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OVERSIGHT OF BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE (PART

I): THREATS, REALITIES, AND TRADEOFFS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY

AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

MARCH 5, 2008

Serial No. 110–148

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.oversight.house.gov

(II)

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California, Chairman

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut

JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland

PETER WELCH, Vermont

——— ———

TOM DAVIS, Virginia

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California

BILL SALI, Idaho

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

PHIL SCHILIRO, Chief of Staff

PHIL BARNETT, Staff Director

EARLEY GREEN, Chief Clerk

DAVID MARIN, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts, Chairman

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

DAVE TURK, Staff Director

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on March 5, 2008 .............................................................................. 1

Statement of:

Cirincione, Joseph, president of the Ploughshares Fund; Baker Spring,

F.M. Kirby research fellow in national security policy, the Heritage

Foundation; Steven A. Hildreth, Specialist in National Defense Foreign

Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division, Congressional Research Service;

and Stephen E. Flynn, senior fellow for national security studies, Council on Foreign Relations ................................................................................ 13

Cirincione, Joseph ..................................................................................... 13

Flynn, Stephen E. ...................................................................................... 72

Hildreth, Steven A. ................................................................................... 55

Spring, Baker ............................................................................................. 45

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Cirincione, Joseph, president of the Ploughshares Fund, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 16

Flynn, Stephen E., senior fellow for national security studies, Council

on Foreign Relations, prepared statement of ............................................. 75

Hildreth, Steven A., Specialist in National Defense Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division, Congressional Research Service, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 57

Shays, Hon. Christopher, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Connecticut, prepared statement of ........................................................ 10

Spring, Baker, F.M. Kirby research fellow in national security policy,

the Heritage Foundation, prepared statement of ....................................... 47

Tierney, Hon. John F., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Massachusetts, prepared statement of ................................................... 4

(1)

OVERSIGHT OF BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE

(PART I): THREATS, REALITIES, AND TRADEOFFS

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5, 2008

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY AND FOREIGN

AFFAIRS,

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

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

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John Tierney (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Tierney, Lynch, Yarmuth, Van Hollen,

Welch, Shays, Burton, and Foxx.

Staff present: Dave Turk, staff director; Andrew Su and Andy

Wright, professional staff members; Davis Hake, clerk; Dan Hamilton, fellow; Christopher Bright and Todd Greenwood, minority professional staff members; Nick Palarino, minority senior investigator

and policy advisor; Brian McNicoll, minority communications director; Benjamin Chance, minority clerk; and Mark Lavin, minority

Army fellow.

Mr. TIERNEY. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs hearing entitled, ‘‘Oversight of

Ballistic Missile Defense (Part 1): Threats, Realities, and Tradeoffs,’’ will come to order.

I ask unanimous consent that only the chairman and ranking

member of the subcommittee be allowed to make opening statements. Without objection, so ordered.

I ask unanimous consent that the hearing record be kept open

for 5 business days so that all members of the subcommittee be allowed to submit a written statement for the record. Without objection, so ordered.

Mr. BURTON. Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TIERNEY. Yes, Mr. Burton.

Mr. BURTON. I know that you are limiting the opening statements, but I am going to have to leave and I would like to say one

or two words before I leave.

Mr. TIERNEY. You are the ranking member right now, so you are

going to be home free with that.

Mr. BURTON. OK. And if Mr. Shays gets here——

Mr. TIERNEY. We will always make an allowance for Mr. Shays,

as well.

Mr. BURTON. Thanks so much.

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Good morning and welcome to all of you.

In a few short weeks—to be specific, on March 23rd—our country

will mark the 25th anniversary of President Ronald Reagan’s announcement to the Nation of his plan to shield our country from

Soviet nuclear missiles. A lot has happened over those 25 years.

Gone are the days when thousands of missiles from the Soviet

Union were immediate threats. Current efforts, instead, focus on

Iran and North Korea.

In 2002, President Bush withdrew our country from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Missile Defense Agency was created

and exempted from normal acquisition, testing, and reporting requirements.

This subcommittee wanted to take this opportunity to step back

a bit to ask what we have achieved over the last 25 years and over

$120 billion in investment. That is a conservative estimate by the

Congressional Research Service. The Congressional Budget Office

estimates that missile defense spending could double by 2013 to

about $19 billion per year. More importantly, we want to find out

where we should be going in the future.

Specifically, the National Security and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee begins today a robust and concerted investigation into

the rationale for missile defense; its cost, benefits, and technical obstacles; and the accountability, transparency, and testing regime of

the Missile Defense Agency.

We thought it vital to begin this investigation with a thorough

examination of the potential threat our country faces from ballistic

missiles and how that threat compares to other homeland security

and weapons of mass destruction vulnerabilities. That will be primarily our focus here today, just that: what is the threat? And how

does it compare to other homeland security and WMD

vulnerabilities?

After all, threat assessments, both with respect to ballistic missile threats, specifically, and comparing this threat across sectors,

should be the logical foundation from which sound policy and resource judgments are made.

Unfortunately, what we largely have to date is instead a series

of intelligence estimates from the 1990’s that factually have been

tossed around like political footballs. What we seek to do with this

first oversight hearing on missile defense is to have as robust and

open a dialog as possible about the threats we face with top experts

who have devoted decades of their lives to exploring these issues,

and we are doing so drawing on information already in the public

sphere.

I think it is vital that, as much as possible, we have these debates and discussions in public so that the American people can get

the most accurate picture possible about what our Government is

up to, especially when you are talking about a program costing in

excess of $10 billion a year.

In the spirit of the robust debate to follow today, I want to throw

out a few thoughts to get the ball rolling.

First, what advice do our panelists have for navigating through

the various intelligence estimates on intercontinental ballistic missile threats? I think we have to understand as we go through this

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hearing, too, that is what we are talking about: intercontinental

ballistic missiles. We are not talking about theater defense systems, we are not talking about short range or medium range; we

are focusing on that intercontinental ballistic missile threat and

what has occurred in the real world since these earlier estimates

took place.

Do we need an updated national intelligence estimate? If so, how

can we achieve one that is free of political pressure and interference?

Second, when we are talking about a threat assessment, how important is it to differentiate between short- and medium-range missiles versus intercontinental missiles?

Third, I note with great interest a point that has been repeatedly

stressed by our intelligence community over the years. In 2000, for

example, Robert Walpole, who was then the CIA’s point person on

the issue, testified in Congress as follows: ‘‘In fact, we project that

in the coming years, U.S. territory is probably more likely to be attacked with weapons of mass destruction from non-missile delivery

means—most likely from non-state entities—than by missiles, primarily because non-missile delivery means are less costly and more

reliable and accurate. They can also be used without attribution.’’

A National Intelligence Council report in 2000 entitled, ‘‘Global

Trends 2015,’’ reiterated this point: ‘‘Other means to deliver weapons of mass destruction against the United States will emerge,

some cheaper and more reliable and accurate than early-generation

ICBMs. The likelihood of an attack by these means is greater than

that of a weapons of mass destruction attack with an intercontinental ballistic missile.’’

My question for our panel today is, if other methods to strike the

United States are cheaper, more reliable, more accurate, and provide anonymity instead of ensuring a completely devastating

counter-strike by our country, is it likely that our highest-priority

threat against which we must protect ourselves will come from a

country that wanted to cause us harm by focusing their limited resources and expertise on the very difficult process of building, testing, and deploying an intercontinental ballistic missile with a miniaturized weapon of mass destruction as a payload?

Fourth, what are the opportunity costs of spending roughly $10

billion a year on missile defense when this amount of funding represents a third of the total budget for the Department of Homeland

Security and is roughly equal to the total appropriation for the Department of State? To break it down further, we are annually

spending billions more on missile defense than the entire budget

for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, 20 more times

than for public diplomacy, and 30 more times than for the Peace

Corps.

I have no doubt that the members of this subcommittee and the

American people will benefit from the opportunity to learn today

from our witnesses and your decades of collective military, arms

control, and national security experience. I want to thank all of you

for being with us today. We look forward to your testimony.

[The prepared statement of Hon. John F. Tierney follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. I now yield to Mr. Burton, recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. BURTON. I want to take 5 minutes. I appreciate your giving

me a little bit of time.

In 1983, right after I was elected to the Congress, I was on the

floor of the U.S. House and a fellow named Tom Downey from New

York and a fellow from Tennessee named Al Gore were discussing

this very issue in 1983. I debated them for about an hour, and that

was the first time the term was used, Star Wars, first time. Tom

Downey I think is the one that coined that phrase, and Al Gore

jumped all over it. Ever since then, we have been denigrating, if

you will, or saying that a missile defense system like this simply

was not going to be effective and it was going to be too costly.

The fact of the matter is, one of the reason the Soviet Union fell

apart and is no longer a major threat is because we did start developing a missile defense system and the Soviet Union simply could

not keep up. They just kept spending their money to such a degree

that they finally just had to dissolve the whole system over there.

I believe, especially after what we just saw recently with the

point-to-point hitting of the incoming satellite that was falling out

of orbit, that the technology is there to do a good job in defending

against an intercontinental ballistic missile and maybe even a

shorter-length missile.

The problem that I have about destroying or doing away with a

missile system like we have, missile defense system like we have,

is that I don’t know what China is going to do. We just found out

they are going to increase their military board by a dramatic

amount, and they have already stolen a ton of our technology, including the ability to launch satellites and to launch missiles intercontinentally, should they decide to do that. Russia still has that

ability. North Korea has been testing missiles that would go beyond the Sea of Japan, and maybe even intercontinentally. Iran is

trying to develop everything they can, including nuclear weapons,

as well as, I believe, a delivery system that could even hit the

United States, as well as western Europe.

So I think that, even though this is a costly undertaking, this is

something that we should continue to move on. Nobody knows how

the United States may be attacked. Nobody ever thought we would

be attacked by two airplanes flying into the World Trade Center or

the Pentagon, but it happened. I think that we should do whatever

is necessary to make sure that this Nation is protected from any

kind of an attack, interior, inside the country, or outside. I think

that is why this system that we are developing still needs to be

pursued.

We may find ways to economize. I have no problem with that,

Mr. Tierney. But I think it is something that we should continue

to work on. We have been working on it since I got here in 1983,

and I think it has a lot of merit, and for that reason I will listen

with great interest to our witnesses, but I certainly hope we won’t

derail this system.

Mr. TIERNEY. I thank you, Mr. Burton.

Mr. Burton, I think we shared this with Members in our brief.

This first hearing is just to give us an idea of the threats and sort

of prioritize where they are and how our resources are going. We

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will have a subsequent hearing on the technological aspects of it,

and, along the line of that, something about the spiral development

and block scheduling and whether or not we really have the accountability that we need as an oversight committee to determine.

It has been going since 1983, and $120 billion.

There is some question, I think, that we should be looking at

whether we are deploying before we adequately test, or whatever,

even if you have a system. That argument goes, have one, but how

do you go about it and how do you have the accountability? And

then the last one, we will have the Defense Agency, itself, to make

its presentation so that we get all angles on this thing.

Mr. Welch, do you have any comments? In fairness, we expanded

the openings a little bit.

Mr. WELCH. No, I don’t.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. Shays, you are recognized.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for scheduling this hearing today. Missile defense is a vitally important topic. Protecting

our homeland is a daunting task. We live every day with the

knowledge there are terrorists who seek to harm us and countries

that wish to harm us. We acknowledge that individuals in a rogue

nation may elect to strike us 1 day. Evil people and rogue regimes

are constantly considering new ways to threaten the United States.

We must remain vigilant. Each day we must safeguard our infrastructure and, more importantly, protect our citizens.

Sadly, ours is a world where hostility and brutal, undemocratic

regimes like Iran and North Korea have or seek nuclear weapons.

They also want to develop long-range ballistic missiles. Together,

these elements pose a dire challenge to our Nation. We cannot help

but be concerned about this threat. Of course, decisions made about

how best to protect our States must be weighed against the various

defense options available to us.

In fiscal year 2008, Congress appropriated nearly $10 billion for

missile defense. This enormous sum clearly deserves oversight, but

we must remember, as well, the financial and emotional cost of a

successful missile strike on our territory would cost far more than

$10 billion. It is against this alternative that we must examine the

missile defense program.

Nine years ago, President Clinton decried ‘‘the growing danger

that rogue nations may develop and field long-range missiles capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction against the United

States and our allies.’’ Just 2 weeks ago, the Deputy Director of

National Intelligence told the Armed Services Committee, ‘‘Iran

continues to deploy ballistic missiles inherently capable of delivering nuclear weapons.’’ He also said Iran ‘‘sought to develop longerrange missiles.’’ The Deputy Director told members North Korea

possessed nuclear weapons and ‘‘has already sold ballistic missiles

to several Middle East countries and to Iran.’’ And he observed

that one type of North Korean missile ‘‘probably was the potential

capability to deliver a nuclear-weapon-sized payload to the continental United States.’’ This is a threat we cannot be blind to.

Today I wrestle with whether or not our priorities are correct.

Should we be putting money into a ballistic missile shield or should

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we divert some or all of the funds into other forms of protection for

our homeland?

There is one final point I would like to make concerning the development of a national missile defense. Before September 11th the

Hart Rudman Commission argued we needed a Department of

Homeland Security with all its accompanying powers. If the Department of Homeland Security had been operational before September 11, 2001, it is very likely the terrorists who flew commercial airplanes into the World Trade Center would have been

caught. This, of course, would have saved thousands of lives and

trillions of dollars, so I can’t help but wonder if advocates of a

strong missile defense, like the members of the Hart Rudman Commission, are people we should be listening to. It seems to me the

answer is yes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Christopher Shays follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Shays.

The subcommittee will now receive testimony from the witnesses

before us today. I would like to take the opportunity to introduce

them generally. They all have much, much steeper credentials than

I am going to have the time to record here.

Our first witness is Joseph Cirincione. This hearing marks the

first day Mr. Cirincione actually takes office as president of the

Ploughshares Fund. Congratulations. He was most recently vice

president for National Security and International Policy at the

Center for American Progress. He is the author of a recent book,

Bomb Scare: the History and Future of Nuclear Weapons. He teaches at Georgetown University and was some years ago a staffer on

the predecessor to this committee, as well as on the House Armed

Services Committee.

Welcome, Mr. Cirincione.

Baker Spring is the F.M. Kirby research fellow in national security policy at the Heritage Foundation. Mr. Spring began studying

missile defense issues while researching the SALT II Treaty as an

intern in the 1970’s. He later served on the staffs of Senators Paula

Harkins and David Kearns. He has also developed tabletop exercises for nuclear war games.

Steven A. Hildreth has been a specialist in missile defense and

nonproliferation at the Congressional Research Service since 1985.

He is a graduate of the National War College, has published several books on security assistance and advanced weapons in developing countries. He has written numerous reports for Congress, primarily dealing with missile defense and missile proliferation. Mr.

Hildreth led the Congressional Research Service’s efforts in support

of the Joint Congressional Committee Investigating the Attacks of

9/11.

Dr. Stephen E. Flynn is the Jean J. Kilpatrick fellow for national

security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

He is a retired U.S. Coast Guard Commander. He is the author of

the recent book, The Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation, and the national best seller, America the Vulnerable. At the

Council on Foreign Relations, Dr. Flynn directs an ongoing private

sector working group on homeland security. He was also the director and principal author for the report, ‘‘America: Still Unprepared,

Still in Danger,’’ for the task force co-chaired by former Senators

Gary Hart and Warren Rudman.

The subcommittee wants to thank all of you for being with us

today, for your many years of experience and first-hand knowledge

on the topics that we will be discussing. I am sure you are going

to provide us with excellent starting points and perspective for this

series of hearings.

We swear in all of our witnesses that testify before this subcommittee, so I would like to ask you to please stand and raise

your right hands. If there is any other person that might be assisting you in your testimony, please ask them to stand, as well.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. TIERNEY. The record will please reflect that all witnesses answered in the affirmative.

Gentlemen, your full written statements will be entered on the

record. We have had the opportunity to read them. I can’t imagine

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that too many of them would fit within the 5-minute provision that

we have here, but they were very valuable in the information they

provided, so I know that those Members that are here have probably already read them or will read them.

We will give you 5 minutes. Most of you have testified before us.

The green light gets you started, yellow light lets you know there

is a minute or so to go, the red light means it is over. We have a

practice in this subcommittee of not shutting people off mid-sentence. We would love to hear you conclude your thought, but be

mindful of the other people testifying and their need for time, as

well as the opportunity Members want to have questions. We

would like you to stay as close to the 5-minutes as you possibly

can.

Mr. Cirincione, will you please start us off with your testimony?

STATEMENT OF JOSEPH CIRINCIONE, PRESIDENT OF THE

PLOUGHSHARES FUND; BAKER SPRING, F.M. KIRBY RESEARCH FELLOW IN NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY, THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION; STEVEN A. HILDRETH, SPECIALIST IN

NATIONAL DEFENSE FOREIGN AFFAIRS, DEFENSE, AND

TRADE DIVISION, CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE;

AND STEPHEN E. FLYNN, SENIOR FELLOW FOR NATIONAL

SECURITY STUDIES, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

STATEMENT OF JOSEPH CIRINCIONE

Mr. CIRINCIONE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to

be here. I have much in common with the members of this committee. I grew up in Connecticut, I was educated at Boston College,

and I vacation in Vermont.

Mr. TIERNEY. Been to Indiana lately?

Mr. CIRINCIONE. I haven’t been to Indiana. Sorry.

More importantly, I served on the predecessor to this committee,

the Government Operations Committee, as the deputy staff director

for then the National Security Subcommittee. We did investigations

into the ballistic missile threat at that time. We had Steve Hildreth

give what I thought was some of the best testimony Congress ever

got during those years. I was also on the House Armed Services

Committee. My very fist assignment when I joined in 1984 was

oversight over the strategic defense initiative.

At that time we were not worried about a prototype Iranian missile that might or might not be deployed. We were worried about

5,000 Soviet warheads on SS–18 and SS–19 missiles screaming

over the pole, hitting the United States, destroying not just our

country but most life on this planet.

I have known ballistic missile threats. I have researched ballistic

missile threats. Mr. Chairman, this is not a serious ballistic missile

threat that we face today. Don’t get me wrong: we do have threats,

we do have challenges, but they pale in comparison to the challenges we confronted 15 or 20 years ago when President Reagan

began what is still the initiative to find an effective defense against

these ballistic missiles. I believe the best way to summarize it is

the way I do in the first page of my testimony: the ballistic missile

threat today is limited and changing relatively slowly. There is

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every reason to believe that it can be addressed through measured

military preparedness and aggressive diplomacy.

The most serious threat the United States and our allies face are

the short-range missiles confronting us in various theaters of operation, not the long-range missiles that are the focus of the bulk of

the anti-ballistic missile budget.

I want to talk about the ballistic missile budget, which is why

we are here today.

[Slide.]

Mr. CIRINCIONE. The ballistic missile budget request this year is

four times the size of what President Reagan was requesting when

he was trying to find an effective counter-measure to those 5,000

SS–18s and 18 missiles. The $12.3 billion sets a record for anti-ballistic missile funding, and it would expend over $60 billion over the

next 5 years.

A great deal of that money is devoted to the still hypothetical

Iranian missile. The budget request over the next 5 years is some

$10 billion be devoted to countermeasures to the medium-range

Shahab III ballistic missile.

I believe that, in order for Congress to judge whether these sums

are necessary, they need a comprehensive assessment of the ballistic missile threat. Congress has never, never gotten this kind of assessment.

Here is what I mean. When you look at where we were 20 years

ago or 10 years ago, what immediately strikes you is that the world

we face today has a decreasing number of ballistic missiles. There

are fewer ballistic missiles in the world today than there were 10

years ago or 20 years ago. There are fewer hostile missiles potentially threatening the United States. There are fewer countries

with ballistic missiles potentially threatening the United States.

But there are more countries that have started medium-range ballistic missile programs, but they are poor and less technologically

advanced than the countries that had long-range ballistic missile

programs some 20 years ago.

Let me just give you a few facts to back up those bars on the

chart. No. 1, there are currently far fewer intercontinental ballistic

missiles and long-range submarine-launched ballistic missiles than

there were during the cold war. The total number of long-range

ballistic missiles potentially threatening the United States has decreased by 71 percent over the last 20 years. By anybody’s standard, that is a decreasing long-range ballistic missile threat.

The total number of medium- and intermediate-range ballistic

missiles has decreased by 80 percent. We are now primarily worried about approximately 70 Chinese missiles that could hit regional targets. Some could hit the United States. About 20 of those

could hit the United States. About 90 North Korean NoDongs—

again, these are medium-range missiles that would threaten South

Korea or Japan or U.S. forces in the area—and a small number of

Iranian Shahab III missiles that could hit neighboring countries.

Even with those existing threats, it is an 80 percent reduction in

the kinds of threats we faced 20 years ago. Five new countries—

India, Pakistan, China, North Korea, and Iran—have developed

limited medium-range ballistic missile capabilities since the late

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1980’s, yet there were still fewer medium-range missiles than there

are today.

The vast majority of nations with ballistic missiles have only

short-range ballistic missiles with ranges under 1,000 kilometers,

basically SCUDs. This is often ignored when officials or experts cite

the 30 countries with ballistic missile capability. That is true.

There are approximately 28 countries with ballistic missiles, but of

these 17 have only SCUD-B missiles or similar. Most of these countries are friends or allies of the United States.

So when you look at the ballistic missile threat, it really comes

down to a handful of countries that are potentially hostile to the

United States.

The next chart gives you my overall assessment of this threat.

This is the kind of assessment that I believe Congress deserves before it can make a judgment on the budget. It shouldn’t be satisfied

with assessments that cherry-pick one or two threats and then pretend that is the kind of comprehensive assessment we demand.

Overall, a decrease in long-range ballistic missiles, a decrease in

intermediate-range ballistic missiles, some increase in mediumrange missiles, primarily from these new programs I mentioned, a

declining inventory of short-range ballistic missiles, fewer hostile

countries with ballistic missile programs, and the potential damage

from ballistic missile attack, while very serious, is orders of magnitude below that what it was 20 years ago.

The assessment I have presented to you I am sure has errors in

it, some mistakes in a few of the numbers, but I believe that it is

the kind of assessment that Congress should demand the administration present to support a budget request of this magnitude.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Cirincione follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Cirincione.

Mr. Spring.

STATEMENT OF BAKER SPRING

Mr. SPRING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I very much appreciate

the opportunity to testify today on the ballistic missile defense program.

According to a statement by President Bush before the National

Defense University last October, there are 27 states that possess

ballistic missiles. That compares to about nine in 1972. The question is not, in my judgment, the overall number of the missiles as

to the circumstances that are presented by the distribution of this.

By any measure, the United States now finds itself in a multipolar missile world. The key policy question facing the United

States, now that it finds itself under this circumstance, is how it

will respond. In my judgment, it basically faces to alternatives. On

the one hand, the United States can multi-lateralize the cold war

policy of purposeful vulnerability established in the bipolar cold

war. This was called mutually assured destruction [MAD].

Alternatively, the United States can adopt a policy to defend its

people, territory, allies, and forward deployed forces against missile

attack to the best of its ability. I call this alternative a damage limitation strategy.

Analysts at the Heritage Foundation have revealed that multilateralizing mutually assured destruction would be a profoundly

destabilizing choice, and that the damaged limitation strategy is

the preferred option for maintaining peace and stability in a multipolar missile world.

Obviously, there has been extensive discussion, including today

so far with regard to the emerging missile threats in the form of

the state actors, specifically Iran and North Korea. Certainly we

can continue to look at that.

I think it is important, though, from this policy perspective, that

we also focus on the friends and allies of the United States that

are also moving toward ballistic missile delivery systems, and in

some cases nuclear weapons. These include Egypt, India, Israel,

Pakistan, South Korea, and Turkey.

How the United States goes about reducing the likelihood that

these allied or friendly states will be tempted to use their missile

arsenals in a way that will draw the United States into a conflict

has not been widely discussed, but this is at the core of the question of strategic stability in a multi-polar world.

This issue will become much more pressing as these same states

may be tempted, perhaps, for example, in response to Iran’s nuclear program, to pursue nuclear weapons insofar as that three of

them—India, Israel, and Pakistan—are at least presumed to be de

facto nuclear powers. It is adjusting to this particular circumstance

of nuclear and missile multi-polarity—and I would extend that actually to other weapons of mass destruction, as well, using that delivery system, which I think is really the pressing question and

what justifies the $10 billion that we are talking about here.

What is it that I would do with the missile defense program to

make sure that it keeps on track, in my judgment, to execute the

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damage limitation strategy that I have outlined in broad brush

here?

First, I think it is important for Congress not to put procedural

roadblocks in the way of the best technological path to effective

missile defense. One of the reasons that, in my judgment, we are

behind the curve with regard to addressing the missile threat is

the United States had adopted that policy of mutually assured destruction and a treaty that went with it for a 30-year period that

effectively blocked what I would view as the most effective avenues

and cost-effective avenues to missile defense.

We are beyond that treaty now. President Bush has withdrawn

the United States from it. But we are still in the process, in my

judgment, of catching up over on the 30-year period where we were

subject to those restraints.

I would maintain robust funding for the missile defense program,

but that would still be within the 2 or 3 percent of our total defense

budgets. I think it is unlikely that it would go much higher than

that.

I think we should look at space-based options, including the

space test bed that is in the President’s budget request this year.

I think we should set aside the charge that a ballistic missile defense program would ‘‘weaponize space.’’ My judgment is the ballistic missiles that fly through space are the capabilities that have resulted in the weaponization of space.

I think we should look at sea-based options more readily than

the ground-based options, in balance.

And I think that we should make sure that we don’t put any restrictions on putting developmental missile defense systems on

operational alert when circumstances suggest that we should do so,

as we did in 2006 with the North Korean salvo launch.

And I think we should shift responsibility, as missile defense programs mature, from the Missile Defense Agency to the services, as

we are doing with the Patriot system now and I think we should

start doing with the sea-based systems in the near future.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Spring follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Spring.

Mr. Hildreth.

STATEMENT OF STEVEN A. HILDRETH

Mr. HILDRETH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Tierney,

Mr. Shays, distinguished members of the subcommittee, I want to

thank you all very much for this opportunity to come here today

and talk about this issue.

I want to acknowledge the collaboration of a couple of colleagues

that are here and actually sit behind me in this effort: Mary Beth

Nikitin and Paul Kerr. Their assistance, their work in this area is

significant, and I want to acknowledge that here today.

There are any number of threats, different kind of threats, to the

United States and its national security interests. What I want to

focus on and what I did in my statement was focus on just one part

of that, and that was ICBMs armed with nuclear weapons, nuclear

warheads.

I last appeared before this subcommittee in 1992—Joe was

here—during its investigation of the Patriot missile defense system

performance during Operation Desert Storm. It is useful to recall

that during the 1991 war with Iraq what we saw and what we

were told with respect to the patriot SCUD engagements was not

necessarily, as it turns out, what actually happened. This underscores the importance of rigorously examining assertions concerning weapon systems’ performance and development.

Since the dawn of the rocket age, only five countries have demonstrated the ability to develop, test, and deploy or field ICBMs

armed with nuclear weapons. Since the early 1960’s, there have

been any number of intelligence assessments and studies that predicted that number would be much higher.

The question is, why has that not happened? Why has this number not increased, as many had predicted. I believe that no small

part of the reason lies with the serious technical challenges that

countries face in building an operational ICBM.

The statement that I have briefly discusses some of these technical and organizational management challenges that nations face

in developing such capabilities. The five countries that today have

those capabilities all needed to overcome those challenges, and in

some cases by receiving significant foreign assistance.

A review of those challenges can add what I would call perspective to look at all these issues, look at the challenge in developing

ICBMs, and put that in perspective in trying to better understand

the likelihood that countries might develop, deploy, and threaten

U.S. national security interests. I think that this perspective helps

lead to a better estimation of those likelihoods.

There are many key parts of an ICBM, and in my statement I

go into those things, things like propulsion system, the payload or

compact nuclear device, the re-entry vehicle, and then there are additional factors that we have seen in the successful development of

an ICBM program such as testing and organization management

that are all seen as important to see or to produce a successful

ICBM for fielding. I am not going to go into all those right now because I know that many of you had a chance to see the statement,

and I will leave that.

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Basically, to sum up, saying that it is a daunting challenge. The

fact that only five nations have ever accomplished this ability, this

capability, in the past 50 years is perhaps testament to the fact

that this is a technically daunting challenge. Not to say that other

countries can’t do this, but it is to say, in perspective, that it is a

difficult, difficult task.

Each and every one of these things—RVs, propulsion systems,

guidance systems, so forth—present a multitude of technical challenges and hurdles to overcome that are just not easily done, and

that is basically the track record that we have had among the five

ICBM countries.

There has been discussion in the past decades since the Rumsfeld Commission that some countries, such as Iran, Iraq, and North

Korea, could develop ICBMs in a significantly different manner.

Within those studies—and this extends also to efforts on the part

of the intelligence community over the past decade—there are

many assumptions made to support this thought.

First is that countries will pursue alternative paths to building

missiles that will not require ‘‘high standards of missile accuracy,

reliability, and safety, nor large numbers of missiles.’’ Second,

countries will obtain significant foreign assistance in developing

those missiles. Third, having or building short-range ballistic missiles such as Scuds provides the means to develop ICBMs.

Each and every one of those are arguable. I just want to touch

on one, and that is that this issue of deploying an ICBM without

testing could be readily done, but, even according to the 1999 national intelligence assessment, doing so would result in significantly reduced confidence in the reliability of that system.

Also, foreign assistance, of course, could speed up development of

ICBMs and nuclear warheads, but some observers—and I know Joe

testified just last summer on that—most suppliers appear to be

withholding meaningful assistance. Arguably, gaining foreign help

with ICBMs has become more difficult over time. The fact that in

recent testimony by the intelligence community to Congress before

the Senate Armed Services Committee, if you read the prepared

statements, there is nothing in their prepared statements about

this kind of assistance for foreign missile development, where in

previous years it was highlighted.

Two countries have successfully developed and deployed operational nuclear-armed ICBMs. The developmental records of their

efforts indicate how challenging that effort has been. The fact that

more nations have not done this, as I mentioned, is perhaps witness in part to the extraordinary technical effort it took. The long

history of ICBMs demonstrates that such success took considerable

resources and time, funding, knowledge, infrastructure, organization, and national commitment. It is this aspect of it, this perspective, that I think is lacking in so many of the discussions about

ICBM threats to the country today.

On that note I would like to end. Thank you very much for your

time.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hildreth follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Hildreth.

Dr. Flynn, your testimony, please?

STATEMENT OF STEPHEN E. FLYNN

Mr. FLYNN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Like Joe Cirincione, I have some linkage to yourself and the

ranking member here. I spent the first 18 years of my life growing

up in your District, and the last 20-plus years living in Mr. Shays’

State of Connecticut. Mr. Burton, I am heading to Indianapolis at

the end of this month. I will have a chance to talk to the Indianapolis Committee on Formulations and spend a day at the University

of Indiana in Bloomingdale, so I am looking forward to that.

Mr. TIERNEY. Your problem is that we are now joined by somebody from Kentucky, so you have to find a link there.

Mr. FLYNN. Yes, I have to work all this in here.

Thank you so much, all of you, for being here today. It is an

honor to be here today.

I think I am particularly grateful for the fact that you have

asked me to offer some perspectives this morning about how this

threat sits in the context of other ways in which one could target

the U.S. homeland with nuclear weapons.

Despite the events of September 11th, Washington continues to

look at security challenges confronting the United States as if national security starts and stops at the water’s edge. Debates about

threats, tactics, and strategies within the traditional national security community have remained remarkably and disturbingly isolated from the assessment of threats, vulnerabilities, and policies

commonly associated with homeland security.

The U.S. national security community also continues to assign a

higher priority to programs designed to confront conventional military threats such as ballistic missiles than unconventional threats

such as a weapons of mass destruction smuggled into the United

States by a ship, train, truck, or even private jet.

While terrorists demonstrated on 9/11 that their preferred battle

space is in the civil and economic space, the Pentagon has made

clear its preference for other entities to be assigned the responsibility for managing that new reality when it falls at or within the

U.S. borders. The White House and congressional staff with oversight responsibilities for defense, intelligence, and foreign affairs

have also held the homeland security mission at arm’s length.

As a consequence, there is no place within the U.S. Government

where tradeoff issues associated with national security and homeland security are routinely raised or adjudicated. This hearing is

very much an exception to that rule, and I commend you, Mr.

Chairman, for having it.

I cite in my testimony about one of the examples about how this

bridge between national security and homeland security can leave

Americans less secure by pointing to, for instance, the amount of

money we spend on force protection here inside the United States

for U.S. military basis. Of a budget last year of about $16.5 billion,

that money, about two-thirds, went to protecting U.S. bases on U.S.

soil. That amount reflects more than 20 times what we are spending protecting critical infrastructure at major cities within the

United States.

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The logic of this is that we essentially are hardening military

bases and making civilian assets more attractive, softer targets for

our adversary. This clearly isn’t the intention, but it is the outcome

of not looking at the threat environment, the homeland and national security, in a kind of strategic context.

In the same way I would argue we have the same disconnect

here in the area of ballistic missile defense. The executive and legislative advocacy to build the defenses for nuclear missiles have not

included a side-by-side consideration of the risks that nuclear or biological weapons might be smuggled into the United States by

other means, such as on board a small vessel, within a cargo container, aboard a private aircraft, or carried across U.S. land borders, nor is the investigation in programs whose aim is to mitigate

the non-missile threat weighed against the investment associated

with developing ballistic missile defense.

The reason for this is that addressing the smuggling issue is

viewed primarily as a Homeland Security responsibility to be managed by agencies such as the Domestic Nuclear Protection Office,

Customs and Border Protection, and the Coast Guard. This translates into having the program reviewers at OMB and the congressional authorization appropriation processes move along separate

tracks.

In the end, the sum of the combined budgets for funding the domestic and international maritime and port of entry interdiction efforts pursued by Customs and Border Protection, Coast Guard, and

the DNPO is about one-half the amount that we are allocating for

missile defense. Nowhere in the U.S. Government has there been

or is there now an evaluation of whether that represents an appropriate balance.

What seems clear, however, is this: should missile defense continue to be developed without a parallel commitment and putting

in place protective measures to detect and intercept the transport

of nuclear weapons by non-missile means, the Department of Defense will end up providing less protection by fueling the development of our adversaries into the non-missile realm.

These two things clearly have to be considered in parallel.

I lay out four reasons that essentially I would place a non-missile

threat as a higher threat. I would be happy to go into them in detail a little bit later. The first is that it represents the only realistic

option for our current clear and present adversary, our non-state

actor, al Qaeda. That is the folks we are dealing with. Non-traditional is their option.

The second, that even for a state actor there is the benefit, as

you said in your opening statement, for anonymity when you bring

it in by a surrogate or you use a terrorist to bring it here. You don’t

have the blueprint of where or the footprint of where the missile

came from.

Third, there simply is so much opportunity—and this is based on

my two decades of experience being on the front lines and assessing it—for essentially penetrating legitimate conveyances into the

United States. I go through and talk through, and I would be

happy to talk to you later, an example of how open that system

still remains by effort since 9/11.

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In light of that, I also highlight here, as a final set of issues here,

that when you use a commercial conveyance for potentially getting

the weapon in, you also get a two-fer. You not only get the destruction that the nuclear weapon would present, but you also get the

cascading economic consequences when we are spooked by those

conveyances. I particularly am concerned about, that if it came to

us by a box and our response is to essentially shut down all boxes

to sort this out, we will bring our global economy literally to its

knees in about 2 weeks, because the intermodal transportation system will grind to a halt.

So if our adversaries are thinking in terms of economic disruption, not just loss of life, then we clearly have to think in that kind

of totality.

Now let me, in conclusion, say that I believe there are three bottom-line conclusions:

First, the emphasis ballistic missile defense has been receiving

since the post-9/11 era is disproportionate to the more probable risk

that other means will be sought by America’s current and future

adversaries to our U.S. homeland.

Second, to the extent that the U.S. Government continues to invest in ballistic missile defense, it should be committed to a parallel effort to deal with the non-missile risk, particularly since success at BMD would only elevate the non-missile risk.

Finally, Congress needs to take a hard look at the oversight process to manage this duality, the non-missile on the one side and the

threat ballistic missile defense. I think that strikes to the very

heart of what you are trying to achieve here today by hosting this

hearing.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to

present this testimony.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Flynn follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Dr. Flynn.

I want to thank all of you for excellent testimony, both what you

presented here today orally and what you submitted in writing.

I am going to start the questioning period, if we can. We have

5 minutes, so you will find that Members sometimes get a little

testy if you start to go on too long. They don’t mean to be rude;

they are just trying to get their questions in. If it is all right with

the panel, I think we will try to do more than one cycle through

here if we can on that.

Let me just ask, Mr. Cirincione, Mr. Spring, and Mr. Hildreth—

I know where Mr. Flynn stands on this—and limit you if I can to

agree or disagree to the following statement: it is more likely that

a nuclear weapon is going to be delivered into the U.S. territory via

an unconventional means as opposed to an intercontinental ballistic missile. Agree or disagree, Mr. Cirincione?

Mr. CIRINCIONE. I completely agree.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Spring.

Mr. SPRING. I disagree, certainly in the context that if we were

to purposefully leave ourselves open with regard to the avenue of

missile attack. And by the way, I would include in that cruise missile. So I think I disagree.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Hildreth.

Mr. HILDRETH. I don’t know. I know that the challenge of building an ICBM that would reach the United States is extraordinarily

challenging, and I just haven’t taken the time to look. The answer

is I don’t know. I know that building an ICBM capable of delivering

something to the United States from a couple of these countries, in

particular, is an extraordinarily technical accomplishment and

challenging.

On the other side, it is not something I have looked at in detail,

with the same rigor, the capability to deliver something smaller

scale into the United States, although I do know the literature

tends to support that it is relatively easier.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. Cirincione, Mr. Spring in his testimony seemed to indicate

that he thought the ABM Treaty was a detriment to our defense

on this, so let me ask you whether you think that the ABM was

actually successful in any way in the decrease that you have seen

in the number of exposures to intercontinental ballistic missiles, or

whether you also think it was somehow detrimental to our situation.

Mr. CIRINCIONE. At the time, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty

was a necessary part of the U.S. effort to limit and then decrease

the soviet missiles that threatened us, so yes, the ABM Treaty

played a very important part in the decreasing of ballistic missile

threat through the efforts of Republican and Democratic Presidents. I believe it is a myth that the ABM Treaty in any way inhibited our technological development of effective anti-ballistic missile

weapons.

The current administration came into office fervently believing

that, and their No. 1 priority in 2001 was to scuttle the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. They believed once that was out of the way that

they could advance rapidly toward deploying effective missile defenses, that they scuttled the treaty. It has been 7 years. We are

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no closer to anti-ballistic missile defenses that work now than we

were during the Reagan era.

Mr. TIERNEY. The last phrase, we are no closer to systems that

work, I think we will probably get into more of that in the next

technical hearings that we have on that, but let me ask this question: if a country that did somehow get the ICBM capability—and

Mr. Hildreth raises the very serious question of how likely or unlikely that actually is for some of these countries, but if they did,

what leads any of us to believe that an Iran or a North Korea or

something like that would actually take their limited capability

and target the United States, with the knowledge that the retaliation would be devastating?

Mr. CIRINCIONE. I believe deterrence is alive and well. I don’t believe in the myth of the mad mullahs who are intending on bringing about an apocalypse. I think Iran, as a recent national intelligence estimate indicated last November, has a cost/benefit analysis to their decisions and that they would be dissuaded from taking

such a suicidal act by the certainty of a swift and overwhelmingly

devastating response from the United States.

I believe that there are military measures we can take to enhance that deterrent effect on Iran. I believe the administration

made a mistake by turning down President Putin’s offer to use the

radar facility at Azerbaijan and allow the United States to deploy

short-range anti-ballistic missile weapons on Aegis cruisers in Turkey. That would have been an effective enhancement to the already

existing deterrent capability.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Dr. Flynn, I know that when we look at these there are people

that say we have hundreds of thousands of potential targets in the

United States for unconventional attack, but aren’t there really a

defined number of realistic targets that some terrorist might want

to target in the United States that we could identify?

Mr. FLYNN. Yes. I think it is important to see that there are really two ways, when we talk about particularly conveyances coming

to the United States, there are two ways to think about this. There

are clearly the number of nuclear weapons that were maybe available to a terrorist would be incredibly small. That means they have

to be pretty conservative about how they use those, and they want

to get the biggest bang for their buck. So the things that are most

critical for our country are most likely to be target critical in terms

of loss of life potential and disruption for our society.

The other component—and it is one more on the lower end of the

spectrum—is a dirty bomb in the system, bringing something in a

container, not because that may be the best way to get here, but

because you spook the system. You lead us to over-react, having

huge cascading consequences. So it is an economic mass disruption.

A nuclear weapon clearly could be also, when you have one of

them, could be used in a way that would be a weapon of mass destruction. What you are really doing is you are creating uncertainty

that there are other such weapons in the system, and when you

don’t have the means to manage that threat—just like we did on

9/11, we shut the system down to sort it out—you start having incredible cascading effects.

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So it is one part that we have scenarios that would target specific

things, loss of life, and take a regional kind of focus; others go after

the system, themselves, and create uncertainty and fear that leads

to significant economic consequences.

Mr. TIERNEY. But in your expertise, is there a finite number of

sites that we could focus on that would give us a reasonable

comfortability that we are protecting those most likely targets?

Mr. FLYNN. Absolutely. Absolutely. There are places that either

would be, because of loss of live potential—a lot of people live

there—or business, that are incredibly important with a lack of redundancy in other systems that would cause real effect.

Mr. TIERNEY. And we have the potential to put in place systems

that would actually provide us with a fair modicum of protection?

Mr. FLYNN. Yes. We have to think broadly about protection. For

instance, one way in which you could protect the pipeline coming

from Alaska is have a quick and rapid response force to repair any

damage done. It wouldn’t make much sense for a terrorist to be

hanging out in the tundra to take out a piece of the pipeline if you

could fix it in 24 hours. The visual is lousy, so probably nobody is

going to capture it, and it would have no real measurable effect if

it is fixed quickly, so you don’t need to put a National Guardsman

up and down the gas line.

So it is combination of thinking some things do need to be hardened, like the White House. You have to think about other things

where there is redundancy. You can put extra systems, or you react

quickly, but the fact is there are a finite number of critical assets

in the country, most of which today have been largely unprotected

in the ways that I just described, and therefore raise some great

vulnerability.

Mr. TIERNEY. What would be the budget that you would need,

and how much time would it take to actually implement a protective system like that?

Mr. FLYNN. Well, as I highlighted in my testimony, we are just

very much out of proportion with what we are willing to invest in

the conventional threat scenarios.

Mr. TIERNEY. How much money are you talking about, and over

what period of time to get it fully implemented?

Mr. FLYNN. I can’t provide a precise answer, unfortunately, for

that because we really haven’t completed the threat assessment or

the site assessments, and we haven’t thought through these different controls. But it is within the kinds of range of dollars we are

talking about here in the missile defense line that would get us significantly ahead of where we are right now to safeguard those critical assets.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. Burton, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. BURTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First of all, Mr. Flynn, I agree with your approach. I think we

really need to pay more attention to other forms of attacks here in

the United States other than just intercontinental ballistic missiles.

We had a colleague of mine, Curt Weldon, who was on a television show I had every month bringing in a mock-up of a briefcase

nuclear weapon which could destroy eight square blocks and probVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:21 May 07, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00087 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\48657.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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ably kill 100,000 people with radioactive fallout, as well. So I share

your concern about that, so that there probably needs to be a balance, and I would be one of those who would work with you or anybody to advocate that we come up with some kind of a balance.

I do believe, however, that we do need an intercontinental ballistic missile system and also intermediate and short range.

I would just like to say to my friends at the table there I am

probably a little older than most of you.

Mr. TIERNEY. There is no probably about that, Dan.

Mr. BURTON. There is no probably about that. Now do I get more

time for that? [Laughter.]

When I was a boy, I remember my father was reading the funny

papers, we called it, on Sunday morning, and they had Flash Gordon, and he was flying through outer space with a backpack and

looking at a television set, and I never will forget it, he said, That

is crazy. You can’t shoot pictures through the air without a movie

camera. You can’t fly without wings. And you certainly can’t go into

outer space like that. How are you going to get around with nothing but a backpack, and how are you going to breathe, and all that

sort of thing. Well, every one of those things happened. Every one.

And in World War I the President and the leaders of the world

after World War I said, the best way to stay out of war is to just

destroy our weapons. If everybody doesn’t have these weapons, we

won’t have to worry. We sunk our ships and we destroyed our aircraft and we did all that, and so did our allies.

And there was some guy named Adolph Hitler who violated the

Treaty of Versailles and took a 100,000-man army that was supposed to be and built a multi-million-man army. He bought airplane engines from Great Britain, the Rolls Royce, and built the

Luftwaffe, and he was developing a nuclear weapon, the V–2 rocket, and jet planes, and all the rest of the world said, hey, that ain’t

going to happen. But it did, and 62 million people died.

Now, I don’t have a crystal ball, but I don’t think anybody else

does, either, and I think the technology that we have seen make

quantum leaps in my lifetime, and in the last 10 years even more

quantum leaps, would indicate that the delivery system of nuclear

weapons could even become more effective and better with new

technology, and that we need to defend ourselves against crazies

that might launch them or people that bring briefcase nukes into

the country. We need a multifaceted approach to dealing with the

nuclear threat or any other kind of threat like that.

So I don’t think we should do away with our intercontinental ballistic missile system or defense system because I think it is extremely important.

I also think that, in the process of developing this defense system, that we can also probably perfect it to where we can hit shorter-range and intermediate-range missiles that might be launched

off the shore with the new technology and the ability to instantaneously see what is going on.

I would just like to make one other comment about the mutual

assured destruction. I always thought that was crazy. You say nobody is going to be a madman and launch a war like that. There

have been madmen throughout history that have done those crazy

things. All you have to do is get in the history books. And if you

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had some kind of a nut case that developed a nuclear system under

the mutually assured destruction system, they could launch an attack that could, in effect, destroy the whole world and mankind as

we know it.

So it is my opinion that we need to have a multifaceted approach

to deal with these horrific weapons, but that should include—and

maybe to a lesser degree. Maybe, as my colleague here in the Chair

feels, maybe we ought to reevaluate it and cut back the amount of

money we are spending on a defense missile system, and maybe allocate more to what Mr. Flynn is talking about.

But I think that this is a very, very dangerous world, and I think

we need to do everything we possibly can to protect this country.

We have very porous borders. We are very vulnerable to all kinds

of things. And to do like they did in World War II or after World

War I and say, we don’t have to develop new weapons. We will destroy the old ones. We won’t have to worry about a war. And we

ended up with a war that killed 62 million people. Just think what

it would be like if we had a nuclear war where they did start delivering these ICBMs and there was no defense for it.

With that, thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Burton.

Mr. Welch, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. WELCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Cirincione, you pointed out in your prepared testimony that

six countries have had active intermediate- or long-range ballistic

missile programs 20 years ago and they have halted them in countries like Argentina to South Africa. Can you comment on what lessons we learned from their decisions to halt ballistic missile programs, and can these be applied to North Korea and Iran?

Mr. CIRINCIONE. Sure. Would the staff put up table two on there,

the chart of where we were in 1987 and where we were in 2007—

I am sorry, that is graph two. Table two is the list of countries with

active intermediate-range.

I draw on those lessons for my conclusion that we do face

threats. We do need to have a balanced approach. That includes

military measures. That includes research on and deployment of effective anti-ballistic missile weapons. But it also includes measured

diplomacy, because the history tells us that it has been the diplomacy that has worked to eliminate these threats more so than the

deployment of anti-ballistic missile systems.

So you look at those countries we saw in 1987, these were all

countries we were worried about—Argentina, Brazil—not because

they were opponents of the United States, but they were engaged

in missile programs, and Argentina was in cooperation with Libya

and South Africa on an intermediate-range ballistic missile program.

These were serious efforts, well-funded, a better technological

base than most of the countries who we are worried about now.

They were convinced to give them up by changes in their own regime—Argentina and Brazil ended the military juntas and restored

civilian rule—and by diplomacy, including on the part of the

United States to have conflict resolution between Argentina and

Brazil, and export controls that limited the ability of these countries to get the technology they need.

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And 1987 is a very significant year. That is when President

Reagan started the missile technology control regime where the

countries that make this stuff agreed to limit their exports to help

reduce the risk that some of these other countries would get it.

South Africa is another case in point similar, a regime change

that brought the majority rule, and export controls that slowed

down the progress in their program had much more to do with

them ending the program than any deployment of anti-missile systems.

Mr. WELCH. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Mr. Spring, there is use of asymmetric warfare that is the trump

card for the terrorists. My question to you is your own assessment.

Do you consider the ballistic missile threat to be more imminent

than the nuclear terrorist threat? In other words, when we have to

make choices in a world where there are limits on what we can do,

how much time and effort we have, how much money we have,

should we be focusing first on defending the United States from a

nuclear armed ballistic missile or defending the United States from

a nuclear device that is smuggled in or launched at close range?

Mr. SPRING. I would certainly hope we would never face that particular question as an either/or choice; that the United States

would make a decision that we are so concerned about one avenue

of attack that we are going to ignore another, or a series of others.

What I am here to say is really two things. One is that the cold

war policy of retaliation-based deterrents I think is being overwhelmed by the complexities of the multi-polar world. That includes asymmetric warfare capabilities. That includes different delivery means. That includes a different coalition dynamic. That includes a whole host of things that did not go into the underlying

analysis of what produced strategic stability during the bipolar

years of the cold war.

Mr. TIERNEY. But let me interrupt—I am sorry.

Mr. SPRING. And so what I find very interesting here is that—

and the conversation between the chairman and Mr. Flynn is in my

judgment a very clear example of a damage limitation strategy.

What they were going back and forth about, admittedly within the

terrorist realm, not within the ballistic missile defense realm, is an

element of a damage limitation strategy that I think is exactly the

path that we should be on. I think that we are getting on the verge

of forming a consensus.

Mr. WELCH. That we should be on damage limitation?

Mr. SPRING. We should be on a damage limitation strategy.

Mr. WELCH. There really are choices that you make, obviously

budgetary choices. Or are you going to have your scientists and engineers and technologists working on plan A or plan B, and they

can’t be on both necessarily.

If I understand Dr. Flynn, the likelihood of a threat from a terrorist’s use of a nuclear device that is smuggled in, where there is

no return address, is probably a higher threat, at least if I understand Dr. Flynn. The threat assessment on that would be higher

than there would be a missile launch from Iran or North Korea.

And, bottom line, I am just wondering what your view is. I mean,

we don’t live in a world where we can make this country guaranVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:21 May 07, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00090 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\48657.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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teed to be completely safe and never, ever have any possibility of

a threat.

Mr. SPRING. I don’t think that we are going to be able to ever

answer that question precisely with perfect foresight. The fact of

the matter is that the threat dynamic is dynamic enough. Let me

put it in perspective. Let me put it in retrospect in this way: the

United States, on the basis of an assessment that air defenses were

not contributing very effectively to its primary cold war adversary,

the Soviet Union, effectively dismantled the air defense system in

this country. As we faced 9/11, we succumbed to the fallacy of the

lesser excluded case. We didn’t have the air defense capabilities to

shoot down an airliner that was flying toward the World Trade

Center in time because we basically dismantled that system.

Mr. WELCH. Let me interrupt for a second, because this is important. I mean, my colleague, Mr. Burton, raised the specter of madman being out there, and that is obviously a possibility. Somebody

could do that. It is not all rationed. But, on the other hand, we

can’t defend against every mad-man everywhere. At least that is

my view.

I would just want to read something that was written by the

CIA’s point person, Mr. Walpole——

Mr. TIERNEY. I would just ask you to try to wrap it up so the

other Members can ask their questions, as well. We have one remaining question and a relatively short answer expected? We are

going to have another round, as well.

Mr. WELCH. All right. I don’t want to overstay my welcome here.

I was just hitting pay dirt. You know what I mean?

Mr. TIERNEY. Go for it.

Mr. WELCH. Well, here’s the question. I think we are really in

this conflict of the dilemma that we face, but what Mr. Walpole

said was, ‘‘In fact, we project in the coming years U.S. territories

are probably more likely to be attacked with weapons of mass destruction from non-missile delivery means.’’ My question is: do you

agree with that? And if you do agree with that, wouldn’t we then

direct our resources toward meeting that threat first?

Mr. SPRING. Again, I think I would agree with it if all things

were equal, but they are not all equal. In other words, the question

is if you are going to leave yourself relatively vulnerable or completely vulnerable to a particular avenue of attack, then I think it

will be exploited.

Mr. WELCH. OK. Thank you.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Welch.

Mr. Lynch, you are recognized for 5 minutes, more or less.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank the ranking member, as well.

Let me just continue on that line of thought. We do have a situation right now where we have a group that has, in fact, declared

war on the United States. We have Al Qaeda. They have declared

war, they have demonstrated an ability to strike within this country. If you follow the pattern of activity of these terrorists, Al

Qaeda and affiliates, we have seen train bombings in Mumbai,

London, Madrid. We have seen the aviation-related attacks on 9/

11 and some attempts elsewhere out of London and out of Indonesia and the Philippines. So I am not asking for a crystal ball to

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think about what might happen as much as I am asking us to look

at what is, in fact, happening right now around the world, in other

countries. There is a pattern of conduct here that we don’t have to

guess. It is happening.

All I am saying, I am a little surprised, Mr. Spring, that you

think that it is more likely that, even though this conduct is happening now, you think that the unconventional threat is probably

less than an intercontinental ballistic missile threat, and that puzzles me because this is a question of resource allocation for many

of us, and especially for the appropriators, and so we see this stuff

happening now with people who have declared war, and yet you

think that the threat is greater for people who don’t have the technology yet and have not declared hostile intent against the United

States. I need to know how you reached that conclusion.

Mr. SPRING. Well, again, I reached the conclusion, as I stated

earlier, because I don’t think you can say that everything is equal

in terms of the comprehensive assessment of the threat.

I would also say this as it relates to resource allocation, because

you are exactly right about that, is that if you look at the broad

array—and let’s just limit ourselves to the military capabilities,

and certainly Mr. Flynn has made some important points with regard to homeland security, and we can re-address this, but let’s

confine ourselves to the military. If you include what we are doing

with regard to the projection of our conventional capabilities, as

well as what we do with regard to providing for the protection of

U.S. assets here at home in the military budgets——

Mr. LYNCH. You are going pretty far afield of what I was talking

about.

Mr. SPRING. But you——

Mr. TIERNEY. I know what——

Mr. SPRING. But you are going to find——

Mr. LYNCH. Sir, you are eating up my time and you are not really answering the question.

Mr. SPRING. The fact of the matter is on resource allocation we

are spending several times what we are spending on missile defense when you look at that broad array of even within the military

budget.

Mr. LYNCH. Let me ask the other panelists, and, look, I appreciate everybody coming up here. Mr. Spring, even though we are

at odds here on this one single point, I appreciate the work you are

doing and trying to help the committee with its work.

Let me ask the other panelists: on a question of proportionality,

which is one of resource allocation for us, is our current approach

here—and I just want to talk about the ICBM issue, the intercontinental. I am not talking about medium-range that Mr. Burton was

talking about, because I agree with him on that. That is more of

a theater issue, and protecting our troops, as well as the situation

perhaps in Israel and medium-range. I am talking about the ICBM

threat here. Is our allocation of resources, I have numbers here

from GAO that says we spent about $120 billion on this ICBM defense system. Is that proportional to the threat right now, given everything else we have going on here. Mr. Cirincione?

Mr. CIRINCIONE. Let me start. Absolutely not. I believe that the

ballistic missile defense program is the longest-running scam in the

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history of the Department of Defense. This is an enormous waste

of money. And if you leave this decision to the Joint Chiefs, they

won’t spend anything near what this administration is requesting.

In fact, the last time the Joint Chiefs were asked about this, in

1993, the JRC, the Joint Requirements Council, headed up by Admiral Owens at the time recommended to then-President Clinton

that we spend only $3 billion a year on these kinds of programs,

and, of that, 2.3 should go to theater missile defense system—in

other words, the weapons we were actually facing that are real

threats to our troops and to our allies.

This program is out of whack, and, Mr. Burton, if you are an advocate of continuing this program, I am going to tell you this budget is unsustainable. You have been here—some of the staff may not

have been—when budgets don’t go up all the time. They do come

down, and this budget is heading for a crash, so we should be looking for how to budget a program that will have some sustainable

technological base. Sorry.

Mr. LYNCH. No, that is OK.

Mr. Chairman, is it OK to have Mr. Hildreth address that, as

well?

Mr. TIERNEY. It is.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, sir.

Mr. HILDRETH. You can ask, but you may not like the answer,

because of the hat I wear. This is an issue of policy and resource

prioritization, and because of where I am it is not something that

I can really address. I can talk about some of the issues, but sort

of taking that next step of what to do about it, it is not something

that we can really do.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Fair enough, Mr. Hildreth. We appreciate that.

Mr. Yarmuth, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. YARMUTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also think this has

been a very valuable conversation. I appreciate all the testimony. I want to just continue the line of questioning. With $120 billion

having been spent on ABM technology, is there any way to assess,

if you had unlimited funds, if we had unlimited funds, is there any

way to project what the program would cost to reach some kind of

successful conclusion?

Mr. CIRINCIONE. Such budget projections have been done in the

past. During the Reagan years there were estimates ranging from

$1 trillion to $2 trillion to deploy the programs, including the

space-based weapons that were then under consideration. The

ground-based systems are expensive, but still relatively cheap compared to the space-based weapons. This is as close as we have ever

come to an unconstrained budget, and I would say we are no further along in our ability to actually hit a real enemy missile now

than we were 20 years ago. Some advances in sensors and guidance

systems, but not significantly beyond where we were in the 1980’s.

Mr. YARMUTH. So we really——

Mr. FLYNN. If I might just say that if you achieve that, you will

create the incentive for the non-missile realm to be exploited, so

that is just a key point.

Mr. YARMUTH. That sounds like a very important point. You

made the comment, Mr. Cirincione, that if you left it up to the

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Joint Chiefs of staff. What is the proper process for coming to the

most logical decision and cost-effective decision? And the followup

question, which I would like any of you to address, is: what do you

see as the biggest threats to that process working properly?

Mr. CIRINCIONE. If it was up to me, the first thing I would do

is restore a budget process that starts with an accurate threat assessment, and I would add to my testimony and Dr. Flynn’s recommendations that you have a comprehensive threat assessment of

what the most serious security threats are facing the United States

and then have a budget allocation based on that. I believe that the

No. 1 threat is nuclear terrorism, so I would be devoting significantly more funds to promote preventing that.

The second is I would bring the Joint Chiefs into this process.

History of these ballistic missile defense programs are the Joint

Chiefs are happy to support a President’s pet rock as long as the

budget continues to expand, but as that budget contracts they want

to spend the money on programs that they really care about, that

meet their real conventional needs. That is the kind of budget

crunch that is about to hit the budget overall and ballistic missile

defense, in particular.

I would devolve all these missile defense programs back into the

services’ budgets, let them weigh in, and see whether they would

rather spend the money on jets, planes, tanks, and replacement for

the equipment that has been chewed up in Iraq, or they want to

continue with digging holes in the frozen tundra of Alaska.

Mr. FLYNN. I would just add to that it would clearly need to be

broadened beyond the Joint Chiefs and incorporate the issues that

are going to fall under the Department of Homeland Security

realm, because the Customs Service plays an important role in

some of these, the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, the Coast

Guard, and they are not even at the table with those discussions

about resources. If you look at the overall investment we are making on the conventional military national security apparatus, my

key, I guess, recommendation I am trying to advance here, particularly on Congress in its oversight function, is at some point in time

a comparative analysis, both on the threat assessment but also on

the oversight of these programs.

When these programs percolate up to the Pentagon they go

through an OMB reviewer who looks at them against other Defense

priorities, but not against other competing Government entities’

budgets to deal with a portion of this threat. That is a structural

problem that I argue that Congress needs to get into so that we

can start to balance these resources appropriately around this

range of challenges of which this threat may materialize.

Mr. YARMUTH. And my second question about what are the biggest threats to this process. I understand that you have a President

who thinks that it is politically desirable to demagogue this issue

and that is just some way that they could achieve political clout.

I know that is a threat, but are there other threats that you see

to having the right type of process?

Mr. FLYNN. I would put fundamentally here what I think has

been echoed across here: we haven’t got a good threat assessment.

We haven’t got a good intelligence estimate that looks at the nonmissile threat with the missile threat.

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The work that I did with the Hart Rudman Commission before

9/11, providing them a briefing—I shared with the staff here the

actual presentation I gave to them in 2000—that work was basically to say your attention is in the aerospace. Your attention is beyond our borders, but there is a whole conduit by which things

come to the United States, and commercial conveyances across our

borders at sea and so forth, where there is virtually no understanding in the defense apparatus of how it works, and you need to draw

experts who are outside that realm into this process.

Mr. YARMUTH. So just one quick followup. No pun intended, but

so we have had a silo approach to it where we compartmentalized

the various threats and we don’t consider them altogether? Is that

fair?

Mr. FLYNN. Absolutely. This is the first hearing I am aware of—

it may have been. I have been up here about 20 times since 9/11—

where you have traditional sort of national security side looking at

an element that falls into my arena, which we call homeland security. I usually don’t get invited to the National Security and Foreign Affairs Committees. I end up talking about Customs and so

forth. That is a problem, because we are not seeing the totality of

the threat.

Mr. SPRING. I would say this, too, which is that another threat

to that is I don’t think that we have yet fully arrived at a consensus-based strategy for dealing with the post cold war.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. And that is one of the reasons why this

committee is actually having this hearing, Dr. Flynn, is that we

have the unique positioning of being able to cut across different

agencies in our oversight, so while Homeland Security may have an

oversight committee, and armed services may have one, or whatever, they couldn’t necessarily poach into each other’s area. We

have that jurisdiction that we are able to go across and combine,

so I think there is some good work done here by Members and by

the staff on making sure that we get that perspective.

Mr. Van Hollen, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for

holding this series of hearings. And thank you to all of the members of the panel.

We have had a lot of discussion about the nature of the threat

and the severity of the threat, ballistic missile threat versus nonballistic missile type threats. I think it is pretty clear, and obviously some differences of opinion, but clearly, in this day and age,

given the capabilities other countries do have, that the non-ballistic

missile threat now is much greater than any kind of ballistic missile threat, and the question is what happens in the future.

As we have all talked about, this is largely a question of resource

allocation, because you do have a limited amount of resources. How

best are you going to spend the money of the American people on

their defense? And one is assessing the nature of the threat, and

the other is trying to determine whether what you are doing to

beat that threat is actually going to work.

I know we are going to have other hearings on this, but I do

want to just raise this issue now because we are sort of talking

about it in a way that, OK, we have these two different threats;

what if we had a ballistic missile system that really worked. Even

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if it worked, our sense is that the threat from these other areas

would be greater.

Let me just note that in 2003, when Bush administration officials

came before the Senate, they said that the interceptors would be

capable of shooting down missiles with 90 percent efficiency and

that they would be put in place by September 2004. They made

that statement despite the fact that a majority of tests that had

been performed before that time had failed, and that none of the

tests that were performed using realistic decoys and the kind of

other systems that you would expect to actually be part of an attack were in place.

Despite that testing record, the Bush administration essentially

said by fiat, not by evidence but by fiat, we are going to deploy this

thing—a very different approach than they have taken in many

other systems.

So once they said deploy it, the Pentagon, recognizing that the

testing wasn’t going so well, they didn’t do additional tests until it

was ‘‘deployed.’’ Since it has been deployed, you have a 50 percent

test success rate in tests that are done, but, again, these are tests

that have been dumbed down. They have been dumbed down so

that now, yes, you can hit something with a 50 percent accuracy

when you know in advance exactly what is coming, where it is coming from, and there are no decoys involved.

So I guess my question to you all is—and it gets to how many

resources you should put behind this at this particular point in

time until you get a little bit of better sense of whether or not this

would actually succeed in defeating an attack of the different scenarios that we are talking about.

Mr. Cirincione, if you could lead off, and I would be interested

in other’s comments.

Mr. CIRINCIONE. Thank you, Mr. Congressman. Did I mention,

Mr. Chairman, that I live in Maryland?

Mr. TIERNEY. No, you didn’t. I am glad you are covering the

ground. [Laughter.]

Mr. CIRINCIONE. In Mr. Van Hollen’s district.

I believe the history of this program has been that the threats

have been inflated, the capabilities have been inflated, so it is no

wonder that the budgets have been inflated. I believe $12.3 billion,

which is what the request is for this year, is completely out of proportion to both the threats we face and the capabilities we currently have. You have to restore some realism to the program.

I am not saying we cut it out, but you bring it back down to reality. You do an accurate threat assessment and you restore operational testing, common sense, to the program. You don’t buy it before you fly it. We have never in the history of the last 20 years

had a realistic test of any of these systems, the kind you describe,

that has flown up against what we would actually expect even a

primitive country to deploy, like North Korea or Iran. The NIE indicates that any country that can fly an ICBM is going to be capable of deploying one of or perhaps all of six basic countermeasures,

including chaff, balloons, other countermeasures that can defeat

the system.

We have never had a test of these weapons, and until we do how

can the Congress possibly justify sticking these things in holes in

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Alaska or straining our alliance to try to convince Poland or the

Czech Republic to deploy it? Fly before you buy, accurate threat assessments—that would be the rule of thumb. And then shift some

of the money out of missile defense to the No. 1 priority that we

have, which is making sure that the next 9/11 attack is a non-nuclear 9/11. Let’s prevent nuclear terrorism, the No. 1 threat facing

the United States today.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you.

Mr. SPRING. I am afraid that what you have described there is

what I would call a cycle of failure. That is, if what we do if say

we are going to reduce money for the testing until we can prove

the system will work, is basically then you are de-funding the testing that you acknowledge would need to go forward to make sure

the system works.

So I think that actually, if you want to improve technological

progress, then you are going to have to make the investments in

order to achieve that.

Let me speak also just very briefly about fly before you buy. This

is a system of systems approach that we are doing in missile defense. It means, because of the nature of the system, you have to

build it in order to test it.

We didn’t do full constellation end-to-end testing of global positioning system satellite network; we started putting satellites in

place in pieces, building it, fielding it, testing it concurrently. That

is not the answer, admittedly, in all defense programs, but in systems of systems approaches it is an unavoidable requirement.

Mr. FLYNN. The only thing, it is almost surreal for me coming

from the other end of the spectrum. Whatever you whack away, if

you have scraps I will take them for the non-missile threat. If I

could just point out, if I could just share this with you here, this

is just a few pictures of the world that I operated in. Just so you

have an idea, this was the longer one that is here.

[Slide.]

Mr. FLYNN. This gives you a scenario of the environment that I

worked through.

This is what I gave the Hart Rudman. We have this guy, Osama

bin Ladin, who did this to our embassy. If we move on to the next

slide, my scenario would be to come out of the Port of Karachi, we

have cut-and-sew shops there where you basically stuff containers

with day labor. That container ends up in situations like these,

local coastal barges loaded onto these inter-Asia ships that carry

about 300 barges.

They will go to a port like Hong Kong in a place like this that

moved 5.5 million containers last year on a ship like this that carries about 5,000 or 6,000, up to 10,000, land in a place like Long

Beach, move on rail into places like switch stations in Chicago

where you have boxes like this, or the Port of New York and New

Jersey, which is directly adjacent to a place like Newark International Airport, where New Jersey Turnpike runs directly adjacent to, which is also where our pipeline is at its head for New

England, basically the throat for New England, as this shot illustrates.

What I was basically making the case of here is that there is a

world out there where you can have access to conveyances that

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really is about access to a truck driver who gives you hold of a container, and that is how containers get to the United States and

then end up in Wal-Mart and on our shelves.

That is the world that I operate in. And the amount of resources

that we have dedicated to that problem is minuscule compared to

the kind of resources we have obviously invested in dealing with

ballistic missile threat. That is the kind of disconnect we are operating under.

Mr. TIERNEY. And we will all sleep well for that. Thank you. The

question is, do you sleep at night?

Mr. Burton, would you like to add something onto the record and

ask some questions?

Mr. BURTON. Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TIERNEY. You are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. BURTON. I will try to be more brief than that, because we

have votes coming up here in just a few minutes.

I am going to enter this into the record, and I ask that we do

this.

Mr. TIERNEY. Without objection, so ordered.

Mr. BURTON. This is the ballistic missile defense system, and the

Missile Defense Agency conducted 10 hit-to-kill intercepts in 2007,

including 6 intercepts of the Aegis BMD element, 3 intercepts of

the terminal high altitude area defense element, and an end-to-end

intercept of a long-range target by the ground-based mid-course defense system in California.

In addition to these flights in 2007, they conducted successful

tests of the sea-based X-band radar command control battle management and communications system and other sensors, radars

over multiple time zones.

And since 2001, there have been 34 of 42 terminal and midcourse hit-to-kill intercepts in atmosphere in space. Those aren’t

hypotheticals. They actually did that. And I understand in just the

last year or so there has been even more successes.

I agree, as I said before, with what you said. I think we are really vulnerable at our seaports and in our cities, and our borders are

very porous, and I think we ought to have a more complete threat

assessment, Mr. Chairman, where we find out really what we

should be doing that we are not doing right now to make sure that

the homeland is secure from some internal operation or something

in our seaports.

At the same time, though—and I know how vehemently you feel

about this. I mean, you come across pretty strong—I still think

that we need a very strong anti-missile system, and it should be

effective in all three areas—intercontinental, short-term, and intermediate-distance missiles.

With that, Mr. Chairman, since we are short on time I will just

submit this for the record.

Thank you, gentlemen, very, very much. We are going to be having votes in a minute, so I won’t be with you, but thanks for your

testimony. I really appreciate it.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you very much, Mr. Burton.

Mr. Burton, we are going to enter this on today’s record. I have

no problem with that. You might want to bring it back or have Mr.

Shays bring it back for the next hearing when we will be talking

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about capabilities and things, as well, so it gets on both records for

that, if that is the point you want to make.

Mr. BURTON. I will have Mr. Shays bring me back, too.

Mr. TIERNEY. OK. I didn’t want to make a statement on that. I

understand that statement made those points, but I caution all of

us to recognize what is a success and how it is defined. My experience with this thing over a dozen years or so has been that the

agency tends to define success of a rather animated process where

they simulate tests and then call it a success, where they use compartments or aspects of that program that are not the final operational aspect at all, but rather a prototype, which is not the one

they are finally going to use, where the target is identified in advance.

There are a lot of issues around what they call success and what

has actually hit to kill, but when we get into that next week I

think those are legitimate questions to ask. We should really define

what has been successful and what hasn’t, whether or not there

has been realistic and operational testing on that, and whether or

not, as the Congressional Budget Office suggests, we ought not go

back to an evolutionary process where we actually test before we

build.

This is the crux of the thing. The whole DTO&E Office was designed to stop the Defense Department from running amuck, as

they had with so many systems of building, only to find out that

it didn’t work and that we lost not only the money but the time.

So even for those who believe this is a system worth pursuing, you

would think that they would have some feeling for the idea of pursuing it in a logical sense that is economical so we can take care

of all of our risks at the same time and not be exclusive, but focus

on the testing where we don’t lose time and money going down the

path of actually building, deploying before they are actually ready

to work.

But we talk about our own system, and that is going to be for

the next hearing. But, Mr. Hildreth, I want to talk to you a little

bit about our tendency to over-estimate the capacity of others, particularly Iran and North Korea. From my understanding, and I

have a window through the Intelligence Committee, as well as this

committee’s work and general open source knowledge on that, they

still have issues about their propulsion systems; am I right?

Mr. HILDRETH. Yes.

Mr. TIERNEY. And they still have serious issues about their guidance systems?

Mr. HILDRETH. You can raise questions about every single one of

those elements of an ICBM, yes.

Mr. TIERNEY. And neither one of them has perfected the way of

compacting a payload in order to put it on a missile head so they

can be sent somewhere; isn’t that correct?

Mr. HILDRETH. Correct.

Mr. TIERNEY. All right. And neither one of them has perfected

the re-entry vehicle issues and challenges that are out there?

Mr. HILDRETH. To my knowledge they haven’t tested that outside

the laboratory. If they have done it inside the laboratory at all.

Mr. TIERNEY. OK. And you write in your testimony something I

think is very important, a need for a full system testing, just as

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we have never had that with our defensive operation with that,

neither of these countries even come remotely close to fully testing

a start-to-finish system, correct?

Mr. HILDRETH. I would argue so, yes.

Mr. TIERNEY. And that is an enormous undertaking. Tell us a little bit about what that entails.

Mr. HILDRETH. Most of the discussion is touched on in the statement, but basically an ICBM is a complex set of technologies that

need to be integrated together. Each one of those elements, those

main elements, themselves, constitute a whole range of technical

challenges that must be overcome. They need to be tested independently and proven to be successful. A lot of that stuff can be

done internally inside labs.

A lot of it, probably much of it could probably be done in ways

that could be masked or hidden, but in the end even those major

subsystems like re-entry vehicles or propulsion systems is not

something you can buy a computer model for and say this is what

we are doing and plug the numbers in and it shows that we are

going to have success. You have to go out and test these things in

a way that are, by a large measure, observable.

You can’t hide these things very well, especially the testing of

RVs. I mean, you just can’t gain the kind of experience you need

to understand the dynamics that an RV will experience inside a

laboratory. They don’t make wind tunnels that mimic the same

kind of stresses that an re-entry vehicle will experience when it is

coming in at several velocities per second, and massive deceleration.

You can’t do that inside a lab. The only way you can do it is to

actually go out and do it, and those things can’t be hidden. You

can’t hide the fact that people will test a missile, and you may be

able to shoot something up under the guise of a space launch vehicle, for example, and show that you have developed the capacity to

shoot a missile and launch something into orbit, but it is a totally

separate challenge and problem to have something re-enter the

Earth’s atmosphere and survive re-entry. It is not an easy thing.

You can’t get around that by not testing.

So these are just things you don’t see these other countries doing.

Mr. TIERNEY. You make the point in your written testimony that

some of the long-range ballistic missiles that we use to test intercept targets for our own ballistic missile defense program have

failed to launch or operate in order to allow the test to proceed, and

that is with 50 years of considerable U.S. long-range experience,

which none of these, neither Iran or North Korea, or, for that matter, any of the other countries have on that. I think that is an excellent point.

The other aspect that I don’t have time to question you on is the

whole idea of management organization of some 80,000 people

sometimes involved in a program as evolves on that and all the

necessary coordination to overcome these challenges that doesn’t

exist.

The bottom line of my point on this being that if we are serious

about this, we have the time to do this right. For those who believe

we can have an effective ballistic missile intercept, or whatever, we

have the time to do it right, to test and then build as we get things

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that are accomplished, or whatever. That way if it doesn’t work we

don’t have to spend all that money in that direction, but if it does

work we can have the confidence to move to the next system on

that.

Testing, reliability, and confidence that it is reliable are as important to our defense system as it is to them when they think of

whether or not they are going to use something offensive against

us. If we go back and take the CBO’s recommendation on that, it

gives us the opportunity to allocate resources to testing and allocate resources to making this country confident again that we are

doing everything that we can do, and relying on our resilience because we know that if something goes outside we will have done

all we can do but we are a resilient Nation. Dr. Flynn has said in

his written comments that we can move on from there.

Mr. Welch, you have no further questions, and I understand the

same with Mr. Yarmuth. Mr. Van Hollen, do you have any further

questions?

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. No, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. Gentlemen, would any of you like to make a final

remark? Is there something that we left unsaid that you would like

to address?

Mr. CIRINCIONE. Just on your last point, sir. One of the justifications that Secretary Rumsfeld gave for exempting the anti-ballistic

missile programs from normal operational testing process was the

urgency of the threat. I believe that the threat is not urgent; that

it is limited and developing rather slowly. So the two are related,

the inaccurate threat assessment and thorough and realistic operational testing. If you get one right, it helps you get the other right,

as well.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Does any other person on the panel

wish to——

Mr. FLYNN. Just the last point to say that the non-missile threat

I firmly believe from my analysis is the higher probability threat,

and it also is a vast distance behind what we have been trying to

develop in the ballistic missile defense, so we need to be thinking

about whatever we do in this area done in concert with the nonmissiles, just to reinforce that point.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. Spring, would you like to say something?

Mr. SPRING. I would just say that I would like to urge the committee to focus on the requirements, the damage limitation strategy, and say why not missile defense among the other requirements for protecting the American people, our friends and allies,

and forces afield.

Mr. TIERNEY. I want to thank all of you. Mr. Hildreth, the work

that CRS in not just this area but in many areas is very helpful

to us. It is a great resource, and we use it on a number of different

committees.

All the other witnesses, thank you for your expertise, your frankness with us, and the way that you approach this. It is very, very

helpful.

Mr. Burton, thank you. I thought you brought a great perspective

to it. We look forward to working with you.

Other members of the committee, thank you for your input.

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I thank the staff for your work, as well. I think you got us off

to a good start on a very serious issue that is enormously expensive

and very, very important to our defense.

With that, this hearing is closed. Thank you.

[Whereupon, at 11:40 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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