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80–605 PDF 2003

S. Hrg. 107–558

CRUISE MISSILE AND UAV THREATS TO THE

UNITED STATES

HEARING

BEFORE THE

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, PROLIFERATION AND

FEDERAL SERVICES SUBCOMMITTEE

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

JUNE 11, 2002

Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs

(

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman

CARL LEVIN, Michigan

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii

RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois

ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey

MAX CLELAND, Georgia

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware

JEAN CARNAHAN, Missouri

MARK DAYTON, Minnesota

FRED THOMPSON, Tennessee

TED STEVENS, Alaska

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio

THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi

ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah

JIM BUNNING, Kentucky

PETER G. FITZGERALD, Illinois

JOYCE A. RECHTSCHAFFEN, Staff Director and Counsel

RICHARD A. HERTLING, Minority Staff Director

DARLA D. CASSELL, Chief Clerk

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, PROLIFERATION AND FEDERAL SERVICES

SUBCOMMITTEE

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii, Chairman

CARL LEVIN, Michigan

ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey

MAX CLELAND, Georgia

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware

JEAN CARNAHAN, Missouri

MARK DAYTON, Minnesota

THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi

TED STEVENS, Alaska

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio

ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah

PETER G. FITZGERALD, Illinois

Richard J. Kessler, Staff Director

Dennis M. Ward, Minority Staff Director

Brian D. Rubens, Chief Clerk

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Opening statements: Page

Senator Akaka .................................................................................................. 1

Senator Cochran ............................................................................................... 3

WITNESSES

TUESDAY, JUNE 11, 2002

Vann H. Van Diepen, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Nonproliferation, U.S. Department of State ............................................................. 3

Christopher Bolkcom, Analyst in Naitonal Defense, Foreign Affairs, Defense,

and Trade Division, Congressional Research Service ....................................... 13

Dennis Gormley, Senior Fellow, International Institute for Strategic Studies .. 14

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Bolkcom, Christopher:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 13

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 28

Gormley, Dennis:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 14

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 59

Van Diepen, Vann H.:

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 3

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 23

APPENDIX

Questions for the Record submitted from Chairman Akaka to:

Mr. Van Diepen ................................................................................................ 69

Mr. Bolkcom ...................................................................................................... 73

Mr. Gormley ...................................................................................................... 74

(1)

CRUISE MISSILE AND UAV THREATS TO THE

UNITED STATES

TUESDAY, JUNE 11, 2002

U.S. SENATE,

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, PROLIFERATION,

AND FEDERAL SERVICES SUBCOMMITTEE,

OF THE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC.

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room

SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Daniel K. Akaka,

Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.

Present: Senators Akaka, Cochran, and Stevens.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA

Senator AKAKA. The Subcommittee will please come to order.

Good morning to all, especially our witnesses. I would like to thank

our witnesses for being with us today to discuss cruise missiles and

unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAV, and their threats to the United

States.

During the early days of Operation Enduring Freedom, United

States and coalition troops found an American manual on how to

operate a remotely-controlled unmanned helicopter in an al Qaeda

safe house in Afghanistan. And just 2 weeks ago, the intelligence

community issued a terrorist alert to the airline industry because

of a portable shoulder-launched missile casing that was found

abandoned outside an airfield in Saudi Arabia. While remotely-controlled helicopters and so called ‘‘man-pads’’ are not cruise missiles,

they demonstrate the threats we face, both at home and abroad,

from cheaper and easier-to-use and long-ignored alternatives to

ballistic missiles.

During the Subcommittee hearing on the National Intelligence

Estimate on Foreign Missile Developments, we learned that between one and two dozen countries will possess a land attack

cruise missile capability by the year 2015 through indigenous development, acquisition, or modification of other systems, such as

anti-ship cruise missiles or UAVs.

In fact, in every hearing I have chaired in the past year on weapons of mass destruction proliferation, the subject of cruise missiles

was raised. For this reason, I believe it is necessary to examine the

cruise missile threat to America and the extent of cruise missile

proliferation. I have included UAVs both because of the apparent

interest by al Qaeda terrorists and because an armed UAV technically is a type of cruise missile.

2

Cruise missiles are any unmanned, self-propelled, and guided vehicle whose primary mission is to place a special payload on a target. Cruise missiles vary greatly in their speed and range and are

often an afterthought to ballistic missile concerns.

In many ways, cruise missile proliferation is more difficult to

tackle than ballistic missiles. They share many features with commercial aircraft which have legitimate uses and are less expensive

to build. These similarities make it difficult to inhibit cruise missile

proliferation without impacting the aircraft industry.

The Missile Technology Control Regime, or MTCR, was established by the United States and our G–7 partners in 1987 to restrict the proliferation of long-range ballistic and cruise missiles

and to delegitimize their sale. Currently, 33 nations belong to the

MTCR. However, the MTCR is only as effective as the effort member nations put into implementing it and ensuring that it is comprehensive in the technology it controls.

During our Subcommittee hearing last week on Russian export

controls, we learned that Russian officials drafted license requests

so that cruise missile sales intended for India would fall just under

the MTCR guidelines. India has the capability and history of modifying these missiles to then exceed the range and payload limits.

This practice, which is not limited to Russia, shows that unlike

ballistic missiles, there is not strong consensus between MTCR

member states that cruise missiles are sufficiently dangerous to

warrant tighter controls. There is not even agreement on which

items or technologies need to be controlled.

The willingness of member states to export cruise missile and

UAV technology is proof of this. The United States also is caught

between national security concerns and the profitable world of

cruise missile and UAV sales.

The administration has asked the producers of the Predator UAV

for a new version for export to non-NATO allies. The new version

would have modifications that would make it impossible for the

buyer to arm or augment it into a system that would violate the

MTCR. But do MTCR limitations on cruise missiles address our security concerns and are other MTCR members making similar efforts in their export of cruise missiles and UAVs? That is a question.

I look forward to discussing these important questions with our

witnesses and I welcome Vann Van Diepen, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Nonproliferation, our first panel’s sole witness.

He will discuss the global interest in cruise missiles and UAVs,

how the MTCR addresses this threat, and what measures the administration is pursuing other than the MTCR to stem cruise missile proliferation.

Mr. Van Diepen has returned recently from the April MTCR

working group meeting in Paris. I hope he will share with us the

discussions on cruise missiles and whether our MTCR partners

share our concerns. So I look forward to that.

I would like to call on my friend and partner here, Senator Cochran, for any statement he may have.

3

1The prepared statement of Mr. Van Diepen appears in the Appendix on page 23.

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COCHRAN

Senator COCHRAN. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much, and

thank you for convening the hearing. I join you in welcoming our

witnesses this morning to this hearing and hope that we will learn

about the nature of the threat to the United States and our security interests from unmanned aerial vehicles and cruise missiles.

We have had hearings and have taken steps to try to develop legislation to improve our defenses against ballistic missiles. The

threat seemed to be more clear and present in connection with ballistic missiles because up to 35 nation states have the capability of

using ballistic missiles to threaten our troops in the field and

Americans around the world, as well as our homeland.

I am advised that up to nine nation states have the capability

of using land-attack cruise missiles. Unmanned aerial vehicles are

similar in that they can be converted to cruise missiles, as I understand the technology. But we will learn more about the details

from these witnesses and I am sure we will be better positioned in

terms of our understanding of the nature of the threat to take

whatever action the Congress deems appropriate to be sure that we

are capable of defending against these threats as well as ballistic

missile threats.

Thank you for being here, Mr. Van Diepen. I look forward to

your testimony.

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Senator Cochran.

Mr. Van Diepen, we welcome you here and welcome any statement you may have. You may proceed.

TESTIMONY OF VANN H. VAN DIEPEN,1 ACTING DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY, BUREAU OF NONPROLIFERATION, U.S.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Mr. VAN DIEPEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Senator Cochran. It is my privilege to testify before you on the important subject

of the proliferation implications of cruise missiles and unmanned

air vehicles, or UAVs. These systems provide important capabilities

to the United States and our friends and allies, but in the hands

of our adversaries can pose substantial threats. I will discuss briefly the threat potential of cruise missile and UAV proliferation and

then describe the steps that the United States and our partners

have been taking to impede that threat.

Unmanned air vehicles is the term used in the Missile Technology Control Regime, the MTCR, to refer to unmanned systems

that fly within the atmosphere and are not rocket propelled. Different terms may be used in other contexts, but for MTCR purposes, this term includes cruise missiles as well as target drones,

reconnaissance drones, and other forms of unmanned air vehicles,

be they military or civilian, armed or unarmed. UAVs can be as

large as a jetliner or as small as a model airplane.

UAVs have been in military service since at least the use of the

V–1 cruise missile in World War II. Since then, their use has

grown dramatically in land attack, reconnaissance, as targets, and

even in some civilian applications, such as crop dusting. As UAVs

4

become more capable, they are taking on more missions that had

exclusively been borne by manned aircraft.

The same attributes that make UAVs so useful for the U.S. military make UAVs threatening in the hands of our adversaries.

UAVs are potential delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction and they are ideally suited for delivering chemical and biological weapons. As you have noted in your statement, Mr. Chairman,

there is a potential for terrorist groups to produce or acquire UAVs.

U.S. efforts to impede threats stemming from the proliferation of

UAVs and UAV technology encompass a broad spectrum of measures. As in the other nonproliferation areas, the U.S. attempts to

aggressively use all the following tools that I will briefly describe

to affect various aspects of the UAV proliferation threat.

First, norms such as the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Biological Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention,

and the MTCR guidelines help dissuade new countries from getting

into the WMD delivery business, including via UAVs. They impede

and delegitimize WMD proliferation and the proliferation of UAVs

for WMD delivery. And, these norms help support our other nonproliferation measures.

Export controls, both national and multilateral, help deny

proliferators access to technologies that might be misused to develop WMD delivery systems and they help slow down adversary

UAV programs, make those programs more costly and less effective

and less reliable than would otherwise be the case.

The key export control instrument is the Missile Technology Control Regime, which from its beginning in 1987 subjected exports of

unmanned air vehicles inherently capable of delivering a payload

of at least 500 kilograms to a range of at least 300 kilometers, socalled Category I UAVs or MTCR-class UAVs, and their directly associated technology to an unconditional strong presumption of denial. Exports of the specially designed production facilities for Category I UAVs are prohibited.

Key components and materials usable in producing MTCR-class

UAVs, as well as many UAVs not captured under Category I, are

controlled under the MTCR as so-called Category II items, the export of which are reviewed on a case-by-case basis against specified

nonproliferation criteria.

In addition to MTCR controls, military UAVs, their components,

and a wide range of materials and equipment useful in producing

military UAVs are controlled under the so-called Wassenaar Arrangement, the nonproliferation regime for conventional arms and

associated dual-use items.

Now, there are a large number of items relevant to the production of UAVs that are not controlled under either the MTCR or

Wassenaar, mostly because of their broad civil uses. On a national

basis, the United States and most of the other members of the nonproliferation regimes have enacted so-called ‘‘catch-all’’ controls

that give them a legal basis to control exports of these unlisted

items when they are intended for use in WMD delivery.

Related to the export control tool are the very extensive export

control assistance programs that the United States has to help

other countries to enact and enforce export controls that are compatible with those of the MTCR and the Wassenaar Arrangement.

5

Now, in addition to its export control role, the MTCR also serves

as a forum where member countries can share information and

concerns and coordinate their national missile nonproliferation efforts, and over the past several years, UAVs have taken on an increasing prominence in the discussions of the MTCR.

Another tool we use is interdiction. The United States has a

longstanding program of identifying potential exports of proliferation concern and working with other countries to investigate and,

if warranted, stop such exports.

Another tool are sanctions. A variety of U.S. domestic laws require sanctions against foreign governments or entities involved in

certain activities, including proliferation activities related to UAVs.

The threat of sanctions can act as a deterrent to proliferation activity, and in some cases, the diplomacy surrounding sanctions or

sanctions waivers can result in positive nonproliferation progress.

Another important tool is our military efforts, which, of course,

go beyond my scope as a State Department person. Nonetheless,

our efforts to try to defend against adversary UAVs, to defend

against the WMD they might deliver, as well as to be able, if necessary, to destroy adversary UAV holdings or to retaliate against

the use against us by adversaries of UAVs or WMD delivered by

UAVs all help to deter the use of UAVs against us and our friends

and help to make the UAVs a less attractive option for our adversaries to pursue.

Good intelligence is central to nonproliferation, and this is a very

important nonproliferation tool. The U.S. intelligence community

has done a very good job in building awareness of the UAV threat,

in supporting U.S. nonproliferation efforts, in facilitating interdictions, and in assisting other countries’ enforcement of their export

controls.

Finally, all the tools that I have mentioned are enabled by active

U.S. diplomacy, and not only is diplomacy a tool that enables the

others, there are times where we can use diplomacy directly, independent of the other tools, to promote good behavior and dissuade

irresponsible behavior.

Energetic U.S. use of all these tools and intensive cooperation

with our friends and allies have had a positive impact in impeding

the UAV proliferation threat. Adversaries’ efforts to acquire UAVs

have been complicated and made more time consuming and expensive. To the extent that they have been able to acquire UAVs, our

adversaries have had to settle for systems that are less effective

and less reliable than if our nonproliferation efforts had not existed.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, just as UAVs provide real opportunities for U.S. and allied militaries, they also provide opportunities

for our adversaries to threaten us. Dealing with the UAV threat

has been a part of U.S. nonproliferation efforts for over 15 years

and we have been strengthening our ability to impede and cope

with it, including by broadening MTCR export controls, adding

catch-all controls, and improving our military and intelligence capabilities. But we will need to keep working hard to keep pace with

the threat, not only because our adversaries are determined, but

because the increasing reliance on UAVs worldwide and the dualVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:58 Jan 13, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 80605.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
6

use nature of much UAV technology will make our job more difficult in the future. Thank you.

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Mr. Van Diepen.

Senator AKAKA. I would like to ask Senator Stevens if you have

any comments.

Senator STEVENS. I am sorry to be late and I have no opening

statement. Thank you very much.

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much for being with us.

Mr. Van Diepen, we are certainly interested in the meeting you

had in July 2000 with MTCR members. We understand that you

were there to discuss ways of reducing ambiguities over limits on

cruise missile technologies and also to forge a consensus over how

the regime’s provisions apply to cruise missile transfers. My question is, when will the MTCR announce new guidelines for cruise

missile technologies?

Mr. VAN DIEPEN. Thank you, Senator. I do not think that that

is exactly corresponding to what is going on in the regime. First of

all, as I indicated in my statement, the basic controls on cruise

missiles themselves have been in place in the regime since 1987

and additional cruise missiles were added to Category II controls

in 1994. A number of key items useful in making cruise missiles,

certain types of turbo-jet and turbo-fan engines, certain Global Positioning System receivers, guidance systems, composite materials,

and so on have been subject to MTCR control from the very beginning.

What has been going on in the regime over the past few years

as part of the overall effort of reviewing the entire MTCR annex,

the list of equipment and technologies that the regime controls, to

make sure they are up to date, to make sure that any loopholes are

closed, to expand the list where it is warranted. Part of that has

been to look at that effort with the cruise missile threat, the UAV

threat, and the associated threat of CBW delivery, for which UAVs

are especially interesting, in mind.

And so, for example, we are refining the controls on the turbojet and turbo-fan engines that are the primary propulsion means

for cruise missiles to make sure that they are adequate. We are

trying to expand the universe of the Global Positioning System receivers that are of the highest threat potential for use in cruise

missiles. We are trying to refine the definitions of range and payload as used in the MTCR, not just for UAV purposes but for ballistic missile purposes, as well.

So there is an ongoing effort underway to refine the controls to

try and make sure they are as effective as possible. Part of that

is a cruise missile focused effort, but it is a broader effort, as well,

and as these individual decisions are taken, they are announced

when they are taken and they get reflected in the United States

in changes to usually the Commerce Control list that are published

in the Federal Register.

Senator AKAKA. When do you think these changes will be announced?

Mr. VAN DIEPEN. I think these sort of dribble and drabble out as

consensus is reached, and with a 33-nation regime, sometimes

reaching consensus can be a challenge. I would guess that we will

7

probably have some of those items agreed at the next MTCR plenary, which will be at the end of September in Warsaw.

Senator AKAKA. Talking about payloads, let us go back to 1993.

In 1993, the MTCR members were directed to assess whether recipient states could modify missiles to meet longer range and larger

payload limits before permitting missile exports. This change is especially important for cruise missiles because they can be easily altered.

The question is, how do member states judge whether a potential

recipient has the capability and intent to modify a missile, and has

this change resulted in an increase or decrease in the number of

export licenses by MTCR states?

Mr. VAN DIEPEN. Well, first of all, the 1993 decision basically

made explicit what had been implicit in the MTCR from the beginning, the idea that in judging the capability of a system to exceed

the Category I range/payload parameters, 300 kilometers, 500 kilograms, that one has to apply what we like to call in the United

States the inherent capability principle, that one needs to look at

the inherent technical capability of the system to exceed a range

of 300 kilometers with a 500 kilogram payload regardless of whether the system is actually deployed in that configuration, regardless

of whether it is advertised to meet those parameters, so on and so

forth. Part of that is taking into account the so-called trade-off

principle, the ability to trade off range and payload. Part of it, as

you know, is to take into account the potential for the item to be

modified.

As with all decisions in the MTCR, as noted in the MTCR guidelines themselves, it is ultimately the sovereign national decision of

the exporting country and so it is a national responsibility of each

MTCR partner to implement these various provisions. For our part,

we subject applications to export UAVs to very intensive technical

analysis, usually working with the companies involved to make

sure we understand the configuration of the system, just what its

inherent capability it is, how modifiable we believe it to be, and we

combine that with the judgments of the intelligence community in

terms of what the intentions and capabilities of the recipient might

be in terms of modification.

Overall, it is certainly my impression that the regime partners

have been very responsible in their exports, certainly of Category

I items, and I think the adding of smaller Category II UAVs to control starting in 1994 has had a positive impact on the responsible

nature of the decisions, as well. I am not in a position to know

whether the number of approvals has gone up or down as a result

of the 1993 and 1994 decisions, but it is my sense that, by and

large, the regime members have been acting responsibly.

Senator AKAKA. Before I defer to Senator Cochran, in 1994, the

Defense Science Board stated that it will be very difficult for the

intelligence community to provide timely estimates of cruise missile

and UAV threats. What has been done since 1994 to rectify this intelligence gap? Why is there not a consensus among our allies and

MTCR partners that cruise missile exports need tighter controls?

Mr. VAN DIEPEN. Senator, I am not sure I am in a good position

to address what the intelligence community has been doing, and

8

frankly, would not know what would be appropriate to say in an

unclassified forum on that subject.

I would note, though, as I said in my statement, at least internally, we believe the intelligence community has done a good job

of raising our awareness of the threat and helping us come up with

proposals in the MTCR for dealing better with that threat. We

have made a number of presentations over the years in the socalled information exchange portion of MTCR plenaries on the

cruise missile threat to do our part to raise the awareness of other

countries of the issue.

I guess I do not agree with the concept that there is not a shared

understanding or shared appreciation of the cruise missile threat

in the MTCR. Now, obviously, different countries have different national policies in terms of their own exports of cruise missiles, just

as they do with their own exports of arms more generally. But I

think that is different than saying that somehow shows that the

countries have a different appreciation of the generic threat that is

posed by cruise missiles.

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much. Senator Cochran.

Senator COCHRAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

How would you assess the effectiveness of our export controls in

helping to reduce the amount of proliferation from missile technology, whether we are talking about ballistic missile or cruise missile technology?

Mr. VAN DIEPEN. Well, first of all, in terms of the United States,

I think our export controls, both the multilateral MTCR controls

and our national controls, like our catch-all controls, have been

substantially effective in more or less walling the United States off

as a source of controlled technology for use in cruise missile programs.

Now, obviously, there are other sources of technology, including

sources in places like China that are not members of the MTCR,

and so our national controls have a limited utility in dealing with

that avenue. But the most technology, the best technology is in the

United States, is in Western Europe, is in Japan, and the MTCR

export controls have gone a long way toward making it very difficult for proliferators to get technology from those places, and so

they have had to resort to very intricate, expensive, time-consuming covert acquisition. They have had to settle for the kinds of

technology they can get from places like North Korea and China.

So while we have not stopped the proliferation problem, what we

have done is impeded those programs, make them cost more, make

them take longer, and make the missiles that these guys are able

to ultimately come up with less threatening than would be the case

if we were not applying these nonproliferation measures.

Senator COCHRAN. There has been a good deal of effort by our

administration in conversations with the Russians and the Chinese

to try to get a higher degree of cooperation in this proliferation reduction area, specifically with ballistic missile parts and technologies and the like. Have we extended that to the cruise missile

area with respect to China and Russia? Have we tried to use the

same kind of influence in keeping down their exporting and transferring technologies and components?

9

Mr. VAN DIEPEN. I guess a fair answer is yes and no, in a sense

that much of our dialogue with both of those countries is more generic. It is not focused on ballistic missile versus cruise missile proliferation. It is focused on missile proliferation, on meeting MTCR

requirements, which covers both ballistic and cruise. But there has

been relatively little direct engagement on the question of cruise,

I think in part because we see it as subsumed in this larger question.

Senator COCHRAN. Why have more nations not elected to develop

or obtain cruise missiles? When we note the comparison between

the 9 nations that are said to have cruise missile capabilities and

35 nations that have ballistic missile capabilities, why the big disparity there, do you think?

Mr. VAN DIEPEN. By definition, any answer has to be speculative.

I would like to say it was because of our nonproliferation efforts,

but I am not sure that that is a fair answer. I think it is probably

a combination of things.

I think a number of countries’ military objectives are such that

the fast flight time and assured arrival, difficulty of interception of

ballistic missiles is attractive to them in meeting those objectives.

I think a number of countries see as both a political threat and an

item of political prestige big ballistic missiles that they can parade

around, and cruise missiles do not necessarily meet that bill.

I think that, for some, what is most readily available on the open

market are North Korean Scud-based missiles. They are available,

they are relatively inexpensive, they are proven, and so to a certain

extent, it is because this is what is readily available on the market.

So I think it is probably a combination of those things.

Now, as the Chairman noted in his statement, our expectation is

that, over time, more and more countries will probably be interested in acquiring some sort of land attack cruise missile or land

attack UAV capability, but I think many countries can meet a lot

of their objectives in pursuing WMD programs in the first place by

using the tried and true and relatively available ballistic missile.

Senator COCHRAN. Can you tell us in this open hearing whether

you know of any countries that are developing an intercontinental

capability with cruise missiles that could attack the United States?

Mr. VAN DIEPEN. A literal intercontinental capability in terms of

a cruise missile with a range sufficient to reach the United States

from Eurasia, I would be surprised if anybody was working that direction right now.

There are a number of countries that are working on what we

call long-range cruise missiles, missiles with a range of 1,000 or

2,000 kilometers, and to reach the United States with missiles like

that, one would have to have some sort of forward delivery platform, whether it was concealing them on a merchant ship, concealing them in an aircraft, something like that. But, of course,

even these shorter-range missiles pose a direct threat to our forward-deployed forces in places like the Middle East and to our

friends and allies abroad.

Senator COCHRAN. Are we fully capable of defending against

those attacks now in the case of deployed troops?

Mr. VAN DIEPEN. I am probably not the best one to answer that

question. I mean, certainly, we have air defenses of various sorts

10

that would have some degree of utility against incoming cruise missiles, but I should probably not answer that question definitively.

Senator COCHRAN. Is this the same kind of threat that we saw

used in the war between Argentina and Great Britain when the

Exocet missile struck a British ship?

Mr. VAN DIEPEN. That is certainly one aspect of it. The most

widely deployed cruise missiles right now are, in fact, not land attack missiles but anti-ship missiles, and a lot of the attributes that

make those missiles interesting as anti-ship missiles also make

them potentially interesting as land attack means.

They are relatively small. They are hard to detect. They are hard

to shoot down. They can be very accurate, accurate enough to hit

a ship. With the appropriate other type of guidance system, they

could be very accurate against specific land targets. That could

begin to make it more feasible to use these things in militarily effective ways with conventional payloads.

Right now, with the ballistic missiles that are out there, most of

them pretty much—all that they are good for, the ones in the

hands of proliferating countries, are delivery with WMD, and while

that is obviously a major threat, if a proliferant also had a capability to hit what he was shooting at with conventional ordinance,

that would expand the types of threats that our forces would face

and land attack cruise missiles offer that potential.

Senator COCHRAN. Your testimony has been quite helpful and interesting and we appreciate very much your being here today and

helping us understand this threat.

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much.

You said that Predator exports would be fixed so that it cannot

be armed. If that is so, how do you do that?

Mr. VAN DIEPEN. I think it probably would not be appropriate for

me to comment on any specific type of American UAV system because I do not want to get into any sort of commercial confidentiality or proprietary information issues, but as a general matter,

you would look at the aerodynamics of the system, its internal configuration, the center of gravity, and you would look at are there

ways of mounting additional weight, for example, under the wings

and could you find ways of making that more difficult to do.

Not having hard points already installed on the wings of the

cruise missile, for example, would make it more difficult to put

weapons underneath. If you knew that putting additional weight

on those places would disrupt the center of gravity of the missile

and make it more difficult to fly, you would have some confidence

that it could not be armed in that way. Finding various ways of

sealing in or having a tamper-evident capability on the removal of

the non-weapons payload that the missile or the UAV was issued.

So there are a number of techniques that one could use, but it

is highly dependent on the specific design of the specific UAV and

you really have to look at these things in detail, case by case.

Senator AKAKA. In your testimony, you mentioned delivery services. You think that UAVs are ideally suited for the delivery of

chemical and biological weapons. Nations exporting UAVs and

cruise missiles capable of carrying smaller payloads, such as a biological or chemical weapon, are limited by the MTCR if the system’s intended use is to carry weapons of mass destruction.

11

Has the United States been asked by exporting nations to provide assistance either through intelligence or through guidance to

determine the intent of potential UAV buyers?

Mr. VAN DIEPEN. Not in as direct a way as your question implies.

When we agreed in the MTCR back in 1993–1994 to put these new

controls on, part of the package is that there is an agreement to

have enhanced information sharing to help other members apply

these various controls.

And so for our part, since that time, we have been providing enhanced information on the identity and status of the WMD programs in countries that are also interested in acquiring missiles

and UAVs so that, for example, licensing officers in another MTCR

country can have that kind of crosswalk. They can know that this

country or this end user is also involved in WMD and so they can

make that link-up between the potential risk that the UAV in

question would be diverted for WMDs.

Then in addition, most of the countries that are in the MTCR are

also members of the Australia Group, the chemical-biological regime, and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, and so they have access

there to information on the WMD side of the WMD–UAV interrelationship.

Senator AKAKA. There have been concerns expressed about UAV

exports. The administration has proposed expanding UAV exports

to non-NATO allies on a case-by-case basis. Does the administration think we need looser restrictions on UAV exports?

Mr. VAN DIEPEN. Certainly not at this time, Senator. What we

have done, and I cannot get into the details because they are classified, but the MTCR guidelines make clear that exports of Category

I items are subject to a strong presumption of denial. As is clear

in the guidelines themselves, that means that such items theoretically can be sold, but only on rare occasions, and that is the language used in the guidelines, rare occasions that are particularly

well justified in terms of five specific nonproliferation and export

control factors.

What the Executive Branch has done is come up with an internal

definition of what would warrant being a rare occasion under

which a Category I UAV could be sold, at least for the MTCR part

of the equation. Now, assuming a decision was made that it was

possible in a particular case to overcome the strong presumption of

denial, at that point, the export would be handled just like any

other arms export and all the myriad considerations that would go

into whether or not ultimately to make that export would pertain.

So this is really coming up with an agreed way of answering that

very first question that one has to answer in the case of a Category

I UAV. Is it or is it not going to be able to overcome the strong

presumption of denial? We now have an agreed internal definition

as to when the answer to that question is yes. Now, when the answer to that question is yes, that does not mean, OK, it is rolling

out the door. That means at that point, then, it is subject to all the

other considerations that any arms sale is subject to in ultimately

determining whether or not it will take place.

Senator AKAKA. Before I defer to Senator Cochran for any second

round questions, as you know, Mr. Van Diepen, cruise missiles can

be easily modified to expand their range or payload. Beyond MTCR

12

limits, the resale of cruise missiles is not well regulated. These are

serious problems. Could these issues be addressed through an inspection regime? How does the United States verify that our missile exports are not resold after delivery or modified to violate the

MTCR?

Mr. VAN DIEPEN. Well, first of all, the extent to which a missile

that is below the Category I threshold could be modified to exceed

the Category I threshold again depends very much on the nature

of the missile in question. Some have that potential. Others clearly

do not, and so it would be a case-by-case situation.

Because these are munitions, their sales would be subject to all

the standard conditions of any munitions sale, including a commitment from the recipient government that the item not be re-transferred without U.S. permission. In addition, we have the so-called

Blue Lantern program, where there are periodic checks made, both

on a random basis and on a targeted basis determined by intelligence, to actually go from time to time to places and look at the

items in question and make sure that they are where they are supposed to be and see what is happening with them.

Usually also, if it is a U.S. munition that is being provided, there

is almost always some degree of spare parts support or servicing

or other activities that would go on and those activities would provide a source of information, again, as to whether or not the item

is where it is supposed to be and whether or not someone has

played around with the item.

Senator AKAKA. Senator Cochran.

Senator COCHRAN. Mr. Chairman, I have no other questions. I

appreciate very much your help to us in this hearing.

Mr. VAN DIEPEN. Thank you.

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Mr. Van Diepen, for your

testimony and for your time this morning. The Members of the

Subcommittee may submit questions in writing for you and we

would appreciate a timely response to any of those questions.

We will now proceed to the second panel, so thank you very

much again.

Mr. VAN DIEPEN. Thank you.

Senator AKAKA. I would like to call Christopher Bolkcom and

Dennis Gormley to take their places at the witness table. Mr.

Bolkcom is an analyst in the Defense and Trade Division of the

Congressional Research Service. Mr. Gormley is President of Blue

Ridge Consulting and a senior fellow at the International Institute

for Strategic Studies in London.

You have been asked to discuss the features that make cruise

missiles and UAVs attractive weapons for nations of concern or terrorist groups, how aggressively they are pursuing cruise missiles,

the threat these systems pose to the United States, and how well

the MTCR is addressing cruise missile proliferation concerns. Your

full testimony will be submitted into the record and I look forward

to hearing your statements.

Mr. Bolkcom, you may give your statement now.

13

1The prepared statement of Mr. Bolkcom appears in the Appendix on page 28.

TESTIMONY OF CHRISTOPHER BOLKCOM,1 ANALYST IN NATIONAL DEFENSE, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, DEFENSE, AND TRADE

DIVISION, CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE

Mr. BOLKCOM. Thank you, Senator. Mr. Chairman, Senator Cochran, thank you for inviting me to speak today about cruise missile

proliferation. I have submitted my testimony, as you mentioned,

and I would like to take a moment just to emphasize three key

points that you will find in that testimony.

First, I would like to make a few observations about today’s

cruise missile threat. Over 80 countries today own cruise missiles

of some kind and 18 of these countries manufacture cruise missiles

domestically. The most advanced cruise missiles, those with the

longest ranges, the heaviest payloads, the highest degrees of accuracy, stealthy features, these tend to be in the hands of our allies

and friendly countries.

Our adversaries, countries like Iran, Iraq, Libya—these countries

tend to operate anti-ship cruise missiles, although they are fielding

and developing land attack cruise missiles, as well. These tend to

be of theater range, tens to hundreds of miles, typically armed with

conventional high-explosive warheads and capable of attacking

known and fixed targets, such as ports, airfields, and cities.

Today’s cruise missiles appear to be most threatening to our allies and friendly countries and to forward deployed U.S. military

forces, especially the Navy, which must deal with the threat of sea

skimming anti-ship cruise missiles.

A cruise missile attack on the continental United States today,

however, is technically possible. The intelligence community has

testified, however, that they do not believe such an attack is likely.

They argue that terrorists do not need cruise missiles because they

already have access to a variety of weapons and methods that they

find very effective, such as truck bombs, letter bombs, suicide

bombers, hijacking airplanes and cruise ships, and using firearms

to kill people. Yet, it cannot be ignored that cruise missiles do have

many attributes that could make them attractive to terrorists who

may acquire them and use them in ways that we currently cannot

foresee.

My second point is that a key aspect of cruise missile proliferation is that it is highly unpredictable and the current threat could

change very rapidly. Cruise missile threats can emerge quickly because manufacturers do not have to start from scratch. Instead,

manufacturers can exploit existing platforms. Manned aircraft have

been turned into cruise missiles. UAVs, or unmanned aerial vehicles, have been turned into cruise missiles. And anti-ship cruise

missiles have been modified to attack targets on the land.

As I mentioned a moment ago, of the 80 cruise missile countries

today, 18 of them manufactured their own domestically. However,

22 other of these countries appear to have the industrial and technological infrastructures that are required to make cruise missiles

if these countries decided to pursue those sort of programs. The

status of these threshold manufacturers could have a significant effect on the global supply, demand, and inventory of cruise missiles.

14

1The prepared statement of Mr. Gormley appears in the Appendix on page 59.

As Senator Akaka mentioned a moment ago, the Defense Science

Board, which is DOD’s premier body of technical advisors, has

pointed out and recognized the inherent unpredictability of cruise

missile proliferation. As Senator Cochran mentioned, they have

written that the cruise missile threat can be expected to evolve

both in function and severity. The threat could evolve rapidly and

it would be very difficult for the intelligence community to provide

timely estimates of cruise missile threats.

So why is the proliferation of cruise missiles so difficult to monitor and predict? Well, the answer lies in my third and final point,

and that is that most cruise missile technologies are inherently

dual use. Most cruise missiles exploit well understood and well established technologies that are found throughout the civil aviation

industrial base. Missile airframes, navigation systems, jet engines,

satellite maps, mission planning, computers and software all can

be found on the commercial market. Thus, identifying a military

program can be difficult because the technology hides in plain

sight.

Also, the commercial nature of cruise missile technologies keeps

the costs of these weapons systems low and makes them accessible

to a wide range of nations and potentially non-state actors.

The commercial availability of cruise missile technologies may be

the biggest obstacle to controlling the spread of these systems

through export controls alone. Many argue that there is currently

a civil aviation loophole in the Missile Technology Control Regime

that allows technologies applicable to cruise missiles to slip

through that agreement.

Also, industry groups remind us that the legitimate export of

military and civil aviation products is big business and these industry groups are arguing for the liberalization and streamlining of export controls, not for stricter rules.

So recognizing these challenges and in conclusion, I would like

to point out that successfully dealing with cruise missile proliferation will likely require a multi-faceted strategy. Such a strategy

could include steps such as attempting to reduce the supply of

cruise missiles by negotiating more robust export controls, attempting to reduce the demand of cruise missiles with disincentives to

potential importers, and improving our military capabilities, such

as improving our theater air defenses and potentially continental

United States air defenses and our counterforce targeting capabilities.

So, Mr. Chairman, Senator Cochran, this concludes my verbal

testimony. I look forward to any questions you may have.

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much. Mr. Gormley, you may

proceed with your testimony.

TESTIMONY OF DENNIS GORMLEY,1 SENIOR FELLOW,

INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES

Mr. GORMLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, Senator Cochran, it is a pleasure to appear before you once again, this

time to offer my suggestions on ways to deal with the emerging

15

threat of cruise missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles as they

could affect U.S. interests abroad as well as at home.

This issue has only just begun to emerge and attract the kind of

scrutiny it so desperately deserves. In part, this is because the terrible events of September 11 have reminded us of the dangers of

focusing obsessively on a narrow range of familiar threats at the

expense of perhaps more likely ones.

Land attack cruise missiles and UAVs have yet to spread widely.

However, CIA Director Tenet has testified that by 2010, land attack cruise missiles could pose a serious threat not only to deployed

forces, but possibly also to the U.S. homeland. As America successfully pursues effective theater and national ballistic missile defenses, nations and terrorist groups will be even more strongly motivated to pursue cruise missiles. For example, the low cost of small

airplanes modified to become autonomous vehicles, and other propeller-driven and UAVs make the cost-per-kill arithmetic for missile defenses generally very stark. Simply put, large numbers of

low-cost cruise missiles could overwhelm the best of defenses.

The emergence of the cruise missile threat confronts American

military forces with enormous challenges. Some existing air defenses have substantial capability against large land attack cruise

missiles flying relatively high flight profiles. But once cruise missiles fly low, or worse, add stealth features or employ countermeasures, severe difficulties arise. Indeed, even defending against

easily observable cruise missiles flying relatively high is challenging and that is because air defenses could mistake them for

friendly aircraft returning to their air bases and shoot them inadvertently down.

Large numbers of weapons-carrying UAVs or converted kit airplanes flying at very low speeds also threaten current air defenses

which were designed to detect high performance and fast flying Soviet aircraft. Sophisticated look-down radars eliminate slow moving

targets on or near the ground in order to prevent their data processing and display systems from being overly taxed. Thus, propeller-driven UAVs flying at speeds under 80 knots would be ignored as potential targets.

Cruise missiles are also attractive alternatives for states or terrorist groups lacking the resources or technical skills to build or deploy intercontinental ballistic missiles. Various national intelligence estimates have drawn attention to the conversion potential

and use on a commercial container ship, of which there are thousands in the international fleet, as a launch platform. Such a shiplaunched cruise missile could be positioned just outside territorial

waters to strike virtually any important capital or large industrial

area, and this could occur anywhere around the globe.

While the latest NIE draws attention to this among several attack options, equally worrisome, in my view, is the conversion of

small manned airplanes into weapons carrying, autonomously

flown attack vehicles. Terrorists’ use of large commercial airliners

on September 11 came as a complete shock to American planners.

While small aircraft cannot begin to approach the carrying capacity

of a jumbo jet’s 60 tons of fuel, the mere fact that gasoline when

mixed with air releases 15 times as much energy as an equal

weight of TNT suggests that small aircraft can do significant damVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:58 Jan 13, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 80605.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: SAFFAIRS
16

age to certain civilian and industrial targets. Such an autonomous

delivery system in the hands of a domestic terrorist threat means

that launches could take place from hidden locations in close proximity to their intended targets.

What should one make of the effect of nonproliferation policy in

stopping or slowing the evolution of the cruise missile threat? The

existing MTCR provisions are surely in need of revision to cope

more effectively with cruise missiles and UAVs. The regime’s provisions have simply not kept pace with the rapid expansion in commercially available technology facilitated by today’s globalized

economy. The matter of small aerospace companies being formed to

provide fully integrated flight management systems to enable the

transformation of manned aircraft into entirely autonomous UAVs

is only the most egregious example.

I outlined five specific reforms in my prepared statement for my

February 12 appearance before you. None of these is conceivable

without a determined U.S. effort to work closely with the founding

G–7 partners of the Missile Technology Control Regime. This core

group must convince the broad MTCR membership of the necessity

of enhanced controls.

During the Cold War, arms control and military deployments

played complementary roles in maintaining nuclear stability.

Today, the two policy domains still have mutually reinforcing roles

to play. Absent amending of the MTCR, cruise missile threats are

certain to spread and inevitably make missile defenses more expensive and problematic. But if the MTCR can become as effective in

limiting the spread of cruise missiles as it has with more advanced

ballistic missiles, missile defenses can conceivably keep pace with

evolutionary improvements in both missile categories. This will not

happen without the committed leadership of both the Congress and

the Executive Branches. Thank you.

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Mr. Gormley.

We have some questions for both of you. Mr. Bolkcom, first, let

me thank you for the map you provided in your testimony of estimated global cruise missile capabilities around the world. Thank

you for that. Your map separates countries into indigenous manufacturers, threshold manufacturers, and operators. What separates

an indigenous capability from a threshold manufacturer? Is it critical technology, infrastructure, training, money, or something else?

Mr. BOLKCOM. Thank you, Senator. That is a very good question.

If you look at the 18 countries today who are manufacturers, their

technological and industrial infrastructures are not that different

than many of the threshold manufacturers, which is exactly my

point. The technology, the capabilities, the knowledge required to

manufacture cruise missiles are spread throughout the globe,

frankly, and I believe the main difference between being a manufacturer and a threshold manufacturer is desire.

I think that many of the threshold manufacturers could manufacture cruise missiles quite soon, today, perhaps. In fact, Argentina

is one example, but for various reasons, as Mr. Van Diepen said,

their efforts may have been focused elsewhere. But I think it is

simply a matter of desire and focus.

Senator AKAKA. Mr. Gormley, as indicated in your testimony, the

draft International Code of Conduct on Ballistic Missiles does not

17

include cruise missiles. How could the draft document be amended

to include cruise missiles? For example, would it be useful for

member states to declare their cruise missile and UAV stockpiles?

Mr. GORMLEY. Senator, I think, first of all, the absence of cruise

missiles from the draft Code of Conduct just simply reinforces the

lack of consensus with respect to what the most worrisome threats

are, in my view. To amend the existing Code of Conduct, and that

would assume on my part that I agree that it is an important document to establish norms, which I think is another question, but assuming that it was worthwhile to pursue this Code of Conduct, the

addition of cruise missiles and UAVs would be a simple language

change.

In fact, I was at an International Missile Conference in Southampton, England, 21⁄2 weeks ago in which many of the non-U.S.

MTCR members were present and this issue of addressing the

cruise missile and UAV issue in the Ballistic Missile Code of Conduct came up. The general approach is to encourage not only

MTCR member states who are part of the roughly 80 nations who

attended the meeting in Paris, but all participating states, to submit suggested changes to the Code of Conduct. So that it seems to

me appropriate for at least several of those states to include recommended changes in the language to address cruise missiles.

In my view, this will not happen for reasons that I simply cannot

really come to grips with. But it strikes me that the focus is on ballistic missiles. There has been an intentional decision not to include language addressing cruise missiles and UAVs and I am not

aware of what state or states what might be behind the effort not

to include that language in the Code of Conduct, but I think it is

shameful.

Senator AKAKA. This question is for both of you. The United

States has asked the manufacturer of the Predator UAV to develop

a version for export to non-NATO allies that cannot be armed or

modified to exceed MTCR guidelines. Is this a realistic request? Is

it possible to construct a UAV so that it can never be modified to

carry a weapon? Mr. Gormley or Mr. Bolkcom?

Mr. GORMLEY. I will start, Mr. Chairman. I think Mr. Van

Diepen addressed the issue of the difficulty and I think the major

issue that he pointed out that struck me as particularly relevant

is every missile that is transferred has to be dealt with on a caseby-case basis because every missile is fundamentally unique from

an engineering standpoint.

That said, I would also argue that it is technically difficult to

make these kind of changes. There are particular safeguards that

one could employ, even the notion of trap doors, devices that the

recipient is simply not aware of, all of which raise difficult issues

in the negotiation to purchase these missiles because, obviously,

the recipient nation does not want anything that might inhibit its

potential use, even to include modifying it in violation of whatever

end use assurances we might place on that subsequent modification.

But there is a larger issue that I think is important because this

issue came up in what has been the most embarrassing cruise missile transfer, that is a stealthy cruise missile, the Apache or Black

Shahine. That was a decision made by both the French and the

18

U.K. governments to transfer what is decidedly a Category I missile, but also a stealthy one, raising other concerns about the potential defense against such a missile. They decided to do it nonetheless and they brought up this issue of applying safeguards.

But the issue is one that becomes difficult in terms of establishing a precedent. Once you establish a precedent that you can

come up with all these fixes, then it creates a major incentive on

the part of other MTCR members to practice the same behavior, to

come up with these technical fixes that allow for these transfers to

occur, and that is the ultimate problem that I think the case of the

Black Shahine transfer to the UAE creates. That is, it creates an

incentive for Russia, and, indeed, MTCR adherent states like

China, to make decisions that might be inconsistent with the wishes of all the MTCR member states.

Senator AKAKA. Would you want to comment on that, Mr.

Bolkcom?

Mr. BOLKCOM. Yes, sir. I agree with Mr. Gormley. It really needs

to be looked at on a case-by-case basis, how feasible is it to change

a missile or a UAV so that it cannot be tampered with. But generally speaking, I think that, yes, I think that one can envision for

most cruise missiles and UAVs a means or methods of making

them tamper-resistant. The question is, would the customer want

it? Would you have to go to such a degree that the missile would

be so dumbed-down that it would not offer them the sort of capabilities they want? And the answer is, probably.

I also agree with Mr. Gormley that there is a larger issue with

the Predator’s sale or those sorts of sales and the norms they establish, and the issue for me is one of U.S. credibility. We have

talked a lot about export controls and supply side efforts to quarantine the spread of this technology, but we need to recognize that

there is a flip side to that coin and that is reducing the desire of

importers to try to give them disincentives.

In countries like China, Russia, France, they look at us and I

think they can oftentimes say that we are inconsistent or we are

talking out of both sides of our mouths when we, the United States,

are a large exporter of cruise missiles. The Harpoon, for instance,

is a very successful export product. And, of course, the United

States is one of the leading users of UAVs and cruise missiles.

So when we think about what we want to do in terms of export

controls and stopping the spread, we also have to look at how others may perceive us and our exports.

Senator AKAKA. Let me ask you, Mr. Bolkcom, whether you agree

with this assessment: The National Intelligence Estimate on Future Missile Threats estimated that one or two dozen countries will

possess a land attack cruise missile capability by the year 2015 via

indigenous development, acquisition, or modification of other systems, such as anti-ship cruise missiles or UAVs. Do you agree with

this assessment? What are the most important factors affecting

cruise missile acquisition?

Mr. BOLKCOM. Well, sir, the intelligence community certainly has

a lot of resources that I do not have access to and I tried to focus

on capabilities. I have looked at the paths through which countries

have historically acquired cruise missiles and just focused on those

sort of capabilities. So in terms of intent or countries’ desires, I

19

cannot really say. But looking at the capabilities that I see today,

I think that sort of estimate is entirely plausible. It is entirely

plausible.

Senator AKAKA. Mr. Bolkcom, the last National Intelligence Estimate on Future Missile Threats does not include UAVs. During our

hearing on the subject in March, National Intelligence Officer Robert Walpole told this panel that UAVs will be included in future

threat assessments. In your testimony, you described in detail the

challenges of assessing UAV capabilities. Do you believe that a

threat assessment can be done?

Mr. BOLKCOM. Sir, I do not know enough about threat assessments to know if they are feasible on UAVs, but I can tell you that

other experts have made recommendations for how to improve our

capabilities in forecasting and providing good intelligence. I do not

know if these sort of recommendations have been acted upon, but

I will share one with you.

The Defense Science Board, which you mentioned, and a body

with which I am familiar, recommended 8 years ago that the intelligence community should not only put a higher emphasis on cruise

missile and UAV proliferation, but they made recommendations on

how they should put a greater emphasis on this problem and one

approach they recommended was what they call a ‘‘skunk’s work’’ or ‘‘red teaming’’ approach.

This approach is one where if you are unsure if a country has

the ability to manufacture UAVs or cruise missiles or weaponize

them, what you do is you take a bunch of people, oftentimes military officers with the sort of expertise you find in the country in

question: Engineering, aeronautical engineering, computer science,

and what not, and you isolate these people with the sort of technologies and processes you believe that country possesses and see

what they can do. It is called a red team or a skunk’s work approach. It is a very effective way of finding out empirically whether

these sort of capabilities could be kluged into a cruise missile or

UAV.

To my knowledge, the intelligence community has not taken on

this approach. That does not mean they have not, but I do not

know of any such efforts.

Senator AKAKA. Mr. Gormley, would you want to comment?

Mr. GORMLEY. Yes, I would, Chairman. On the 12 to 24 nations

by 2015, that is really, I mean, it is like hoping that you can pull

a rabbit out of a hat and be relatively close and that is, I trust,

a product of, I would hope, rigorous threat assessment and looking

at where capacities exist.

I would only footnote it by saying that given the pronounced effectiveness and thereby the interest that is driven by it in Predator’s use in Afghanistan as a weapons delivery platform, it strikes

me that the 40 nations that now produce UAVs, half of which are

not MTCR members, might be inclined to put a weapon on their

existing UAVs. This isn’t easy, but by 2015, it would seem to me

that the potential for that is certainly there.

We have looked very systematically in a study sponsored by the

government at a body of about just under 700 UAVs produced by

a large number of countries and found that 80 percent of them,

nearly 80 percent of them, were capable of meeting the Category

20

II provisions of the MTCR. That is, they could fly with a small payload out to and beyond 300 kilometers. In fact, roughly about 20

percent of them could fly as far as 1,000 kilometers. So there is significant capability in today’s UAV infrastructure.

All that said, you asked a question about factors affecting the acquisition of cruise missiles and UAVs. I would add a cautionary

note. There is a tendency to just look at the technology and look

at popular interest in these weapons platforms, but if you look at

a country like Iran and examine where it spends its resources, it

is still buying tanks, planes, and ships. So it raises the question

of how much can they afford and how do they trade off decisions

to buy cruise missiles for land attack missions versus ballistic missiles in the context of limited resources when they still intend to

flesh out a conventional army with tanks, ships, and airplanes.

So it is a difficult proposition to think out to 2015. Just in terms

of technology, you can come up with some relatively straightforward answers, but you have to set it in a broader, richer context

before you can make careful predictions on the future.

Senator AKAKA. Mr. Gormley, the Missile Technology Control Regime demonstrates how cruise missiles are often an afterthought to

ballistic missiles. But are cruise missile performance and technology sufficiently different from ballistic missiles to warrant a new

international agreement solely for cruise missiles and UAVs?

Mr. GORMLEY. No. The answer is definitely not. I am a very

strong adherent of not allowing the best to become the enemy of

the good.

Many people in various positions, high and low, criticize the Missile Technology Control Regime for not being an adequate tool in

stemming the spread of missiles generally, ballistic and cruise. I

would look at the glass as half filled and suggest that with modest

changes and reforms to the MTCR, we can do a reasonably good

job at stemming the tide of the most sophisticated cruise missiles

and UAVs getting into the hands of our potential adversaries.

The concern I have about a new regime of any sort is the time

it takes to reach a consensus among the nations that would participate in it, and if nations take their eye off the prize, which now

is reform, to bring the MTCR up to the capacity to deal more effectively with cruise missiles and UAVs, then I think they take their

eyes off that prize at the risk of allowing the continuing globalization of dual-use technologies to create the condition for cruise

missile and UAV proliferation. So they ought to focus on the existing mechanism, reform it as best they can, and move out strongly

to cope with the emergence of this threat.

Senator AKAKA. Thank you.

Mr. Bolkcom, in your testimony, you discuss the difficulty of

identifying and distinguishing between cruise missiles and legitimate small aircraft. How effective would an advanced and universal combat identification system be for improving the rapid and

accurate distinction between the two?

Mr. BOLKCOM. Sir, from a defense perspective, it is identifying

what that blip on the radar screen is very important. We have very

high standards in terms of trying to avoid friendly fire, trying not

to shoot down our allies or non-combatants, and that sort of high

standard can work against us in terms of cruise missile defense.

21

In terms of a specific answer to your question about improved or

universal IFF systems, I have not thought about that specific solution much, but I would point out that there are some technologies

that are coming online that will be very helpful, like Link-16,

which is a secure, jam-resistant communications link that not only

the United States but our NATO allies will also use, and that is

not an IFF system in and of itself, but it will help provide an IFF

function that should be very helpful in identifying friend from foe

from neutral on the battlefield.

Senator AKAKA. Mr. Gormley, do you believe such a system

would be acceptable to MTCR?

Mr. GORMLEY. I think we may be talking about two separate

issues: Identification friend/foe in a military context, and some

mechanism that would be used in an export control context.

The former that Mr. Bolkcom responded to is the requirement to

have some way of distinguishing friendly from enemy assets on

your air defense radars and that is an exceptionally difficult technical challenge. We have been trying to cope with that in a variety

of different ways.

Ultimately, the best solution is to have high-quality radars that

provide you not only with the ability to detect an incoming object

at long range, but high-quality fire control quality data that gives

you the confidence that you can fire on something because you understand it to be a non-friendly asset. That is a technology issue

that I know the U.S. Department of Defense is working on, but a

very difficult challenge, indeed.

If I understand your question to apply to an export control regime, that would almost suggest something along the lines of a

safeguards regime that would essentially allow you to distinguish

whether a transferred missile is being used in ways inconsistent

with the end use assurances that you have negotiated with the recipient nation. And as I mentioned before, end use safeguards can

be very technically sophisticated and that in and of itself makes

them problematic because every member of the MTCR does not

have an equal level of technology to build into their transfers that

might occur.

So does that imply that the United States and the other lead industrial G–7 nations would provide safeguards technology to all the

other non-G–7 members of the MTCR? I think that would raise an

export control issue in and of itself. So I think it is very difficult

to imagine a regime that would work in a robust way.

Senator AKAKA. I want to thank both of you and all witnesses for

your testimony and the time that you took to be here. The United

States will unilaterally withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile

Treaty in 2 days. In our race to field a missile defense system, we

should heed the lessons of ballistic missiles. Short- and mediumrange ballistic missiles are widespread and already pose a significant threat overseas to U.S. interests, military forces, and our allies. Cruise missiles are far fewer in number and our potential adversaries are said to own cruise missiles that are easy to track and

have low accuracy. But this can change rapidly, especially with foreign assistance.

We must not lose this opportunity to stop the spread of cruise

missiles. It will always be more effective to prevent a state from

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acquiring cruise missiles than to build a system to defend against

them.

It is clear that the administration recognizes the advantages that

cruise missiles and UAVs give us in military operations. Since the

beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom, I have seen one press

report after another describing the new and improved uses for

UAVs. In fact, the Air Force plans to spend about $1.5 billion to

speed the initial operational capability of combat UAVs over the

next 5 years.

However, as we broaden our uses of UAVs, we must assume that

our adversaries are planning to do the same. The United States

should set an example. We should not rush into easing restrictions

on UAV sales to non-NATO members. We need to ensure that we

have an end user verification system that can track where this

technology goes and who has access to it once it leaves U.S. borders.

The administration should put pressure on our MTCR partners

to abide by the guidelines on cruise missile exports. The administration needs to lead the debate on how the MTCR will address

UAVs so that an agreement can be reached. We must not forget

and we must not let our allies forget that once released, technological genies cannot be returned to their bottles.

Gentlemen, we have no further questions at this time. However,

the record will remain open for questions for our witnesses and for

further statements from our colleagues. We appreciate the timely

response to any questions that are sent to you.

I would like to express my appreciation to all our witnesses for

their time and for sharing their insights with us. Thank you again

very much.

The hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 11:22 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

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