By Emelie Rutherford
A leading House lawmaker said yesterday he plans to scrutinize President Barack Obama’s plans for developing ground-based interceptors for the United States as a hedge in case Iranian missiles can reach the homeland before more-advanced protections are developed.
Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio), the new chairman of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee, previously raised concerns about the Pentagon’s so-called hedging strategy for protecting the homeland under its Phased Adaptive Approach to European missile defense. Now that he chairs the subcommittee, following Republicans’ takeover the House this year, he told reporters yesterday the Pentagon’s plan for a hedge, which he said may not adequately protect the homeland, will be an area of focus for him.
“I do remain concerned in the Phased Adaptive Approach that the administration has such a lag until the homeland is defended, and perhaps does not recognize some of the technological impediments that they’re going to face or the industrial base impediments,” Turner said at a Capitol Hill press briefing.
“As (Obama administration officials are) now giving us more information as to how the Phased Adaptive Approach is implemented, we’re trying to cast that against what industry can actually do and what the technological impediments will be to accomplish the Phased Adaptive Approach,” he added. “And there are gaps I think that put at risk their timeline. And if our ultimate goal is, and it certainly should be, the protection of the mainland of the United States, I think there are some issues.”
Turner has kept a close eye on the Obama administration’s Phased Adaptive Approach to overseas missile defense, which it unveiled in September 2009 and replaces former President George W. Bush’s plan for placing ground-based interceptors in Poland and radars in the Czech Republic. The Phased Adaptive Approach calls for deploying ships equipped with Lockheed Martin’s [LMT] Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system and Raytheon‘s [RTN] ship-based Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) interceptors before adapting to a ground-based setup for the SM-3 interceptors in Poland.
The Pentagon’s hedging strategy calls for maintaining a two-stage ground-based interceptor– part of Boeing‘s [BA] Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system for national missile defense–in this country in case Iran develops missiles that can reach the United States before the more-advanced land-based SM-3 interceptors emerge around 2020.
Turner fears Iran could develop ICBMs that could reach the United States as early as 2015.
He said Obama officials “haven’t really provided any real substances to what that hedge would be.”
“They talk about maintaining the two-stage ground-base as a hedge strategy,” he said. “You ask them under what circumstances would it ever then be deployed as a hedge, and they say we don’t envision any circumstance in which it would be deployed. Well, that’s not a hedge. But they do recognize that you need a hedge. They indicate that these threats could emerge more quickly. So, then, we need to push them on, well how are we going to respond to that threat. And they don’t have a very good answer for that.”
Turner said he’s pleased that Obama has committed to increase missile defense funding. He said he believes U.S. policy-makers have moved beyond the question of whether missile defense is needed and if the technology works, and now are focused on determining which systems and capabilities should be in the missile-defense portfolio.