Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

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The Defense That Does not Defend: More problems for national missile defense

I have a new article up over a the mothership on the latest setback for the Ground Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system. Here’s how it starts:

America’s troubled national ballistic missile defense system just found more trouble.

For the first time, the Pentagon’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, Dr. Michael Gilmore, has determined that this system, known as Ground Based Midcourse Defense (GMD), may be too flawed to save.

In his Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 report to Congress, Dr. Gilmore states that the design of the two types of “kill vehicles” that sit atop our 30 long-range interceptors in Alaska and California are of questionable “robustness” and that the Pentagon should consider redesigning them. Translation: the system as currently configured – which has cost the American taxpayer roughly $40 billion – can’t be relied upon to perform its intended mission of protecting the U.S. homeland against even rudimentary long-range missiles launched from North Korea or Iran.

Dr. Gilmore’s report is but the latest in a long list of setbacks for the GMD system, all of which cast serious doubts over the wisdom of the Pentagon’s plan to spend $1 billion to deploy 14 additional ground based interceptors in Alaska with the existing flawed kill vehicles – to say nothing about building a third site for the system in the eastern half of the country, as proposed by some Republicans in Congress.

Click here to read the whole piece.

Center Releases In-Depth Study of the Conference Version of the FY2013 NDAA

“While the NDAA covers a broad spectrum of national security issues, the House version raised some serious concern for the future of nuclear weapons and non-proliferation programs,” said John Isaacs, Executive Director of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. “Fortunately, the conferees watered down or eliminated many of the objectionable nuclear provisions including limitations on the implementation of the New START treaty.”

Strategy, Not Cold War Ideology, Should Guide Conferees on Defense Bill

“The Republican leadership seems stuck in the Cold War, authorizing hundreds of million on nuclear weapons and missile defense programs that military leaders did not request,” said Reif. “Pentagon spending should be driven by strategic need and affordability.”

Don’t blame Moscow

On July 12, the US State Department released a major annual report on arms control compliance that has riled up nuclear weapons hawks. In its annual “Report on Adherence to and Compliance With Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments,” the Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance assessed whether numerous countries complied with treaty obligations in 2012. Most of the media attention, though, has been on what the report says (and doesn’t say) about Russia. Since the report came out, Republican members of Congress and their supporters have repeatedly accused Moscow of violating arms control treaties, and the State Department of ignoring the problem.