Missile Defense Deployment Announcement Briefing

NEWS TRANSCRIPT from the United States Department of Defense

DoD News Briefing Missile Defense Deployment Announcement Tuesday, December 17, 2002

(Special DoD Briefing With Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, Director, Missile Defense Agency and J.D. Crouch, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security.)

Staff: Before you break down any cameras, the next presentation was going to be on background with two senior Defense officials who have been referred to extensively -- (laughter) -- in the last couple of minutes. In light of that, we will be doing this briefing on the record.

I think you all probably know our two briefers. Well, I shouldn't say that; there's been some confusion over time. (Laughter.) But Dr. J.D. Crouch, the assistant secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, and Lieutenant General Ronald Kadish, the director of the Missile Defense Agency, are both here today to fill in some details on some of the announcements that we've made earlier.

So with that, we do have to break this at 14:50, and so we'll go ahead and get started right now.

Crouch: Ron, do you want to maybe just come up, and we can just kind of be up here together. Ron and I will change place. Why don't you start on this side, and we'll change when it's your turn to brief.

Thank you, everybody. Yes, I am not Doug Feith. (Laughter.) I am in fact J.D. Crouch. And we're here to talk a little bit today about the announcement on missile defense. And I'll try to put in context. As you know, the White House issued a statement today directing the department to begin fielding some initial defense capabilities, starting into the 2004-2005 timeframe. What I'm going to try to do is put that decision in the overall sort of defense policy and missile defense policy context, show how it flows from the activities not only of our missile defense program, but also of our general defense policies. And then General Kadish is going to go into a little bit more background on the technical and programmatic details of what the president has directed us to do.

If I can get the first slide here, please. Good. As we see it, we face an increasingly complex and dynamic security environment in which we think surprise will continue to be a dominant strategic consideration. We know that there are countries out there hostile to us that are developing asymmetric threats. As the secretary said, we've been organized around here for a very long time to deal with armies, navies and air forces. We're now trying to look at how we can deal with such amorphous threats as cyberterrorism, cyber-warfare, weapons of mass destruction and missiles.

In this environment, deterrence is valuable, but it is less predictable. Traditional approaches to deterrence in fact may not be adequate against these new kinds of threats, and we need a balance, a balance between offensive capabilities and defensive capabilities. And this new threat environment also requires -- or also, I think, extents to ballistic missiles and the threats from ballistic missiles that we see not only to the United State but also to our friends, to our allies and to our deployed forces abroad. So in some ways, this broader context, I think it's important to understand -- the decision today ought to be put in that context, that there are in fact a number of threats we're trying to deal with here, and missile defense is a potential and partial solution to one of those.

Next slide, please.

Now, as you know, our planning approach that we've taken here in the Pentagon is trying to take into account that we cannot predict with confidence what nation, what combination of nations, what non- state actors may pose threats to the United States and our allies in the future. But we do know that there are certain capabilities that are being acquired. Adversaries may be armed with a wide range of these capabilities, including weapons of mass destruction, and the means to deliver them, including ballistic missiles.

And in light of this very dynamic security environment, and I know you've been briefed on the Quadrennial Defense Review, which identified this capabilities-based approach as the way we would look at trying to develop and focus our efforts here in the Pentagon, as well as to focus on the kinds of capabilities that adversaries may use against us, how they may be -- how those forces would be used, rather than fixing on any particular set of threats or any particular set of hostile actors.

And of course our broad defense goals, we think, are reinforced by this approach as well -- the need to assure allies and make sure that we meet our security commitments, to dissuade potential adversaries from developing capabilities that threaten us and, if they do develop those capabilities, to be able to deter aggression against the United States, our forces and our allies and friends.

So a result of this capabilities-based approach -- we are using what we call a -- the spiral development approach, in terms of the missile defense program, and an evolutionary approach to the acquisition of missile defense capabilities.

This is intended to be very responsive to the demands of this dynamic and unpredictable security environment, and we think this is the best way to go -- as the secretary said in his short remarks on the subject, trying to get some initial capabilities that we can work with, we can get experience with, and that also, if called upon, would be there in the event that we needed them.

Now what does this mean in terms of missile defense? Next slide, please.

Our evolutionary approach is sort of characterized here. This -- what was discussed or what was announced today is not a fixed or final architecture of any kind. It's an initial capability, and it's building on the Pacific testbed that I think we have briefed you about before and I think the general will talk about a little bit more later on in the brief. It integrates new technologies, and our hope is to continue to improve these capabilities, to improve them from a technical standpoint and, as technology and other international security environment warrants, to augment these capabilities.

Their number, type and location will change over time, as the secretary said. And this -- what we're -- what we've announced today is a very modest initial interceptor inventory and an investment that provides a useful defense capability, but one that, you know, has limitations, as the secretary said. And we want to be very clear about that.

The other thing I think is very important is that this capability will give our combatant commanders and the like the ability to be involved in the operation and in fact in the development of follow-on capabilities, and that's an important thing as well. And it allows us to field some capability quickly, employing test assets as we go along, but without making a commitment to serial production and very large-scale investments.

The other thing I would point out is that because of our withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, we've been able to take advantage of forward-positioning of mobile components, integrating components together that would not have been allowed to be integrated under the treaty. And this in the future, we believe, will allow us to, you know, improve these capabilities by adding additional layers to the defense.

Next slide, please.

Now, over the past year, we have successfully restructured the missile defense program. And we've been looking at new approaches to missile defense. Obviously, we've withdrawn from the ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaty and simultaneously secured the Moscow treaty, which will ensure that we bring nuclear forces of both the United States and the Russian Federation down as we do so. We've also undertaken a very extensive set of consultations with friends and allies. We've gotten a very positive, and I think in some cases, enthusiastic response from them.

And we've adjusted the program; we are now focusing on the most promising elements. As you know, we're undertaking the deployment now of the Patriot PAC-3 system, and in fact are requesting that we accelerate production for that program. We've terminated some things. We eliminated the Navy Lower Tier system, but we're still pursuing the SM-3 missile, and we'll talk more about that later. And we've restructured part of the program. One of the questions earlier was on space; the SBIRS-low program, for example, has been restructured. We think it's under better management now and will be utilizing more off- the-shelf technology that will be able to provide capability beyond the time frame of this '04, '05 decision.

We've also had testing successes. In 2001, 2002, for example, we've been four for five for our long-range ground-based intercepts, two for four in the Patriot PAC-3 system, and three for three in the short to medium-range ship-based intercepts, and we'll talk more about that in the past (sic). So based upon this, we think that this, again, modest and initial capability is both warranted but also will be very, very useful.

Next slide, please.

So, the president's directive to us was to look at fielding this initial set of capabilities in the 2004, 2005 time frame as part of this evolutionary approach. As I said, it will provide an initial modest defense capability. And the plan is to put, by the end of '05, up to 20 ground-based interceptors at two sites to intercept long-range missiles; begin upgrading our Aegis-class destroyers and cruisers so that we can net them together, net their sensors together to be used in a missile defense context; and begin fielding of up to about 20 of the sea-based interceptors that can be used against these short and medium-range missiles.

We're going to utilize forward-deployed radars in this that will enhance the performance of our interceptors. And in this context, we have officially requested from the governments of the United Kingdom and the Kingdom of Denmark for use of early-warning radars on their territory; we've requested that those radars be upgraded; that we would invest to upgrade those radars. And of course, we're continuing the fielding of the Patriot PAC-3 system. And as new technologies develop and new technologies are mature, well, obviously our intent is to try to add additional capability, but no decisions to do so at this point have been made.

A final point on this. The president also directed that we continue our efforts to works with allies, secure allied cooperation. One of the things that characterizes our approach on missile defense as distinct from prior approaches is that this is not focused on a national missile defense, it is a defense that is designed to develop capabilities that will protect our friends, our allies, our deployed forces, as well as the United States. And we will do that on a bilateral basis, we will do that in the context of our alliance commitments, and we will certainly do that from the standpoint of our industrial relationships with countries abroad.

Last slide, please.

Just to sum up: Dynamic security environment. Threats are less predictable. As I said surprise is likely. And deterrence is less reliable, although still very important. And we think this requires a balance of offensive and defensive capabilities. We have some offensive capabilities; we're now just beginning to get some initial defensive capabilities. In accordance with this approach, we're employing this evolutionary approach to develop some missile-defense capabilities, with some initial protection, as I said, in the 2004- 2005 time frame, and attempting to add additional capabilities as the threat develops and technology develops.

So with that, I'm going to turn it over to General Kadish, and he'll talk a little bit more about the programmatics, and then we can take some questions.

General, why don't you move over here?

Kadish: Thank you, J.D.

What I'd like to do is drill you down into some more of the specifics of what it is we are planning to do, and relate that to what our ongoing program has been.

So I'd like to have my first slide, please.

I want to take you back to July of 2001, when in this room I went through a number of slides to describe the RDT&E (research & development, test & evaluation) program that we were going to embark on. I'd like to review those slides with you, because we are still doing these things, and we intend to still do them, subject, of course, to the congressional approval and appropriations process. And it's the underlying basis for us proceeding as the president has asked us to do.

So I'd like to remind you that this is still an aggressive RDT&E program, and it is even more important to proceed down this road because of the ABM Treaty withdrawal. It's allowed us to take advantage of a number of things. But we've only been out of the treaty for about six months. So we need an ongoing RDT&E program to make it happen and improve our overall capability.

It's a multi-layered system that we're trying to build.

I'd like to have the next slide, please.

This is a simple depiction against all ranges of missiles where we want to be. Eventually, where we want to have capability in the boost phase, the mid-course phase, and the terminal phase, with the sensors to support that against all ranges of missiles. So we could take shots, if you will, multiple times in all phases of a ballistic missile flight.

Another chart I showed you in July of 2001 is depicted in the next slide. This was the idea that we were going to start with where we were in terms of our investment over many years in missile defense, and then, over time, we were going to either field, accelerate in some way, truncate or modify our efforts to achieve our goals. And over time, I believe this has happened. And I'll explain that in just a minute.

In the next chart, we have some basic summaries of the overall approach to point out the direction that we want to go in the BMD (ballistic missile defense) RDT&E program. Again, a single R&D (research & development) research program, starting with what we know. Realistic, aggressive testing. Transition the capabilities as soon as possible and in increments over time in an evolutionary way.

So these were the things that we talked about in July of 2001, and what we have been working on for many months since then, and I think very successfully.

In the next chart, I'd like to take a minute and explain this idea of evolutionary development. If you look at the history of the development of very complex weapon systems, what you'll find is the first things you build are not the final things that people use.

I would use the B-52 as a good example. The B-52 that was designed and operated in the early '50s is not the B-52 we're flying today. Same here with missile defense. The difference is that we have recognized that in this revolutionary technology, and have designed a program to develop this system in an evolutionary way.

So, what have we done over the past two years? Let me review this. And I think J.D. has talked a little bit about this.

Next slide, please.

We have withdrawn from the treaty. Six months into that withdrawal, we are still evaluating what that means to our program. And we've made significant strides, but there are still more to come. We have changed our program of work, all the way from canceling programs to modifying programs. And they are listed here. And we have had significant changes in our testing regime in terms of what we've learned and the successes of a hit-to-kill technology. And I'll give you a video report card of that here in a few minutes to show you what I mean.

Next chart, please.

Now, what have we been asked to do, and what have we proposed that we could do in this initial capability approach in the 2004-2005 time frame? This is the summary that J.D. gave you a little bit more in detail. But I'd also like to make the point that we're not only building on the capabilities that we have put in the test bed, that I'll talk about in a minute, but we are still aggressively pursuing RDT&E across a broad front, all way from the THAAD (Theater High Altitude Area Defense) airborne laser, through development of kinetic energy boost-phase interceptors. And in fact, tomorrow we'll be having an industry day, surveying industry and preparing them for a request for proposal for our efforts in that particular area.

Now let me be a little bit more specific about what we mean about building these capabilities on top of the test bed idea. Recall that the tests we've been doing to date are very, very complex. However, we have the basic limitation of geometry, geography, and physics in our test program today.

Next chart.

Although the tests are complicated, we are still doing them from Vandenberg to Kwajalein Island 4,000, 5,000 miles away, using basically the same geometries. And we have to change that. And we put in our program the ability to change that. And we proposed -- the next chart -- and I don't intend to decipher this for you -- (soft laughter) -- except to say we're going to build a lot of stuff and put it in the Pacific against all ranges of threats. And we're going to test this as robustly as we possibly can, subject to the physical limits of the geography involved and the physics involved.

We have invested in this. We have postulated, for instance, a interceptor site at Fort Greely with five interceptors. We'd hook it up like we'd use it, and then at some future time we would make it operation (sic) [operational]. We've been at this for some time, and I'll show you some of the progress.

But let me be a little bit more specific about what we mean about this testbed in terms of its specific elements that we are going to build. Next chart.

If you start on the right-hand side of this chart, you got interceptors, launch sites, sensors, battle management, command and control, the communications that hook it all together, and then the test infrastructure that gives us what we call truth data, so we can compare what actually happened to what the test objectives were. This is very complex. So at Fort Greely we're going to put five interceptors against long-range threats. At the Pacific Missile Test Range in Hawaii, we would have an Aegis system with Standard Missile-3 against short- and medium- and eventually intermediate-range threats. The Patriot has been tested at White Sands, and eventually we will test it out in the Pacific, and of course THAAD is in development.

And if you go down to the launch sites, we've had targets and interceptor sites at Vandenberg, Fort Greely, on Aegis, and eventually the airborne laser, supported by the sensors that you see there at those locations.

And then we have the battle management, the command and control part of this, where we actually plan the intercepts and they're authorized by competent commanders, and then the communications that hooks them all together, not only terrestrial-based, but to communicate while the interceptors are in flight, and of course, as I said, the test infrastructure.

Now this is what we have funded, this is what the Congress has so graciously approved and appropriated, and this is what we are building today. Now let me tell you what the initial capability is on top of this.

Next chart.

If you take that same chart and looked at that box, large box, in the upper left-hand corner of the slide, that is the test that I just talked about. That is what we are building. The bottom line is of course the test infrastructure that doesn't change. Now, the purple box there is what we are adding to the testbed in order to make this initial capability real by 2004 and 2005 time frame. To make it easier to read, I'll go to the next slide. (Laughter.)

What we intend to do is to take the infrastructure that we are building in the testbed, and instead of waiting to decide on order to turn it on to make it operational, we will attempt to make it operational from the beginning, starting now. All right? That's the big change. We will add one more interceptor to Fort Greely for a total of six in the '04 time frame, and four interceptors at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California possibly by the end of '04 for a total of 10 GBIs.

Q: How is it possible -- (inaudible) -- this time frame?

Kadish: Well, we have a situation where we have environmental rules and a whole bunch of things that are subject to law that we have to go make happen. But this is our plan.

Crouch: And obviously, we're going to be submitting this funding request --

Kadish: To Congress.

Crouch: -- to the Congress. So, it will be dependant upon their approval and appropriation of funds.

Kadish: So, we're going through all the approval loops that we need to go. But this is the plan.

In addition to that, we expect that we will ask for approval to produce somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 20 missiles for Aegis purposes; convert the Aegis ships to use those missiles; convert more Aegis ships to support a surveillance capability to improve the performance of our ground-based program; and ask for approval to use the U.K. (United Kingdom) and the Greenland radars; integrate the command and control to make a more effective system and then put the right terminals in the right place to communicate with this system.

Q: (Word inaudible) -- '04 the Aegis conversions and --

Kadish: There will be a combination of '04 and '05. But this -- the best way to characterize this is that by the end of '05, we intend to have these totals and numbers in place, subject to approval process and our ability to meet the schedules.

So, what we have tried to do here is take a very reasoned approach of taking a testbed that we were already going to build for realistic testing purposes and now make it operational with a few more assets, both at sea and on the ground, and then continue to test when those are in operation.

Q: General, you're taking an R&D program and you're putting it in operation and working out the kinks along the way. Is that --

Kadish: That's right.

Q: -- fair to say? How much money do you have invested in this now, and how much will you be requesting from Congress in '04 and '05 for this?

Kadish: I have a few more charts, and I hope to satisfy you when I get finished.

Let me just be a little bit clearer by drilling down a little bit more in what we're going to build, and then I'll talk about what we are going to ask for funding.

Next chart.

This is the (U.S.S.) Lake Erie. This now is a dedicated testbed to the Missile Defense Agency, through the good graces of the United States Navy. This is an important step forward, because we've been using the Lake Erie but it hasn't been dedicated to us to do a whole range of other testing that we need to do.

So, by the end of the '05 time period, I'd like to reemphasize, against short and medium-range threats, we expect to have somewhere around 20 missiles or less on board, with three Aegis ships available to fire those missiles, and then 15 ships available for surveillance.

Now let me talk about Fort Greely. I'm going to show you three pictures about our progress there, because this is real. We've been at this for some time. We've been discussing it and planning it and actually building it.

Next chart.

If you look at the upper right-hand side of this chart, that's Fort Greely from the air in the summer of 2001. If you look at the larger picture, you'll see that's Fort Greely a few months ago. And the construction seasons are obviously shorter there than they are in the lower 48, but we have made significant progress to build this testbed. And again, the idea of building it as we would use it in order to get realistic tests is what we were after here, and I think we are making really good progress in that area.

On closer inspection -- next chart -- you can see in that picture, almost in the center, there's about five little mounds there. Those are the silos that we have built at Fort Greely. And you can see a sixth one that was going to be used as a spare test asset, in the upper left-hand corner of that asphalt area, if you want to call it. And I can pick those out for you later. But the point here is, we have this underway today and we're going to add to it.

Next chart.

And we have some buildings going in that are under construction in Alaska. So this is an effort that we are building on, and I think it makes a lot of sense to do.

Next chart.

Quickly, a summary of Patriot. This just gives you an idea of how many missiles we project to have in that time frame, based on the fact that there has been a decision to accelerate Patriot, based on our success so far in that program.

Now, again, I don't want to repeat myself too much, but it's important to understand that we have been after a testbed both at sea and on land in an integrated way, and we've been building it, getting approval to build it, for the last couple of years. This approach is to build on that infrastructure, and it's a modest increase to that infrastructure to make it happen. And we'll be using the testbed while it's operational, instead of using it as a testbed and then deciding to make it operational.

Now, why do we have the confidence to do this? I think it's a fair question that everybody asks me all the time. So I'd like to kind of summarize it as simply as I could in the next chart.

We are confident to proceed in this initial capability, recognizing the final architecture is not knowable today because we have a lot more research and development to do to improve our capability over time. But what we do know is that our fundamental technology of hit-to-kill, collision of the interceptor with the warheads that completely destroys the warheads, works. Whereas a few years ago, I could not tell you that with any confidence.

The system testing that we have done gives us confidence that we have the ability to integrate these elements, as complex as they are, and to make them effective. And our computer predictions, of which are very sophisticated, are telling us that when we do have a successful test, it occurs just as we had predicted.

So those confidence-building measures, along with the fact that we're going to have a very aggressive RDT&E program, subject to all the risks that are inherent in this business of failure and success, and some things will work and some things won't, but we will build confidence over time, as we invest in the program.

Now, from a test record, there's many ways we can characterize this. And I'm going to give you a video report card here in a second. But I wanted to get the numbers straight as best I can.

Against short-, medium-range and long-range targets, we have done a significant amount of testing in the last couple of years. And what's shaded here is what's been done since January of 2001, kind of when we started the real aggressive testing in the program. So from a ground-based program, we're three for eight; but in the last two years, it's four for five. Aegis hasn't missed yet -- three for three in the last year; three attempts, three successes in the approach just in the last year. And in Patriot, you can see that we have done significantly well in that program, although we had some misses recently in operational tests. We know why they missed, and we will fix those. So test, fix; test, fix; test, fix is what we're doing.

Now, let me try to make that a little bit more real to you, because I could stand here and talk about hit-to-kill for many hours, but you won't get a flavor of it until you see it in action. What I'm going to show you is a video report card.

(To staff.) Can I roll the film, please?

What we're going to try to show here is that in each regime, in the boost phase, in the mid-course phase, and in the terminal phase, against ranges all the way from short, medium and long range, we have had test successes or efforts that give us confidence we're on the right track -- boost phase being the most immature.

So the first thing I'd like to show you is the short-range threat system, using Patriot 3 as an example. We've done a number of these types of tests, but I'll just show you one in particular. So this is in the atmosphere against a short-range threat, and here's Patriot 3. You can see the battery. You see the launch against the missile. You will see the Patriot maneuver within the atmosphere towards the target. As it approaches the target, you will see little puffs of white smoke come out of the sides of the missile. Those are attitude adjustments that it's making to be very fine in its endgame and actually hit the target. You'll see it hit. There is no explosives in that warhead; that's pure kinetic energy. So we've done a number of those successfully.

Now, THAAD was -- we were having problems with, but the last two flights you'll see the THAAD convinced us that we could do this in a hit-to-kill mode. And you see it maneuvering here. But this was on the edge of the atmosphere, almost in outer space. And this is what the seeker actually saw as it came in for that kill. So you can see that we get very, very accurate placement on the kinetic warhead.

The Lake Erie -- three for three and the Standard Missile-3. You could see the launch here. This was out in Hawaii, in the Pacific missile test range, against a medium-range missile. You can see it maneuvering. This occurred in outer space, and that's how accurate we hit it -- three times going.

That's another view of the intercept.

Midcourse -- this is our long-range test. Our last test did not succeed, but four previous to that did. And you can see the repeatability that we got out of this particular test series, and we had the intercept here. You can see the flash. The left-hand side is radar tracks. We confirm these hits every which way we can.

This was the first night mission we were going to attempt in the last test, IFT-10 (Integrated Flight Test 10). It did not succeed. I could talk about that later, but we didn't separate the intercept, so it was fundamentally a no-test.

In the boost phase, the airborne laser, the airplane, in its first flight, doesn't have the laser in it yet, but we intend to do the installation of the laser over the next 18 months.

We're also doing kinetic energy experiments that give us confidence that we'll be able to intercept a missile in the boosting phase of flight using hit-to-kill technology.

So across a broad front, in boost and in midcourse and in terminal, we have built the confidence that the hit-to-kill technology will work repeatedly and reliably. And that's where we're headed in our testing program.

So when you look across the board, we have made, I think, significant progress in our overall hit-to-kill technology. And that's why we have gained the confidence that we could take this next, modest step.

Now just how aggressive is the testing? We go way beyond flight tests. We go way beyond these flight tests. And the next slide that I'd like to show you -- when you put this mosaic together, it's pretty impressive -- but the next slide tells you -- next -- here's the kind of testing we do when you roll it all up. Every element has ground tests. They have flight tests. And when -- if you look at the past two years, as this slide says, we've conducted 55 flight tests of all our elements, 60 ground tests, and of those, 17 were intercept tests that the video report card just told you about.

Over the next two years, we've got another 68 flight tests and 58 ground tests to do, and we'll have a like number of intercept tests, depending on what our planning actually produces. And all the while, we're experimenting with simulations, war games and those types of activities. So we've got a lot of work to do between now and then and for the foreseeable future.

Now let me talk about the funding required to do this effort.

Next chart, please.

We have, for the last two years at least, been appropriated somewhere in the neighborhood of $8 billion a year to do this very aggressive flight test program. And I showed you the results that we've been able to produce for those dollars so far. We expect -- and by the way, I want to make this point very clear, what I'm about to tell you is subject to the budget process here in the building, Congressional appropriations and all the other pressures that come about these types of programs. So I'm giving you my best estimate, subject to the changes of what we're going to face here. So somewhere in the neighborhood of $8 billion will continue to be spent to build that testbed to aggressively test and move forward across a broad front in our technologies.

For the '04 and '05 time frame, however, what we intend to do as a modest increase to the capability of missile defense, what I just described, we expect to ask for funding in the neighborhood of $1.5 billion dollars over two years -- over two years.

Crouch: Above the $8 billion.

Kadish: Okay. So from an increase in funding standpoint, and you can ask me all the questions you want to about what does this cost in terms of the definition of cost, anywhere from life cycle cost to acquisition cost, I can give you those numbers when you ask the question. But fundamentally, what we're going to ask the United States Congress to do is add about $1.5 billion to our budget to get this job done over the next two years. And about a third of it, I think somewhere in that neighborhood, in the '04 time frame.

In addition to that, I had mentioned before that Lake Erie was assigned to us by the United States Navy, which gives us great flexibility, and in exchange for that -- it's kind of an arcane point, but we allocated some of our future budget back to the Navy to pay for that capability to be allocated to us. And of course, the accelerated Patriot has been approved and funded, so that's already in the budget. So any further additions will be added as directed and as approved. But subject to all the other approving activities, we're on track for about that amount of money, billion and a half.

Next chart.

So to sum it up: We have an aggressive program for research and development and testing that's still ongoing and we'd expect to go full-bore ahead. Our testing and analysis gives us confidence that hit-to-kill works and we ought to take this next step at sea with Aegis and Standard Missile-3 as well as at Fort Greely and Vandenberg and associated points. We expect to ask for funding in the neighborhood of an additional billion and a half. And we're going to continue to build confidence in our ability to do this over time, building on the initial capability as rapidly as our successes will allow.

J.D.?

Crouch: (Off mike) -- questions.

Q: I'd like to ask the general: If you have 10 ground-based interceptors available for use by the end of '04, how much of the United States would be protected against a long-range missile with that kind of capability? And when would you have a 50-state capability?

Kadish: Well, in '04, soon as we have -- as soon as we have our first missile, it will be capable of defending the entire United States.

Q: Against a missile coming from any part of --

Kadish: Not any part.

Q: Which parts?

Kadish: Primarily Northeast Asia in '04, and then the rest of the Middle East area in '05, when we add -- we need the UK radars and the Thule radar. The missiles will have the capability, but we won't have the sensors out there.

Crouch: So we've made a request to both those governments, and that request is pending. And we're hopeful that we can proceed with that.

Q: Missiles in Greely and missiles at Vandenberg, plus your Aegis missiles, would be capable of dealing with a Middle Eastern kind of threat profile given your upgrades to these two radars? Or do you need to -- where would the Aegis missiles have to be -- (off mike)?

Kadish: People get confused on this point, so I want to make it clear one more time. Aegis is capable against medium-range and shorter-range missiles, No-Dong class. The ground-based system is ICBM (inter-continental ballistic missile). We will eventually fill in the gaps of that. But in the case of a layered system against all ranges of threats, that's what we're starting to build. So Aegis and the Standard Missile-3, depending on where we place them, could protect parts of the U.S. from ocean-launched, or our allies and friends, or our deployed forces. And then the ground-based program, initially because it's sited in California and Alaska, only has a range to protect the 50 states.

So again, this increase in capability is the beginning of building a layered defense system, which is our best counter- countermeasure and our best capability that we could provide.

Q: Correct me if I'm wrong, but when the Navy first started looking at the Aegis capability, they were looking at the ability to put two Aegis destroyers on either side of the Korean peninsula and knock down any missiles fired from North Korea at the United States. Isn't that still the intention of the Aegis capability?

Kadish: No. The Standard Missile-3 was always intermediate range and below. Now, to a certain extent, when you get -- we can argue about what ranges mean you say intermediate. But if it's 3,600 or 4,000 kilometers, you're talking about Alaska. But the Aegis is best used against shorter-range missiles, and it will be very effective when we're done. And the long-range missiles are taken care of by the ground-based program. That's why there's a synergy here of low numbers.

Crouch: It would have capability, let's say, in the Mediterranean against threats coming out of the Middle East, North Africa. It would have capability to protect allies in the Far East who might be threatened by missiles. It would have capability to be used vis-a-vis deployed forces in areas.

So -- and that's why I think one of the things the president highlighted was this is not strictly a national missile defense program. We're looking to provide capabilities that are useful not only for the U.S., but also for our allies.

Q: And then a follow-up. And I, perhaps, should have asked the secretary this, but I'll ask you anyway, because you're policy also. At the moment, the United States and North Korea are in a standoff over North Korea's nuclear program. Won't the unveiling of a program that is so obviously aimed at North Korea's military capability, exacerbate the tensions at this point, rather than have a soothing effect?

Crouch: I guess I don't accept the premise of the question. This is not "obviously aimed" at anything. We've been saying for two years, since we came in here, that we wanted to develop and deploy, when ready, missile defense capabilities. We've moved deliberately in working with the Russians, to get out of the ABM Treaty so we could do realistic testing. We now have a set of capabilities that we think are mature enough to give us an initial and very modest set of missile defense capabilities, and we are moving forward on that. We have -- we are moving forward on it based on months and months of work, all of which predated current, you know, difficulties.

So I think that from our perspective, you know, we do think that missile defense capabilities can have a powerful impact on those countries that might threaten us. They have a deterrent effect, and we hope they have a dissuasive effect, in the sense that we hope that our missile defense capabilities will keep countries that might be thinking about investing in ballistic missiles from continuing those investments that might threaten ourselves or our friends and allies. So, to that degree, it is connected. But I think it is certainly not connected directly to what's going on.

Q: I have a general and a specific question. The specific question is, I never saw any X-band radar in there at all, so how does the ground-based -- how do they work without X-band radar? That's the specific question.

And the general question is, this looks like your aggressive RDT&E program, plus a few more things, but if it looks like a R&D program, what has changed today -- the secretary asked us not to think of deployment with a capital "D" sort of thing, as we normally do, but what has really changed today?

Crouch: Do you want to -- well, why don't I take the second part first? This is a -- I think the president directed us to take -- to build on that initial test bed and provide some capabilities that would give us, as I said, a very modest capability, but that would be a modest operational capability that would be available if we managed to implement these plans, you know, with all the caveats that the general mentioned -- (chuckles) -- in the '04, '05 time frame. That means, as he said, a major difference I think is that before, we had a testbed that we could have transformed into a capability if we wanted to.

Now, we have taken the step -- the next step to say we're going to create some operational capability that will eventually give us some 24-7 coverage that we will also use as part of our testing program. So it's, again, I'd like to characterize this as a modest next step that does provide some capability. And I think that's, you know, the way the secretary talked about it this afternoon, and certainly the way the president talked about it in his statement.

Kadish: You missed the X-band, in the sense that we decided to put it on a sea-based platform, if you will, and move it around for test geometry purposes. And when we're not doing that, it could serve as our mid-course sensor. However, the initial capability is based on primarily the Aegis, Cobra Dane upgraded early-warning sensors, along with the Defense Support Satellite System. And then we're going to move to improve that as quickly as possible with our sensors, subject to all the other constraints that we have.

Q: In other words -- in other words, the initial -- (inaudible) -- '05, '04 capability relies on upgrade to existing things like Cobra Dane, Aegis, whatever, rather than building the X- band radar, which would take longer, or something?

Kadish: Well, it's not that it takes longer so much as that we believe we can make the initial capability robust enough to meet our perception of threats, if you will, with the radars we got. But we're not going to stop there. I'm going to continue to propose upgrades to those when it's proper.

Q: So you don't have the money for that yet?

Kadish: And one of the -- I think one of the test assets is that mobile, sea-mobile X-band radar.

Crouch: We already have the sea-mobile. We are building that as part of the testbed.

Q: You're already building. When will that be done? And do you have the money to --

Crouch: We have it in the budget. It's been funded as a part of the testbed. It was appropriated in the last appropriation, and we expect it to be available in the '05 time frame.

Q: General -- General, you talked about --

Q: General, a technical --

Staff: We really need to cut it off here. You have people waiting at --

Q: General, looking at countermeasures, because this is the Achilles' heel of the program, in terms of critics over the last two years. You've spent a lot of time on that issue. What capability will these first 20 missiles have against sophisticated countermeasures, given that you've pretty much articulated before a "crawl before you walk" program on countermeasures, you're still in a crawl phase, it seems. Can you address the issue before the arms groups do?

Kadish: Well, I wouldn't characterize it as being in the crawl phase. We're -- I'm not going to -- I could talk to countermeasures at various levels of classification, but I will tell you this; countermeasures are with us not only in this system, but in every military system, so we got to deal with it.

The capability that we're postulating right now will be capable against the countermeasures we expect in the time frame that we're talking about. And then we will move rapidly to improve that capability to make sure that we either stay ahead of our perception of the threat or get the capability to prevent a surprise as soon as possible. And that will include upgrades to all the hardware, software, adding new capability in terms of sensors. And that's the way we're going to approach it. Now we're going to be very, very aggressive in this area.

Q: Could you also address the booster question? Your booster failed to separate for a second time. You're not going to be putting that booster into this program; you're going to use new boosters that we haven't even seen yet and haven't been tested. That's one thing I think that probably the program is vulnerable on from critics who are going to criticize that.

Kadish: Well, I think -- I don't like where we are in terms of being developed with the boosters. That is a fact. Everybody knows that. I've been saying that for some time. Calendar year '03 is the year of the ground-based booster in terms of the testing. We've got two approaches. And of course we -- you know, if I haven't said this before, I'll said it again, if I haven't given the impression: You know, we're managing the program and all the challenges all the time, and this is one of those challenges. And so we intend to know, probably by fall of next year, about the time that the appropriations process is going to be concluded, how we're doing on the boosters.

Q: And if the booster isn't working, would that derail this, or --

Kadish: It will have an effect. I mean, we can't use an interceptor that doesn't fly right.

But let me say this: We've got two approaches, two different boosters being built on this, and we really know how to make boosters. (Laughs.) I know sometimes our record may not show that, but there is nothing here that we have to invent. We just got to do it really well. And I think we have people on board that intend to do it well, and we'll see how the testing goes.

Q: General, you said you're 3 for 8 in the ground-based --

Kadish: We're going to have to go.

Q: 4 for 5 in the last two years. How do you -- how do you -- how's the math there?

ENDS

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