Arms-control advocates are sounding alarms about a potential East Coast missile-defense site, as lawmakers prepare to negotiate the proposal as soon as tomorrow.
Members of the House and Senate armed services committees are slated to convene a conference committee tomorrow that will combine the versions of the fiscal year 2013 defense authorization bill passed by each chamber, with the goal of having a finished product by next Monday. The legislation the House passed in May authorizes $100 million for beginning work on an East Coast facility with missile interceptors after the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) crafts a plan to deploy it by the end of 2015, and directs the Pentagon to produce an environmental-impact statement on possible locations by the end of 2013. The Senate contains no similar provision.
Officials from the nonpartisan Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation took aim yesterday at Republican supporters’ arguments in favor of an East Coast site use, including the fact that the National Research Council recommended the construction of such a facility, to complement those already in Alaska and California.
“What gets missed often in the discussion is that the (National Research Council) recommended that this not be done unless a new, more-capable interceptor be developed with better ways of finding the target, and that ways of discriminating between targets and junk also be developed first,” said Phillip Coyle, the senior science fellow at the center and former associate director for national security and international affairs for the Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Barack Obama.
The arms-control center’s experts dedicated significant time to the East Coast interceptor debate during a call with reporters yesterday about the defense authorization bill’s forthcoming conference committee. They expressed mixed levels of concern about the House proposal, pointing to concerns about the technical maturity and cost of U.S. interceptors and offering insight into the political reality of the United States actually planning site, presumably to protect from Iranian missiles.
Proponents of the site, such as House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Strategic Forces Chairman Michael Turner (R-Ohio), repeatedly point to concerns about Iran developing ICBMs that could reach the United States.
Coyle, for his part, noted yesterday that the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) has reported that Iran’s capabilities are not as advanced as the U.S. intelligence community has previously feared.
Coyle maintained that debating whether to put a site in a state like New York or Maine, while the MDA’s interceptors and target-discrimination capabilities need improvement, “is a little bit like worrying if you have enough sweaters when your pants are falling down.”
The actual cost of building a facility could be $4 billion in the first five years, CRS has reported.
John Isaacs, executive director of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, noted that the East Coast site is not supported in the FY ’13 defense appropriations bills approved by the full House and the Senate Appropriations Committee. Programs need funding approved by appropriations bills to be executed.
“Authorizers can put in $100 million, but it’s not going to be appropriated by the House or Senate, so…it’s not money that’s likely to be spent in the next fiscal year, particularly as further budget cuts are underway, Isaacs said. “So the authorizers can do whatever they want, but they will be doing so kind of in a vacuum.”
While Pentagon leaders have said there is no current military requirement for East Coast interceptors, Strategic Command chief Air Force Gen. Robert Kehler said in a May 30 speech that the Pentagon was looking at varied national missile defense options–as part of a hedging strategy it is crafting–including a potential East Coast interceptor location.