With the 2012 election looming, it is not surprising that the bulk of President Obama’s State of the Union address was focused on the U.S. economy and job creation. But the focus on domestic issues was underscored by a strong defense of the President’s record on foreign policy, in particular his decision to order the mission that led to the death of Osama bin Laden.

Apart from the killing of bin Laden, the only foreign policy issue that merited its own paragraph was Iran.

President Obama’s critics have accused him of being weak on Iran. During the Republican debate on Monday night, Rick Santorum even went so far as to say that, “Obama’s Iran policy has been a colossal failure.”

The President countered this criticism on Tuesday, saying, “Let there be no doubt: America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal.”

He then added a vitally important caveat, “But a peaceful resolution is still possible, and far better, and if Iran changes course and meets its obligations, it can rejoin the community of nations.”

Although Obama is not ruling out the possibility of a military strike, at least rhetorically, it is clear that he will not consider it until all other options have definitively failed. Indeed, many in Washington, both in and out of government, have highlighted the dangers of military action in Iran. In fact, several Iran experts argue that that a military strike in Iran will virtually guarantee that Iran continues to pursue, and eventually obtains, nuclear weapons.

And it is not only the civilians in Washington who believe that military action in Iran would be detrimental to regional and global security. In a speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Admiral Mike Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, argued for greater engagement with Iran, saying, “We haven’t had a connection with Iran since 1979. Even in the darkest days…of the Cold War we had links to the Soviet Union. We are not talking to Iran so we don’t understand each other.”

For an excellent primer on how a diplomatic solution to the Iran nuclear challenge might be achieved, see Arms Control Association analyst Peter Crail’s important analysis here.

Currently, Obama’s Iran policy has been dominated by economic sanctions. The United States-led multilateral sanctions effort has been joined by many other key nations, including Russia and China. And on Monday, the European Union tightened its existing sanctions against Iran, just in time for the State of the Union.

Thanks in part to these sanctions, Iran has become increasingly isolated over the past year.  In the words of Colin Kahl, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East:

One year after the Egyptian revolution began, Khamenei’s hopes — and Western analysts’ fears — have not materialized, and are not likely to. Although it has been fashionable to describe Iran’s growing power in the Middle East, actual events suggest the opposite. Iran’s economy is reeling under sanctions, and the regime’s nuclear activities and saber-rattling increasingly mark it as a pariah state. And as the Arab Spring marches on, Iran will find itself falling further behind.

Whether this will still be the case a year from now remains to be seen. Sanctions alone are unlikely to force Iran to rethink its nuclear program. It’s up to the administration to ensure that economic pressure is paired with the aggressive pursuit of a diplomatic solution.  

Those seeking further details on changes in the Pentagon budget received some satisfaction today in a briefing delivered by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey.

Secretary Panetta revealed that the budget, expected to be released in full detail on February 13, will contain $525 billion in base spending for fiscal 2013.  This excludes funding for the wars as well as nuclear-related activities at the Department of Energy, and represents a $6 billion decrease from the fiscal 2012 base budget approved by Congress.  Congress’ final number for fiscal 2012 was rolled back by $22 billion from the administration’s original proposal in order to comply with the Budget Control Act.  

In addition, the Pentagon will request $88.4 billion in funding for the wars overseas, approximately $27 billion less than fiscal 2012 due to the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

The Pentagon’s stated “hope and plan,” according to Secretary Panetta, is to grow the base budget (PDF) to $567 billion by fiscal 2017.  Although the budget would decrease slightly this year, 2.3 percent in real (inflation-adjusted) terms, it would see a real increase of about a half a percent over the remainder of the next five years.

The Pentagon has taken a hard look at its priorities and scaled back some of its most pie-in-the-sky projects, but its actions have not impacted the country’s ability to fight a war.  “This budget is a first step — it’s a down payment — as we transition from an emphasis on today’s wars to preparing for future challenges,” said Dempsey, “This budget does not lead to a military in decline.”

In fact, the Pentagon document, titled “Defense Budget Priorities and Choices,” notes that “Even with these reductions, the Army and Marine Corps will be larger than they were in 2001.”

If anything, the debt debate has provided the Pentagon with a long overdue opportunity to reexamine its priorities and reevaluate its strategy in light of ongoing and realistic threats.  The last Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) punted on the subject, recommending that the Pentagon choose to prepare for everything short of a zombie invasion.

The Pentagon’s new strategic guidance, released January 5, and corresponding budget request convey a Pentagon decision process guided by strategy, effectively shifting the focus away from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan toward the threats of the future.

The Pentagon will shift its geographic focus toward the Asia Pacific region while maintaining an influence in the Middle East.  Changes include a two year delay for the Ohio-class replacement strategic nuclear weapons submarine and slowed procurement of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.  No changes were made to the Pentagon’s plan to build a next generation long-range bomber.

The Army’s end strength would be reduced to 490,000 from a post-9/11 peak of approximately 570,000 in 2010, and the Marine Corps’ to 182,000 from a peak of approximately 202,000.  In addition, the President will request that Congress authorize use of the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process to identify savings from closing and consolidated bases that might be reinvested in high priority missions at the Department of Defense.

Although at this point the Pentagon has chosen to protect the nuclear triad – land-based, sea-based and air launched nuclear weapons — the document notes that “An ongoing White House review of nuclear deterrence will address the potential for maintaining our deterrent with a different nuclear force.”

Current Defense Department proposals do not account for the possibility of budget sequestration that Congress agreed to last year, which would impose an additional $500 billion cut beginning in January 2013 if Congress does not act.  While most can agree that across-the-board sequestration cuts would not be desirable, an additional $500 billion cut would not be disastrous in itself.

I recently wrote an analysis on the future of the proposed life extension program for the B61 gravity bomb.

It argues, “Congress provided the full $233 million NNSA requested for the B61 life extension program in FY 2012. However, when you read the fine print, it is less clear how Congress will respond to future funding requests. According to the Conference Report for H.R. 2055, the legislation which funds the government for FY 2012, including NNSA, Congress withheld $134 million until “NNSA submits to the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations the outcome of the Phase 6.2/2A design definition and cost study.

The results of this study, as well as other stringent reporting requirements mandated by Congress, are likely to present insurmountable hurdles to NNSA’s plan to move forward with the most ambitious option for the B61 LEP. The current budget environment is no doubt also a key driver of the need to reevalutate the objectives of the program, but a rethinking of the goals of the planned refurbishment would be necessary even in better economic times.”

You can read the entire piece here.

UPDATE (1/29): Portions of this post have been revised to add additional detail and clarity.

Regular readers of the blog will remember that last October we flagged the following rosy proclamation from Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta about U.S. missile defenses: “But you know, we really do have a very remarkable defense system set up to deal with that challenge [i.e. the missile threat to the U.S. homeland].” [emphasis mine.]

Two new reports suggest Panetta ought to be a little less effusive in his praise.  The reports demonstrate that the currently deployed missile defense systems are still unable to reliably intercept and destroy incoming enemy warheads…

Discrimination Problem Remains Unsolved

Center Chairman Lt. Gen. Robert Gard (USA, ret.) has a new article up over at the mothership which summarizes a recent Defense Science Board report titled “Science and Technology Issues of Early Intercept Ballistic Missile Defense Feasibility”.

Early intercept refers to destroying a ballistic missile in the early stage of its flight but after the initial boost phase, which the Pentagon defined for the Defense Science Board as “that interval between thrust termination to final deployment of re-entry vehicles and countermeasures”.

The task force also considered a different kind of “early intercept”, namely the issues related to using interceptors based in Europe to get an “early” shot at intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) heading to the U.S. (though not necessarily before the missiles could release their decoys and countermeasures).  The fourth phase of the phased adaptive approach is slated to provide such a capability against limited ICBM threats from Iran.

We first noted the existence of the report last summer, when an interim version was briefed to Congress, prompting some Republicans to allege that the Obama administration is leaving the U.S. defenseless against ballistic missile attack (as if the George W. Bush administration’s plan would have been more effective). Though the title of the report gives that impression that it is only about early intercept, the Defense Science Board presents a number of scathing conclusions about the condition of the phased adaptive approach overall. Below is a summary of the reports main findings (direct quotes from the report are italicized):

• “EI per se is not a particularly useful goal or protocol for design of a regional BMD system.” In this case other traditional objectives such as confirming the destruction of a target with a single intercept and the key enablers listed below are far more useful than early intercept.
• “In a homeland defense context, there is a significant potential cost and effectiveness advantage of achieving an intercept by forward-based regional assets prior to having to commit rearward homeland protection assets such as GBIs.” The idea here would be to give longer-range interceptors based in Europe as part of the phased adaptive approach a first shot at an incoming missile targeted at the U.S. before having to launch long-range ground based interceptors in Alaska and California.
• “Intercept prior to the potential deployment of multiple warheads or penetration aids – the principal reason often cited for EI – requires Herculean effort and is not realistically achievable, even under the most optimistic set of deployment, sensor capability, and missile technology assumptions.” According to the Defense Science Board, intercept must occur within 100 seconds after the target missile has finished burning its boosters in order to reliably prevent the early release of decoys or countermeasures.
• The effectiveness of the phased adaptive approach in defending Europe and the U.S. hinges less on early intercept and more on the development of key enablers such as faster interceptors, better radars, adequate command and control, and the ability to discriminate (in space) the target warhead from other pieces of the offensive missile complex, including rocket bodies, miscellaneous hardware, and intentional countermeasures.  The Pentagon is maturing these capabilities, but none are yet where they need to be for an effective real world defense. For example, faster missiles are being developed for the later stages of the phased adaptive approach (though it remains to be seen if the fastest interceptors will be fast enough). The same goes for the radars, which are far from up to snuff. Perhaps most importantly, effective discrimination has yet to be achieved.
• “Pursuit of the current plans for regional ballistic missile defense, such as envisioned in the PAA [phased adaptive approach], if pursued to completion, will provide an effective regional defense capability – those plans are technically feasible, are making good progress, and enjoy broad political support.”

Get all that?  It’s quite a bit to digest. You may be wondering how the Defense Science Board could have endorsed the Pentagon’s missile defense plans for Europe given the vulnerabilities it raised.  Perhaps the Board believes the Pentagon will ultimately overcome these hurdles, particularly the discrimination problem.  Perhaps it assumes that the system will never have to combat more complex threats, such as short, medium, or intermediate range missiles armed with decoys or countermeasures? Or perhaps it felt the need to say something positive to offset the report’s many negative conclusions.

As Gen. Gard noted in his article, the fact that early intercept before the first release of potential decoys or countermeasures is not realistically achievable undoubtedly prompted the Defense Science Board to emphasize repeatedly the need for the Missile Defense Agency to deal with the problem of discriminating in space between warheads and other objects. The report’s statement that “discrimination in the exo-atmosphere is still not a completely solved problem,” is, to quote Gen. Gard again, “a polite understatement.”

Ground Based Midcourse Defense Testing Record Still Underwhelming

Meanwhile, Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation earlier this month released his annual testing reports to Congress (click here for a link to the report, though it may be behind a pay wall).  The report on missile defense, particularly the ground based midcourse defense system (i.e. national missile defense), once again makes for revealing reading.

The report states: “To date, GMD has demonstrated a limited capability against a simple threat.”  Talking about damning with faint praise.

The report reminds us that the GMD system failed in its last two flight tests in January 2010 and December 2010, respectively, meaning that the system has not had a successful intercept flight test since December 2008 (or more than three years ago)!  Note that none of these tests were undertaken under what could be considered operationally realistic conditions (i.e. in a situation where the interceptor must find the target amid missile junk or countermeasures designed to defeat the system). The system suffers from the same discrimination problem highlighted by the Defense Science Board.

According to the report, these intercept failures “delayed achievement of flight test program goals by at least two years.”

All of which led Gilmore to once again conclude: “Lack of sufficient data for comprehensive model and simulation verification, validation, and accreditation continues to preclude end-to-end GMD performance assessment.”

I think that’s a scientific and gracious way of saying that the system is not quite as remarkable as Panetta would have us believe.

Via Elaine Grossman, the Obama administration on January 11 sent a letter to Congress informing Members that it plans to pursue a case-by-case approach to civilian nuclear cooperation agreements with other countries. In other words, it appears that th…