By Emelie Rutherford
A Senate panel quizzed Pentagon brass yesterday on the budget implications of the Obama administration’s new European missile-defense plan, with some senators questioning if it will require more Navy ships.
Army Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly, the Missile Defense Agency director, emphasized the affordability of the missile-defense architecture that will use Raytheon‘s [RTN] Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) interceptors on water and land instead of Boeing‘s [BA] more-costly Ground-Based Interceptors in Eastern Europe. Obama said on Sept. 17 this new setup, intended to initially protect U.S. allies and deployed troops from Iranian missiles, will replace plans for fixed radar and interceptor sites in the Czech Republic and Poland.
While Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and most panel Democrats praised the new plan, Republicans along with Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Joseph Lieberman (I/D-Conn.) criticized it. Detractors charged the missile-defense arrangement will not adequately protect the U.S. homeland and does not bode well for relations with Eastern Europe–claims Pentagon officials refuted.
SASC Ranking Member John McCain (R-Ariz.) and other critics lamented that the new missile-defense plan has already been decided and cannot be altered much or at all.
McCain asked Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James Cartwright if the new arrangement–which relies heavily on the ship-based Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system and SM-3s, which are intended for future ground installation as well–will spur a budget request for additional Navy ships.
Cartwright, a Marine Corps general, said he would “have to go back and look” and noted existing ships are currently being outfitted with the Aegis BMD system.
McCain replied: “We’re certainly giving (the ships) additional missions.”
Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a former Army Ranger who spoke favorably about the new missile-defense setup, also questioned Cartwright on Navy ships needed to carry out the new strategy.
Cartwright said Navy cruisers and destroyers are capable of fulfilling the need, without elaborating further on ship numbers.
Under the new four-phase missile-defense arrangement, warships equipped with SM-3 Block IA interceptors will be deployed to the Mediterranean Sea in 2011, and then in a second phase enhanced SM-3 Block IB missiles will be deployed at sea and land locations in 2015. The Navy already is in the process of increasing the number of vessels equipped with Aegis BMD, and requested funding in the pending FY ’10 budget to upgrade an additional six ships.
Ronald O’Rourke, a senior Navy analyst at the Congressional Research Service, said whether additional Navy ships are needed for the new missile-defense architecture is “a potential oversight question for Congress.”
“The Navy already wants to have at least five of its 22 Aegis cruisers, and all of its Aegis destroyers (62 DDG-51s funded in prior years, plus additional DDG-51s funded in FY ’10 and beyond under the DDG-51 restart) to be equipped for BMD,” O’Rourke told Defense Daily in a statement. “So the Navy currently wants to eventually have more than 67 BMD-capable Aegis ships. Whether that would be enough to permit the Navy to devote BMD-capable ships to the European BMD mission and still have enough cruisers and destroyers to meet BMD and other mission demands in other parts of the world is a question that Congress may wish to consider.”
Cartwright said yesterday moving to land-based SM-3s, as part of the new missile-defense architecture’s second phase, “is infinitely cheaper and doesn’t tie down a multi- purpose ship to one function.”
“What we’re thinking right now, and this is early-stage (concept of operations) con ops, is that we would like to see the ability to have two ships per station for three stations, so a total of six,” he said. “That’s generally the way we operate in Japan versus North Korea. That allows one off-station, one on-station.”
Cartwright said Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead “has a very large play in this as we move to the SM-3.”
The four-star general reiterated yesterday that the new setup would be largely initiated via the fiscal year 2011 budget next year, and thus will be debated on Capitol Hill for “a full year.”
However, O’Reilly noted the Pentagon would like to rejigger previous-year funding as well.
For the new arrangement, Pentagon officials want approval to redirect some funding in the pending FY ’10 budget and also to spend FY ’09 monies–both research and development and military construction monies–that was never spent on the previous Eastern European “third site,” he said in writing.
“So if we had access to that funding (from) FY ’09, then we have sufficient funding in which to meet the timelines, especially the earlier timelines, of developing the unmanned-aerial vehicles, all the research and development that we refer to, the long-term development, and get it started now, as well as the short-term deployments focused on 2011 and the testing, which we are proposing, that goes with this,” O’Reilly told the SASC.
He said the Pentagon’s Ballistic Missile Defense Review includes a cost analysis showing the affordability of the new setup. A report on that review is due to Congress in January 2010.
Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) for his part said while the Obama administration’s new missile-defense architecture is likely a done deal, “We’ll do all we can through our process to change that.”