Hawkish lawmakers applauded the Pentagon’s announcement that it will boost missile-defense efforts–including burying more interceptors in Alaska–in response to Iran and North Korea’s work to develop long-range missiles. Yet Republicans lamented the costs incurred from a previous scaling-back of such homeland-defense efforts, and a senior senator called for the Pentagon to accelerate plans for a third U.S. interceptor facility.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said on March 15 that the Pentagon is planning to deploy 14 more Ground-Based Interceptors (GBIs) at Ft. Greely, Alaska, restoring previous plans to have a total of 44 of the interceptors in Alaska and California. He said the Defense Department also is following congressional direction to conduct environmental-impact studies to find a potential third missile-defense site in the United States. The Pentagon, further, is planning to deploy an additional TPY-2 early-warning radar in Japan. And it will restructure the program for the delayed SM-3 IIB missile, which intended to be part of President Barack Obama’s European Phased Adaptive Approach for overseas missile defense, Hagel said.
“By shifting resources from this lagging (SM-3 IIB missile) program to fund the additional GBIs as well as advanced-kill vehicle technology that will improve the performance of the GBI and other versions of the SM-3 interceptor, we will be able to add protection against missiles from Iran sooner while also providing additional protection against the North Korean threat,” Hagel told Pentagon reporters at an afternoon press conference.
He said the “collective result” of the four decisions will “improve our ability to counter future missile threats from Iran and North Korea while maximizing increasingly scarce taxpayer resources.”
The news of the addition of the 14 GBIs was welcomed by Republican lawmakers including Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Ranking Member James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who were upset Obama scaled back plans for the interceptors from 44 to 30 early in his first term.
Yet Inhofe argued Hagel’s announcement does not go far enough to address the threat from Iran, which he said could test an intercontinental-ballistic missile (ICBM) as early as 2015. Inhofe thus called on Obama to require the Pentagon to build a third interceptor site in the United States. The fiscal year 2013 defense authorization bill directs the Pentagon to craft a contingency plan for such a location by conducting the environmental-impact studies on potential sites.
“In light of this recent announcement (from Hagel), and the increase in Iran’s nuclear activities, I call on the president to turn that contingency plan into a deployment order,” Inhofe said.
HASC member Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) argued the “building of a missile defense site on the East Coast is the next logical and prudent step to ensure we can counter the rising threat to the homeland.”
Turner, a HASC member who until recently chaired the panel’s Strategic Forces subcommittee and has followed missile-defense matters closely, said the administration “no longer” can “ignore these threats.”
House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) said he was pleased with the Obama administration’s decision to restore the GBI tally to 44, but also frustrated it chose four years ago to mothball a missile field intended to help accommodate all of those interceptors. The administration at the time assessed the missile threat from North Korea and other countries to be less dire than Republicans believed.
“The original decision to divest ourselves of these interceptors was a classic case of looking at threats through politically tinted glasses,” McKeon said. “Now that the administration has decided to see clearly, America can get back on the right course; but at a high and unnecessary cost.” He said “hundreds of millions” of dollars will be needed to bring the infrastructure back online.
SASC member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) similarly said he is pleased to hear the “the Pentagon is taking North Korea’s bellicose and self-destructive threats seriously,” saying those threats “have been on a very predictable trajectory” and the Obama administration erred in previously reducing the number of GBIs.
On the Democratic side, HASC Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) called the decision to deploy the 14 additional GBIs “wise and prudent.”
“North Korea and Iran are seeking to improve their capabilities to launch long-range missiles and the administration continues to respond appropriately and firmly by bolstering our capabilities and capacity to defend ourselves,” Smith maintained.