In an effort to avoid Republican delay tactics, the Democratic majority has tended to skip over the whole conference process in recent years in favor of less formal means of reconciling House and Senate bills.  In fact, while the 103rd Congress went to conference a total of 62 times, the 110th went just 10.  So yesterday was a special occasion – Nearly five months into the year, the first conference committee of 2010 came together for – what else? – a discussion of sanctions on Iran.

“It’s been so long since I participated in a conference, I’m trying to remember how they work,” joked Chris Dodd, Chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.  To that, House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank responded that the last time he and Dodd’s committees had met in conference, the Senate panel was chaired by Paul S. Sarbanes (House 1971-77, Senate 1977-2007).  

“Well I feel better,” Dodd replied.  “I thought you were going to tell me Alexander Hamilton.”  Har har.

All joking aside, as CQ Today so aptly put it in this morning’s edition, “Conference committee members spent more time trying to one-up one another’s tough talk on Iran than discussing the differences between the two bills.”

Rubber meets the road on only one issue: The State Department’s request for broad waver authority to exempt “cooperating countries” from corporate sanctions.  Some lawmakers chose to break from their biting language on Iran and vowed to fight against the main change that State wants the conference to make to the legislation.

Congressman Brad Sherman went so far as to say the department was asking Congress to “reward the fact that they have illegally ignored the law by writing provisions that allow them to do it legally.”

“The idea of country by country waivers is absurd,” Sherman said. “They will waive virtually every country unless they decide to simply ignore the law.”

Members of the administration have expressed that a waiver is necessary to ensure the support of China and Russia in concurrent bilateral sanctions negotiations – but Congress isn’t waiting.

“Iran and its spinning centrifuges do not wait. … We can no longer wait for a Security Council resolution that has been going on for months,” said Rep. Howard Berman.

In the end, the words of Rep. Ed Royce may have summed up the event:

“Even crushing sanctions might not do the job,” said Royce, “but we ought to try.”

The conference has stated the non-binding goal of finishing its work by May 28, but a final decision could come even sooner.

In an essay for the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs, Defense Secretary Robert Gates issues yet another welcome call for reform.  While the QDR may not exactly have been “shaped by a bracing dose of realism,” Gates does seem to be setting his priorities, one by one (very little by very little).

Yesterday in The Hill, Gordon Adams and Matthew Leatherman point out that the 2010 QDR:

… gives equal priority to every mission the Pentagon and the military want to undertake: current wars, future conventional deterrence and war-fighting, counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency, stability operations, overseas presence, power projection, and homeland defense.  No mission is given lower priority. In fact, rather than change its mission planning, the Pentagon has added the new missions to the existing requirement of fighting two major wars at nearly the same time.

This is too much, and Gates seems to agree.  In Foreign Affairs, Gates argues that in the future, the U.S. will “only be as good as the effectiveness, credibility, and sustainability of its local partners” and lends credence to the Nixon Doctrine, which used military and economic assistance to resist Soviet-sponsored insurgencies without using U.S. troops.  

As we all know well today, military intervention is costly, both monetarily and morally.  Gates notes that, “The U.S. military, although resilient in spirit and magnificent in performance, is under stress and strain fighting two wars and confronting diffuse challenges around the globe.”

The U.S. military must be able to advise, train, and equip indigenous security forces, so as not to repeat mistakes made in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  It is not gainful or reasonable for the U.S. to continue to serve its current role.  For this reason, the U.S. “is unlikely to repeat a mission on the scale of those in Afghanistan or Iraq anytime soon – that is, forced regime change followed by nation building under fire.”

Gates offers five recommendations, including an emphasis on long-term security assistance efforts and a maintained focus on foreign policy.  He also goes after the U.S. defense budget.  Gates emphasizes that the budget is not well suited to dealing with emerging threats and opportunities.  I would also point out that the budget is not well suited to dealing with those threats that are not on the immediate agenda.  As is the case in the 2010 QDR and FY 2011 Budget, the Pentagon and Congress often focus on every possible threat rather than every probable one.  Along these lines, Gates also calls for more congressional oversight, to ensure that funds are spent properly.

Finally, Gates emphasizes that, “everything must be suffused with strong doses of modesty and realism.”  If this is the same realism that Gates referred to in February, count me out.  Something tells me, though, that the Pentagon may be moving toward something more concrete – something with the ability to elicit real change in priorities and effectiveness.  

But then, maybe I’m being overly optimistic.

Iran last week paraded a range of new military equipment on Army Day, including a Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) system that has been likened to the Russian S-300 PMU-1.   If the system actually represented the PMU-1, it would imply that manufacturers Almaz had finally made good on their December 2005 contractual (and controversial) obligation to deliver.  Upon closer look at the Army Day photos, however, some key differences suggest that this was unlikely the case.  Interestingly though, these same differences may also signify the reality of an indigenously produced Iranian variant – something Tehran has repeatedly alleged is in development…

According to a number of experts (see here and here), whatever was on display on April 18 was likely a mockup.  But that should not come as too much of a surprise, since most of the other hardware on display at the parade was mocked up – either for safety / security reasons or as a result of still being in the concept stage of design.  Consequently, this factor does not necessarily imply that the Iranian SAM equipment on display is not based on real technology, as is clearly the case in this example.

A typical S-300 PMU launch complex consists of a number of transporter erector vehicles complete with four launching canisters (holding the missiles), a 30N6E Flap Lid phased-array illumination and guidance radar (also known as Tomb Stone), a 76N6 Clam Shell low-altitude early warning radar (for intercepting low altitude cruise missiles), and a command post infrastructure that incorporates a Big Bird early warning radar.

The pictures of Iran’s system illustrate two transporter erector launcher vehicles, something that looks like a Tomb Stone radar, and a surveillance radar that appears to be part of the Russian made Nebo family (designed for long range air surveillance).  While the Iranians did not field any of the elements associated with the command post infrastructure, this may have been because it was deemed inappropriate for parade purposes.  As such, we shouldn’t necessarily read too much into this point.

From the above photos, the Iranian system appears to be different to the S-300 PMU-1 in three ways.  Firstly, the transporter vehicles of both the missile launchers and ‘Tomb Stone’ radar appear to be indigenously produced Iranian variants, of a slightly different design.  Secondly, the missile canisters themselves appear to be a lot ‘cleaner’ than the designs found on the S-300 PMU-1 (but similar to the Ukranian inherited S-300 canisters on display at a Croatian parade in 1995 – which were apparently sold to Iran in 2008).  Thirdly, as explained, Iran’s long-range Nebo type radar (assuming it is part of their launch complex) offers different capabilities to the low-altitude Clam Shell radar employed in the PMU-1 complex.

It’s true that these differences could suggest Iran was merely parading incomplete, mock-up equipment – either to deter potential adversaries or bolster internal prestige.  These same differences, though, could also imply that Iran’s declared pursuit of an alternative to the S-300 PMU-1 is moving forward.  In this light, the mix and match nature of equipment on show could be illustrative of a hybrid design that combines parts of the S-300 with more accessible alternatives for things like surveillance radars and transporter vehicles.  As such, parts of the Soviet-era S-300PTs that Iran bought from Belarus in 2008 could now be employed in conjunction with more modern technologies to form an Iranian variant.

While it is not clear from these photographs how close Tehran is to actually fielding their system (if at all), its possible existence does suggest that there may now be more than just rhetoric going in to the pursuit of an S-300 PMU-1 alternative.  And as suggested by the Planeman, even if this alternative system only equals the capabilities of the S-300PT system, ‘it’s still a huge leap forward and the only credible threat to IAF/USAF air strikes at medium/high altitude’.  As such, it may help buy Tehran some respite as it continues to wait for delivery of the far-superior S-300 PMU-1.

NoH has been arguing for some time that given the delivery vehicle range outlined in the Joint Understanding last July, together with the slow trickle of news that the new treaty would likely contain simpler conversion and elimination rules, the U.S. wouldn’t have to make any significant changes to its current nuclear force structure (long live the triad!) or chop up systems that have been converted to conventional-only roles.

Now that the treaty text and protocol have been released, the amount of flexibility (and by extension the hedge against uncertainty) that the treaty allows for is truly astounding.

Of course, this won’t stop some critics from saying that the treaty could endanger the triad, that it disproportionately benefits Russia – since the deployed number of Russian delivery vehicles is anticipated to drop dramatically with or without a new arms control agreement – and/or that it limits U.S. prompt global strike capabilities.

Indeed, Sen. John Thune (R-SD), who has made ensuring that the triad remains inviolable a kind of pet project of his, flight tested some of these arguments at last Thursday’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the Nuclear Posture Review.  Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Jim Miller and STRATCOM Commander Kevin Chilton were having none of it, however, and their responses are worth quoting at length…  

The Limits are Key

Chilton really drove home the point that New START prevents Moscow from maintaining a larger number of deployed warheads and delivery vehicles than it otherwise might have without the agreement:

This gets it exactly right. The fact the some Russian reductions might happen in any event is beside the point. If nothing is put in place to replace START I, we can say goodbye to the important limits on and an essential means of verifying Russia’s still enormous force of deployed warheads in particular, but also delivery vehicles. Such an outcome would make the United States less safe.

Each Side Can Determine for Itself How to Structure its Forces

Unlike START I in its waning days, New START is tailored to the current realities U.S. force posture and planning. It also allows the U.S. to meet the limits without endangering the triad. As Chilton put it, “it not only made sense strategically it certainly is doable to sustain the triad at these numbers [i.e. 700 deployed delivery vehicles] and I believe at lower numbers.” Miller provided still more context:

The SLBM provisions, which are laid out in detail in the Ninth Agreed Statement and Section IV of Part III of the protocol, are pretty amazing.  In fact, not only can SLBM launchers be converted in the way Miller describes, but converted tubes can be located on the same boomer with launchers that have not been converted.  The treaty makes it a lot easier to convert or eliminate ICBM launchers and heavy bombers, too.  

In other words there is flexibility galore, and DoD could go in any one of numerous different directions to meet the treaty’s limits on delivery vehicles (both Miller and Chilton stated that DoD will provide a specific force structure associated with New START as part of the Sec. 1251 report due to be submitted to Congress with the treaty in early May).  In fact, the U.S. could probably get away with not having to physically destroy a single launcher; it could simply convert and/or deactivate its way below the limits.  This doesn’t mean that the reductions wouldn’t be “real,” but remember that this treaty was never about deep reductions in the first place.  Predictability and stability are its calling cards.  

Prompt Global Strike is Alive and Well

Finally, on the issue of prompt global strike, Miller points out that New START will count ICBMs and SLBMs whether they carry nuclear or conventional warheads; thus a prompt global strike capability would be subject to the treaty’s limits. However, a warhead limit of 1,550 and a deployed delivery vehicle limit of 700 would still give the U.S. the flexibility to deploy a small number of conventionally armed submarine- and/or land-based long-range missiles, if it ever decides to do so:

New START provides space to deploy a small number of advanced conventional ICBMs, though the wisdom of such a course is another matter.

What this all adds up to is that New START is a huge win for U.S. security.  Our entire military leadership strongly supports it.  It should be a no brainer in the Senate.

(Note: Last Thursday’s hearing was incredible on many different levels, not the least of which was the shouting match that broke out between Sen. John McCain and Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Ellen Tauscher, and will probably be the subject of some future NoH posts.)