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Future of OCO Still Uncertain

Inside Defense reports from behind a paywall that the Defense Department will deliver its “migration guidance,” setting out a plan for the services to begin to move war funds back into the base budget, in the fall.

Having missed a July deadline promised to the Government Accountability Office, a DOD spokesman said “This will be a multiyear process that will be refined as [the] Department gets a clearer picture of enduring missions for the theater, as well as the criteria and scope of the future overseas contingency operations budgets.”

The Pentagon plans to have the guidance to the services in time for crafting of the FY16 budget request.

DOD’s overseas contingency operations (OCO) budget comes in at $58.6 billion for FY15, $26.7 billion less than enacted the previous year. But the fund has received increased criticism in Congress as U.S. involvement in the wars has drawn down, largely because it allows the Pentagon to work around the budget caps set forth in the Budget Control Act.

In response to the administration’s OCO request, which came to Congress late, on June 26, Rep. Adam Smith noted that, “Sequestration doesn’t make any sense. However, none of those other areas of our government have an OCO. … The justification for that spending is something that Congress is going to need to hear.”

Rep. Tammy Duckworth went a step further saying that, “It seems this is just becoming another slush fund … without accountability.”

But recent developments in Iraq might throw a wrench into efforts to draw the money down, as the administration continues to pull from the budget for operations overseas. The White House argues that the fund, particularly a new portion aimed at counterterrorism operations, is important to have in case of emergency.

But some members of Congress disagree. “There’s always going to be something unanticipated in the defense world,” Smith said in the same interview. “You try and budget within the parameters of that, and not have a separate budget for ‘if something comes up.’”

Iron Dome is not GMD

by Lt. General Robert Gard, Jr.

The Israeli Iron Dome rocket/artillery defense system is touted as destroying 85 to 90 percent of the targets it attacks. U.S. Senator Ron Paul (R-KY) was so intrigued by Iron Dome’s success during a visit to Israel that, upon returning home, he advocated deploying the system in U.S. cities.

While few if any other missile defense advocates go that far, several supporters of the U.S. Ground-Based Midcourse national missile defense system (GMD) believe that Iron Dome’s purported success is testimony to the potential effectiveness of GMD. Yet these are two very different systems.

Iron Dome, first deployed in 2011, is designed to target small, unguided, inaccurate, slow- and low-flying rockets fired from four to 70 kilometers away from the defensive system. The rockets’ trajectories travel entirely in the atmosphere. An Iron Dome battery consists of an S-Band phased array radar, a fire control element, and three launchers, each armed with 20 explosive-tipped, proximity-fused Tamir interceptors, which are three meters long.

GMD faces the far more daunting task of intercepting warheads in space that are delivered by intercontinental ballistic missiles. In the space environment, debris from the booster rocket and countermeasures designed to spoof the defense fly together with, and at the same speed as, the attacking warhead, making it difficult for the interceptor to distinguish between the warhead and non-lethal objects. Impact hit-to-kill vehicles must try to find and collide with warheads traveling 15,000 miles per hour.

Iron Dome, known as a low-tiered capability, is one of three systems Israel is developing to provide a layered missile defense complex. The other two have not yet been employed in combat.

The Arrow is the top-tiered system, intended to intercept tactical ballistic missiles. Its development was accorded high priority after the first Gulf War, when Iraq attacked Israel with Scud missiles. Arrow II, with an explosive warhead, was first deployed in 2000. Arrow III, which had its second successful flight test in January 2014, is being designed in collaboration with the U.S. Boeing company to employ an impact hit-to-kill interceptor to engage intermediate range ballistic missiles in space. Arrow III, not Iron Dome, is similar to GMD.

David’s Sling, also called Magic Wand, is a mid-tier system under development in cooperation U.S. defense contractor Raytheon. It is being designed to intercept high velocity medium and long range rockets, cruise missiles and short range ballistic missiles. It had its first successful intercept test in November 2012, but has not yet been operationally deployed.  

However successful Iron Dome may be, it cannot serve as a harbinger for the potential of GMD. It is no more a harbinger than a Ford Fiesta is for a Ferrari. They are very different systems.

GOP Members Push Expanded, Expensive Missile Defense Against Russia, China

Some hawkish members of the House Armed Services Committee and conservative missile defense advocates are promoting a vastly expanded missile defense system that could entail huge new expenditures and be of dubious effectiveness.

That is the message of a recent House Armed Services Committee hearing on missile defense.

The current system to defend the U.S. homeland against intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) is called the Ground-Based Mid-Course missile defense system (GMD). GMD is designed to counter an attack by a rogue state with a single or very few missiles (for example a future North Korean or Iranian ICBM threat), or an accidental or unauthorized missile strike from Russia or China.

While serious questions remain about whether the existing GMD system can perform its intended mission, the proposed expanded roles for missile defense are the height of folly.

The House Armed Services Committee Strategic Forces Subcommittee hearing was entitled, “Adapting U.S. Missile Defense for Future Threats: Russia, China and Modernizing the NMD Act.”

The main question posed to the witnesses was, “Does a policy of limited missile defenses against limited threats continue to make sense in today’s threat environment?”

Here is the deal.

In 1999, Congress overwhelmingly adopted legislation endorsing a National Missile Defense system to defend “against limited ballistic missile attack.” The language also called for deployment only if the system  is “effective” and “as soon as is technologically possible.”

Some of the committee Republicans, led by Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL), now think that it is time to go beyond “limited” missile defense. So too does the conservative Heritage Foundation and others.

In other words, these members of Congress and others would like to see our missile defense system efforts go beyond the ability to defeat one or two missiles from a rogue state and instead design the system to defeat all out attacks by Russian or Chinese ICBMs.

During the hearing, Ambassador Robert G. Joseph explicitly endorsed expanded missile defense that could include directed energy and space weapons previously rejected as impractical and too expensive. He also called for shifting emphasis from theater defenses and shorter-range threats to national missile defense.

Republican Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) also embraced space based defenses and directed energy weapons, options previously rejected by governments of both parties.

The two problems: even the limited GMD missile defense currently deployed is not “effective” as required by the legislation, and an expanded defense against the Russian and Chinese nuclear forces would be a prohibitively expensive scarecrow.

The witnesses were Philip Coyle, Senior Science Fellow, Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, former CIA Director James Woolsey, Jr. and Former Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security and Ambassador Robert G. Joseph.

Coyle is a recognized expert on U.S. and worldwide military research, development and testing. He has served under four U.S. Presidents, mostly recently as the Associate Director for National Security and International Affairs in President Obama’s White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Coyle’s remarks hit the nail on the head. In his opening statement, he outlined three important reasons why it would be unwise for the United States to pursue an expanded missile defense against Russia and China.  

First, the technology simply does not exist to deal with a deliberate Russian or Chinese ICBM attack. U.S. missile defenses against ICBMs can at best deal with very limited attacks—say from Iran or North Korea—and even that goal continues to be a technological challenge.

Second, the costs of trying to deploy a system to deal effectively with a Russian or Chinese attack would be staggering. In 2002, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the cost of several different proposed missile defense programs that would be integrated into one layered system in 2025. The CBO estimated that a system of ground-based interceptors would cost between $27 and $74 billion, a system of ship-launched interceptors would cost $50 to $64 billion, and a Space-Based Laser system would cost $82 to $100 billion. All of these systems are meant for only a “limited” attack. CBO has not yet estimated the costs of a system designed to defeat Russia and China’s ICBMS, but it would necessarily be considerably more expensive.  

Third, if the U.S. had missile defense that could effectively defeat Russian and Chinese ICBMs without being overwhelmed, it would be strategically destabilizing and provoke military responses from Russia and China. If Russia and China perceived their ICBM arsenals had been rendered useless, Russia and China would need to respond with new forces—perhaps more attacking missiles, cruise missiles (against which our missile defense systems are useless), or perhaps even the deployment of troops areas of the world that are currently peaceful.

Furthermore, Russia would certainly not agree to further reductions in its nuclear arsenal and may then use new U.S. missile defense programs as justification to withdraw from New START and other important arms control agreements that have significantly reduced the threat from nuclear weapons.

Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral James A. Winnefeld Jr., in a May 28 talk at the Atlantic Council, punctured the expansive views of those who argue for massive new missile defenses as he explained why limited defenses are in the best U.S. interest.

“As you know,” he said, “we’ve told Russia and the world that we will not rely on missile defense for strategic deterrence of Russia because it would simply be too hard and too expensive and too strategically destabilizing to even try.”  Later the Admiral reiterated this point, saying, “And let me be clear once again: it’s not the policy of the United States to build a ballistic missile defense system to counter Russian ballistic missiles.”  

Read Phil Coyle’s entire testimony here

Uranium Seizure in Iraq Sheds New Light on Abysmal Nonproliferation Budget

Iraq’s ambassador to the U.N stated in a July 8 letter to U.N Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that roughly 88 pounds of uranium compounds had been seized by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) after the group took control of the city of Mosul.

The nuclear material was being used for scientific research at a university in Mosul.

Any loss or theft of enriched uranium, plutonium or other types of radioactive material is potentially alarming, as terrorist groups could try to use them to fashion a crude nuclear device or a “dirty bomb.”

Fortunately, the IAEA reported last Thursday that the material in question was low grade (either natural or depleted uranium), and thus useless for terrorist groups seeking to make a nuclear bomb or a dirty bomb. Furthermore, it is not clear whether the incident demonstrates a genuine interest by ISIS in acquiring nuclear material for a bomb, or whether the group simply looted whatever happened to be present at the university.

While many in the international community will be tempted to exhale a sigh of relief and focus their attention on the next crisis that will inevitably plague the region, the incident deserves attention because it sheds light on the larger and more important issue of nuclear security.

As Matthew Bunn pointed out in an excellent piece in the National Interest last week, the Islamic State’s newly found control over huge swaths of strategic territory in Iraq and Syria has opened the floodgates for the creation of a safe haven for hostile groups and countries to train and plot attacks. He notes that for having a giant, lawless playground—as the situation in Iraq and Syria is certainly shaping up to be—makes a huge difference in terrorists’ ability to execute a really complicated plot, such as building a nuclear bomb.

Such concerns do not exist in the realm of impossibility or fantasy. Al Qaeda’s interest in carrying out a nuclear or radiological attack on a Western target has been well documented. Al Qaeda operatives have made repeated attempts to buy nuclear material for a nuclear bomb, or to recruit nuclear expertise—including two extremist Pakistani nuclear weapons scientists who met with bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to discuss nuclear weapons. Today, ISIS or others who seek sanctuary in the group’s territory may well try and take advantage of the region’s chaos to go down a similar path.

At a time like this, we should be grateful that the Obama administration’s stated policy is to keep wayward nuclear weapons and radioactive material out of the hands of terrorists, right?

Well. Not really.

Unfortunately, in its Fiscal Year 2015 budget request, the Administration shocked many by running completely contrary to its stated non-proliferation priorities. The White House made it overwhelmingly clear through its request that it would not accelerate the securing of nuclear and radiological materials around the globe despite the growing need to do so.

Overall, the FY 2015 budget request cut $534 million in funding (relative to the enacted Fiscal Year 2014 funding level) for nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear terrorism prevention programs at the Department of Defense and the National Nuclear Security Administration.

Some of the most critical and effective threat reduction and non-proliferation programs, such as the Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI) and the International Materials Protection and Cooperation (IMPC) program, were slashed nearly eighteen percent. This is the third year in a row the NNSA budget submission has put core nuclear and radiological material security programs on the chopping block.

This year’s deep cuts to non-proliferation are particularly incomprehensible given President Obama’s statement a few months ago that “loose nukes” were the main thing keeping him up at night.

So while the uranium seizure in Iraq last week was not a nuclear threat in and of itself, the incident once again underscores the need to make securing dangerous nuclear material around the globe—particularly in those areas of the world beset by instability and conflict—a top priority.