of the best security policy research at the Nation’s academic institutions. While the worst of the many Secretaries of Defense under whom he has served have ignored him and, in one case at least, tried to get rid of him by banishing him from the Pentagon, the best — including the only man to hold the position twice, Donald Rumsfeld — have prized and benefited greatly from his counsel.

Marshall Plan’ Should Include

Now, the Nation as a whole stands to be the beneficiary of Dr. Marshall’s wisdom and unsurpassed corporate memory. These are among the points we must hope his strategic review will underscore:

  • The threat from China: Few senior officials have better understood and done more to document the determination of the People’s Republic of China to anticipate and prepare itself for conflict with the United States. He grasps the danger the Chinese might pose to U.S. interests in Asia and beyond — including outer space — and his recommendations about the sizing and equipping of America’s military will surely reflect the need to be able to contend with the growing asymmetric and other threats from China.
  • The need for urgent deployments of missile defenses: Andy Marshall has long appreciated the risks associated with America’s present, absolute vulnerability to missile attack. He also understands, as Secretary Rumsfeld noted recently, that an anti-missile system need not be perfect to have strategic value. The new Marshall Plan should give urgent priority to beginning the deployment of a global missile defense, starting with the approach that promises to be the fastest, most flexible and least expensive: adaptation of the Navy’s Aegis fleet air defense ships.
  • The requirement for safe, reliable and effective nuclear forces: During his Rand years, Dr. Marshall was a specialist in nuclear weapons matters. Although it is not entirely clear at this writing whether the study President Bush has commissioned to determine the future size of the U.S. deterrent will fall within his mandate, Dr. Marshall certainly appreciates that the quantity of nuclear arms the Nation needs is only part of the calculation. Quality also matters and the arsenal must be modernized and tested if it is to remain viable for the foreseeable future.
  • “Transformation” cannot be accomplished on the cheap: President Bush clearly hopes to reconfigure the U.S. military so as to enable it to meet tomorrow’s challenges. Andy Marshall assuredly will have many ideas for doing so — some of them brilliant, many of them heretical, all of them probably controversial. Still, he would be the first to acknowledge that, even if one envisions revolutionary changes in the weapons of the future (for example, an Army built around lighter, more mobile yet more lethal weapons than main battle tanks and tracked infantry fighting vehicles or a Navy weaned from large carriers in favor of arsenal ships and submarines), the military will have to maintain and operate the preponderance of what it has for at least the next decade or so.

This is more than a matter of correcting current, egregious shortfalls in spare parts and other training- and combat-related gear. There will have to be some interim modernization since the generation of weapons Mr. Bush talked about “skipping” during the campaign was actually skipped during the last decade. Recapitalization of the armed forces must go forward apace to offset the effects of looming block obsolescence of much of the Pentagon’s hardware.

All these steps, to say nothing of the research and development and procurement costs associated with the next generation of military hardware simply cannot be paid for within existing budget limitations. What is more, the increased funding needs to start right away. It will fall to Andy Marshall to help the new Bush-Cheney team and the Nation appreciate these facts of life.

The Bottom Line

For most of the past half century, Andrew Marshall has been a man ahead of his time. Thanks to George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, his time has come.

The President Must Quickly Demonstrate that His Commitment to Defend America is No Gambit’

Israeli Election, Defense Budget Caps Argue for Aegis Option

(Washington, D.C.): To their great credit, President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have in recent weeks made clear that they are personally committed to protecting the American people against ballistic missile attack. Secretary Rumsfeld has indicated that the President perceives this as a “moral” obligation, as well as a strategic necessity. He told top officials from all over Europe and Russia over the weekend that the United States would not be diverted from this path by outdated objections like the fear that a U.S. missile defense deployment would spark an “arms races” — a construct he said was “left over from the Cold War” and “less relevant today than it was then” — or the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that he has called “ancient history.”

Specifically, Rumsfeld told the Werkunde Conference in Munich:

…The United States intends to develop and deploy a missile defense designed to defend our people and forces against a limited ballistic missile attack, and is prepared to assist friends and allies threatened by missile attack to deploy such defenses. These systems will be a threat to no one. These systems will be a threat to no one. That is a fact. They should be of concern to no one, save those who would threaten others.

These declarations are supremely important and thoroughly commendable. They are abso lutely necessary to the task of defending America. Surely, however, Messrs. Bush and Rumsfeld appreciate that they are not, in and of themselves, sufficient.

Actions Speak Louder

If anything, the necessity promptly to begin acting on the Bush-Cheney Administration’s commitment to deploy missile defense was underscored yesterday in an editorial in the Washington Post. It effectively charged Messrs. Bush and Rumsfeld with bluffing, hoping that by declaring National Missile Defense (NMD) inevitable without including specifics, the Administration will be able to “defuse a potentially divisive debate within NATO before it can get hot,” and “neutralizing an emerging Russian strategy of fomenting European opposition” to NMD.

The Post put the matter bluntly: “It is striking how little seem[s] to lie behind Mr. Rumsfeld’s opening gambit [at the Werkunde defense conference in Munich last week].” It warns that “The risk is that instead of resolving…difficult and pressing questions [like an anti-NATO European military force and increasingly costly Balkan deployments], Mr. Bush’s relations with Europe will be shaped in their opening months by a weapons system that has not yet been chosen, proven or paid for…even in the best of circumstances…won’t materialize for years.”

What Needs to be Done

The Administration simply cannot continue to allow its rhetoric to be unaccompanied by concrete actions. It will find, should it do so, that the sort of criticism evident in the Post yesterday will rapidly metastasize into emboldened opposition to doing anything about missile defense. In no time, the gridlock likely to accompany the onset of the 2002 mid-term elections will make problematic implementation of Candidate Bush’s most concrete national security promise to the American people. This could have most undesirable political — as well as strategic — repercussions in light of the findings of a poll released last week by McLaughlin & Associates.1 This sampling was but the latest confirmation that the vast majority of the American people — irrespective of race, gender, party affiliation or political orientation — want the United States to be protected against missile attack.

Accordingly, the Bush Administration should immediately accompany its rhetoric about missile defense with specific, concrete actions. As a practical matter, the only near-term step it can take in this regard is to announce that it will begin deploying in not more than six-months time, the first elements of a sea-based anti-missile system aboard existing Navy Aegis ships. By so doing, Messrs. Bush and Rumsfeld can with one stroke: underscore their commitment to start addressing the problem they properly describe as intolerable (thanks to the fact that the necessary infrastructure for such a system is largely in place today); demonstrate their determination to defend our forces and allies overseas, as well as the American people (thanks to the inherent flexibility of the ships that will over time become anti-missile capable); and secure missile defenses in the most cost-effective manner possible (thanks to the investment already made in the 55-ship Aegis fleet).

The last point takes on supreme importance in light of the Administration’s ill-advised decision not to take any step in FY2001 to increase defense spending. The Aegis Option is simply the only means available at the moment by which way the Bush-Cheney team can begin doing what it correctly states is needed — namely, defending America — within existing resources, without grievously exacerbating the shortfalls already afflicting the combat readiness and esprit de corps of the U.S. military.

The Bottom Line

With yesterday’s election in Israel of Ariel Sharon, the issue of missile defense may suddenly be put into even sharper focus. If, heaven forfend, deterrence should fail and Israel’s enemies in Iraq, Iran, Syria or Libya decide to seize upon the electoral outcome in the Jewish State to initiate regional hostilities, an attack may well feature the use against Israel of deadly ballistic missiles — perhaps carrying weapons of mass destruction.

In the aftermath of such a disaster, it is clear that the United States would, among other things, undertake a crash program to put into place whatever anti-missile capabilities it can rapidly muster. Inevitably, the Aegis Option would be one of the first to be exercised. If that step would surely be taken under those circumstances, the Bush Administration has no excuse for not taking it now — especially when, by so doing, we might discourage this sort of eventuality.



1 See, the Center’s Decision Brief entitled, The American ‘Mainstream’ Wants a U.S. Missile Defense; Guess That Makes its Opponents ‘Extremists’ (No. 01-D 11, 31 January 2001).

Newsweek declares the missile defense debate Over’

Newsweek Magazine’s on-line service circulated this week a fascinating assessment of the missile defense debate by one of its most astute reporters, John Barry. His conclusion: "America is going to build a national missile defense" — and everybody who thinks otherwise better think again.

The following highlights of Mr. Barry’s analysis are particularly thoughtful. They add to the sense of inevitability about defending America, as well as her forces and allies overseas, that owes much to the "Rumsfeld effect" — the signal of serious determination conveyed by President Bush’s appointment of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. When combined with poll data released earlier this week by McLaughlin and Associates that confirms anew the overwhelming, bipartisan popular support for U.S. missile defenses (see "The American ‘Mainstream’ Wants a U.S. Missile Defense; Guess That Makes its Opponents ‘Extremists,’" No. 01-D 11, 31 Jan. 2001), it is clear that the question is not if, but when, anti-missile systems are put into place. With proper presidential leadership, a can-do spirit and attendant budgetary priority and an innovative approach to shortening the time- lines to deployment (i.e., by modifying existing Navy Aegis fleet air defense ships to perform this new mission), the United States and her friends will not only be protected, but begin to be protected far more rapidly than many now think possible.

 

Excerpts of:

Looking Forward To NMD: America will definitely build a national missile defense. Here’s why – and what it means

By John Barry

Newsweek, 29 January 2001

World leaders – from Russian President Vladimir Putin to British Prime Minister Tony Blair – talk as if the issue is still unresolved. They act as if their arguments in Putin’s case, threats – could still have an impact. But it isn’t so. The political debate within the United States is over. Finis. America is going to build a national missile defense.

Sure, there will be shouting and even a few demonstrations by what passes for the left in the United States. The old-style arms control community will protest the abandonment of the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty and prophesy a new arms race. The New York Times will follow received opinion in New York and denounce the decision. But nobody in Washington will pay the least attention. Al Gore’s lame "me too" stance on missile defense in the election campaign recognized the political reality of the matter – which is that America’s decision to deploy defenses was really made on August 31, 1998.

That was the day that North Korea test launched a Taepo Dong-1 missile which — to the surprise of America’s spooks — turned out to have a third stage. Though it didn’t succeed in launching a small satellite into orbit, as North Korea had hoped, that third stage meant that, theoretically at any rate, the Taepo Dong now had intercontinental range.

Only six weeks before, a bipartisan panel of defense heavyweights, chaired by a former defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, had concluded that hostile nations were working hard to develop missiles with which to threaten the U.S. and that the intelligence services were failing to keep abreast of their efforts.

The Taepo Dong third stage was thunderous proof of Rumsfeld’s verdict. Overnight, the politics of missile defense were transformed. Sceptics could, and did, claim that the Rumsfeld Commission had made "worst case" assumptions about other nations’ missile programs, whereas the intelligence community had been circulating "most likely" scenarios. But if North Korea — bankrupt, primitive, starving, isolated, paranoid North Korea — could develop something close to an ICBM, the world really was a more threatening place than it had seemed. America’s 35-year debate about the need for missile defenses was suddenly over.

So when President George W Bush and his new defense secretary, the same Donald Rumsfeld, reiterate — as both did this past week — that the U.S. is going to deploy missile defenses, listen up. They mean it.

What remains to be decided are the second-order questions: timeframe, technology, and cost. These are questions America will settle largely for itself. But what also has to be thrashed out – and here the rest of the world can and will have a voice – is the strategic context within which those defenses are deployed.

And that is why the new Administration is banging the drum so loudly so early. Behind the braggadocio is a clear-headed game-plan. President Bush’s advisers have persuaded him that Russia, China and Europe will not even start to negotiate seriously about a new strategic nuclear order – the new framework for deterrence which Bush & Co. believe is needed – unless and until the world accepts that the United States is going ahead with missile defenses no matter what.

This judgement draws heavily on the national security team’s personal experiences of the team. The National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was a mid-level bureaucrat for the outfit she now runs under the first President Bush in 1990, and worked on the then-thorny issue of German reunification. Bush pushed for a Germany whole, free and integrated into NATO from the outset. He got it. Rice has since written that she took this as a lesson to "choose goals that are optimal, even if they seem at the time politically infeasible." Rumsfeld and the new Secretary of State Colin Powell have both negotiated strategic arms agreements. Both have concluded – as have many others over the years – that the Russians will accept a deal only when they become convinced that America is ready to walk away from the table.

The frustrations of the Clinton Administration have only reinforced these views. By 1996, President Clinton had come — grudgingly and under Republican pressure — to accept the case for defense. But Clinton wanted to negotiate a deal with Moscow that through minimal amendments to the ABM treaty would allow a minimal defensive system to protect against a minimal threat. Years of intensive discussions with Moscow to this end got nowhere, even though Russian generals were privately telling their U.S. counterparts that Russia herself was worried by the prospect of missile proliferation around its southern rim.

The incoming Bush Administration does not intend to walk the same path. Instead, the new Administration’s strategy is to go ahead with the development of missile defenses and invite the Russians and the Europeans to make constructive proposals on how best to integrate these into a new strategic framework. They have, of course, their own ideas what that could be. The Bush Administration is willing to think about moving from strategic arms agreements that limit offensive weapons and ban defensive ones to a new set of mix-and-match totals where offensive and defensive capabilities are somehow reckoned together. They are more willing than Clinton was to think about taking U.S. missile forces off alert status, and they are open to other suggestions for reducing nuclear risk. They would contemplate sharing intelligence, and welcome joint efforts to counter proliferation. They may reduce the size of the U.S. strategic arsenal unilaterally, urging Russia to follow suit but not insisting on it.

The message will be: If Moscow wants to join with the U.S. in these endeavors, fine. If not, that’s Moscow’s choice. Underlying this approach are two fundamental judgements. The first is that, at this point in history, the United States holds all the high cards. The second is that there is no need for haste.

Take Russia. The Russian nuclear submarine fleet rusts at its moorings. By U.S. calculations, Russia’s strategic missiles are so antique that by 2010 or shortly thereafter Russia will likely deploy only 500-800 warheads. So Putin can spend billions of rubles he cannot afford on a new generation of strategic missiles. Or he can do a deal.

Take Beijing. China’s leaders threaten "a spiralling arms race" if the U.S. deploys missile defenses. But to what end? Traditional state-to-state deterrence theory suggests that such a buildup would cost a lot economically while buying nothing of strategic value. China would not lose a deterrent if America installed a missile defense because China does not really have a deterrent against America today, presumably because it doesn’t really think it needs one. The fact that China’s current nuclear arsenal consists of aging, static, highly vulnerable, liquid fuelled ICBMs is proof of that. Why then, Bush’s advisers ask, should Beijing choose to waste resources on a fruitless enterprise ?

Take rogue states. The virtue of missile defenses — or so the Bush team’s thinking runs — is that defenses increase the price of admission to the strategic club. Take Iraq. As the sanctions on Iraq erode, Saddam Hussein will almost certainly be able to afford a clandestine program to develop a handful of missiles with ranges sufficient to hit European capitals. If he can develop even one with a range to hit the United States, Saddam has the tools for a strategy of blackmail. Defenses, even limited defenses, thwart that scenario — though only if both sides have faith in their ability to stop the incoming missile.

Grasping the Importance of Space Power

(Washington, D.C.): Finally, the United States seems to be getting serious about the need for space power. For eight years, President Clinton paid lip-service to the importance of America being able to have ready and reliable access to and use of space — and the capability to deny such access and use to hostile powers. Yet, his Administration deliberately precluded the Nation from acquiring the wherewithal to do so. Within its first week in office, however, the Bush-Rumsfeld Pentagon has begun to correct this strategically foolish and potentially costly policy disconnect.

A front-page article in today’s Washington Post reveals that the Air Force recently conducted a war game focusing on military operations in space. This step comes on the heels of the release on 11 January 2001 of a blue-ribbon commission report urging the United States to acquire and exercise space power and the subsequent confirmation of its chairman, Donald Rumsfeld, as Secretary of Defense. The war game also appears to have validated findings and recommendations made at the Center for Security Policy’s High-level Roundtable Discussion on space power held in December (see attached).

Interestingly, Post reporter Thomas Ricks who attended part of the war game held at Schriever Air Force Base (a facility named for one of the Nation’s most visionary and accomplished space pioneers, General Bernard A. Schriever USAF [Ret.], who has long served on the Center for Security Policy’s National Security Advisory Council) seems to have been surprised by the lesson of this “first major war game to focus on space as the primary theater of operations”: Notwithstanding the keening of those who oppose the “militarization of space,” U.S. control of space — far from promoting global conflict — will actually help keep the peace. As one participant in the games concluded, “Space surprised us a bit. It turns out that space gives you a lot of options before you have to go into conflict.”

Space is Playing Field For Newest War Game; Air Force Exercise Shows Shift in Focus

By Thomas E. Ricks

The Washington Post, 29 January 2001

Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado — Last week, the possibility of war in space moved from pure science fiction created in Hollywood to realistic planning done here by the Air Force.

Spurred by the increased reliance of the U.S. military and the U.S. economy on satellites, and facing a new secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, who is more focused on space than his predecessors were, the Air Force’s Space Warfare Center here staged the military’s first major war game to focus on space as the primary theater of operations, rather than just a supporting arena for combat on earth. The scenario was growing tension between the United States and China in 2017.

“We never really play space,” Maj. Gen. William R. Looney III said. “The purpose of this game was to focus on how we really would act in space.”
The unprecedented game, involving 250 participants playing for five days on an isolated, super-secure base on the high plains east of Colorado Springs, was the most visible manifestation of a little-noticed but major shift in the armed forces over the last decade.

The Gulf War showed the U.S. military for the first time how important space could be to its combat operations — for communications, for the transmission of imagery and even for using global positioning satellites to tell ground troops where they are. The end of the Cold War allowed many satellites to be shifted from being used primarily for monitoring Soviet nuclear facilities to supporting the field operations of the U.S. military.

But military thinkers began to worry that this new reliance on space was creating new vulnerabilities. Suddenly, one of the best ways to disrupt a U.S. offensive against Iraq, for example, appeared to be jamming the satellites on which the Americans relied or blowing up the ground station back in the United States that controlled the satellites transmitting targeting data.

In response, the Air Force over the last year focused more on space — not just how to operate there, but how to protect operations and attack others in space. It established a new “space operations directorate” at Air Force headquarters, started a new Space Warfare School and activated two new units: the 76th Space Control Squadron, whose name is really a euphemism for fighting in space, and the 527th Space Aggressor Squadron, whose mission is to probe the U.S. military for new vulnerabilities.

All those steps come as Rumsfeld, who just finished leading a congressional commission on space and national security issues, takes over the top job at the Pentagon. Among other things, his commission’s report hinted that if the Air Force doesn’t get more serious about space, the Pentagon should consider establishing a new “Space Corps.”

So, perhaps to show that it is giving space its due, the Air Force held its first space war game here, and even invited reporters inside for a few hours. The players worked in a huge building behind two sets of security checkpoints, the second of which features two motion detectors, four surveillance cameras and a double-fenced gate with a “vehicle entrapment area.”

Yet officials were notably jumpy about discussing specifics with the reporters they brought in. “We’re doing something a little unprecedented, bringing press into the middle of a classified war game,” said Col. Robert E. Ryals, deputy commander of the Space Warfare Center here.

The U.S. military has a long tradition of conducting war games, not so much to predict whether a war will occur, but to figure out how to use new weapons, how to best organize the military and how political considerations might shape the conduct of war.

After World War II, Adm. Chester W. Nimitz commented that the war in the Pacific had been gamed so frequently at the Naval War College during the 1930s that “nothing that happened during the war was a surprise — absolutely nothing except the kamikaze tactics towards the end of the war. We had not visualized these.”

Last week’s space war game was set in 2017, with country “Red” massing its forces for a possible attack on its small neighbor, “Brown,” which then asked “Blue” for help. Officials described “Red” only as a “near-peer competitor,” but participants said Red was China and Blue was the United States. When asked directly about this, Lt. Col. Donald Miles, an Air Force spokesman, said, “We don’t talk about countries.”

Going with the conventional wisdom in the U.S. military, the game assumed that the heavens will be full of weapons by 2017. Both Red and Blue possessed microsatellites that can maneuver against other satellites, blocking their view, jamming their transmissions or even frying their electronics with radiation. Both also had ground-based lasers that could temporarily dazzle or permanently blind the optics of satellites.

The Blue side also had a National Missile Defense system, as well as reusable space planes that could be launched to quickly place new satellites in orbit or repair and refuel ones already there. Veiled comments made by some participants indicated that both sides also possessed the ability to attack each others’ computers — in military parlance, “offensive information warfare capabilities” — but no one would discuss those.

On Monday, as the game began, no conflict had occurred — or was even inevitable. As Red threatened its neighbor Brown, the first major question that Blue faced was whether to stage a “show of force” in space, akin to sending aircraft carriers to the waters off a regional hot spot.

On Day Two of the game, Blue decided to show force by launching more surveillance and communications satellites, making it harder for Red to stage an early knockout attack — that is, a successful Pearl Harbor.

Space gives the United States “more opportunities to demonstrate resolve” without using force, said Maj. Gen. Lance L. Smith, who played the role of commander of a Blue military task force. Asked whether that included taking over Red’s broadcast satellites, he said: “Those are the kind of options.”

On Day Three of the game, privately owned foreign satellites became a key issue. The Blue side asked the foreign firms not to provide services to Red. In response, Red tried to buy up all available services to constrain the U.S. military, which relies heavily on commercial satellites for many of its communications. Red offered to pay far more than is customary. Blue then said it would top Red’s offer. The eight people playing the foreign firms responded that they would honor their contracts, which left Blue worried and unhappy.
Robert Hegstrom, the game’s director, concluded that “dealing with third-party commercial providers is going to be a priority for CincSpace” — the U.S. commander for space operations.

Another lesson of the early friction between Blue and Red was that the Pentagon should prepare plans for what to do if it picks up indications that an adversary is getting ready to shoot blinding laser beams at commercial satellites operated by U.S. firms. Among other things, one official said, the government could tell the American companies to close the “shutters” over the optics on those satellites.

For four days, the two sides tiptoed up to the edge of war, but never actually fired a shot. They did come close: At one point, the Red military prepared a plan to fire dozens of nonnuclear missiles at U.S. military installations in Hawaii and Alaska. They calculated that those missiles would use up all the shots the United States had in its missile defense arsenal — and thereby leave the U.S. homeland open to being hit by subsequent missiles.

But the players found that “theater missile defense” — that is, coverage of a region, usually by U.S. Navy warships — bolstered deterrence in two ways, by making it harder for Red to attack deployed U.S. forces, and by encouraging U.S. allies to stay in the coalition, which would keep them under the protective umbrella of those ships.

Red also launched cyberattacks on U.S. computers, said Miles, the Air Force spokesman, who declined to provide details.

Officials were unusually tight-lipped about what actually happened in the game but were willing to describe some of their conclusions.

Not surprisingly, they found that many of the weapons on the Air Force’s drawing boards — missile defenses, anti-satellite lasers and “reusable space planes” — could have a useful role in deterring future wars by discouraging adversaries from thinking they can preemptively knock out the United States.

“With a robust force, we can absorb some losses before [the situation] becomes critical,” said Hegstrom, the game director. But, he said, with the “thin” space presence the United States will have in 2017 if current trends continue, “it becomes critical to respond almost immediately.” Thus a future president might be backed into escalating quickly, launching preemptive strikes against enemy weapons that could attack key U.S. satellites.

“Space surprised us a bit” in how much it might help boost deterrence of a future war, said retired Air Force Gen. Thomas S. Moorman Jr., who played part of the Blue team’s political leadership. “It turns out that space gives you a lot of options before you have to go to conflict.”

But generally the players came up with more questions than answers, both about how deterrence might work in the 21st century and how to employ the new weapons the Air Force is contemplating.

“We know what deterrence was with ‘mutually assured destruction’ during the Cold War,” said Brig. Gen. Douglas Richardson, commander of the Space Warfare Center. “But what is deterrence in information warfare?”

Likewise, said Maj. John Gentry, who played a staff member on the Blue force, the small attack satellites that both sides possessed are only barely understood. “A lot more thinking will have to go into the microsatellite, the concept of operations about how to use it,” he said.

“I hate to use the word ‘paradigm,’ but mind-set changes are happening here,” added Maj. George Vogen, who helped run the game. “This is the next step in seeing the growth of space into its own right.”

The American Mainstream’ Wants a U.S. Missile Defense; Guess That Makes its Opponents Extremists’

(Washington, D.C.): Yesterday, the respected polling firm McLaughlin & Associates sent a message that should be read loud and clear in the Bush White House, on Capitol Hill and in media and other elite salons across America: The vast majority of Americans — seven in ten — strongly support the development of a national missile defense system.

The poll, which sampled 1,000 likely voters, is remarkable, among other things, for the fact that even those who identified themselves as “liberal” responded “Yes” by a clear majority (58.1%) when asked “Should the United States develop a missile defense system to guard the Nation from missile attacks from Iraq, Iran, and other terrorist states?” In addition, some 63 percent of Democrats polled likewise responded in favor of missile defense, as did a full 70 percent of African-Americans and 72 percent of women.

As a press release issued by the polling firm put it:

The public sentiment to develop a missile defense system is strong across all voting segments. More than 4 in 5 Republicans want a missile defense system developed, and nearly two-thirds of Democrats and independents believe the United States should build a missile defense system. Women are slightly more in favor of developing a missile defense system than men. Majority support for this national antiterrorist missile defense system extends across every geographic area, every ideological group, every age group tested, and is equally solid among African-Americans and whites.

Confirmation of Previous Opinion Research

McLaughlin’s results broadly confirm the findings of earlier polls and focus groups concerning the missile defense issue. For example, a poll two years ago, commissioned by the Center for Security Policy, the Heritage Foundation, the Claremont Institute and the Family Research Council was revealing not only about the breadth of support for the deployment of missile defenses (as much as 86 percent of registered voters) but the intensity of that support: Fully forty-six percent believed it to be an “urgent priority.” Only eight percent of the electorate was then opposed to such a deployment.

The fact that this poll registered even larger majorities in favor of deploying missile defense than the McLaughlin survey may have been attributable to the fact that, in 1998, the respondents were first asked whether they thought the U.S. military could destroy a missile if one were launched at this country. Only 27% of those polled correctly answered that the U.S. military would not be able to destroy a ballistic missile fired at the United States. Seventy-four percent either believed that the U.S. military could destroy the ballistic missile (54%) or said they do not know (20%).

When told the unhappy truth, 78% of those queried said they were “surprised” (45%), “shocked and angry” (19%), or “skeptical” (14%) of government documents that indicate that the U.S. military cannot destroy even a single incoming missile. Only twenty-two percent said that they were “not surprised at all.”

Insofar as there has still not been a sustained, nationwide effort mounted to expose the public to the full extent of their vulnerability to missile attack, it is entirely possible that the McLaughlin data actually understates how strong the American people’s support for anti-missile defenses would actually be if so informed.

The Bottom Line

While George W. Bush has properly declared that his policy decisions will not be predicated upon polls, it can only encourage him as he prepares to act on his oft-stated commitment to deploy national missile defenses “as soon as possible” that he will enjoy broad-based, bipartisan support from the American people when he does so.

This will be particularly true if Mr. Bush chooses to proceed in a way that will appeal to his constituents’ native common-sense and sense of fiscal responsibility. That would be the effect of his announcement in the immediate future that we will begin in six-month’s time to adapt what the Nation has already bought and paid for — namely, the Navy’s fifty-five Aegis fleet air defense ships — to serve as the infrastructure for a missile defense, first for our forces and allies overseas and, “as soon as possible,” for the American people and homeland as well.

At a minimum, the President, his advisors and the rest of us should take note of one unmistakable fact: It is the opponents of such a deployment of missile defenses — not the Administration and its allies — who are clearly “out of the mainstream” or, in the political vernacular of the day, “extremists.”

Taking the Rumsfeld Effect’1 to Europe

(Washington, D.C.): Short of putting a sign outside the Pentagon saying “Under New Management,” it is hard to imagine a more dramatic indication of the change of leadership at the Defense Department than Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s first response at his first press conference on Friday.

The question came from Reuter’s Charlie Aldinger, the dean of the DoD press corps: “During your confirmation hearings, you…appeared to deride the ABM Treaty as ancient history. Are you and the United States ready to scrap that treaty, even if it means sour ties with the allies?”

Changed Circumstances

Secretary Rumsfeld answered: “I don’t think I was disparaging of the treaty. I think I compared it as being as ancient as I am….It was a long time ago that that treaty was fashioned. Technologies were notably different, the circumstances in the world were notably different. The Soviet Union, our partner in that treaty, doesn’t exist anymore. The focus that we necessarily had during the Cold War was on attempting to have a stable situation, given two nations with overwhelming nuclear capabilities. And all of that has changed.

“We’re in a very different world. The Soviet Union is gone. The principal threats facing the United States are not the fear of a strategic nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. And it strikes me that we should accept the treaty in that sense. And I…personally believe it [ought] not to inhibit a country, a president, an administration, a nation, from fashioning offensive and defensive capabilities that will provide for our security in a notably different national security environment.

“The president has not been ambiguous about this. He says he intends to deploy a missile defense capability for the country. He has concluded that it is not in our country’s interest to perpetuate vulnerability. And the Russians know, they have to know, that the kinds of capabilities that are being discussed are not capabilities that threaten them in any way. They also have to know, if they look around the globe, that there are other threats; that there are nations with increasingly capable weapons that, because of the proliferation of technologies, are posing threats not just to the United States, but to other countries in Europe and to, ultimately, Russia.

“So I think it’s something that’s manageable. I don’t know quite how it will be managed. The National Security Council will be addressing these questions in the period ahead, and certainly the treaty itself is an issue that Secretary Powell and the president and all of us will be discussing.”

This statement bespeaks not only a level of maturity and sobriety about national security that is enormously refreshing, as well as urgently needed at this juncture. It also makes clear the seriousness of purpose with which President Bush and his national security team are pursuing the deployment of ballistic missile defenses.

The Most Important Werkunde Meeting in a Generation

Secretary Rumsfeld’s comments come as he prepares to travel to Europe this week for the annual defense conclave in Munich known as Werkunde. This may be the most important of these meetings since 1983, when the NATO alliance was confronting strenuous opposition from the last KGB thug to run the Kremlin — Yuri Andropov — to the American-underwritten plan to deploy Pershing II and Ground-Launched Cruise Missiles in five West European countries.

Now, as then, the United States must provide leadership, as well the wherewithal, to help its allies meet their defense requirements and resist the combination of sticks and carrots the Russians are wielding to block the deployment of American missile defenses. Fortunately, in Donald Rumsfeld, the Nation has a man who can persuasively convey to U.S. allies that the Bush Administration’s commitment is to provide anti-missile protection to their people and territory, as well as our own. He can describe for them how this country intends promptly to deploy missile defenses in places like the Mediterranean aboard our Aegis fleet air defense ships, offering near-term protection from the emerging capabilities of countries like Libya, Iran and Iraq to deliver weapons of mass destruction to European soil via long-range ballistic missiles.

Surely some in the left-wing governments that run Europe today will continue to cavil against such a “destabilizing” initiative. But most will find it untenable to denounce the United States for coming once again to the aid of her allies when their security is threatened. A significant straw in the wind in this regard was to be found in an editorial published on January 15 by Britain’s left-of-center newspaper The Independent. It said, in part: “Fortunately for us, the Americans could only protect themselves by protecting us….The Americans may receive little gratitude for national missile defense, but yet again, they will be making a large and disinterested financial sacrifice in the cause of world peace.”

Moscow Rules

Make no mistake, the Kremlin will try to succeed in 2001 where it failed two decades ago. It will squeeze our allies in the hope of causing the new American administration to make the fatal mistake of delaying the deployment of missile defenses. Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin railed against such a deployment, causing visiting NATO Secretary General George Robertson to wring his hands and assure his host that the alliance would not let the United States do something rash.

Such fawning is all the more reprehensible in light of a reality that Putin has chosen not to acknowledge – – and that NATO and Washington have, to date, been unwilling to address: The former Soviet Union has a deployed territorial anti-ballistic missile system of its own, constructed in violation of the very ABM Treaty to which Mr. Putin and his friends aver such loyalty. As former career intelligence officer William Lee has documented, the Russian system includes not only a limited site defense around Moscow but a network of radars and some 10,000 surface-to-air missiles capable of providing considerable protection nationwide. It is undergoing further modernization even now with the construction of a new missile warning and tracking radar in Belarus. (I treat this important subject at somewhat greater length in an article on missile defense featured in the current edition of Commentary Magazine.)

The Bottom Line

For all these reasons, the new Pentagon management — and the Bush Administration more generally — must seize the day. The stakes for the West associated with once again overcoming Kremlin opposition and providing for the common defense are every bit as high as they were in the early 1980s. Now, as then, Russia will get over it once the decision is taken and the deployment begun. There is no time to waste in getting those steps accomplished.



1 The “Rumsfeld effect” is a term first coined by Robert Kagan in an op.ed. article published in the Washington Post on 19 January to describe the therapeutic effect Secretary Rumsfeld’s appointment and directness about missile defense has already begun to have in shifting European attitudes towards the inevitability, and even the desirability, of deploying anti-missile systems.

See, the Center’s Decision Brief entitled, The ‘Rumsfeld Effect’: Leadership on Missile Defense (No.01-D08, 19 January 2001).

Safire makes the case for a missile defense for allies and US

In yesterday’s New York Times, syndicated columnist William Safire addressed with characteristic lucidity the folly of the left-wing governments now running virtually every Western European nation who are bent on forging a separate defense "identity." In other words, they are seeking ways to diminish, if not actually to eliminate, the Transatlantic security pillar and its principal instrument, NATO.

The perils of this stratagem are evident amidst reports that the former leftist Committee on Nuclear Disarmament agitator turned British Minister of Defense turned NATO Secretary General, George Robertson, is in Moscow seeking to thaw chilly relations with Russian president Vladimir Putin by promising to "go much farther in [NATO’s] cooperation" if the Kremlin is willing to do so, as well.

In his column, Mr. Safire ridicules the European Rapid Reaction Force (EERF — "barkingly pronounced erf!") and offers a different approach, one that "revives the original idea behind NATO. American power — including the nuclear umbrella — was extended across the Atlantic to protect our European allies, as their forces joined in mutual defense."

In planning to cope with the threat sure to come from Iraq, Iran or some well-financed terrorist group, an American-built missile defense system should again be assisted by, and in return protect, our allies. Therefore, we should not limit ourselves to N.M.D., a national missile defense. We should test and deploy an A.M.D., an allied missile defense, extending its reach to allies endangered by blackmailers with deliverable weapons of mass destruction.

Fortunately, the most cost-effective, near-term and flexible approach to missile defense would be to adapt the U.S. Navy’s Aegis fleet air defense system so as to give it the capability to shoot down as quickly as possible missiles aimed at U.S. forces and allies overseas and Americans here at home. It can only be hoped that President Bush will commit the Nation to such a course of action in the very near future and — by so doing, that he will revitalize not only American security, but the common defense of freedom loving peoples everywhere.

 

NATO or ERRF?

By William Safire

The New York Times, 25 January 2001

London — Believers in a united European superpower have taken their vision beyond the realm of economic union. Led by French chauvinists and Brussels bureaucrats, they now espouse a military alliance without the United States, called the European Rapid Reaction Force — ERRF, barkingly pronounced erf!

The non-American force would not supplant the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the go-it-alone crowd in Europe insists. With the old Soviet threat gone, erf! would "rebalance" the Atlantic Alliance by taking regional responsibility for strictly local interventions.

This Euro-isolationism delights American isolationists. What are we doing in the Balkans anyway? our America-firsters ask. Let Europeans take care of Europe; Lafayette, we are outta here.

One European leader not yet in power is resisting this slow dissolution of the alliance. In a Churchillian speech defending the U.S.-European strategic relationship, William Hague, the Conservative challenger to Tony Blair’s "third way" government of Britain, said: "Conservatives wanted cooperation inside NATO, to strengthen NATO. What we are getting is duplication outside NATO, to weaken NATO."

President Bush inherits a wishy- washy U.S. response to Euro-isolationism. Bill Clinton’s "three D’s" accepted erf! provided it did not decouple Europe from NATO, did not duplicate forces, and did not discriminate against Turkey, the NATO member outside the European Union. That was strategic sophistry: erf! is designed to do all three.

Pollsters here give the bold, bald Hague no chance of ousting Labor in elections this spring. Despite the resignation of Blair’s chief political guru yesterday after a passport-influencing episode was revealed, the most that the small rightist minority is said to hope for is a gain of 80 seats in the lopsided Parliament.

The agile Blair, Clinton’s buddy, is now pulling out all the stops to get a pre-election photo op with Bush. Because meddling in the elections of democratic allies is not good policy, I hope our new president prudently waits to make a post- election date to reassert our special relationship with whomever the British choose as their prime minister.

That’s also because Hague understands America’s need for a missile defense against rogue-state blackmail. Although Blair, like many Europeans, nibbles his nails about an American shield lest it be seen as an invitation to a new arms race, Hague says, "I believe Britain should cooperate with the United States to the best of our ability as it develops and builds its weapons shield."

How? In Fylingdales, among the black-faced sheep of northern Yorkshire, sits a radar station built by the U.S. If expanded, it could well become an outpost much needed to track missiles on their way to North America and to plot their interception.

The Fylingdales upgrade is resisted because any nation that cooperates with U.S. missile defense might itself become a terrorist target. For that reason, Hague wishes that the Bush administration would go beyond "a purely national missile shield." Instead, "the aim should surely be a global defense shield to which Britain could contribute its early warning radars as well as much-needed political and diplomatic support."

This revives the original idea behind NATO. American power — including the nuclear umbrella — was extended across the Atlantic to protect our European allies, as their forces joined in mutual defense. In planning to cope with the threat sure to come from Iraq, Iran or some well- financed terrorist group, an American-built missile defense system should again be assisted by, and in return protect, our allies.

Therefore, we should not limit ourselves to N.M.D., a national missile defense. We should test and deploy an A.M.D., an allied missile defense, extending its reach to allies endangered by blackmailers with deliverable weapons of mass destruction.

That will be costly; only the superpower can afford it. Tests will fail and fail and ultimately succeed; only the superpower’s technology can achieve it.

The same idea that protected the free world from Communist domination for a half-century can protect the world from future terrorist intimidation. That idea is not erf! or multi- isolationism or a go-it-alone shield. It is the idea of collective security exemplified by NATO and led, as before, by a powerfully safe America.

The Osprey as Phoenix

(Washington, D.C.): Seems like a no-brainer. The new Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, is under orders to cut some big military procurement programs so as to “transform the military” on the (relatively) cheap. Everybody from the General Accounting Office to “60 Minutes” to the Pentagon’s own testing czar have identified an obvious choice for cancellation: the V-22 Osprey. Vice President Dick Cheney’s past opposition to the Osprey; its recent, fatal crashes, substantial price tag and technical complexity; and, most recently, allegations that Marine Corps personnel covered up its maintenance problems — all appear to validate the argument that this is a weapon system the armed services can live without.

There is only one problem with this emerging conventional wisdom. It’s wrong.

The Corps Requires the Osprey

Although 60 Minutes’ powerful assault on the V-22 program — with its heart-rending appeals from those who lost Marines in the latest Osprey crashes — made the point dismissively, the Corps is right when it says the missions of the future require the application of this aircraft’s revolutionary tilt-rotor technology. In fact, successive studies by the Pentagon and by outside experts (including the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory) conducted over the past eighteen years have confirmed again and again that no combination of traditional helicopters offers as much combat performance, mission flexibility and survivability at a lower cost than this aircraft which can take-off and land vertically, but convert in-flight to operate like a conventional plane.

The fact is that the Marines will have to purchase something to provide for the future mobility of their air assault forces and the associated equipment. The existing fleet of CH-53 and CH-46 helicopters is rapidly obsolescing and has been forced to stand-down for safety reasons at various times in recent years.

Indeed, problems associated with keeping sophisticated weaponry on-line — like those said to be afflicting the V-22 and allegedly being suppressed — are, unfortunately, affecting not only the Corps’ other aviation assets. The cumulative effect of inadequate funding for spare parts and maintenance and the wearing-out of so much of the Pentagon’s inventory is part of the Clinton legacy that Messrs. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are going to have to work hard and invest massively to overcome.

No Substitutes are Acceptable

While the manufacturer of the Blackhawk UH-60 helicopters have been trying to kill the Osprey for years with assurances that their product can supplant it for less cost, the siren’s seductive song is deceptive. To make an apples-to-apples comparison, the Blackhawks would have to be modified to carry larger payloads and many more would have to be purchased. In addition, a new buy of the heavier lift CH-53 helicopters would be required to get comparable capabilities to the planned V-22-only fleet. Since the CH-53 is no longer in production, there would be considerable delays in taking delivery and large costs associated with restarting the line — especially if, as seems certain, there would have to be redesigns and requalification of suppliers. Additional high costs associated with maintaining the existing fleet of Marine helicopters for a still-longer period would, accordingly, have to be factored into the equation.

Then there are more intangible, but no-less-real operational considerations. Studies have shown that the V-22’s significantly longer range and faster speed may contribute decisively to success on the battlefield. Not least, this can mean losses avoided in a currency we hold even more dear than dollars — the lives of our troops as they fight the Nation’s wars.

Unlike the alternatives, the Osprey was designed from the ground up to operate in nuclear, chemical or biological weapons-contaminated environments. As going into harm’s way in the future may well require fighting in such difficult conditions, the armed forces must have the best “NBC” protection possible.

The V-22 has also been designed to be self-deployable — a huge, albeit difficult to quantify, contribution to the flexibility and rapidity with which the United States can respond to far-flung crises without tying up already over-committed and rapidly aging transport aircraft. Various scenarios that have been modeled that suggest the difference can between a timely intervention that makes possible a decisive and low- cost victory on the battlefield, on the one hand, and a tardy and insufficient engagement that can incur needless tactical setbacks and human tolls on the other.

These qualities mean that once the Marines have perfected the Osprey, the other armed services are sure to purchase tilt-rotor aircraft in significant quantities. The Air Force is already committed to acquire a derivative of the V-22 to support the Nation’s special operations units. In due course, search-and-rescue, combat medevac and the Army’s heliborne forces will likely find the enhanced performance made possible by tilt-rotor technology to be irresistible, with a possibly profound and positive impact on the economies of scale and unit price of each plane. Ditto the very sizeable potential for foreign military sales.

The Peace Dividend’

There is, however, another powerful argument for the United States to support the Marines in their determined effort to capitalize on the nearly twenty-year-long investment in the V-22 — an argument that neither 60 Minutes, nor the GAO nor the other critics have addressed: Tilt-rotor technology will not only revolutionize the art of war. It promises to transform civil aviation in this country as well.

At a time when the American people are reeling from the effects of grid-locked airports with little likelihood of additional construction of long-runway facilities to ease the congestion, commercial spin-offs of the V-22 offer the promise of cost-effective and convenient air transport for millions of our countrymen. The export potential of such aircraft is possibly huge as well with keen interest in the civil tilt-rotor being expressed in densely populated countries like Japan, where real estate and rapid transit are at a premium. These considerations make decisions about the future of the V-22 truly national ones; the Marines should be extolled — not criticized — for their willingness to make the investment upon which we all stand to capitalize.

The Bottom Line

The V-22 was named for the Osprey for their shared and extraordinary aerodynamic abilities. Given the compelling reasons for fulfilling this aircraft’s promise that have repeatedly overcome the program’s technical challenges and previous efforts to terminate it, the tilt-rotor it might more appropriately be named for another creature — the Phoenix. Like that mythical beast, the V-22 can — and must be allowed to — rise again.

Now Hear This: The Commandant Speaks Out on the V-22

(Washington, D.C.): On last night’s edition of PBS’ “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” the Commandant of the Marine Corps, General James L. Jones, responded publicly to criticism of the Corp’s revolutionary V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft, known as the Osprey. The General forcefully defended the Osprey as a proven technology, of inestimable value to the military and a potentially huge “peace dividend” for the Nation as a whole when tilt-rotor technology’s civil applications are fully exploited.

The qualities of leadership, courage, integrity and candor that were recognized when General Jones received the Center for Security Policy’s 1999 Keeper of the Flame Award were much in evidence in this interview with Ray Suarez. Highlights include the following:

Interview with Gen. James L. Jones

The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, 22 January 2001

…The Osprey is, first of all, not a new technology. This particular airplane has been flying for over 11 years. The V-style concept goes back to almost 1953 with the XV-3 and more recently its precursor, the XV-15 back to 1977.

So we have many years of data on this kind of technology. Most of the difficulties that have been associated with the program over the 11 years that this type of airplane has been flying have been not related to the tilt-rotor technology itself but other ancillary events that have caused mishaps. Statistically it is within the norms of other new-type airplanes that come on line, and I won’t bore you with those details.

But in the experimental phases, there are tragically accidents that happen. And in the operational phase, we continue with every aircraft we bring in to our inventory to experiment, and we learn more as we go along. That doesn’t make it a test model flown by test pilots in the production phase.

So simply put, the tilt rotor technology is not nearly as new as it is being portrayed. So far, the accidents that have happened are not necessarily linked to tilt rotor technology but other problems that can be and have been resolved.

* * *

…I think that any commander and anyone in charge of the operational tests and evaluation phase of particularly transport airplanes wants to make sure that the aircraft is as safe as possible before you put troops in it.

* * *

It’s very disturbing to hear [about allegations that maintenance data has been falsified.] Obviously upon hearing of it, we ordered the Inspector General down to investigate and either substantiate or [disprove] the allegations. It is particularly disturbing in an organization like the United States Marine Corps, which prides itself on integrity and truthfulness. There is no program that I know of that would justify anyone to make false statements concerning readiness of a program. This is peacetime. We don’t have to do that.

The most important thing is the safety of our Marines. Whether it’s in the air, on land or at sea, that is job one for any commander. So this will be looked at appropriately and we’ll come to the conclusions that we have to draw from this lesson — including looking at ourselves to see what it is that might cause our commanders to feel or a commander to feel that he would have to do something like that.

* * *

We will investigate this not in limited fashion but in an unlimited fashion to make sure that all throughout the chain of command people have acted properly, and I’m confident that we’ll do a very thorough investigation that will be fully open and vetted in the public domain because of the people’s right to know.

* * *

This airplane has been looked at in over seven Cost and Operational Effectiveness Analyses since its inception. It has been studied. It has been delayed. It has even been canceled, but each time, it has survived the critics because of its enormous potential — a potential that really transcends the military community and extends, in my judgment, into the commercial sector as well.

When you think of the potential benefits to our industrial base by being able to market this kind of technology, it’s going to be, I think, a very big addition to reducing our crowded airways over our airports and the like.

The military application though is beyond question: Twice as fast, three times the payload, five times the range of any comparable helicopter. This enables not only Marines but members of the special operation forces and our Navy — who are also buyers in this program — to do things that we’ve never been able to do in a much more unlimited way against the threat and [that we will] face in the future.

So, as someone who is an advocate for safety and preserving the lives and the risk we subject our troops to, to have a technologically advanced capability to do this is exactly what we should do — but not simply because it’s a program that we have fallen in love with.

In 1954, the Department of Defense had over 770 airplane accidents. In the year 2000, it had 24. That’s what technology can do for you. But yet over those 770 accidents, all were regretted and all were unforeseen and on airplanes that we thought were safe, and humans did their best to make safe.

But the fact is that flying still has a certain amount of risk to it. It takes heroes to do it. We mourn their losses. We grieve for their families, but nonetheless, in the final analysis we have to do what’s best for our troops, what’s best for our military and what’s the safest thing that we can send our troops in harm’s way [in] if they have to go there and bring them back alive.

* * *

I’m confident in the technology. I’m confident in the research that’s gone into it. I’m confident in the people that advise me with regard to the potential of this airplane, but we are not going to do anything reckless. We are not going to expose our pilots or our crew chiefs or our crew members or our Marines unnecessarily.

If at the end of the evaluation period not only the IG, but the accident report and more importantly I think the blue ribbon panel that Secretary Cohen convened, we will take a measured look — and I’m reasonably confident that this technology is going to be a boon to our military. It will be a boon to our industrial base and will bring a great new concept into aviation.

The Rumsfeld Effect’: Leadership on Missile Defense

(Washington, D.C.): A few years back, the conventional wisdom had it that the Soviet Union was an immutable fact of life, that U.S. security could only be obtained through negotiated arms control agreements with the Kremlin and that the alternative to acceding to the lowest-common-denominator consensus among America’s allies was isolationism. Today, many of those who held such views assert with equal adamance that the United States is legally prohibited from building missile defenses without Russia’s permission and that neither Moscow — nor, for that matter, Beijing and allied capitals — will ever agree to such a deployment.

Just as the first set of assertions have been shown to be false, the current conventional wisdom is becoming ever more palpably wrong. In the attached, excellent column published in today’s Washington Post, Robert Kagan observes the already discernable impact of President-elect Bush’s appointment of Donald Rumsfeld to run the Pentagon once again:

Call it the “Rumsfeld effect.” Bush’s pick for secretary of defense — described in European headlines as a “hawkish missile advocate” — has gone a long way toward convincing the Europeans that Bush, unlike Clinton, is serious about going forward with an ambitious missile shield. Missile defense hard-liners and astute American diplomats have long argued that creating an aura of inevitability is the key to winning European and eventually Russian acquiescence in a program they now think they hate. As Rumsfeld puts it, “once the Russians understand that the United States is serious about this and intends to deploy…they will find a way…to accept that reality.”

Cases in Point

By way of evidence of the “Rumsfeld effect,” Mr. Kagan points to an important speech on the future and durability of the “U.S.-European strategic relationship” given on 12 January by William Hague MP, the leader of Britain’s Conservative Party. Mr. Hague said, in part:

The new U.S. administration is firm about…the early deployment of a missile shield. I welcome the appointment of Donald Rumsfeld, who has done more than anyone to heighten public awareness of missile proliferation, as Secretary of Defense. It is a signal of the importance that the President-elect attaches to early deployment. I think the United States should be supported in pushing forward this project and in pursuing the necessary research.

Further evidence of the tectonic shifts the new American leadership is causing on the missile defense front can be found in the left-wing British newspaper, The Independent, which made the following, for-it-extraordinary statement in an editorial published on Monday: “Fortunately for us, the Americans could only protect themselves by protecting us….The Americans may receive little gratitude for national missile defense, but yet again, they will be making a large and disinterested financial sacrifice in the cause of world peace.” (Emphasis added.)

If even the British left is swinging at anchor before the new Administration actually takes office, it is predictable that — if the Bush-Cheney team speaks with one voice along Secretary Rumsfeld’s lines and moves out smartly to begin deployment of the first components of missile defenses at the earliest possible time — Russia and China will have little choice but to accommodate themselves to the fact of American determination, as well.

It behooves the new President, therefore, to eliminate any possibility of confusion on this score. One place to start is by ensuring that the Rumsfeld effect is maximized by confirming that responsibility for missile defense rests where it belongs, with the Pentagon. This would mean that it is not, in fact, “an assignment of the Secretary of State” — a formulation Mr. Bush hopefully did not mean to use in a New York Times interview published last Sunday. This is all the more important insofar as his Secretary of State-designate, General Colin Powell sent signals during his Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing yesterday that could embolden opponents of missile defenses to believe that redoubled criticism in places like China and Europe could have the effect of delaying, if not scrubbing, U.S. deployments of NMD.1

The Bottom Line

President Bush’s inaugural address provides an opportune — and appropriate — chance to affirm the course the new Administration will follow, both in terms of policy and programs (notably, an accelerated deployment of anti-missile systems at sea aboard the Navy’s existing Aegis ships) to provide effective missile defenses to the American people as soon as technologically possible, as the law of the land requires. Draft speech language toward this end has been suggested by the Center’s President, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., in a memo to President Bush that appeared in National Review Online this week (see the attached).



1 For example, in his confirmation hearing yesterday, Gen. Powell emphasized the need to “persuade our Chinese interlocutors that this [NMD] system is not intended, nor does it have the capacity…to destroy their deterrent force.” To our allies who are opposed to the NMD, Powell recommended to the Senate that “we have to do a better job of explaining to them and communicating to them how it will all fit together.”