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OVERSIGHT OF MISSILE DEFENSE (PART 3):

QUESTIONS FOR THE MISSILE DEFENSE AGENCY

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

APRIL 30, 2008

Serial No. 110–150

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

LAWRENCE HALLORAN, 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 April 30, 2008 .............................................................................. 1

Statement of:

Coyle, Philip E., III, senior advisor, Center for Defense Information,

associate director emeritus, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory;

Henry F. Cooper, Ph.D., chairman, High Frontier; and Joseph

Cirincione, president, Ploughshares Fund .................................................. 150

Cirincione, Joseph ..................................................................................... 192

Cooper, Henry F. ....................................................................................... 181

Coyle, Philip E., III ................................................................................... 150

Obering, Lieutenant General Henry A. ‘‘Trey’’, III, USAF Director, Missile

Defense Agency, Office of the Secretary of Defense ................................... 79

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

Cirincione, Joseph, president, Ploughshares Fund, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 194

Cooper, Henry F., Ph.D., chairman, High Frontier, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 184

Coyle, Philip E., III, senior advisor, Center for Defense Information,

associate director emeritus, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 152

Obering, Lieutenant General Henry A. ‘‘Trey’’, III, USAF Director, Missile

Defense Agency, Office of the Secretary of Defense, prepared statement

of ..................................................................................................................... 83

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

of Connecticut:

Information concerning U.S. missile defense program ........................... 13

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 9

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

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

(1)

OVERSIGHT OF MISSILE DEFENSE (PART 3):

QUESTIONS FOR THE MISSILE DEFENSE

AGENCY

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 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 10:08 a.m., in room

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

Present: Representatives Tierney, McCollum, Van Hollen, Hodes,

Welch, and Shays.

Staff present: Dave Turk, staff director; Dan Himilton, fellow;

Davis Hake, clerk; Hank Smith, graduate intern; Christopher

Bright, Benjamin Chance, and Todd Greenwood, minority professional staff members; and Nick Palarino, minority senior investigator and policy advisor.

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

Missile Defense (Part 3): Questions for the Missile Defense Agency,’’ 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 of the members of the subcommittee

be allowed to submit a written statement for the record. Without

objection, so ordered.

Good morning, and welcome to everybody that is here, particularly our witnesses. Today’s oversight hearing is the third in our

series on the Nation’s missile defense program. As I have noted before, the National Security Oversight Committee is undertaking

this extensive and sustained oversight of missile defense for three

primary reasons.

First, the Missile Defense Agency operates the largest research

development program in the Department of Defense, consisting currently of about $10 billion or more a year. Since the 1980’s taxpayers have already spent $120 to $150 billion, more time and

more money than we spent on the Manhattan Project or Apollo

Program, with no end in sight.

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Second, the broader history of missile defense efforts teaches us

important lessons. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service

put it this way, ‘‘efforts to counter ballistic missiles have been underway since the dawn of the missile age at the close of World War

II. Numerous programs were begun, and only a very few saw completion to deployment. Technical obstacles have proven to be tenacious, and systems integration challenges have been more the

norm, rather than the exception.’’

Third, the excellent analysis and work of those who testified at

our previous two hearings and others like them have raised very

serious concerns about the effectiveness, efficiency and even the

need for our country’s current missile defense efforts.

Today we will continue those conversations with the head of the

Missile Defense Agency, General Obering. I want to thank you,

General, for your service to the country and for your testimony

here today.

For your benefit and for others who weren’t able to attend the

other hearings, I wanted to provide a short recap of what we have

learned and what serious questions have been raised.

Our first hearing focused on the threats facing our country from

intercontinental ballistic missiles versus other vulnerabilities we

face, a discussion which should form the foundation for any wise

policymaking, but which too often gets ignored, distorted or manipulated.

Joseph Cirincione testified, ‘‘the threat the United States faces

from ballistic missiles has steadily declined over the past 20 years.

There are fewer missiles in the world today than there were 20

years ago, fewer states with missile programs, and fewer hostile

missiles aimed at the United States. Countries still pursuing longrange missile programs are fewer in number and less technologically advanced than 20 years ago. Mr. Cirincione also dissected

the threat our troops and allies face from short and medium-range

missiles versus the threat or lack thereof the U.S. homeland faces

from long-range missiles.

Dr. Stephen Flynn, currently a fellow at the Council on Foreign

Relations and formerly the director and principal author of the

Hart-Rudman Commission report, testified that the ‘‘non-missile

risk . . . is far greater than the ballistic missile threat’’ because ‘‘it

is the only realistic option for a non-state actor like al Qaeda to

pursue;’’ it provides anonymity, something a ballistic missile simply

cannot; and there are a rich menu of non-missile options to exploit

for getting a nuclear weapon into the United States,’’ options which

could have the additional bonus from the al Qaeda perspective of

generating ‘‘cascading economic consequences by disrupting global

supply chains.’’

This comparative threat assessment is nothing new. In fact, in

2000 the CIA itself came to the same conclusion, ‘‘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.’’

Dr. Flynn concluded the hearing by basically begging us to use

any crumbs that could be taken from the billions of dollars we lavish on our ICBM missile defense efforts to plug existing and dangerously urgent homeland security vulnerabilities.

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Our second hearing tackled head-on the question of what are the

prospects of our current missile defense efforts and what are the

costs. One of the most eminent physicists our country has ever produced, Dr. Richard Garwin, the 2003 recipient of the National

Medal of Science from President Bush, testified, ‘‘Should a state be

so misguided as to attempt to deliver nuclear weapons by ICBM,

they could be guaranteed against intercept in mid course by the

use of appropriate countermeasures.’’

Philip Coyle, the longest-serving director ever of the Defense Department’s testing and evaluation office testified, ‘‘Decoys and

countermeasures are the Achilles Heel of missile defense. . . .

From a target discrimination point of view, during the past 5 years

the flight intercept tests have been simpler and less realistic than

the tests in the first 5 years. None of the GMD flight intercept

tests have included decoys or countermeasures during the past 5

years.—In the past 5 years, there have been just two successful

GMD flight intercept tests. At this rate it would take the Missile

Defense Agency 50 years before they could be ready for realistic

operational testing.’’

Other witnesses referred to a recent report by the Government

Accountability Office that concluded, ‘‘GAO was unable to assess

whether MDA met its overall performance goal because there have

not been enough flight tests to provide a high confidence that the

models and simulations accurately predict ballistic missile defense

system performance. Moreover, the tests that have been done do

not provide enough information for Department of Defense’s independent test organization to fully assess the BMDS’s suitability

and effectiveness.’’

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that assuming

the Missile Defense Agency continues on its present course, the

taxpayers will spend an additional $213 to $277 billion between

now and 2025. I need to stress that this is in addition to the $150

billion that have already been spent.

In a time of economic hardship, budget deficits and many pressing and expensive challenges, both foreign and domestic, we need

to all ask ourselves, whether you are a conservative Republican or

a liberal Democrat, are we wisely spending the taxpayers’ money

here, is there a real threat we are trying to guard against, and are

we actually going to have something useful at the end of the day?

That is why we are here today. Mr. Shays, I recognize you for

5 minutes.

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

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Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Tierney, for scheduling this hearing

today and continuing the subcommittee’s oversight of efforts to defend our Nation. I am pleased that today we will hear from the key

person at the Defense Department who is responsible for designing,

developing, testing and deploying our country’s missile defenses.

Obviously General Obering’s perspective is critical for this subcommittee to properly discharge its oversight function. I look forward to hearing General Obering’s explanation of the threat this

Nation faces.

Earlier this year, another senior military leader testified before

a House committee that, quote, the spread of nuclear, chemical and

biologic weapons and the ballistic missiles to deliver them is one

of the central security challenges confronting the United States and

its allies. This echoed the assessment given a few weeks before by

Thomas Fingar, the Deputy Director of National Intelligence. Dr.

Fingar informed the House Armed Services Committee that, ‘‘Iran

continues to deploy ballistic missiles inherently capable of delivering nuclear weapons and to develop longer-range missiles.’’ He acknowledged that North Korea possesses nuclear weapons and has,

‘‘already sold ballistic missiles to several Middle East countries and

to Iran.’’ Dr. Fingar also observed that one type of North Korean

missile, ‘‘probably has the potential capability to deliver a nuclear

weapon sized payload to the continental United States.’’

This then is the situation that intelligence and military experts

believe the United States confronts now and in the future. It was

in light of these dangers that the Congress approved the National

Missile Defense Act of 1999 which established, ‘‘the policy of the

United States to deploy as soon as is technologically possible an effective national missile defense system capable of defending the

United States against limited ballistic missile attacks.’’ This is the

law of the land.

Last year the chairman of HASC, House subcommittee with responsibility for missile defenses, declared that there was always,

there has always been partisan, bipartisan support for developing

and deploying an effective missile defense system. Mrs. Tauscher

made it clear that Members from both sides of the aisle, ‘‘believed

that effective missile defenses are an essential component of our

country’s overarching defense and national security strategy.’’ Mrs.

Tauscher’s points were endorsed by the U.S. Congress and signed

into law again recently.

The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2008,

which was overwhelmingly approved by this House, clearly recognizes the threat of ballistic missile attacks and codifies support for

an effective missile defense system. Thus, it is not surprising that

2 months ago the Secretary of Defense declared that past doubts

about missile defenses have been resolved. ‘‘The question of whether this capability exists has been settled.’’ Secretary Gates said, but

he also noted that, ‘‘the question is against what kind of threat,

how large a threat, and how sophisticated a threat.’’

I am concerned that if this subcommittee overlooks the consensus

for missile defenses and succeeds in delaying or curbing the program, we may regret this action. There was a time when missile

defense critics said the system, ‘‘could never hit a bullet with a bulVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:08 May 07, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\48813.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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let. The Missile Defense Agency has proved the skeptics wrong on

this point. I suspect they will do so again on other aspects.’’

This notwithstanding, I believe our subcommittee has a vital, important role to play in overseeing the missile defense program.

However, I believe we need to frame the debate differently. We

should post queries such as, what is the proper mix of technologies

available to us? Which systems perform better and are more cost

effective than others? Are our international partners sufficiently

engaged? Can factors which inhibit testing, such as target price

and availability, be addressed in order to offer more meaningful exercises? Is there a way to better encourage sales of component systems to allies, thus bringing our production costs down while offering a measure of protection abroad?

Over the past weeks in this hearing series, we have heard wildly

varying assessments of the threat this Nation faces, the capability

of our current missile defense system, and the testing regime to

which it has been subjected. I am eager to hear from General

Obering to learn the facts, and I am interested in hearing contrary

views from our second panel.

Mr. Chairman, again, I sincerely thank you again for holding

these hearings.

[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 our first panel before us today, Lieutenant

General Henry A. ‘‘Trey’’ Obering III. General Obering is the Director of the Missile Defense Agency in the Office of the Secretary of

Defense and has held this position since July 2004. He entered the

Air Force in 1973, receiving his pilot wings in 1975, flying F–4

Phantoms. Among other assignments, General Obering participated

in 15 space shuttle launches as the NASA orbiter project engineer.

He was responsible for integrating firing room launch operations.

Prior to his assignment at MDA, General Obering served as the

Mission Area Director for Information Dominance on the Air Staff.

General, again, thank you for being with us today. We look forward to a frank and robust discussion. We do have a policy of the

subcommittee to swear everybody in before they testify. So I ask

you to please stand and raise your right hand.

[Witness sworn.]

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Let the record reflect that the witness

has answered in the affirmative.

Mr. Shays.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If I could just insert into

the record two letters endorsing the current system from General

Kevin Chilton and General Kevin Campbell, an MDA response to

recent criticisms regarding the U.S. missile defense program; and

finally, an independent report refuting the criticism lodged by Professor Ted Postal.

Mr. TIERNEY. Without objection, so ordered.

[The information referred to follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. General, I do have to make some preliminary comments. One is that your full written statement will be in the

record, and I know it’s quite extensive.

We have several issues going on here today. One is that Mr.

Ahern from Ireland is over here talking. Some Members will want

to come and go to that. So I want to move the hearing if we can.

We have a second panel as well and votes coming in. So I want to

give you your full 5 minutes for your opening statement and then

go to questions.

But I understand—I look at your statement, it’s certainly longer

than 5 minutes, and I understand you also want to show some

slides or a video or whatever. So how you manage that and get it

within the 5 minutes without making me look like an ogre for shutting you down will be appreciated because we will pretty much

keep it to 5 minutes, maybe with a little bit of leeway. But it is

up to you how you want to work on that. Then we’ll let people ask

questions and go from there.

I appreciate that. And you are recognized.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, could I make a request that he be

given 10 minutes? This is the gentleman who is responsible for the

entire program. It would seem to me that there’s no logic to confining his testimony and letting us hear what he has to say.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Shays, we’ll be as generous as we can within

the confines. We have those issues that are around here this morning. Certainly it’s the witness’ choice to use video or to testify. He

can use his time as he wants. General, you are recognized.

STATEMENT OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL HENRY A. ‘‘TREY’’

OBERING III, USAF DIRECTOR, MISSILE DEFENSE AGENCY,

OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

General OBERING. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Representative

Shays, and other distinguished members of the committee. As the

Director of the Missile Defense Agency, it is my role to develop,

test and initially field an integrated, layered ballistic missile defense system. And I want to emphasize the integrated and layered

nature of these capabilities which our critics overlook and which I

will expand upon later.

I am happy to report that 2007 was the best year we ever had

and it reflects the hard work of thousands of men and women

across the country. This past year we’ve made progress in our fielding and testing and we’ve taken major steps to defend our homeland as well as our deployed forces and allies in the Pacific. With

NATO’s recent recognition of the merging missile threat by all of

its member nations, its endorsement of our long-range defense proposals, and its tasking to propose options for shorter-range protection and integration, we will be able to defend our deployed forces

and allies in that important theater as well.

In addition, we have active cooperation efforts with 18 nations

worldwide. Our success to date has also affected our increasingly

complex and realistic test program which we will continue to expand over the next several years. With the 10 of 10 successful

intercepts in 2007, we have now achieved 34 of 42 successful hit

to kill intercepts since 2001. We have not had a major system failure in our flight test program in over 3 years.

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Two relatively recent milestones are worth highlighting. One was

the success of our allied partner, Japan, in their first intercept

flight test off the coast of Hawaii in December. And while it was

not a test of our missile defense system, we were able to modify

our sea-based element to destroy the errant satellite in February

with just 6 weeks notice.

Now I would like to address some of our critics’ opinions. The

fact is that many of our critics disagree with the policy choice that

we ought to deploy strategic or tactical systems to counter the ballistic missile threat. They have other approaches, to include denying that the threat exists or using more destabilizing or destructive

solutions.

In pursuing missile defense even in a limited fashion, we are following a commonsense approach. To illustrate, let me quote a recently declassified draft Presidential memorandum, ‘‘a number of

arguments for deployment of a less than perfect ballistic missile defense are most persuasive. A ballistic missile defense, even though

of limited capability, could be very effective against a simple attack

by a minor power, a small accidental attack, or a small attack constrained by arms control measures. Such a defense would contribute to the deterrence of blackmail threats and to the stability of

arms control agreements. A ballistic missile defense of limited capability would contribute to the deterrence of large attacks by raising doubts of the attacker’s ability to penetrate. Such a defense,

even though limited, greatly complicates the design and tactics for

offensive systems.’’

This memorandum was written 45 years ago on October 6, 1962;

the President was John F. Kennedy. Signs of similar logic, the Congress passed and the Clinton administration signed into law the

National Missile Defense Act of 1999. What we’ve seen from our

critics is an attack of the overall policy to deploying missile defense

using technical arguments, stating originally that we can’t do hit

to kill or that we cannot be effective against countermeasures or

that in the future we cannot make boost-phased defenses work. But

the fact is that we can do hit to kill. We can be effective against

countermeasures and we are making boost-phased defenses work.

So we are taking these technical arguments off the table one at a

time through a comprehensive test program.

Our critics are also out of step with the mainstream. There’s

been bipartisan support by 11 Congresses, four Presidents, combatant commanders, a growing number of allies, including all NATO

nations, not to mention the majority of the American people. Successive military commanders such as the head of U.S. Northern

Command testified to Congress that our long-range defenses have

made great strides and that the system is standing ready to defend

the United States and its allied infrastructure and population centers. Indeed, for several years now a number of our combatant commanders have placed missile defense near the top of their needed

capabilities list.

Defying the predictions of critics who maintained for years that

we could not hit a bullet with a bullet, we have now shown that

we can successfully do so. In fact, we can show that we can hit very

precisely, within centimeters of where we’re aiming.

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Also contrary to what critics maintain, we are using realistic test

criteria developed by the test community and the warfighter. The

Director of Operational Test and Evaluation concurs that we’ve increased the operation and realism of all our testing, to include an

end-to-end test of our long-range elements with operational assets.

The critics claim that the threat is not realistic unless it has simple or advanced countermeasures. We take countermeasures seriously and we have tested against several versions in the past. Our

flight tests will include more complex threat suites in the future as

our development program produces new sensors, algorithms and

Kill Vehicles. However, the fact remains that there that are hundreds of missiles deployed today that we do not believe carry countermeasures and we have been successful against these types of

threats.

What would our critics have us do, return this country and our

forces to its previous state of complete vulnerability to missile attack? Missile defense must be considered within the entire balance

of forces within the United States. It will complement our arms

control and other dissuasive actions. It can bolster our defense capability. It can stabilize crisis situations, and when all else fails

and a warhead is in the air, missile defense and only missile defense can save innocent lives.

Now, sir, with your permission I do have a few charts if I could

go to illustrate this point.

Mr. TIERNEY. You still have time.

General OBERING. This is the integrated, layered system that I

was talking about before. It comprises defenses in a boost phase,

the mid-course phase of flight as well as the terminal phase. And

we are building the integration and the engineering for these all

to work together so the distinction between tactical and strategic

blurs considerably supported by an entire family of sensors.

Next slide, please. This is the deployment of the system today,

to include radars as far forward as Japan, Aegis ships of which

we’ve modified 17 through long-range tracking, 12 to be able to

launch sea-based interceptors and a whole host of elements, to include more than 24 interceptors that we’ve placed between Alaska

and California, radars that we’ve modified, as well as new radars

that we’ve deployed across the globe as well as a modified radar

in the United Kingdom to be able to protect initially from threats

from Iran.

Next slide. Now on our testing. If you go ahead and click on this

first one very quickly. The first one—no, I’m sorry. Can you back

up? The first one right here. OK. It’s not in there? Go ahead to this

last one then. I want to show just the last long-range testing we

did in September. This was a test to emulate an attack. Go ahead

and click on inside the frame there, please. To emulate an attack

from North Korea into the United States. That’s fine. It should

start.

The target was launched from Kodiak, AK. This was a threestage target emulating what we believed the North Koreans are capable of doing. This geometry was to emulate an attack from North

Korea into Texas with an intercept from Alaska. We flew from Kodiak Island, AK down into the Pacific and we intercepted with an

interceptor from Vandenberg, CA. Here is a target camera looking

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aft on the target. The next you are going to see the interceptor

flight leaving the silo in California. Now, I remind you that this

was done by soldiers on the console operational hardware and software, operational interceptor, and the configuration that we have

deployed to our interceptor silos in Alaska and California.

Again, the next you’ll see is the silo being—the silo interceptor

being launched from Vandenberg. We have a clamshell protection

over the silos. This is a long-range shot from there. Here are the

clamshell doors opening and the egress of the interceptor. Now this

is our largest interceptor. It’s about 60 feet long, three stages. It

is capable of defending from either the East or the West. So we can

use these interceptors to protect from both North Korea as well as

Iran.

This is a three-stage version, as I said. We are proposing a twostage, which we will remove the third stage for Europe. Here’s the

separation of the first stage, and you fly up. And the next shot you

are going to see are some of the intercept scenes. This intercept occurred several hundred kilometers in space. So the first is an IR

image that you’ll see of the intercept. We know that we destroy

about 50 percent of the warhead immediately, about 40 percent

burns up in re-entry, and only about 10 percent debris hits the

ground. This is just at 30 percent speed.

The final frame, you will see three boxes come up here and this

is exactly what the Kill Vehicle sees. What you’ll be able to see is

that it’s tracking multiple objects in those boxes with the three sensors. There’s a little box that comes up. In every one of the boxes

that you see here are objects that are in the focal plane of the Kill

Vehicle. It’s having to go through and determine what is a warhead, what is the third stage, what is debris that is in that field

of view? In these two frames, you will see it selects the warhead

just before we hit.

Sir, that’s all I have. I just wanted to use that to illustrate I

think the tremendous progress that we’ve made in our program.

[The prepared statement of General Obering follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you very much, General.

We’re going to proceed to questioning and a 5-minute rule on

that basis, but I suspect that we’ll have more than one round if

Members wish.

General, I have a lot to go through here. So I want to start and

sort of do it systematically if we can and go back to some of it. We

talked a little bit about the threat that the country faces today and

a number of people at the Defense Department point out that over

two dozen countries currently have ballistic missiles. I know Vice

President Cheney likes to say there are 27. But I want to break

that down a little bit. Because as I said to you yesterday, we want

to make some distinctions here between short-range, middle and

medium-range, and long-range. We’re really focusing on the GMD

here. And that’s what we’re talking about.

So of the 27 or so countries that currently have ballistic missiles,

how many only have short-range capability? And that is 300 kilometers or less.

General OBERING. Well, sir, first of all if we are going to address

the $120 billion or $115 billion that—I want to remind the committee that is the entire program. So that includes——

Mr. TIERNEY. I understand. And I think you broke it down in

your written testimony to $64 billion or so in the mid-course or

whatever. And that is on the record, and I appreciate that.

General OBERING. Yes, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. I’m not trying to get into a debate with you. I just

wanted to focus on the question, of the 27 countries that the Vice

President likes to refer, how many of those only have short-range

capability?

General OBERING. The majority of those have short-range capability. There’s two nations that are of very much concern. That is

Iran and North Korea because they’ve been able to take the shorter-range SCUD technology and they’ve been able to grow that into

longer and longer ranges. And so North Korea, in particular, was

able to launch a long-range weapon in the summer of 1998 which,

by the way, the intelligence experts did not believe was going to

happen for 8 to 10 years. So the majority of those are short range

and short to medium range to intermediate range. So we do know

they’re growing those capabilities.

Mr. TIERNEY. When you say North Korea has the capability of a

missile, you are not trying to lead people to believe that they’ve

tested it thoroughly and that every aspect of it and every component of it has been tested any particular number of times to show

effectiveness, are you?

General OBERING. Sir, as a very robust development and test

program in those countries that I mentioned. In fact just this year,

for example, Iran fired a 2,000-kilometer missile in November.

They again attempted a space launch vehicle in February. And as

I stated, North Korea——

Mr. TIERNEY. You are conflating again. So I want to stick to one

topic at a time if we can. And I think that’s—I don’t want to be

sarcastic with you or anything, but I think there’s been a tendency

for some people to just conflate a lot of different issues.

General OBERING. Sir, I’m not trying to——

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Mr. TIERNEY. I appreciate that. But I want to ensure we don’t.

I don’t want to conflate long with middle with short. I don’t want

to conflate North Korea with Iran and 27 other countries. I want

to focus down here if we can. Let me just ask the questions if I

might and try to focus your answers on those specific questions.

Likely you are talking about North Korea and Iran outside of

France and Great Britain and China and Russia.

General OBERING. China and Russia, right.

Mr. TIERNEY. We then don’t have a concern that they’re going to

start lobbing missiles at us any sometime soon, China, Russia,

France or Great Britain. The system you have designed is not focused on them, it is not directed at them, right?

General OBERING. Right.

Mr. TIERNEY. So the system that you are talking about now

would be the prospect of somebody might have 5,500 kilometers, or

3,500 miles capacity in a missile. You think at some point in time

North Korea or Iran might get to that point?

General OBERING. Actually, yes, sir. And also when you start getting above 3,000 to 3,500 kilometers you now start to get in capabilities where you need the long-range defenses that we’ve produced.

Mr. TIERNEY. I get mixed up with kilometers and miles here. So

it’s 5,500 kilometers, 3,500 miles roughly equivalent.

General OBERING. No, sir. About 3,500 kilometers—about 3,500

kilometers or greater, you start getting into the long-range capabilities that you need.

Mr. TIERNEY. OK. We’ve had assessments from the Congressional

Research Service and a lot of them saying that any number of intelligence estimates or studies have predicted that there would be

more than five nations that have accomplished this capability in

the next 40—at various times in the last 40 to 50 years. But that

number hasn’t really increased. You’ve got two, North Korea and

Iran, and other than that it really hasn’t increased beyond what

was there quite a while ago.

General OBERING. Yes, sir. Again the facts are that those predictions oftentimes are not very accurate. You have to look at what

is the sharing, the collaboration that’s going on. And that’s what

makes it difficult to try to judge those.

Mr. TIERNEY. The other question we have, if Iran had the capability, if they had it, and which they currently don’t, we’d know exactly where that missile was coming from, wouldn’t we?

General OBERING. Well, sir, obviously it depends. It depends on

whether or not—if it was fired from within their country, we would

know the launch location of the missile. That’s true.

Mr. TIERNEY. But we’re not purporting that they have the capacity to launch it somewhere other than a country on an intercontinental ballistic missile, are we?

General OBERING. Well, one of the videos that I thought the folks

loaded but they didn’t, shows the fact that we can shoot—we actually launch shorter-range missiles off of our ships in our test beds.

Mr. TIERNEY. Again we’re talking about intercontinental ballistic

missiles.

General OBERING. I am talking about short range.

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Mr. TIERNEY. I’m talking about intercontinental ballistic missiles.

You are not purporting to tell me that Iran is setting them off from

anywhere other than their own soil.

General OBERING. Yes, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. So that would be the case, if they sent one off purposely or whatever, they could expect to have some pretty severe

retaliation.

General OBERING. Yes, sir. And of course the warhead would

land on our soil without missile defense that we would do nothing

about. So we would have to apologize——

Mr. TIERNEY. What I’m talking about, General, obviously is, you

know, you would have to think that somebody would be that crazed

to send over something like that. Now Iran, last time I checked, is

a country with a government, an elected government. They have

roads. They have bridges. They have buildings. They have business. They’re a functioning society over there. And you would have

to make a leap of faith to believe that they would purposefully send

off a missile, knowing there was going to be severe retaliation.

That’s the point that I make.

General OBERING. May I, sir, address that?

Mr. TIERNEY. Sure.

General OBERING. No. 1, just the possession of a long-range

weapon would allow coercion of our allies or coercion of the United

States to allow them to operate under a nuclear umbrella that I

think would change dramatically the geopolitical situation in the

world and would have severe policy consequences on the United

States and our ability for unrestricted movement.

We saw what happened in Iraq where you had just the hostage

taking of a number of individuals change the national policy of one

of our allies. If you had a country that could hold entire cities at

risk in Europe or other nations, what would that do to be able to

coerce us? If I could get to your point directly.

Mr. TIERNEY. I wish you would.

General OBERING. What happens if they do not exercise control

of those weapons? And we cannot guarantee that. So what happens

if you have the equivalent of a nation state suicide bomber that

wants to make a blow for their cause? And they don’t care——

Mr. TIERNEY. Russia and China?

General OBERING. I’m talking——

Mr. TIERNEY. France?

General OBERING. I’m talking about Iran right now.

Mr. TIERNEY. In the case you are talking about, that could happen anywhere, whether it’s Pakistan, Russia, China, France.

General OBERING. Yes, sir. Which is even—which is even

more——

Mr. TIERNEY. But the system you are building is only focused on

Iran and North Korea?

General OBERING. Actually the system that we are fielding is focused on Iran and North Korea for very good reason. Those are the

two nations that have made very aggressive statements about their

intent as well as the capabilities that they’re backing that up within their program.

Mr. TIERNEY. So I guess your case is that you think that if they

had the capacity, ever eventually got the capacity to throw a misVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:08 May 07, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00118 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\48813.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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sile up there, that you think the threat to do so, knowing that

there would be severe retaliation, would be effective enough to

change U.S. policy?

General OBERING. I believe it could be effective enough to change

ally policies. I think it would have severe consequences for our

dealings in the alliance. And I think that’s something that when

we can close off that vulnerability, why wouldn’t we?

Mr. TIERNEY. Well, I guess you would have to factor in a lot of

other things in a cost-benefit analysis. We’ll probably talk about

that later, how many billions and hundreds of billions of dollars

you want to get to that prospect at some point with all those factors thrown in.

We’ve had witnesses come in here, in fact, going back before that,

back in 2000, the CIA’s point person on missile threats, Robert

Walpole, testified to Congress that in fact we projected in coming

years U.S. territory is probably more likely to be attacked with

weapons of mass destruction from nonmissile delivery means, most

likely from nonstate entities, than by missiles, primarily because

nonmissile delivery means are less costly and more reliable and accurate. They can also be used without attribution.

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

Trends 2015,’’ reiterated that 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 ICBM.

Do you disagree with that, General?

General OBERING. Well, sir, first of all those are dated assessments. So I would recommend that you might get an updated assessment from the CIA and the DIA.

Mr. TIERNEY. I’ve had them, General. I serve on the Intelligence

Committee as well. So having them, I still give you, this is the

most recent written public assessments since 2001. And I notice

that there has been no national intelligence assessment with respect to overall threats and prioritizing them and identifying them.

And I have my own feeling that there’s a reason for that, knowing

what I know from the Intelligence Committee and what is real and

what is not. We’ll have to save that for another day because it’s

only insinuation at this point. But with respect to those two statements, do you disagree with that?

General OBERING. Sir, I don’t disagree. What I would say is that

we have to be prepared for both of the alternatives in terms of either a ballistic missile attack from a medium or long-range missile

from a ship or from a smuggled nuke into a port. We can’t pick and

choose that. I think that the significant lesson from 9/11 was not

how we were attacked. It was the fact that they expressed and

acted on a will to attack. So the means by which that happens we

have to be prepared for. So as soon as we say that we’re not going

to develop a long-range missile defense for this country, we are inviting that avenue of attack for our future adversaries.

Mr. TIERNEY. So you are an advocate of not making any priorities and not making distinctions and just spend every dollar we

have on defense for every possible contingency you might have

without deciding which one is more realistic than others?

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General OBERING. Sir, what I would say is this, if you look at

what we’re spending on missile defense for the entire program, not

just our long range, the entire program, it’s less than 2 percent of

our defense budget, less than 2 percent.

Mr. TIERNEY. It’s about $150 billion to date with another anticipated over $200 billion going forward. And we’ll talk about effectiveness and other things later. But my time has expired.

And nobody being on Mr. Shays’ side, Ms. McCollum, you are

recognized for 5 minutes. I’m sorry. Mr. Van Hollen is recognized.

I didn’t see him over there.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. No. That’s OK.

Mr. TIERNEY. You are recognized for 5 minutes, Mr. Van Hollen.

You’re not ready. Ms. McCollum, you are recognized after all.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, I am ready.

After the expert testimony from the first two hearings, I believe

it would make more sense to move the Missile Defense Agency to

the White House Office of Faith-based Initiatives.

It’s hard to believe and it’s impossible for me to explain to my constituents why we’re spending $10 billion every year on a cold

war program that’s based on a series of very questionable assumptions. In general, just from the last bit of the conversation that was

going between you and the chairman, I would have to ask you, do

you have any real fears that al Qaeda, who is our No. 1 enemy,

would ever be able to build or launch a nuclear-tipped missile at

the United States?

General OBERING. Ma’am, you put your finger on a very important concern, and that is, while the number of countries that have

grown since——

Ms. MCCOLLUM. I asked you about al Qaeda.

General OBERING. I’m getting to that, ma’am.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. I only have 5 minutes. I asked you, do you have

a fear that al Qaeda could be in possession——

General OBERING. I have fear that as the access to these weapons have grown because of the lack of missile defenses, I do believe

that organizations like al Qaeda have a likelihood of getting their

hands on them and being able to launch these weapons.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. In the near future?

General OBERING. We’ve already seen states pass missiles to

nonstate actors in the Middle East. We’ve seen Iran and Syria

handing over short-range missiles to——

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Our allies are the ones who possess the technology. Do you think al Qaeda’s going to get this from our allies.

Syria doesn’t have—does Syria have this capability of giving this

to al Qaeda?

General OBERING. North Korea has the technology. The experts

agree, there was an article in the Washington Post just this year.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. General, I am going to move on because you and

I disagree on this. I don’t think al Qaeda has immediate capability

on this.

Are there cheaper ways to strike the United States with weapons

of mass destruction than long-range missiles? Yes or no.

General OBERING. Well, ma’am, first of all, I think that it depends on a number of different factors. No. 1, would it be cheaper

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struction. What I can say is it was very cheap, relatively speaking,

for us to launch a target off of a ship off the coast of Hawaii.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Sir, I asked you a question. This is hard for me

to do this. I want you to know, we were stationed at Wright Patterson when my sister is born. This is with the utmost respect, but

I only have 5 minutes. OK?

Are there cheaper ways to strike the United States with weapons

of mass destruction than with long-range missiles?

General OBERING. Ma’am, I’m not an expert other than the missile threat. So I can talk about the missile defenses to those

threats.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. So you are not aware that there are any more

reliable or accurate ways at all than long-range missiles to attack

the United States?

General OBERING. I do know that by launching a missile from

the coast you control everything up to the launch of that

missile——

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Mr. Chairman, I’m going to focus then on cost

in the next round when I can go into it serving on the Appropriations Committee. Thank you for trying to answer my questions,

General, for your attempt.

General OBERING. Yes, ma’am.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Mr. Van Hollen, do you want Mr.

Welch to go? We’re trying to accommodate your schedule. Mr.

Welch, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. WELCH. Thank you. General, first of all, it’s your job to obviously develop this. You’ve been assigned to do that, and you’re

doing the best you can. And I happen to have major reservations

about the effectiveness of it. But Congress has approved it. So I

think we bear a lot of the responsibility for this policy. But on this

question of the threat, we don’t have infinite resources. And it is

possible to conceive of an infinite number of threats to our national

security, and decisions have to be made about the deployment of

limited resources to protect us. Would you acknowledge that there’s

a significant tactical use of asymmetric warfare-type tactics by adversaries of the United States that we’re seeing throughout—in the

whole war on terror?

General OBERING. Yes, sir.

Mr. WELCH. And wouldn’t it be the case, as some witnesses have

testified, that there is a serious threat that somebody may try to

bring a nuclear device into this country on a ship or across a border and then detonate that device here in the homeland?

General OBERING. Yes, sir.

Mr. WELCH. And would you be in agreement that it would be important for us in terms of addressing that threat that we have a

focus on some of the vulnerabilities at our ports and along our borders?

General OBERING. Oh, yes, sir.

Mr. WELCH. Do you have an opinion as to whether the threat of

that type of means of delivery is greater than the threat posed by

a long-range ballistic missile delivery system?

General OBERING. I do have an opinion. Yes, sir.

Mr. WELCH. And what’s that?

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General OBERING. I do believe that from our own experience,

being able to launch a weapon from a ship into the United States

in which you controlled everything up until the launch of that

weapon and not have to rely on trusted agents or sneaking past

sensors and these things is a real threat. That’s something that can

in fact happen.

Mr. WELCH. And the question I asked is whether—do you think

that threat is a greater threat than delivery by these asymmetric

means?

General OBERING. Sir, I don’t know if I can quantify that. What

I can say is that it is a threat that we can do something about.

Mr. WELCH. I actually think it’s important to have some quantification. If there’s limited resources and we have to decide to put

those resources into protecting ports from a delivery by means of

backpack or cargo container versus put our resources into acceleration of the missile defense program, and we can’t do both, which

do you think is a more imminent threat?

General OBERING. Again, sir, I’m not an expert in that regard.

I’m only an expert in the missile portion of that, the missile defense portion of that.

Mr. WELCH. Well, I understand that. And again, this is not just

you. That’s your job, so that’s what you’ve got to do. And I think

all of us respect that and appreciate your history here. But from

the perspective of threat—I mean obviously it’s very important for

national security reasons that people with experience like you and

policymakers have threat assessments, right?

General OBERING. OK, sir, if I can answer it this way: I look at

the intel books every day.

Mr. WELCH. You look at what?

General OBERING. I look at the intel assessments every day. I

don’t recall seeing any testing of a nuclear suitcase weapon in

those books in the last 4 or 5 years—4 years that I’ve been—almost

4 years I have been Director. I have seen year after year after year,

test after test after test, last year 120 of those missiles from a variety of countries around the world. So I’m paying attention to that

capability. And if we have countries that are producing that capability in those tests and then some of those countries, a small subset are making very hostile statements against the United States,

it’s something that I am being paid to pay attention to and to see

if we can do something about that.

I’ll leave it up to the Congress and others to make a determination of how much is enough of what. All I can say is, from my personal perspective, I see this progression across the globe, and I see

it’s something that we can actually do something about.

Mr. WELCH. What countries are you focused on as a threat to our

security through the delivery of missiles?

General OBERING. I think today Iran and North Korea have

made very hostile statements against both the United States and

our allies. They are backing that up with capability demonstrations. One of the lessons learned from the summer of 2006 is the

North Koreans had carried on their Taepodong–2 program much

beyond what we were anticipating and they attempted a launch of

that long-range weapon. But more importantly, the shorter-range

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weapons that they fired, they showed a dramatic improvement in

the reliability and the accuracy of those weapons as well.

Mr. WELCH. Do you believe that our capacity for massive retaliation if there were a missile attack by Iran would serve as any deterrent on the launch of a ballistic missile against the United

States from Iran?

General OBERING. If the controlling authorities were deterrable,

yes, sir. If they’re not, then the only thing you can do is protect

yourself against that missile. And I think that is what I am trying

to convey, and maybe not very well, is that we are no longer in the

cold war. We no longer can rely solely on deterrence because we

may face in this century organizations or countries that are

nondeterrable.

Mr. WELCH. Right. Well, I actually agree with that. I mean, actors that are nondeterrable. And that’s what the problem is with

the asymmetric warfare tactics of folks who use terror as a political

tactic. But our—as I understand it, our recent National Intelligence

Estimate on Iran, our November 2007 intelligence estimate concluded, ‘‘Tehran’s decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach.’’

Do you agree with that conclusion in the National Intelligence Estimate?

General OBERING. I will give you my opinion of that. There are

three things that are necessary to deliver a nuclear weapon or

weapon of mass destruction. You have to have—in a nuclear weapon, you need to have the enriched uranium to be able to produce

the material. You have to have a weaponization of that and you

have to have a weapons delivery vehicle. Now if you look at the

cost-benefit analysis that is going through the Iranians right now,

why are they investing so heavily in the weapons delivery vehicle

systems; i.e., the missiles, if they’re only interested in a small conventional warhead? Knowing the accuracies that they have, it

doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. That’s my assessment. So I think

that—and I think there’s been followups to the NIE since then that

talk about what that really meant in terms of halt and whether

they’ve restarted etc. But I don’t think it makes sense to say that

they’re going to stop weaponization and yet they’re going to accelerate their missile programs.

So I believe that it doesn’t make sense. I think it’s something

that we really have to pay attention to.

Mr. WELCH. So what’s your threat assessment of the likelihood

of Iran launching a first strike missile attack on the United States?

General OBERING. I believe that the ability to do that is several

years away. The ability to do that is probably not before 2015

based on the intel experts that inform us. The problem there is, we

have to be prepared for that because capability takes years to develop, both offensive as well as, by the way, defensive to be able

to build a defense for that. But intent can change overnight. So I

can’t guarantee the Congress and can’t guarantee the U.S. people

that we will be protected from attack because they choose not to

do so.

Mr. WELCH. What is my time?

Mr. TIERNEY. Your time has expired. We’re going to have another

round.

Mr. WELCH. OK. Thank you.

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General OBERING. Yes, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Van Hollen, you’re recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And again, thank

you for holding this series of hearings. And welcome, General.

Just to frame the discussion, and it already has been, I think,

very well framed by my colleagues, this is not a question of whether the United States should be spending any money at all in this

area. The question is, the amounts of money that’s being spent, especially given the other threats that are out there.

Now you have said that this represents 2 percent of the Defense

Department budget which, as you know, is a huge budget. If you

take the $10 billion, it represents one-third of the entire budget for

the Department of Homeland Security. And that’s the issue being

raised here because according to most intelligence analysts, while

I understand what you’ve been saying, that you’re not an expert on

comparing the risks, the intelligence folks who do make it their

business to do that have indicated that you’re more likely to have

a threat, especially in the near to mid-term of a nuclear weapon

being smuggled into this country. And the fact of the matter is

we’re spending very little to defend against what is a more probable and realistic threat at this time compared to what’s being

spent to look at what may be a threat way out there on the horizon. But I want to focus on the effectiveness issue as well because

if we’re going to be investing this kind of money, we would hope

that it would be an effective system.

And you state in your prepared remarks that under the Missile

Defense Act of 1999, ‘‘it became U.S. policy to deploy missile defenses as soon as technologically possible to defend the United

States against limited ballistic missile attacks.’’

There’s also another portion of that language in that directive

that says, ‘‘but it should be an effective national missile defense

system.’’

Now in a prior hearing in this committee we heard from a number of experts and scientists in this area, including Richard

Garwin—and I’m sure you are familiar with Mr. Garwin. He’s been

focused on this area for a very long time—who said that should a

state be so misguided as to attempt to deliver nuclear weapons by

an ICBM—and I assume he said that for the reasons Mr. Welch

was talking about, because if you’re a state launching an ICBM

against the United States, for example, we know where it came

from. We have overwhelming ability to retaliate. But if they were

to be so misguided as to do that, they could be guaranteed against

intercept in mid-course by the use of appropriate countermeasures.

A 1999 NIE judges specifically that Iran or North Korea could

have such measures at the time of their first ICBM task. Now you

were talking in your remarks about the year 2015. Would you

judge that by that timeframe that any of these potential threats

that you’ve been focused on North Korea or Iran would have very

effective countermeasures if they were to at that time be able to

have this missile capability?

General OBERING. We are anticipating that to be the case.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. OK. Let me ask you this: Do you believe that

the systems you’ve tested to date would be able to defeat the countermeasures that would—and this is a total hypothetical. It wasn’t

121

a hypothetical at the time of the Soviet Union. It’s obviously much

less likely now. But I’m just asking you the technology question.

Would your system be able to defeat the type of countermeasures

that could be deployed by Russia if, hypothetically, it were to

launch an ICBM against the United States?

General OBERING. In 2015 or today?

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Today.

General OBERING. Not today. So very complex countermeasures.

The system would not be able to handle for either the short, medium or long-range system.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Right.

General OBERING. But the types of countermeasures that we

would anticipate a country like Iran or North Korea to be able to

employ, we believe it can.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. So you are not testing now against the kind

of countermeasures that hypothetically Russia——

General OBERING. Yes, sir, we are. But not in our intercept program. We’ve had a very robust countermeasures test program. So

we’ve actually flown very complex countermeasures against our

sensors and our systems. We’ve had eight flights over the past several years in which we have collected immense amounts of data

and being able to—that’s how we’re deriving our algorithms for our

sensors and radars to be able to counter those in the future.

And in addition, one thing that I mentioned in my opening remarks, we can’t lose sight of the fact that we’re building a layered

system. So what we would like to do is destroy that missile before

it ever is able to deploy or employ a countermeasure. That’s what

our boost phased defenses are for. Once they do that, we have the

ability to deal with those more complex countermeasures by virtue

of what we’re doing with our sensor programs, our algorithms development, and our Multiple Kill Vehicles where we’re able to take

out the credible objects that we’re able to discriminate.

So in answer to your question, I believe that today we are able

to counter the simple countermeasures that we would anticipate

from a country like Iran or North Korea. And for the future, we

have a robust program laid in to be able to counter those.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. But in the year 2015 that you are talking

about, what kind of countermeasures capability would you anticipate from——

General OBERING. I would have to go into a classified session to

talk about that.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. OK. But are you suggesting that by the year

2015 you would be able to effectively respond to countermeasures

that could be deployed by—again, this is hypothetical—but by Russia, Russian ICBMs?

General OBERING. We should have a pretty good leg up, yes, sir,

based on our algorithms, based on our sensors and then based on

the follow-on Multiple Kill Vehicle programs and then eventually

the boost-phased defenses just shortly thereafter.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Last question, Mr. Chairman. What would you

do to fully deploy the kind of system——

General OBERING. Sir, can I make one clarification?

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Yeah.

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General OBERING. It would not be directed at Russia because

that presents a different challenge. I’m talking about a country like

Iran and North Korea that would have the kind of countermeasures on their fleets. So for example, if you’re talking about

trying to counter a Russian attack, absolutely not because you are

talking about hundreds of missiles and thousands of warheads.

That’s not what I’m referring to. I want to make sure you are talking about the kind of countermeasures themselves that would be

deployed on a single missile.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Well, then, based on that assessment, what

kind of missile deployment are you basing your calculation—with

respect to Iranian or North Korea missile capabilities in terms of

numbers? Because the point you are making, I understand, you

know, if you are talking about one missile, you may have that ability but—so based on your estimate here, what kind of fleet of missiles are you, in terms of your hypotheticals, are you using for this

assessment?

General OBERING. Well, actually we get that from the intel community and what they think and assess their abilities would be.

And we factor that into our force structure that we recommended

to the Department. So right now that consists of about 44 missiles

in the United States, 10 in Europe. So a total of 54 of the longrange missiles. We would have—by 2013, we would have approximately 133 of our sea-based interceptors. We would have approximately 100 of our THAAD interceptors with four or five units capable of deployment. Then shortly following that, we would begin to

ramp up with a long-range sea-based missile that we call the SM–

3 Block IIA, and those numbers have yet to be determined in terms

of what that would be.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. And again, we’re going to hear some more testimony after you. But there are obviously serious questions have

been raised about whether the testing program that you’ve undertaken really tests under realistic type scenarios with respect to the

countermeasures. And I understand your testimony here. But I

think——

General OBERING. I can address that if you like.

Mr. TIERNEY. We’re going to do that I’m sure in the course of

questioning, sir.

Mr. Shays.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, General

Obering. I am pretty stunned by the fact that given that you’re in

charge of this program that you wouldn’t have been given the opportunity just to make a presentation. If it took 5, 10, 15 or 20

minutes, I would have thought you would have been given that opportunity. And I can’t imagine why this committee would be reluctant to do that. You’re in charge of the program. We’ve had a number of hearings where all we’ve heard from primarily have been

critics with one witness that we’re allowed to introduce as a

counter. And the only reason we introduced a counter in support

of the program is, we want there to be a counter. If they had all—

only people favoring it, we would have had a counter the other

way. But it strikes me, one, that you have a lot more to say and

you would have had a lot more to introduce that should have been

made part of the record, and I deeply regret it. I can’t even tell you

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how deeply I regret it. It makes me feel that this committee does

not want to really know how this system works. They just want to

score points.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Shays, you will have ample time to ask your

questions.

Mr. SHAYS. No. No. I don’t have ample time.

Mr. TIERNEY. We’re going a number of rounds.

Mr. SHAYS. I’m just going to make a point to you.

Mr. TIERNEY. You’ve made your point.

Mr. SHAYS. You have interrupted me and I will claim back my

time. I have deep respect for you, Mr. Chairman. But when it

comes to this, I think this is a fraud. I think this is an absolute

joke. You should have been given as much time as you needed. And

had I been chairing this committee and it was the other way

around, I would be doing that. It’s no sense to bring in someone

of such expertise and tell him he has 5 minutes and then we’ll give

you an extra 2 or 3 minutes and make him rush through a presentation that he was not able to finish. It’s just a fraud.

I found myself not being a supporter of this program when it

started out because I didn’t think you could hit a bullet with a bullet. I didn’t think you could do some of the technology. And it’s

really a surprising thing to me, frankly, that it is unfolding the

way it has. I have been one that says it should not be deployed

until it works. I have to tell you, though, when Iraq was sending

SCUD missiles into Israel, I thought, oh, my God, we didn’t—the

PATRIOT didn’t work all that great. But it did serve some function. Does this system have any capability in a much shorter-range

theater? And if Israel had the kind of technology today, would

those SCUD missiles have penetrated the way they had penetrated?

General OBERING. Sir, what I can do is talk about the latest fight

in Iraqi Freedom. There were several missiles launched against coalition forces. They were all totally destroyed. Those that were

going into defended areas were totally destroyed by the PATRIOT

systems that we had deployed. That included the PAC–3 by the

way. One of those—at least one of those trajectories we now know

would have impacted a very heavily populated area in the coalition

force arena. So that—the money we’re spending is for the shortrange defense as well as the medium and the long-range defenses.

And may I say that, you know, obviously other nations than the

United States are making the cost-benefit analysis to go do this.

Because we are—we are, frankly, being inundated by several countries to help them to build missile defenses very rapidly. As I said

in my opening statement, there are actually 18 nations around the

globe that we’re working with to help them build a missile defense

system as well.

Mr. SHAYS. Explain to me the support of NATO because I’m surprised. I thought some of our NATO allies were pretty critical of

this system. So I don’t know how to interpret your comment that

there’s support among NATO for a missile defense system.

General OBERING. Sir, in the Bucharest Summit Communique

that was released in April, there was a statement in there—I think

it was paragraph 37, and what they did is they basically welcomed

the U.S. long-range defense proposals that we are—that’s the proVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:08 May 07, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00127 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\48813.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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posal to put 10 interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic to provide—to begin to provide long-range protection for our

deployed forces in that region along with our NATO allies. And

they also went—they took it a step further and they tasked their

own infrastructure to come back at the 2009 summit with options

for how they build shorter-range defenses, missile defenses to integrate with the longer-range systems. And we are helping that process. In fact, we had a demonstration in January of how we could

take the command and control system that we have deployed for

the U.S. components and what NATO is building. NATO is building a theater missile defense program today that’s called an active

layered theater missile defense program. And the NATO Air Command and Control System is the command and control system for

that. We’re showing how we can integrate those two together by

taking radar track data, mission data, those types of information,

and running that on the NATO system, then taking the NATO

data and running it on our system.

Mr. SHAYS. Is it conceivable that contrary to the wishes of, say,

the leader in North Korea or the powers that be in Iran, that someone could direct a missile at the United States without their leadership knowing about it?

General OBERING. Sir, that would have to do with the command

and control of the weapons in the country. It’s something that I’m

not an expert in. But it certainly is within the realm of the feasible

that could be done without the knowledge of a government, depending on how loosely or how tight those controls are.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. Thank you, General.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Shays. Mr. Hodes, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. HODES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General I want to talk

a little bit about some of the testing that’s been done. But I’d also

like to put this in the context of costs. We’ve spent approximately

$125 billion over the last 25 years. For missile defense last year,

$9.9 billion, the CBO estimates that if the MDA continues on its

course, the taxpayers are going to spend an additional $213 to $277

billion between now and 2025. So in the context of those kinds of

numbers, I want to ask some questions about testing.

Is it true that over the past 5 years, there have been only two

successful GMD flight intercept tests?

General OBERING. In the new configuration, yes, sir, but the total

configuration, including the prototype of what we deploy today,

there are now six of nine over the last—since 2001.

Mr. HODES. How many GMD flight intercept tests will you do before you introduce flight intercept tests with more than one mock

enemy missile in the attack, when do you plan to do that?

General OBERING. Well, first of all, I think we have that plan for

later in our program. But in reality, the ability to deal with multiple missiles is better tested in our ground tests and our modeling

simulation. Because looking at the geometry and physics of these

attacks, each—each attack, each missile attack is, in essence, an

isolated event, so we learn more from that from our flight tests.

Mr. HODES. We have heard—we have had testimony that in

March 2002, the MDA told Congress that the first GMD tests with

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multiple targets, that is, with several mock enemy missiles

launched at once could take place as early as 2005.

You’re now saying that’s going to take place later in the program,

and you say that other means are better than mock tests. When

did you make the determination that the other means were better

than the mock tests that you said would take place as early as

2005?

General OBERING. So that says we gain more and more confidence in our modeling and simulation program that’s what—

that’s what would prompt that.

Mr. HODES. In other words——

General OBERING. I want to—I’m sorry, go ahead.

Mr. HODES. I just wanted to make clear. In other words, you

switched, after 2002, your assessments of what kind of testing you

wanted to do?

General OBERING. Sir, we do that all the time.

Mr. HODES. And when was that change made?

General OBERING. I don’t recall. I would have to submit that for

you for the question for the record.

Mr. HODES. And when you say later in the program, what do you

mean by later in the program terms of when you’re going to be conducting the actual tests with multiple, multiple targets?

General OBERING. I’ll have to submit that. I want to make sure

I’m accurate in that. I know it’s what we call our Integrated Master Test Program, but let me get back to you on that.

Mr. HODES. All right. And I’m sorry, I didn’t want to cut you off,

you were going to add something.

General OBERING. Sir, just the fact that we do salvo testing,

which is what you’re referring to. In—in our short range—in our

short range defenses, we have done that with our sea-based where

we launched two targets in the air simultaneously, and we’ve engaged with two inceptors because it makes sense in a tactical situation.

In the long range by the time you’ve grown that geometry over

thousands and thousands of miles having two intercepters in the

air at the same time, against two different targets. What I’m trying

to say is each one of those is like an isolated engagement that is

fully capable of being tested in a single engagement.

Where we really are—what you’re really stressing there is your

commander control, your sensors, that type of thing and we can inject and we can do a better job with our simulations to be able to—

to stress that system, not just with two but with 10 or 20 at the

same time.

Mr. HODES. When do you plan to conduct a flight intercept test

to demonstrate that the GMD is effective at night?

General OBERING. Let’s see, sir, we had—we actually had a night

launch, as I recall, that was—that was scrubbed because of—because of one of the intercepting issues, but that was several years

ago. Again, I will submit the answer for the record in terms of

when that will be.

Mr. HODES. And just to jog your memory, our understanding is

that according to previous testimony the first nighttime test was to

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ful nighttime test, and that’s just that we’re about 6 years behind

schedule on nighttime testing?

General OBERING. Sir, it depends. We went to a different configuration on the kill vehicle between the 2002 timeframe and the 2004

timeframe. So I’ll have to—again, I would have to submit that answer for the record.

Mr. HODES. What about conducting a flight intercept test to demonstrate that the GMD system is effective in bad weather?

General OBERING. We will probably not do that with respect to

actual flight tests because we want to make sure we gain as much

information as we can from these launches because of the money

we spend on them. And, for example, we want to make sure we

have optical tracking in case we do have a problem that we can

gain the data from that.

Mr. HODES. So you—I’m just going——

General OBERING. It is not something that we’re very much concerned about frankly.

Mr. HODES. You’re not very much concerned about whether or

not the system is effective in bad weather, or not concerned about

sort of in flight testing for bad weather?

General OBERING. We’re not concerned about—we’re not concerned that weather will have a major impact on the system is

what I’m trying to say. For example, I mean we’ve launched—well,

we’ve launched out of Vandenberg in heavy inter—in heavy cloud

layer of marine layer. We did that in FTG–2, which was a year ago,

a little over a year ago now, a year and a half ago.

There is some—you can get some degradation with some climate

effects on sensors. But in order for that to be a factor, it would

have to be every sensor that you have in the program at the same

time, which is not a high likelihood. And in addition, you can test

those effects in our modeling and our simulation and our test program much more—with much more scope and much more expansiveness than doing in a flight test. And it is much cheaper to do

it that way. Does that answer your question?

Mr. HODES. Yes and no. Perhaps I’ll followup at a later time. My

time is out. Thank you.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Hodes.

General, I just want to follow in that same vein. That 1999 National Intelligence Estimate on accounting measures, I don’t know

that Mr. Hodes read the whole thing. ‘‘We assess that country’s developing ballistic missiles would also develop various responses to

U.S. theater and national defenses. Russia and China have each

developed numerous countermeasures and probably are willing to

sell the requisite technologies. Many countries such as North

Korea, Iran and Iraq probably would rely initially on readily available technology including separating RVs, spin stabilize RVs, RV

rear orientation, radar absorbing material, boost-er fragmentation,

low powered jammers, CHAF, and simple balloon decoys to develop

penetration aids and countermeasures. These countries could develop countermeasures based on these technologies by the time

they flight test their missiles.’’

I assume that you agree with that, that by the time they flight

test the missiles, they could develop those kinds of technologies.

General OBERING. They could, sir. Yes, sir, but go ahead.

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Mr. TIERNEY. So let me ask you—I don’t—I didn’t hear if this

was asked. Have you had a test against a flight incept system test

where you introduce decoys that resemble the target RV in the infrared signature size or shape?

General OBERING. Sir, if I answer that, I will have to do it in

closed session in terms of what we have actually flown against, but

we have flown against countermeasures in our program.

Mr. TIERNEY. Well, I think I have that—in unclassified form

here. I’m going to go over it in detail and it’s certainly public record

out there. So we can wait until then if you’d like.

General OBERING. But—what—when you get to an operation and

deployed system what you can and can’t do with respect to capabilities and limitations becomes classified. And the ability to deal

with certain types of countermeasures. What I can say is that we

are, we have flown against countermeasures in the past to try to

decoy the kill vehicle. We are flying against countermeasures in

our next flight test for the long range system, for next two this

year. And we will continue to expand that in our future test program. So if that answers your question.

Mr. TIERNEY. Well, it does and doesn’t. I mean, we have information about what you’ve flown against, it is public information. It’s

out there and publicly gone.

General OBERING. Sir, we changed the kill vehicle capabilities

since those tests were done. We have an operationally deployed kill

vehicle now that is different than the prototype that was flown in

the countermeasure tests. We learned what we wanted to learn

from that testing.

Mr. TIERNEY. But against which there have no real operational

tests taken, right? But you have not done realistic operational

tests.

General OBERING. Sir—again, we believe that there are missiles

that have been deployed that do not have the countermeasures, in

fact, the vast majority. And this argument, by the way——

Mr. TIERNEY. We’re not talking about short range and medium

range here. We’re talking about intercontinental ballistic missiles.

And in that sense, you don’t even think that Iran or North Korea

has the current capacity to send those against the United States.

So, we’re talking here I think about, what you think is going to

happen on 2015.

General OBERING. Sir, to have this conversation in a genuine

fashion I need to go closed. Because I can tell you what—I can tell

you what we have seen, and what we have experienced, and what

we have flown against.

Mr. TIERNEY. I have to tell you, General, this stuff, you know,

how the American public’s supposed to decide on something with

this kind of enormity and expense and speculation on some of the

capabilities is mind boggling when it goes on a classified sense. We

overclassify so much in this country.

Back when the President made the decision that he wanted to

try to deploy this inoperable system back in 2004, we asked for

Government Accountability Office to study this. It was done. There

were 50 questions. Mr. Coyle, you know, had 50 of the questions

in previous testimony that were addressed in that study. It came

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back, and the minute that it came back it was classified all of a

sudden.

I have to tell you they don’t classify stuff when it is good news

around here these days, they classify what is bad news apparently.

I don’t think it does a service to the American people at all to this

Congress to keep classifying everything on that basis. And I think

we just have to go on from here. But I hope that’s not going to be

your answer to every question about the capability of these systems.

General OBERING. Sir, I am being as honest and candid as I can.

First of all, and I’ll repeat, we have flown against countermeasures

in the past with prototypes of the kill vehicles that we deployed.

And we are successful in those tests. We actually identified the

warhead and we engaged the warhead in those tests. And that included not just the ability to do that using infrared data, but we

also used our radar data to be able to make that determination so

that is a fact.

The particular types of countermeasures and the particular capabilities and the signatures and everything else are classified. When

we now move into the operational configuration, which is the big

difference, that’s what happened in 2004 is it became an operational system. It was not an open research and development system. And we changed the capabilities. We frankly robusted the capabilities of the kill vehicle in terms of algorithms that we’re using.

And what you saw in the video in terms of the discrimination techniques that we were using, that became classified. Because I’m

sure, Mr. Chairman, you would not want us to transmit in an open

hearing to enemies around the world in Iran and North Korea any

kind of data that they could take advantage of in trying to overcome the system for the future. I know you wouldn’t want to do

that.

Mr. TIERNEY. Of course not. And that’s a tremendous red herring

that we’re not even talking about here. So——

General OBERING. That’s exactly what we’re talking——

Mr. TIERNEY. What we’re talking about is the capacity of this

and people in this country spending hundreds of billions of dollars

on a system. They ought to know against what it will work and

against what it won’t work. And I’m not sure that information is

going to affect any other country’s capacity going on here on that

basis, but it should effect our decisionmaking process how to spend

the taxpayers money. Let me go on for a little bit, if I can, on this

as far as we can go before we find out that everything is classified

here. Have you tested against booster fragmentation?

General OBERING. Pardon me?

Mr. TIERNEY. Have you tested against booster fragmentation?

General OBERING. Yes, sir. We have—not in an intercept test,

but again, in our flight tests we have.

Mr. TIERNEY. But not an intercept test?

General OBERING. Right.

Mr. TIERNEY. How about low power jammers.

General OBERING. No, sir, not yet.

Mr. TIERNEY. How about CHAF?

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General OBERING. We have tested it in our flight test and we

also tested low power jammers in our flight tests, but not intercepts.

Mr. TIERNEY. Ms. McCollum, you are recognized for 5 minutes

and I’ll come back.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Sir, I’m going to read

from your testimony on page 17. ‘‘There’s one real world example

of where missile defense did not play a role and that provides an

important lesson. September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on our

country. According to the Government Accountability Office, the direct cost of the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York City was

$83 billion. That was an attack that did not involve Weapons of

Mass Destruction.’’ And I know you and I also reflect a great sadness of the loss of life on September 11th.

So this is my dilemma, we need to have a comprehensive threat

assessment across all sectors, ballistic missile threats, smuggled

nukes in cargo containers. So General, I want to find out, have you

been part of interdepartment considerations that involved both defense and Homeland Security to try to figure out the right funding

mix across this entire country? We have limited resources.

General OBERING. Ma’am, that—my role in that is to provide

what the costs would be to protect against a ballistic missile attack

both by deployed forces for short range, intermediate range and

long range.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Do you believe as a citizen, as a patriot of this

country, as a person in your capacity, though, that funding decisions should be based on the overall threat assessment to all

threats——

General OBERING. Obviously.

Ms. MCCOLLUM [continuing]. To the United States?

Over the next 5 years the Pentagon has requested another $62.5

billion for missile defense. If Congress supports this spending on

missile defense by the end of 2013, over $110 billion will have been

spent since 2003. I want to say that again. $110 billion will have

been spent just since 2003. That’s not counting the missile defense

spending and the previous 10, 20, 40 years.

So I have a couple of questions that maybe you can help with me,

as I point out, I also serve on the Appropriations Committee. How

much money is it going to cost to complete the overall BMD system? And when will the overall BMD systems be complete? How

much money will it cost to complete the ground-based GMD system? And when will the GMD system be complete?

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated for us that if the

Missile Defense Agency continues course, the taxpayers will spend

an additional $213 to $277 billion between now and 2025. Do you

agree with this assessment? And if not, could you tell me as specifically as you can why you do not. I would like to get down to the

money because there are other defense needs.

General OBERING. OK. If I go back to your first question, am I

concerned or would I be interested in or as a citizen or patriot in

terms of the overall flight assessment, the answer is yes. Do I believe that we have the option or the freedom to pick and choose

which one of those that we can ignore? No, ma’am, I don’t.

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Ms. MCCOLLUM. General I didn’t say about ignoring, I just—I

just wanted——

General OBERING. OK, but I’m saying maybe if I can answer it.

I think it is important that we cover all of those threats, because

as soon as we announce that we are not going to cover a missile

defense threat or a missile threat, that would be the avenue by

which we are attacked, No. 1. You asked me about what it will

take to finish the program. If you can tell me what the threats are

going to be in the next 10, 15, and 20, to 25 years, I can answer

that, but nobody can.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Sir, did we not have a goal with stated objectives when we started this program of where we would be?

General OBERING. Yes, ma’am, I can tell you we’re meeting—

we’re meeting our goals for the first phase of the ground-based

midcourse system is the way I describe it, which is, we are buying

with the 2009 budget the last of the missiles we would need for the

installation in the United States, the 44 interceptors.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. So——

General OBERING. We’ve already paid—we’ve already paid for the

sensors. Pardon me?

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Everything is on track.

General OBERING. It’s on track for the ones that we have in

place, or that we have planned to place in the United States.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. On track with no cost overruns?

General OBERING. Ma’am, actually that cost for the GMD contract would have been, right now, 9 percent estimated completion

of that cost, which is pretty good in terms of the Department standards. That’s an effort that’s been ongoing over 10 years now. It is

about an 8- to 10-year contract. The next phase, if you want to call

it that, would be the deployment to European site. We have costed

that to be anywhere from $31⁄2 to $4 billion, that includes the interceptors, the radars, the support for that, the communications and

everything.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Let me go back then. Do you agree with the

Congressional Budget Office that we’re going to spend an additional 2——

General OBERING. No, ma’am, I don’t, I don’t. I don’t agree.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Can you submit to the committee why you disagree with the congressional——

General OBERING. Yes, ma’am I can. I will do so. I will tell you

why I would not agree with that. Because they are making assumptions about what we will continue and what we will not continue that I don’t think are accurate so I’d like to do that in writing.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Sir, with all due respect, you just said that this

program has no end because you have to completely be

reassessing——

General OBERING. Yes, ma’am, but I’m talking about a matter of

degree. About which programs you carry in total. Let me give you

an example. Do we need two boost phase defense programs? The

communicator sat there in the airborne laser, the answer is no. If

the airborne laser works and if we can make that operation affordable, then we would pursue that program. So I believe what we’re

131

talking about is a matter of degree in terms of what we carry forward.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Thank you. Mr. Chair, I realize my time is up, but I want to note that your budget of $10 billion is one third of

the total budget for Homeland Security and that is the dilemma

this Congress faces. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Ms. McCollum.

Mr. Welch, you’re recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. WELCH. Thank you. General, one of the concerns I have is

that the budgeting for this program is in the research and development component of the Defense Department; is that right?

General OBERING. Pardon me? Yes, sir, yes, sir.

Mr. WELCH. And obviously this program going on 25 years at

this point has a pretty strong life of its own. My understanding is

that there are plans for very substantial purchases. According to

the information I have, this is for new interceptors between now

and 2013. It includes interceptors for the GMD system in Alaska

and California, 111 SM–3 interceptors, 100 terminal sea-based

interceptors for the Aegis BMD system, 96 THAAD interceptors,

400 Patriot Pack 3 interceptors. It adds up, left a few out, to about

635 new interceptors proposed to be bought in the next 5 years.

I have two questions. First, why can taxpayers be confident that

our money is being well spent when this very significant acquisition plan is not in the regular procurement sections of the DOD

budget?

General OBERING. Well, first of all, the fact that it is or is not

in a regular procurement mode I would submit is not an accurate

measurement of whether it is being well spent frankly. I think that

is a matter of looking at——

Mr. WELCH. What’s the point of having a regular procurement

system?

General OBERING. Well, first of all, sir, the procurement system

that you are referring to is one that has grown up over the years

primarily out of the cold war timeframe, and in the missile defense

era, and in the missile defense mission area, the reason that we

are using our RDT&E money for the majority of our program, although we are transitioning that to procurement for a portion of

that beginning in 2010——

Mr. WELCH. Well, my understanding of a budget is that the real

world decisions and choices have to be made with cost and benefits

weighing the opportunity costs. If you choose to spend dollars here,

you’re not going to be able to spend them there. In my understanding of a basic procurement and budgeting process is that it is intended to impose some discipline so hard decisions about threat assessment, something that we were talking about at the beginning

of your testimony have to be made.

General OBERING. But they can be made at the RDT&E level as

well is what I’m trying to say. And there’s Defense wide accounts

that you can make those decisions and determinations in. But if I

can answer your question——

Mr. WELCH. Well——

General OBERING. We have a good track record in being able to

manage these programs with respect to cost and schedule No. 1.

No. 2, in terms of the number of interceptors, the ones that you

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quoted we actually are being asked for more of those by the

warfighters, and that has been approved recently by the Joint Requirements Oversight Counsel that’s chaired by the vice chairman

of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They are not only asking for what you

just quoted, they are asking for about double those in the land

mogul and the sea-based area.

Mr. WELCH. We have a bit of a disagreement here.

Mr. Chairman, my concern is there is not some centralized approach where some people who are looking at the information coming in from the warfighters and folk advocating for this program

are also hearing from folks who are who are concerned about

Homeland Security and the threat that comes perhaps from a backpack delivery of a very serious nuclear device. So this is isn’t an

argument really I have with the General, it’s a concern I have with

the process of budgeting where hard decisions and threat assessments are not made.

Just with respect to a second question, General, that is—655—

635 new interceptors. What is it that you describe as the threat for

which we’re purchasing 635 interceptors?

General OBERING. If I could for the budget that the Defense Department oversees and is responsible for, there are hard decisions

made. And those budget trades are being made within the Department.

With respect to what are those numbers of interceptors geared

for, they are geared for the numbers of missiles that we see, the

North Koreans and Iranians deploying, and capable of using in the

regional fights, along with the anticipated long-range missiles that

we believe that those countries will be capable of producing over

the next several years.

Mr. WELCH. Is it fair to say—I’ve been listening to your testimony carefully, and what I hear you say is that this program is

essentially necessary in order to deal with the threat that has been

assessed to be presented by Iran and North Korea.

General OBERING. For the missile defense program that we have

fielded, yes, sir.

Mr. WELCH. Already. And—that’s it, my time is up. And I yield

back, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Welch.

Mr. Hodes, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. HODES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

General, I would like to continue down some of the line I was following before about reality testing for our systems. I understand

and note your testimony that modeling is something that you are

relying on as opposed to flight intercept tests primarily.

When do you plan to conduct flight intercept tests to demonstrate the GMD systems effective when multiple attempts are

needed to bring down a single target and can work when more

than one missile is launched?

General OBERING. Sir, we do that already in term of our ground

testing. We already test how many missiles, which locations, what

the stressing conditions are. We do multiple runs of those over a

period of days and dozens and dozens of runs within our system.

Mr. HODES. When you say you do dozens of dozens and dozens

runs, are those in flight tests or are those the simulations?

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General OBERING. Those are simulations.

Mr. HODES. OK, and so you’re—and my question was when do

you plan to take from simulation to real life testing?

General OBERING. We don’t have any plans to be able to fly dozens and dozens of targets against—our interceptors against dozens

of targets. That would be too cost prohibitive.

Mr. HODES. So you’re going to rely solely on simulation for that?

General OBERING. Sir, that’s not unusual. We do that in many

other programs in the United States, including reliance on modern

simulation for space shuttle for other programs.

Mr. HODES. The answer to my question is yes, you’re going to

rely on simulations?

General OBERING. But it is anchored by flight tests, sir. So I

want you to—I want you to understand that. We are in the process

of going through, validating and verifying our models and our

SIMs. We should have that process complete by October of next

year. But in that validation verification process, we use the flight

test that we conduct to make sure that we anchor those. If we

could—if I still have my briefing I would like to show you a chart

and I would just like to show you one example of what I’m talking

about.

Could we bring up my briefing please, if that’s OK. And if you

could please go to slide—this is just one very, very small example,

but it is illustrative. And could you go to slide No. 9, please. Keep

going, right there, stop.

OK, I’ll use the satellite interceptor we did in February. We did

this in about 6 weeks as I mentioned in my opening statement.

And what you see here is these are modeling and simulation predictions of what the intercept would look like if we engaged that

satellite. With—first of all, on the left is without hitting the tank.

And the one on the right is as if we hit the hydrazine tank that

was posing the threat. So we ran through our models and our

SIMs, what would that look like if we did that?

Now, let me show you a clip one more time. This is the actual

image of the intercept. So our ability to predict what that was

going to look like in real-time was pretty significant.

We also used our models and SIMs to predict performance as

they do fly outs to predict where we’re going to hit on the target

and we know that very precisely within centimeters. We use it to

predict how it’s going to operate in different environments. We use

it to predict how we can stress the systems with respect to different

trajectories, geometries, etc., so that’s what I’m referring to.

Mr. HODES. On April 1, 2008, the GAO testified that they were

unable to assess whether MDA met its overall performance call because there have not been enough flight tests to provide a high confidence that the models and simulations accurately predict BMDs,

ballistic missile defense system performance.

Moreover, the test that have been done do not provide enough information for DOD’s independent test organization to fully assess

the BMD’s suitability and effectiveness. And we heard testimony at

a previous hearing that the Pentagon has yet to demonstrate the

U.S. ground based missile defense [GMB] system, is capable of defending against a long range ballistic missile in a real world situation, because the tests have demonstrated the kill vehicle is able

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to hone in and collide with an identifiable target but under highly

scripted conditions.

Are these valid criticisms of the progress to date your program?

General OBERING. No, sir, I don’t think so.

Mr. HODES. And why not?

General OBERING. Let me attack them one by one, or answer

them one by one. All right. No. 1, the one—the validity in the assessment by the GAO of the models in SIMs is correct, it is what

I talked about. We’re going through the process of doing that verification. Now, do we have validated and verified models? The answer is not yet. Do we have any problems though in what we have

seen in terms of the predicted data, in terms of our flight testing

and in terms of what we’re seeing in terms of real world performance? The answer is no, we have not seen any show stoppers. We

have not seen anything that would have an affect with respect to

our program that would tell us we’re on the wrong path.

I think that if you ask the Director of Operations, Test and Evaluation today he would agree that we’re on the right path to do this

verification and validation of our models.

In terms of the numbers of flight tests, again the Director of

Operational Test Evaluation, also testified that he felt that we are

on the right path, that we have, in fact, conducted a test of our

long-range system with the operational assets. And this includes,

as I tried to point out in the video, operational realistic conditions.

The one condition that we did not have on the—on the target was

complex countermeasures. And I’ve already gone through that

doesn’t necessarily have to—you don’t have to have complex countermeasures to be operationally realistic is my point. You will for

the future, but you don’t necessarily have do for today and they’ve

agreed with that.

Mr. HODES. So just to put a final point on it. The GAO’s assessment is just wrong.

General OBERING. I didn’t say it was wrong. What I said was I

don’t agree in total with what they came to conclusions. We meet

with the GAO all the time. In fact, I met with them yesterday. You

can have people come to different conclusions based on the data.

But we do know our data better than anybody, that’s a fact.

Mr. HODES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Thank you. General, there have been

some questions raised in some of the earlier hearings about what

some people said was lack of clarity of discourse with respect to

MDA and public announcements. And one example that recently

the MDA pointed out that there five early flight intercept tests that

used simple round balloons as decoys. Your public affairs director

then told the press that five successful intercept tests from 1999

to 2002 used the type of decoys we would expect from countries

such as North Korea and Iran. But the decoys in those tests did

not resemble the target reentry vehicle. With respect to the five

early tests the decoys used were round balloons, not ice cream cone

shaped like the marked target with much different infrared signatures.

The information we have is that MDA has never done a GMD

flight intercept test where decoys resemble the reentry vehicle in

shape or infrared signature. In the report that was issued on FebVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:08 May 07, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00138 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\48813.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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ruary 28, 2002, the Government Accountability Office reviewed the

technical challenges of conducting flight intercept tests with decoys

that closely matched the target. And then they explained why the

MDA decided then to use decoys that did not resemble the target

reentry vehicle. Basically they said the MDA and its advisors felt

that such tests would be too stressing, so why take the chance that

the test might fail?

Let me go over those five tests, because I want to find out if your

public relations person was given the direct scoop on that or whether there might be some misunderstanding. The first in October 2,

1999, is IFT3. That test was labeled successful. The only decoy

used in that test was a large 2.2 meter diameter balloon from

IFT1-A and IFT2. It had an infrared signature six times higher

than that of the marked warhead. Because the decoy was so much

brighter than the marked warhead the EKV saw at first, once the

EKV realized that the balloon’s infrared signature did not match

up with the target that it had received prior to the test the interceptor shifted to the nearby target.

IFT–4, January 18, 2000. In this test the interceptor failed to hit

the target. The failure to intercept was because the cryogenic cooling system failed of the EKV failed to cool the IR sensors down to

their operating temperatures in time because of an obstructed cooling line. The only decoy used was a single large balloon from the

previous test. Smaller balloons originally had been planned but

they were dropped in an attempt to simplify the test presumably

because the Welch Panel made those recommendations.

In IFT–5 July 8, 2000. This test also failed. The failure to intercept was a direct result of the EKV not separating from the surrogate booster due to an apparent failure in the 1553 data bus in the

booster. The decoy balloon did not inflate properly causing the

MDA official to decide to use a different decoy in the future.

The IFT–6 on July 14, 2001, was a repeat of the IFT–5, but this

time was mostly successful. Over the prototype X-Band Radar the

XBR used did not process all the information it was receiving properly causing it to falsely report that the interceptor had missed its

target. I guess if that had happened in a non-test situation, more

interceptors would have been launched to assure a hit of the target

and probably needlessly so in that case.

One large decoy balloon was used, this one was 1.7 meters in diameter, so it’s slightly smaller than the largest balloon used earlier

as a decoy. It still had an infrared signature much brighter, about

three times brighter than the marked warhead.

An IFT–7 on December 3, 2001. That was a successful test, so

labeled. The only variable change from IFT–6 was the target booster. Instead of Lockheed Martin’s Multi-Service Line System, the

Orbital Target Launch Vehicle was used. Targets—that was a

modified MinuteMan ICBM carrying a mock warhead and a single

decoy which did not change from the previous one. It was the same

one used in IFT–6.

And then March 15, 2002 IFT–8. A most successful test, three

decoyed balloons, one large, two small, were used to increase the

difficulty in determining the target’s location, the critics have

pointed out that the infrared signals of the balloon is different from

that on the marked warhead. The large balloon had a much larger

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infrared signature than that of the mock warhead. Whereas the

two smaller balloons had much smaller signatures.

The IFT–9 October 14, 2002 that is said to have included the

same three decoy balloons, one large, two small as target cluster.

But specifics are unknown as you started classifying your decoy details in May 2002.

In the IFT–10, May 11, 2002, that failed when the Raytheonbuilt Exo-Atmospheric Kill Vehicle did not separate from its booster rocket. And a modified Minuteman ICB was being used as a surrogate until a more advanced booster rocket could be developed.

The failure to separate precluded the EKV from attempting to

intercept the target missile. That was the first night test that you

mentioned earlier, because the intercept failed the objective of IFT–

10 was to demonstrate it effective at night was not demonstrated.

All of that, I guess, leads to the question of, if North Korea or

Iran or anybody else were to attack the United States, wouldn’t it

be reasonable to think it would also try to confuse our missile systems? I think we pretty much agreed on that previously, right?

General OBERING. Yes, sir, but you have some inaccurate information there toward the end. The signature of the warhead was

embedded in the signatures of the decoy—the decoys that were

used for the last, I believe it was the last two flight tests if not the

last three. Otherwise we had objects that were slightly dimmer and

objects that were slightly brighter. But you’re not going to be able

to have—unless the attacker fully understands the capabilities of

our system, that means the capability or our radar in detail and

degree or with our infrared focal planes and with our sensors to be

able to exactly identify and accurately model that would be very

difficult. So having it embedded as much as we can justify or as

much as we can anticipate what that would be is perfectly reasonable and perfectly realistic.

Mr. TIERNEY. If the signature is sometimes six times greater or

three times greater?

General OBERING. Oh, what I said was that they were much

more closely aligned than what you describing there toward the

end of the those series of flight tests. Again, it is a crawl, walk or

run approach that I wasn’t the director then, but that’s how—that’s

how they were approaching their test program.

Mr. TIERNEY. Well, it seems to make sense that if North Korea

is smart enough to make a balloon of one particular diameter, they

could make it of other diameters as well and make it resemble the

warhead.

General OBERING. Yes, sir. And then there, as I said, there are

techniques we’re using today that are more advanced than what we

used then. There are capabilities that we are integrating and merging together as part of our program. And it was—one thing I want

to make sure you understand, is when we, after IFT–10 and the

failure to separate, my predecessor, General Kaddish, made a determination and an assessment based on all the data that they had

learned as much as they were going to learn especially after IFT–

9 which was so very successful, including the decoy programs, as

well as the ability of radar and kill vehicles to work together. That

was an incredibly successful test. So he decided to make the deterVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:08 May 07, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00140 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\48813.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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mination to go to the operational—the full operational configuration.

Now while we maintained 75 percent of the same kill vehicle in

terms of characteristics, we did modify about 25 percent of the

hardware and software on the kill vehicle. And then we went to a

totally now booster that we began to fly in the 2002, 2003 timeframe. And so when we went back into the air—attempted in December 2004, when I was a director, we had a failure of a ground

support—at that time was a software timing failure in that test on

the interceptor. It was a one parameter one line of code change to

fix that.

We attempted again in February 2005 and that’s when we had

a piece of ground support equipment. And again, when you went

to a new configuration, new locations, a different configuration of

silos you are going to have these kinds of glitches, but to make sure

that we did not have a systemic problem across the board, I’m the

one that said we’re going to stop, and we’re going to reevaluate,

and start from scratch.

And I asked for an independent team to come in and take a look

at that. And the independent team recommended the series of

flight tests that were on today, getting back into the air with a

flight test of the vehicle because it was in the new operational configuration first without a target. Next flying against—they actually

recommended that we do not fly against a target for another two

flight tests. We accelerated that because of the success of the first

one. So this idea that we somehow found countermeasures too hard

and we shied away from it is just flat wrong. We did it for totally

different reasons. And now we are reintroducing it as we understand the performance of our kill vehicle. Based on our testing, we

are reintroducing the countermeasures to be able to fly against

what we think are the kind of threats that we would be facing from

Iran and North Korea.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Ms. McCollum.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. No more questions.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Hodes.

Mr. HODES. General, there has been testimony about the launch

against the satellite, the errand satellite. It’s really—that wasn’t

really a test of our defense capability, was it?

General OBERING. It was not a test of our missile defense capability because we don’t have an operational capability to do that.

We were able to—if you want to go ahead and ask your question

maybe I can get to the answer.

Mr. HODES. I just wanted to clarify that—I mean that wasn’t a

test of our defense capability.

General OBERING. No. Let me tell you why, we modified the interceptor to be able to achieve that intercept. We also had to modify the radar and we had to modify the ship’s weapons system, because the ship could not execute that test by itself. It had to have

off-board information that was integrated into the ship’s fire control system to be able to accomplish that.

Now, but were tremendous lessons learned from that, that were

indeed applicable to our missile defense system.

Mr. HODES. I’ve seen chart of the FTG–3A that you showed us.

And there was a chart the BMDs hit to kill testing history, and my

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understanding is that since 2001, it explains that in test FTG–3

the target failed to reach sufficient altitude; is that correct?

General OBERING. FTG–3.

Mr. HODES. Yeah.

General OBERING. Yes, that was in May—May 2007.

Mr. HODES. How high did it get?

General OBERING. I don’t recall. I do recall it was about 1 to

2,000 kilometers short. So it was not in the engageable box so to

speak.

Mr. HODES. Short does that mean that was how far short of

down range it failed?

General OBERING. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

Mr. HODES. You don’t have the altitude figures.

General OBERING. No, sir. We had to—we could not launch

against it because for range safety purposes it was not within the

range safety area.

Mr. HODES. Was the interception scrubbed because the target

didn’t go to the place it was expected to go?

General OBERING. Because it as not within the safety constraints. We issued notifications to mariners in our flight test about

areas to stay away from in terms of our flight test. And this would

have come outside of that area.

Mr. HODES. OK. One of our previous witnesses stressed the importance of MDA having so called independent red team when it

comes to testing our capabilities. An independent red team who

would play the role of North Korea or Iran. Do we have one? If not,

why not? And are there plans to institute a red team in the future?

General OBERING. Yes, sir. We have used red teams in the past,

in the agency, yes, sir.

Mr. HODES. Do you plan to continue using them?

General OBERING. Oh, we have a variety of independent teams

in addition to just the red team.

Mr. HODES. We’ve also heard testimony that the current GMD

program has no operational criteria for success. Is that so and if

not, what are the operational criteria that you’ve established?

General OBERING. Sir, we didn’t establish them, the Director of

Operational Assessment Evaluation established them. And that—

there’s—as I recall, there’s about seven or eight criteria that—that

they have outlined. We include that in our integrated master test

plan. And in fact, I think in the last DOT report it annotated what

those were and what the track record was against the various

interceptors.

Mr. HODES. Since I don’t have that here——

General OBERING. I’ll provide you a copy.

Mr. HODES. That would be—that would be great.

For my purposes today if I boiled this down to sort of a layman’s

question, how good is the GMD system supposed to be? In percentage terms, how good is it today and how good is it expected to be

and when?

General OBERING. I can’t give you a percentage because, again,

of the classification. But I will tell you this, it was good enough

that when the North Koreans stacked their tapered on to it in the

summer of 2006, the President was relying on this as opposed to

taking the advice of some senior, former senior officials to preempVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:08 May 07, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00142 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\48813.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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tively strike that site. And so that’s what I mean by previous testimony about being a stabilizing factor in crises.

We believe that the capability of the system is very high against

the threats that we are designed against. That will improve over

time as we get more and powerful, and more capable centers, and

algorithms into our system, that will only increase, but it is very

high today.

Mr. HODES. Can you quantify the effectiveness of the currently

employed GMD system in the event of an actual attack?

General OBERING. Yes, sir, we can. And we can do that in a classified document.

Mr. HODES. And is it your testimony that if the additions you

proposed to the GMD system is funded by the Congress that quantitative effectiveness would increase?

General OBERING. Yes, sir. And in fact, most of those have already been funded by the Congress, and we’re in the process of

completing those.

Mr. HODES. And this information you say would need to be done

in a classified section?

General OBERING. Yes, sir, to give you the specific data.

Mr. HODES. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Hodes.

General, going back to our comments earlier about there being

some clarity issues here. I want to get your best assessment of the

current effectiveness of the program. In July 2006 North Korea

tested the Taepodong–2 missile. Two days after that test, President

Bush was being interviewed by Larry King, in part on the capability of the missile defense system. And the President stated, ‘‘If it

headed to the United States, we’ve got a missile defense system

that will defend our country.’’

A year and a half later, the Missile Defense Agency’s own fine

print in the fiscal year 2008 budget estimate stated, ‘‘This initial

capability is not sufficient to protect the United States from the extant and anticipated rogue nation threat.’’

Can you describe for me the discrepancy in those two statements?

General OBERING. Oh, well, first of all the flight, the flight of the

Taepodong–2 could have been one missile. And that was based on

the number of interceptors that we had deployed at the time. So

it is probably, in terms of the number of rates of missiles and

where we were on the deployment of interceptors. And as I stated

earlier today, we have two dozen that have been placed.

Mr. TIERNEY. I guess the discrepancy is that in July 6, 2006, the

President was saying, if headed to the United States we have a

missile defense system that will defend our country. And in a fiscal

2008 budget estimate, you’re saying this initial capability is not

sufficient to protect the United States from the extant and anticipated rogue nation threat. So have we gone backward or——

General OBERING. No, sir. Again, it is in term—remember rate

size and the number of missiles that could be launched, but I will

have to get you an answer for the record.

Mr. TIERNEY. I hope so. Because so far we haven’t gotten the answer to that.

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General OBERING. I don’t know what you’re referring to when

you’re—you are talking——

Mr. TIERNEY. I’ll give it to you again, on July 6, 2006, the

President——

General OBERING. No, sir, I understand that part. The other——

Mr. TIERNEY. The Agency’s own fiscal year 2009 budget estimate.

‘‘This initial capability is not sufficient to protect the United States

from the extant in anticipated rogue nation threat.’’

General OBERING. I’ll have to get back to you, because obviously

there is a matter of degree probably in terms of the number of missiles that we would think of all ranges that could be deployed by

North Korea and Iran. And——

Mr. TIERNEY. We’re talking about ones that reach the United

States, that’s the specific one that the President——

General OBERING. OK, I’ll have to get back to you on that.

Mr. TIERNEY. We had testimony from a Congressional Research

Services expert on this, of course, only five countries to date have

successfully developed and deployed the operational nuclear round

ICBMs. And the fact that more nations have not done this is perhaps witnessed in part to the extraordinary technical effort it took.

He noted that you need sophisticated propulsion system, a completely self-contained guidance system that’s immune to jamming.

A miniaturized and hardened nuclear bomb, a reentry vehicle that

can survive a field of ionized plasma, and the management capacity

to integrate and test all these systems together. And he went on

to talk about how many tests would have to be done and how visible and obvious it would be.

So it would seem, going back to this point that a few balloons

that roughly match a warhead size is not something that would be

in the capacity of a country that could do all of that to get a missile

up there, that’s why we keep going back to that countermeasure

issue.

General OBERING. Sir, could I address that?

Mr. TIERNEY. Sure, yeah, sure.

General OBERING. There are aspects again that I can’t go into in

this open session. But what I can say is there are a lot of assumptions that were just stated that do not come from concrete hard evidence. I just said that we flew against countermeasures, in our—

of use countermeasures in our flight test program eight times. I

can tell you that’s not very easy. It’s not as easy as the analyst is

assuming it is, especially to get the effects you want to get in terms

of that test program.

Mr. TIERNEY. I’m not sure the analyst is assuming it is easy at

all. What he’s talking about is how difficult it is to put a missile

up. Are you are telling us it is more difficult to put a decoy or a

countermeasure up than it is to——

General OBERING. When you add that complexity to it, it makes

it even more difficult. And there’s also payload penalties that you

pay, trajectory penalties that you pay from that. So I agree it’s not

easy to do and there are a handful of countries that can do that.

However we see that handful growing. And we see countries that

we have not paid attention to in the past and we think we need

to today.

141

Mr. TIERNEY. But you see their capacity growing in terms of

being able to have missile technology, but you don’t seem to see the

capacity growing in terms of having decoys and countermeasures.

I think the point he makes is if you are sophisticated enough to go

over all of those burdens and hurdles to make a missile program,

then you are probably sophisticated enough to have some pretty

good decoys and countermeasures.

General OBERING. So I can give you an answer directly as to why

I don’t think that’s true necessarily. But I will also tell you that

we are growing our ability to deal with those countermeasures as

well.

Mr. TIERNEY. I think we just want to wrap up a few other things.

Mr. Hodes has an area he wants to go into. I just wanted to address a couple of things that were in your written testimony that

we haven’t really talked about today. One of those is the Multiple

Kill Vehicle program that you were talking about. Now we’ve had

testimony about how difficult it is for a single target with a single

inceptor to hit, and that’s been done. What we’re talking about

here with the Multiple Kill Vehicle is sort of hitting a lot of targets

with a lot of bullets to speak the vernacular on that all at once.

The difficulty, I guess, would be that each smaller interceptor, each

one of those multiple interceptors has to carry sensors, guidance,

propulsion systems, all that added weight; is that correct?

General OBERING. Yes, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. So won’t that limit the number of—the number of

kill vehicles that you have on a particular system?

General OBERING. The limit there will be primarily on the mass

that will be required and the volume that you have to be able to

launch those within your interceptor shroud volume. But the numbers that we can achieve in that program are what we believe to

be very effective.

Mr. TIERNEY. And you don’t believe it would be overwhelmed by

somebody who is anticipating that this might be the case that you

have these Multiple Kill Vehicles.

General OBERING. We believe that through a common—again, we

keep wanting to isolate on a particular aspect of the program and

then say, well, that’s not going to work. And you can’t do that. You

have to look at the entire program. So by the time an attacker has

flown through our the layers. By the time that he’s gone through

the mid course discrimination that we would be able to accomplish

and boiled that down to the credible objects where we ignore those

things that are not credible and then use those Multiple Kill Vehicles to go after that, yes, sir, we did believe that would be effective.

Mr. TIERNEY. How costly is that going to be?

General OBERING. We are just into that program in terms of

what that would be. And we are doing the cost estimates now. One

of the things that we do that we actually did at the recommendation—well, it wasn’t a recommendation, but it was a recommendation made in other programs is we picked up the idea of knowledge

points.

So we try to drive down the risk before we build a major acquisition program to go off and to be able to accomplish whatever the

program is, Multiple Kill Vehicle or Kinetic Energy Receptor or

142

whatever. It is a technique that we believe it is prudent to try to

make sure we make these as least as expensive as we can.

So I can’t answer your question until we’ve outlined our ability

to detail the knowledge points and then get a good idea of what

we’re going to do and how we’re going to go about accomplishing

those. And we’re at the beginning of that journey of the program

today.

Mr. TIERNEY. I would hope that it would take some—there was

at one point of time, standards with this program back in the

1980’s, when Nimsky was there, and having it be less costly to

build your defense than it would be for somebody to build something that could overwhelm your defense. I hope that’s going to be

a consideration going forward.

General OBERING. We always want to try to make the attacker

have the cost imposing penalties as opposed to us, that’s true.

Mr. TIERNEY. On the Airborne Laser, if we could just touch on

that for a second because it is also something that you put in your

testimony. There was testimony at an earlier hearing that we had

here that the Airborne Laser an enemy might use white paint as

a countermeasure. And there was some objection, apparently by

your public relations, public affairs guys seem to be pretty active.

He was talking about the United States—he sort of mocked it, he

said, well, if the United States will spend more than $4 billion on

a weapon system that could be defeated by a coat of paint, it might

make a good sitcom, but has no basis in fact. That was his clever

response.

The issue is, though, that the testimony that was had here it is about $8 billion, not $4 billion that’s anticipated. But also, it’s not

just reflective white paint, that it could be dark colors that absorb

almost all the laser energy and allow only 10 percent to be reflected.

The white paint, I guess, would be pretty durable on that, but

also another countermeasure would require more laser power and

those things could be added as well. If it rotated, it would be almost no effort and that would be a problem for us. So what kind

of testing has been done against the darker objects or lighter objects. One expert calls it the ablative coating that burned off the

outside of the enemy missile. What about all of those things in your

laser program.

General OBERING. We have evaluated literally hundreds of coatings and ablatives and paint as part of the program. And we have

tested using laser facilities against those.

Mr. TIERNEY. When you say testing, what kind of testing are you

talking about?

General OBERING. We are talking about very small scale testing,

and we’re in the process of doing much larger scale testing.

Mr. TIERNEY. Now the ABL aircraft is anticipated it will fly at

a reasonably safe distance——

General OBERING. Yes, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY [continuing]. From that.

And you are going to some issues as well with keeping the laser

focused over that time—that area?

General OBERING. No, sir. We have actually demonstrated the

fact that we can do that.

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And by the way, that is a technique that we’ve been using for

many years, so——

Mr. TIERNEY. So the atmosphere doesn’t weaken the beam?

General OBERING. Yes, sir. Let me explain how it works. We actually have three lasers that will be on the aircraft and we’ve

flown. We have fired the high energy megawatt class over 70 times

in a 747 fuselage at Edwards. That—and that, by the way, required

almost simultaneous ignition of the laser modules, synchronizations that many of our so called critics said we could never do.

Well, we did that. And we achieved the full duration and operational power in that laser.

We then took in parallel—we took the aircraft and we heavily

modified that to obviously fire the laser. But there are two other

lasers on the aircraft. There is a tracking laser and atmospheric

compensation laser. This last year, we flew the aircraft with those

two lasers along with a surrogate of the high energy. And we demonstrated all the steps that we need to do the shootdown.

What that entails is being able to track the end point on the missile. In this case it was a simulated target that we used both the

Big Crow aircraft as well as a boosting accelerating F–16 for that

tracking. We then used the atmospheric compensation laser to go

out and measure the distortion that you’re talking about in the atmosphere, and feed that information back and we deform the mirrors onboard the aircraft. And then we fire the high energy in a

diffused state. And then it uses the atmosphere just like your

glasses to focus the beam on the target. And we demonstrated all

of the technical steps to go do that.

Mr. TIERNEY. And when you say demonstrated that, you did it

in a real life——

General OBERING. In flight testing.

Mr. TIERNEY. In the right atmosphere and the whole thing?

General OBERING. Yes, sir. And then we’re going to—we have the

aircraft back on the ground, we’ve had it back on the ground for

several months. We now install the high energy laser modules on

the flying aircraft. We are in the process of cleaning up the installation. We should be back in the air by the first part of next year.

And then we intend to shoot down a boosting missile in midyear.

Mr. TIERNEY. And if the missile’s rotating or is shiny or reflects

off or sloughs off some of the laser energy, that doesn’t create a

problem.

General OBERING. That’s all part of the test program that we

have data on, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. So we tested, all that happening so far or are you

going to test that?

General OBERING. We have tested a major portion of that and

others. We have done the analysis, but we feel like we’re on the

right track.

Mr. TIERNEY. The Boeing 747 is it a potential that may not be

big enough?

General OBERING. Oh, it is big enough. In fact, we would most

likely use a 747 8F version for the next one. But we are going to

take it in a transition period. We’ll collect up all the information

that we’ve learned, and we will apply that to ensure that we can

make an affordable capability.

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Mr. TIERNEY. So it is too premature to ask you how long the

laser has to stay focused on the target to actually kill it, or if it

is rotating in flight what happens, that’s all the testing?

General OBERING. What I can tell you is the time it takes to do

that is certainly within the operational—it is operational realistic,

I’ll put it that way.

Mr. TIERNEY. From a distance.

General OBERING. Yes, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. So there’s no pros—these plays are up there, if

we’re going to have this effect, are they going to be over North

Korea or are they going to be flying around there 24/7, right?

General OBERING. It would be the concept of operations. If you

are familiar with AWACs or Joint STARS, it would be very similar.

Otherwise, you’d get indication and warnings. You would deploy

the aircraft, it would be a 24/7 orbit that would be obviously you’d

have to swap aircraft as part of that. But we do that, as a matter

of routine, at AWACs and Joint STARS.

Mr. TIERNEY. So how many of these particular ABL systems do

think are going to have to have filled to keep something up there

24/7?

General OBERING. I think it’s—the estimates—the initial estimates were two and a half to three-aircraft orbit. But again, once

we do the initial shootdown we continue a very a—what I call a

continuous flight testing program. But then we’re going to go in

and we’re going to take this data and understand what it is we can

do to make this operational and operationally affordable.

Mr. TIERNEY. What are the prospects that one of these ABLs is

going to exhaust the chemicals and have to go back and replenish.

General OBERING. It is a matter of routine. If it shot out its load,

but again, it is the only—it’s the only intercept, if you’d like a capability we have in which we can shoot down multiple missile with

a single component.

Mr. TIERNEY. It looks to be another fairly complex and expensive

aspect of this. You estimate about $5.1 billion on the first aircraft

through 2009, but now you think you need how many aircraft to

make this operation——

General OBERING. I can’t tell you until we go through this operational affordability. We are going to go through a redesign transition not unlike what we did with the THAAD, sir. It will be a revolutionary capability, not just a complex one.

Mr. TIERNEY. The information that was provided to the Congressional Budget Office led them to estimate $1.5 billion per production aircraft. The Air Force Air Combat Command proposed that

the Air Force would buy seven production aircraft.

General OBERING. Right.

Mr. TIERNEY. But the Pentagon didn’t support it.

General OBERING. Sir, that’s because it was premature to do

that, not until we get the information I just talked about.

Mr. TIERNEY. The plan now is that the MDA will build the first

two prototypes before Boeing goes into production. Is that still on

track?

General OBERING. We do not have money funded right now

against a second aircraft tail member.

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Mr. TIERNEY. The ABL program office has estimated that each

aircraft will take a couple years to build.

General OBERING. Yes, sir.

Mr. TIERNEY. Seven aircraft at about $1.5 billion would be about

$10.5 billion, probably the price is escalating on that. If it takes 2

years to build each one of these, it will take the Air Force 14 years

to get the first fleet if they had budgeted one per year.

General OBERING. Again, that’s data based on existing configurations, not necessarily what we would come out of the transition

program with.

Mr. TIERNEY. But if that holds true, you are looking really until

2025 before this thing is up and operational. That means that it

meets all the tests and it is actually doable on that basis. OK.

Mr. Hodes, do you have any further questions?

Mr. HODES. I wanted just to followup a little bit sort of the discussion we were having about the assessment of the effectiveness

of the system, understanding your reluctance to tell us in open session a quantitative assessment, so to speak. And I would point out

that the head of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance has stated,

I believe we have a ballistic missile defense system that is at least

90 percent effective against limited attack. When we’re talking

about a single attack from a single missile, we’re probably higher

than 95 percent because we can do multiple shots, and we have increased our efficiencies and capabilities.

General, do you agree with that assessment of our current effectiveness?

General OBERING. Sir, again, I will be happy to give those numbers to you in private in terms of what they actually are.

Mr. HODES. Well, all I’m asking you now in this session as to

whether you agree or disagree with the number that has already

been put out there by somebody else.

General OBERING. Sir, but if I validate or not validate that number, that’s the same thing as releasing classified information, and

I will not do that.

Mr. HODES. Your predecessor as head of the MDA was asked to

comment on statements made by Pete Aldridge who was U.S.

Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition Technology and Logistics who assessed the effectiveness of the deployed GMD system before the Senate and ended up saying, as of today, the projected effectiveness would be in the 90 percent range. Am I correct that you

don’t want to voice an opinion as to whether you agree with that

assessment?

General OBERING. No, sir.

Mr. HODES. He also said—your predecessor as head of the MDA,

was asked about the Aldridge statement. And he said, if you assume a certain level of success for each interceptor missile, which

doesn’t have to be very high, not greater than 50 percent, and if

you did a math probability calculation and you used six of those

interceptor missiles to attack a single incoming warhead, Secretary

Aldridge was very correct on a pure math basis; Aldridge was correct.

So your predecessor, as head of the MDA, apparently did his

math calculations and agreed with Mr. Aldridge’s assessment of a

90 percent effectiveness.

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My question to you is, has the MDA ever conducted a GMD flight

intercept test where you have demonstrated the capability in flight,

actual flight intercept test, to bring down an enemy missile by firing six interceptors?

General OBERING. By firing, I’m sorry, how many?

Mr. HODES. Six interceptors, as was suggested by your predecessor as head of the MDA.

General OBERING. Six interceptors?

Mr. HODES. Correct. Have you ever conducted a flight test——

General OBERING. I don’t understand where you are getting the

number six from, sir. Could you help me there?

Mr. HODES. Yes. Let me go back briefly. Your predecessor as

head of the MDA was asked about Mr. Aldridge’s previous statement about 90 percent effectiveness. In his answer, he did some

calculating and said, if you did a math probability calculation and

if you use six of those interceptor missiles to attack a single incoming warhead, Secretary Aldridge was very correct.

In other words, your predecessor as head of the MDA was commenting on the 90 percent effectiveness testimony that had been

given. And apparently under—using his calculations—and he

knows a lot more about this, certainly, than I do—was saying,

yeah, it’s 90 percent effective if you use six interceptor missiles to

attack a single incoming warhead.

So my question to you is, has the MDA ever conducted a GMD

flight intercept test where you’ve demonstrated, actually demonstrated, the capability to bring down a single incoming enemy

warhead by firing six interceptors——

General OBERING. In a flight test, no, sir.

Mr. HODES. OK. Have you done it in simulation?

General OBERING. I would have to go check that. I know that we

do, in our simulations, we do fire at times multiple interceptors

against single targets.

Now if you want me to help you with the math a little bit, if you

have an interceptor that is 70 percent effective on a single shot or

80 percent effective on a single shot and you fire two, you are now

at a 91 or 96 percent effectiveness for the overall engagement. So

that’s just a simple probability of statistics in terms of the performance. But that does not relate to what I would call a realistic performance because I won’t get into that in the open session.

Mr. HODES. OK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thanks, Mr. Hodes.

General, I want to try to wrap this up for you. You’ve been good

to spend all this time with us. We appreciate it. You answered Mr.

Hodes’s question about operational criteria earlier. But I didn’t

hear you say whether or not that existed in writing somewhere.

General OBERING. Oh, yes, sir. It does.

Mr. TIERNEY. What would that publication be?

General OBERING. Pardon me?

Mr. TIERNEY. What would that publication be termed?

General OBERING. As I recall, it’s in the DOT&E report for this

year. And I believe, if I am not mistaken, it is also in our integrated master test plan, but we can provide that documentation for

the committee.

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. I appreciate that. Does it indicate how

good the system is supposed to be, whether its effectiveness is supposed to be 1 percent, 10 percent 90 percent?

General OBERING. It talks about the characteristics—I mean the

criteria that would need to be achieved in the flight test to be operationally realistic.

Mr. TIERNEY. Does it talk about percentage of effectiveness?

General OBERING. I don’t remember it doing that. But again, that

is normally derived from our testing.

Mr. TIERNEY. Does it indicate how many interceptors should be

required to defeat a single target?

General OBERING. No, sir. That is what we call shot doctoring,

and that is derived from the specifications and the performance of

the specifications that have been demonstrated in our flight test

and our ground test.

Mr. TIERNEY. The so-called Clinton era tests, that was a fourparter: One was whether the test, you know, material on whether

the challenges are materializing. The other is a status of technology based on the initial series of flight tests and proposed systems’ operational effectiveness. The third is whether the system is

affordable. And the last is implication that going forward with the

national missile defense deployment would hold for the overall

strategic environment and our arms control objectives. Are those

four criteria incorporated in any way in the current objective criteria?

General OBERING. You are talking about in terms of deployment

of the overall system. No, sir. We’re well beyond that. We’re well

beyond that stage in terms of deployment.

Mr. TIERNEY. And on Mr. Nitze’s criteria, the three systems.

That he had back in the Reagan years: that the system should be

effective; that it be able to survive against direct attack; and that

it be cost effective at the margin. So I mentioned earlier about it

being less costly to increase your defense than it is for the opponent to increase their offense against it. Are those incorporated in

any way in the current——

General OBERING. Again, that’s for deployment, which we’ve already achieved.

Mr. TIERNEY. All right. So the operational effectiveness for deployment is different than operational effectiveness for another reason?

General OBERING. Yes, sir. It is. Again, in the environment and

in the world we live in, when you have a mission area in which

you are totally vulnerable and you have no defense, that is a different calculation than you may do in a cold war era where typically you are replacing your weapons system in the field with one

that’s supposed to be better. And so you have a different calculation.

What I can tell you is the calculation that the administration

went through on deployment was, did we have an emerging threat?

The answer was yes, and what we saw happening in North Korea

and Iran, that was of concern. Were they making hostile statements? The answer was yes. Did we have a technological capability

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onstrated that in our flight testing with the prototypes of the interceptors that we deployed.

Mr. TIERNEY. Without decoys or anything of that nature?

General OBERING. That was using decoys in the flight test.

Mr. TIERNEY. Were those the ones I was talking about earlier?

General OBERING. Yes. And did we fly an operational configuration of the booster? The answer was, yes, we had done that. And

was it affordable? And the determination by the administration

and by the Congress, by the way, was, yes, it was.

Now it goes back to the statement that Ms. McCollum made earlier about what is the relative cost not just to an adversary but

more importantly to the innocent people that could be killed if you

don’t defend them as well as the damage that could be done to a

single American city on the order of hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars if you can’t stop that missile, even one missile? So

I think that was the calculation that went into the deployment.

Mr. TIERNEY. And in that consideration, somewhere was the political consideration, I guess, about the implications of going forward with that kind of deployment and how that would effect the

overall strategic environment——

General OBERING. Oh, sir, in fact, I think that’s one of the

strongest arguments for what we’re doing.

Mr. TIERNEY. You may think that, but that was a political consideration that was made.

General OBERING. Well, sir, I hope so because what we’re trying

to do is change the politics.

Mr. TIERNEY. No, I understand your position on it. I’m just——

General OBERING. If I may——

Mr. TIERNEY [continuing]. Makes a decision on that.

General OBERING. We’ve had tremendous proliferation of these

weapons over the past several years. Access to them has gotten

much greater.

Mr. TIERNEY. You are talking—you are conflating again on me,

General. You have two countries that you think may some day join

the club of the existing five that have intercontinental ballistic missiles. All the rest you are talking about is short range and medium

range.

General OBERING. Yes, sir. But that’s part——

Mr. TIERNEY. But it’s not part of what we’re talking about focus- sing on here, is the $64 billion being spent on an intercontinental

ballistic defense system that has not had realistic operational tests

yet under a number of conditions that we continue to procure on.

We’re buying things. We’re putting them on the ground. And it’s

not been shown that it’s going to work in that sense.

Let me ask you, just to wrap it up here, suppose this administration’s negotiations with North Korea have success. Suppose that

they some day wake up and decide they want to talk to Iran, and

they have success in those negotiations. What happens to the budget of the MDA at that point?

General OBERING. Well, sir, that’s not—that’s a hypothetical. I

would say that would be up to the administration and the Congress

at that point. I will say that historically you have always—always—been better off at being able to negotiate from the position

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tions against an adversary in which you have a glaring vulnerability against missile attack and they have an capability to exploit

that, you are not in a very good position. That’s something that I

think is also a part of the calculation as we go forward in the future.

In addition, if you can assure me that is the only threat that

we’ll be facing in this century over the next 10, 15 years, I’d be

happy with that. But I don’t know that we can do that.

Mr. TIERNEY. Well, General, if you can assure me that we have

an endless supply of money that we just want to keep putting on

and on and on, I guess that would resolve everybody’s issue on

that.

I thank you for your time and for your testimony here today and

for your service to the country.

General OBERING. Thank you.

Mr. TIERNEY. We’ll take a brief recess before the next panel

comes on. A couple of minutes.

[Recess.]

Mr. TIERNEY. OK. The subcommittee will now receive testimony

from our second panel of witnesses.

Philip E. Coyle III: Mr. Coyle is the senior advisor for the Center

for Defense Information. As the former Assistant Secretary of Defense, Mr. Coyle was the longest-serving director of the operational

tests and evaluation in a 20-year history of that defense office. He

oversaw the tests and evaluation of over 200 major defense acquisition systems and reported to the Secretary of Defense and to Congress on the adequacy and results of Defense Department testing

programs. He is the associate director emeritus of the Lawrence

Livermore National Laboratory where he started in 1959. He was

appointed by President George W. Bush to serve on the 2005 Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission. Mr. Coyle is an

expert on military research, development, and testing on operational military matters, and on national security policy and defense spending, including defense acquisition reform and defense

procurement. He has an extensive background in missile defense,

in military space systems and nuclear weapons.

The Honorable Henry F. Cooper: Ambassador Cooper is currently

the chairman of the High Frontier Organization. He served as the

first civilian director of the Strategic Defense Initiative [SDI], from

1990 to 1993. President Reagan appointed Ambassador Cooper as

deputy and then chief U.S. negotiator at the Geneva Defense and

Space talks with the former Soviet Union from 1985 to 1989. Ambassador Cooper is also currently chairman emeritus of Applied Research Associates, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and

a private consultant.

Joseph Cirincione: Mr. Cirincione is president of Ploughshares

Fund. He was most recently vice president for the National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress.

He is the author of an article in the most recent issue of Foreign

Policy entitled, ‘‘The Incredible Shrinking Missile Threat,’’ and the

recent book ‘‘Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear

Weapons.’’ He also teaches at Georgetown University and was some

years ago a staffer on the predecessor of this subcommittee as well

as on the House Armed Services Committee.

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We want to thank all of you for being with us today. Obviously

your experience, your knowledge of the topic’s going to help us address the questions that were raised in the earlier hearing and generally. As you all know from previous experience, it’s our policy to

swear in witnesses. So if you please stand and raise your right

hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. The record will please reflect all of the

witnesses answered in the affirmative.

You know from past experience as well that your full written

statements will be put in the record by unanimous consent.

We ask you that you try to keep your oral statements to 5 minutes in duration or as close thereto as you can so there will be

plenty of time for questions. We will be a little bit limited. We

know people’s sensitivity of the time, and we want to be able to

have some questions for the panel and get you folks out of here at

a decent hour as well.

So if we might, Mr. Coyle we’d benefit from your testimony, if

you would.

STATEMENTS OF PHILIP E. COYLE III, SENIOR ADVISOR, CENTER FOR DEFENSE INFORMATION, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR

EMERITUS, LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY; HENRY F. COOPER, Ph.D., CHAIRMAN, HIGH FRONTIER; AND JOSEPH CIRINCIONE, PRESIDENT,

PLOUGHSHARES FUND

STATEMENT OF PHILIP E. COYLE III

Mr. COYLE. Thanks Mr. Chairman.

My opening remarks are quite brief. Chairman Tierney, Representative Shays, distinguished members of the committee, I very

much appreciate the opportunity to appear before you again to support your examination of Department of Defense programs and

missile defense.

In my testimony 2 weeks ago, I raised a number of issues that

the Congress should examine. They are: the limited and inadequate

technical and operational performance of the ground-based missile

defense [GMD] system, and the lack of operational criteria by

which the Congress can judge success; inconsistent and inaccurate

information from the Pentagon with respect to system performance

and the threat; the lack of demonstrated performance of the GMD

system against realistic threats involving decoys and countermeasures as well as in common operational environments; the cost,

which you’ve already spent some time on in this hearing; the vulnerability of the GMD system to direct attack; the successes of U.S.

diplomacy, which have been our most effective missile defense; and,

finally, the ways in which missile defenses can undermine America’s arms control and nonproliferation objectives.

In my formal testimony today, I expand on my earlier comments

regarding the GMD program, also on the proposed U.S. missile defenses proposed for Europe and on the airborne laser and add new

comments regarding the Multiple Kill Vehicle program which you

had brought up earlier this morning.

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Today I only touch briefly on the Navy’s Aegis program and do

not discuss at all the THAAD program, the PATRIOT PAC–3, or

the PATRIOT/MEADS Combined Aggregate Program, which I hope

will be topics for future hearings and increased oversight and review by the U.S. Congress.

The DOD Missile Defense Agency programs need to be re-established as bona fide R&D programs, which they are presently purported to be but are not. The Congress and the American taxpayer

are being misled about the capabilities of these programs both in

terms of their effectiveness to provide dependable defenses and in

terms of their readiness for procurement.

The MDA programs have become large program—large procurement programs masquerading as R&D programs with hundreds of

new interceptors, not to mention scores of other systems, subsystems and support facilities proposed to be bought between now

and 2013.

Through these large procurements, the American taxpayer is

being misled that these systems defend the United States when

they do not. And our friends and allies in Europe are also being

misled that the proposed U.S. missile defenses would defend Europe as well.

This is all the more troublesome as these programs have no demonstrated effectiveness against realistic threats and under realistic

operational conditions. This applies to the GMD program in Alaska

and California, to the new missile defense system proposed for Europe, to the Multiple Kill Vehicle program, and especially to the

airborne laser program.

Several other programs also require increased oversight and review by the Congress, including the Aegis BMD program, the

THAAD program, and PATRIOT PAC–3, and PATRIOT/MEADS

programs.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my opening remarks. Thank you

very much for your attention.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Coyle follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Dr. Coyle.

Dr. Cooper.

STATEMENT OF HENRY F. COOPER, Ph.D.

Mr. COOPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Tierney, distinguished Members—oh, I’m sorry.

Chairman Tierney, Representative Shays, distinguished Members, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you to discuss

our missile defense programs.

As SDI director in the 1990 to 1993 time period, I redirected SDI

away from defending the U.S. homeland against a massive attack

by thousands of nuclear re-entry vehicles to protecting the United

States and our overseas troops, allies and friends against a limited

ballistic missile attack. And I advocated that we work with Russia

to build such a global system.

I believe a global defense still should be the goal of our missile

defense programs. And I now would include among the threats of

concern terrorists who might launch SCUDs or cruise missiles from

ships off our coast.

As SDI director, I was privy to all the classified information related to dealing with offensive countermeasures, against all potential missile defense system concepts, at least of that time. And I

concluded then and remain confident today that we can build a layered defense that would be effective and affordable.

My prepared testimony summarizes the nature of the complementary measure-countermeasure tension between the boost,

midcourse, and terminal phases of the ballistic missile’s flight.

Taken together, a mature layered defense against ballistic missiles

in all their phases of flight can achieve many intercept attempts

and frustrate attempts of the offense to focus on one or the another

of these phases of flight. For example, boost-phased defenses, which

work while the hot slowly moving rocket is very vulnerable, can destroy a threatening rocket before it can dispense its warheads and

associated decoys, defeating such midcourse countermeasures. If

the offense develops a higher-acceleration booster to defeat the

boost-phase defense, it will pay a weight penalty that reduces the

midcourse countermeasures suite, thereby reducing the challenge

to a midcourse defense. Furthermore, a terminal high-endo-atmospheric defense can defeat the midcourse countermeasures as reentry strips away light decoys and chaff. If a maneuvering re-entry

vehicle is designed to defeat high-endo-atmospheric defense interceptor, the weight penalty will also degrade the midcourse countermeasures suite.

My prepared testimony discusses the legacy of the ABM Treaty

in frustrating the development of such a layered defense which has

left the current program focused on the most difficult midcourse defense problem, largely to the exclusion of the other two phases.

This is not surprising because the purpose of that treaty was to

keep the United States and the Soviet Union vulnerable to ballistic

missile attack, each with their single ground-based sight. Still, our

original program on my watch included a follow-on combined endoexo-atmospheric interceptor, which we called E2I, to strip away

lightweight decoys that might get by an exo-atmospheric-only defense.

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Development of sea-based, air-based, and mobile land-based defenses had to be limited to a theater missile defense role. A legacy

of these constraints is that the sea-based defenses today continue

to be restricted to a theater defense role, even though they have

an inherent capability against long-ranged ICBMs, as shown by numerous theoretical studies over the past decade and to some degree

demonstrated by the recent adaptation of the Aegis standard missile to shoot down a satellite traveling faster than an ICBM. Spacebased defenses could not be limited to a theater missile defense

role. Still, space-based sensors were permitted and needed to support ground-based defenses but research and development on

space-based interceptors had—I’m sorry—had to be limited by technology-to-technology demonstrations for which Congress appropriated in 1993 some $300 million before the Clinton administration ended research and development on what I believe was the

best product of the SDI years and the only one with the prospect

of meeting the so-called Nitze criteria, to which you referred earlier, that effective defenses should be survivable against direct attack and cost effective at the margin against offensive countermeasures.

Thus ended the technology pathway that could have long before

now led to lightweight Kill Vehicles that, for example, would have

enabled the Navy sea-based interceptors to reach substantially

higher velocities, providing greater reach to defend much larger

areas, including against ICBMs.

Even though President Bush withdrew from the ABM Treaty in

2002, the current missile defense program has not been redirected

to reflect the basic lessons that I further elaborated in my prepared

testimony. Instead, most of the resources have been placed against

the 1993 scaled-back ground-based defense program, albeit expanded to include mobile components previously prohibited by the

ABM Treaty and with ground-based interceptors at other than the

Grand Forks site permitted by that treaty.

Given the 1999 congressionally mandated policy to deploy as

soon as technologically possible an effective national missile defense system against limited attack, continuing debate should not

be about whether to build a system and sustain it but rather about

how. I believe a return to basics would include a reinvigorated

technology development effort to assure viable missile defenses into

the future, whether at the Missile Defense Agency, at DARPA, or

in the services as their respective components of a global defense

architecture matures.

Increased funding for sea-based offenses to exploit fully their inherent flexibility of operating in international waters and to provide defensive options in all three phases of flight is an important

objective. In many ways, the Navy’s sea-based defenses are the

closest to an operational global defense capability today, but they

have been limited arbitrarily I believe to a theater defense role. A

revival of efforts to exploit the obvious benefits of the space-based

defense, beginning with the President’s proposed test bed in space,

is also I think a good idea.

Finally, I want to emphasize the possibility that terrorists could

purchase SCUDs or cruise missiles and use them to launch weapons of mass destruction at our coastal cities from ships off our

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coast. And even a single nuclear armed SCUD that detonates a nuclear weapon high above the United States killing no one directly

could create an electromagnetic pulse that could produce lasting

economic havoc throughout the United States. This is not a new

threat, and it could circumvent the major expenditures now being

made to prevent the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction into

the United States, a subject, I might add, that I spend most of my

time today worrying about. It can and I believe should be countered by outfitting the Aegis ships that normally operate in our

ports and along our coasts so that they can shoot down these cruise

and ballistic missiles.

As one who lives along the East Coast, I strongly urge Congress

to fund additional missile defense capabilities on our Aegis ships

in the Atlantic. And I would note that by the end of this year, 18

will be in the Pacific; only 2 in the Atlantic. As an extension, I believe we should also have an East Coast test range to dedicate to

their testing and help provide both a deterrent and a real defense

against this threat.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for permitting me to share my views

on these issues.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Cooper follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, sir.

Mr. Cirincione, we would like to hear your testimony as well,

please.

STATEMENT OF JOSEPH CIRINCIONE

Mr. CIRINCIONE. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee,

thank you very much for bringing me back to talk about one of my

favorite subjects, the antiballistic missile program.

When I became a staff member of the House Armed Services

Committee in January 1985, my very first assignment was oversight over the then Strategic Defense Initiative Organization programs. Since that time, I’ve seen a formidable line of directors and

program managers testify before Congress over—of those almost 25

years. They have constantly warned of urgent and emerging

threats and have consistently promised that there was a technological solution to these threats that, with just enough money and

enough time and a few less restrictions, they could deliver.

Over the 25 years, I’ve seen the threat diminish, actually drastically, which is fortunate because the programs that they promised

have been chronically behind schedule, over budget and under performing. We do not now have and are not likely to have an effective

defense against even a primitive intercontinental ballistic missile

launched at the United States using the kinds of decoys and countermeasures that such a country would likely have.

The claims that we have such a capability are simply false. General Obering was a very competent representative of the program

before this committee, and I sympathize with the difficulty that

members have in trying to get him to elaborate on some of the

problems that the program might be having. In my 25 years, I have

never seen a program manager come before Congress and admit

that they were having serious problems in the program or that

they could do the mission with less money. If they did so, they

would be fired, and another program manager would be brought up

here.

So you have of a dilemma. How do you, knowing what you know,

believing what you believe, forge a consensus in the Congress and

in the country over the path forward on ballistic missile defenses?

I believe that—and I have elaborated in my testimony some methods that you should consider that have worked in the past to forge

such a consensus.

No. 1, I believe you should commission an independent assessment of the antiballistic missile technologies. In 1987, the study

done by the American Physical Society forged such a consensus

about the near-term value of directed-energy weapons. You may remember that to the Strategic Defense Initiative program began not

with ground-based systems, which were explicitly rejected by proponents of ballistic missile defense, in favor of directed-energy

weapons. We spent billions of dollars exploring the feasibility of

these weapons. The deserts of America are littered with the carcasses of failed directed-energy weapons programs; none of these

systems worked.

In 1987, the American Physical Society study said it would be

two decades before we would know the feasibility of these systems.

That helped redirect the program toward more promising nearVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:08 May 07, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00196 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\48813.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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term solutions. I believe a similar study by the American Physical

Society, perhaps the National Academy of Sciences, the American

Association for the Advancement of Sciences could provide—could

be sort of a technological referee here that could help give the Congress an objective assessment of what’s working and what’s not.

I have several other suggestions in mind. But I believe that in

the long term—I’m sorry—in the near term, what the Congress and

the next administration should do is disband the National Missile

Defense Agency. Under various directors and under various organizational structures, this has proved to be a very ineffective development and procurement agency. I believe the way to settle some of

the differences that we heard today in the first part of this hearing

is to devolve these antimissile programs back to the services from

whence they came. Let the Joint Chiefs and the commanders in the

field wrestle with the—make a first approximation of the resources

that should be allocated to antimissile defense versus the other defense priorities. I believe if you do so, then Congress will then get

recommendations from the Defense Department, from the administration, that present a more complete and a more balanced representation than you will if you continue to have an agency who

exists only to promote antimissile programs, an agency that now

has a budget of some $10 billion a year. You’ve created a very formidable advocate for these programs. If you’re going to try to get

at the truth of what works and what’s necessary, I think you have

to take that advocate apart and bring—and allow the influence of

the rest of the services into these decisions.

As it is now, I think the Missile Defense Agency is a self-perpetuating money machine. It exists to defend its budget, to defend its

program. You’re never going to get a balanced defense as long as

this Missile Defense Agency exists the way it does.

I’ll conclude my opening remarks with that, sir.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Cirincione follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

I thank all three of you for so thoughtful remarks.

Dr. Cooper, let me start with you because I heard from the other

two gentlemen a little bit before.

Do you ascribe to the notion that a country like Iran, if it had

the capacity say 2015, 2020 to send one intercontinental ballistic

missile here, would do so without minding the fact that they’d have

retaliation against them?

Mr. COOPER. You’re going to accuse me of skirting the question,

but——

Mr. TIERNEY. I could do that now or after you’ve done it.

Mr. COOPER. But I don’t know how to predict such things, sir.

And I’m very uncomfortable with the idea that we would be vulnerable to the likes of—I can’t even say his name—Ahmadinejad and

his friends.

Mr. TIERNEY. Let me phrase it this way then, do any of you—

I know, again, I’m assuming the answers from some of the gentlemen from previous testimony. It seems to me Mr. Cirincione makes

a reasonable argument when he says, look, maybe you ought to

take this and devolve it back to the individual branches of the services here and let them deal with their components on that; otherwise we might run the risk here of just an endless bottomless pit

of money. I mean, this program is already the most expensive program that we have, and I’ve not seen any indication that anybody’s

ever concerned about measuring how much money we spend on it

versus what are the other threats and risks that we have, everything from homeland security all the way to terror abroad or conventional conflicts or whatever.

Would you object to that notion, Dr. Cooper, of putting it back

into the services so they could deal with the components and measure it against what other challenges they think are out there,

where they want to spend their money?

Mr. COOPER. I think the combination of SDI, which was mostly

about research for the first 8 years or so and began to get seriously

engaged in the idea of actually building something was a really

good idea because, at the time, there was no way within the Department to integrate things.

You know, when the first Gulf war came along and we saw the

PATRIOT activities, I was the one who argued that we should fold

in theater defenses into the Missile Defense Agency, then called

SDI. And fortunately, in my judgment, Secretary Cheney went

along with me. And that was to assure that our theater and strategic defenses were integrated together because of this vision of

wanting a global defense.

This is a long way of saying, I think there’s an important function performed by centralizing the planning, the research and development, even to the stage of developing prototypes and, to some

degree, the initial operating capabilities in the field, in this integrated way, at which time I think it is an appropriate thing to

transition them back to the services. And I believe that’s the general intention of the department.

Mr. TIERNEY. Dr. Coyle, you’ve sat through, very patiently, the

entire first panel on that for some time. I’d like to just know what

your immediate observations are from that discussion.

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Mr. COYLE. Well, General Obering is an experienced and excellent witness, but I was surprised at how many statements, including new statements, he made that were certainly incomplete, misleading or even untrue. There were quite a few of them. I don’t

know quite where to begin. Perhaps it would be best if I provided

that for the record. But I was——

Mr. TIERNEY. Well, we’d greatly appreciate that. But if something comes to mind, that would be helpful as well.

Mr. COYLE. I was surprised that he made a couple of statements

that I think are, at best, misleading.

Part of the problem is, when we talk about tests, General

Obering, for example, said, we have flown countermeasures against

our sensors in tests. He made that point two or three different

times. But he’s talking about sensor characterization tests, flight

characterization tests, tests that didn’t actually involve shooting

down a target. So I don’t deny that, indeed, they’ve tried to gather

data about how their sensors would behave against these various

countermeasures. But I think it’s a little misleading to imply that

they’ve got the matter in hand because of such tests when they

don’t actually involve shooting down the target. That’s just one example.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. We would appreciate a great deal—I

don’t mean to be giving you homework or anything. But, on the

other hand, we do I guess. But if you have the time and the patience to do that, I think we’d benefit from knowing your analysis

of what he said and what we ought to further inquire so we could

get to the bottom of some of these things.

Ms. McCollum, if you don’t mind, I will ask Mr. Cirincione the

same question, and then we will come to you. I think I have passed

my 5 minutes.

Mr. Cirincione, please.

Mr. CIRINCIONE. A lot of this boils down to what your definition

of test is. And the agency uses test when they refer to computer

simulations, flight tests where they’re putting objects up and observing them, or actual intercept tests. And they merge them all

together. So when you ask them, but you’ve never done a test with

a realistic countermeasure, he says, yes, we have. And what he

means is, they put some realistic countermeasures up into space

and they’ve imaged them to see what they look like. But he doesn’t

mean—but you may have drawn that conclusion, some might have,

not you, Mr. Chairman—that he meant that we’d actually done an

intercept test, again with a realistic countermeasure. We have not.

We have not.

And I share Dr. Coyle’s concern——

Mr. TIERNEY. Are you sure it hasn’t been done and classified on

you?

Mr. CIRINCIONE. We have never done a realistic test against the

kind of missile and the kinds of countermeasures we could expect

from even an Iran or North Korea. And the reason we haven’t done

that is that, if we did, we would miss. It’s not that we don’t have

the ability to hit a bullet with a bullet. We do. But we don’t have

the a ability to see that bullet when there are dozens of other

phony bullets around it. And that’s the problem. If you can’t see

it, you can’t hit it.

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Mr. TIERNEY. Ms. McCollum.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Boy, I don’t even know where to start. But let me thank you for

talking about tests because as a former teacher, I can devise a test

to measure what I want to measure. And so I think when you talk

about having successful tests, you need to know what the standards were that you were trying to meet with that test.

The computer modelling that people kept being referred to, can

you gentlemen tell me—I’m not a computer expert, so if I say something, and I’m using the wrong terminology, correct me. Do they

have their own supercomputer? Do they use cluster computers? Are

they just using, you know, something kind of souped up off the

shelf? What are they using to do their testing for their computer

models? Anyone know?

Mr. COYLE. Ms. McCollum, they use a variety of different kinds

of approaches. Some of it’s done on big computers. Some of it, with

the amazing capacity of laptops these days, it could even be done

on a laptop. Whether or not that simulates what would happen in

real battle is another matter. But they use a variety of different

kinds of computers. And with the kind of resources they have, I

don’t think access to big computers, supercomputers, is a problem

for them. They also do what are called hardware-in-the-loop simulations where they take hardware in the laboratory and run it

through small laboratory scale tests, for example. So those are a

couple of ways that they do it.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. OK.

Mr. COOPER. May I add a point? The other point is that they do

physics based modelling, first principle physics-based modelling.

Just as the DOE laboratories are applying this approach to at least

claim that they can do nuclear weapons design without testing.

And so, for example, when General Obering showed you the picture

up here of what they anticipated were they to hit the fuel tank on

the satellite and then he showed you the picture of the actual data,

there was a fair amount of detail in the two that compared—well,

the modelling they did was physics-based modelling. And there is

a growing confidence in our ability to do that. We fly airplanes

today. I don’t know that we’ve ever gotten to the point where we

have actually put one in service without fully testing it. But once

upon a time, we did lots of testing. Today we don’t do as much testing because we believe these models.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. OK. My time’s going to probably going to run

out. Have I got time? Go ahead.

Mr. CIRINCIONE. Just two quick points. I was on staff in the

1980’s and 1990’s when computer simulation started to becoming

an increasingly large part of Department of Defense testing. And

we tried to resist the effort to have computer simulations included

as operational testing data for the obvious reason that, in a computer simulation, you can program in assumptions that the customer might not be aware of. So we were very concerned that computer simulations could be manipulated to give data that might not

actually be realistic, and it would, as it got down the chain, it

would be more and more difficult to understand what you were actually simulating and what the assumptions were. We lost that

battle. So computer simulations are now completely integrated into

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not just developmental and research testing but operational testing. I personally find that very disturbing.

Second, I don’t even use the word ‘‘test’’ when I discuss what’s

going on with the antiballistic missile programs. You will notice in

my testimony I don’t use that word. I think these are demonstrations, that these are highly scripted demonstrations of a certain capability. Do they have value in understanding how far you are toward achieving your goals? Yes. Are they actual tests of our ability

to intercept a target? No, I don’t think they are.

Ms. MCCOLLUM. If we’re going to have another round, I’ll wait

and do that. But it looks like Mr. Cooper had something he wanted

to add if you would be kind enough. Thank you.

Mr. Cooper.

Mr. COOPER. I just wanted to add a point of disagreement, I suppose, with my friend Joe here. And that is, he is making a universal statement, and that’s not entirely an accurate thing it seems to

me. I believe the Navy programs have done quite realistic operational testing in many of their experiments, if you want to use

that term, including firing cruise missiles and ballistic missiles at

the same time, and as General Obering spoke of, a couple of ballistic missiles at the same time where the crews of operational cruisers are actually the ones that are conducting the tests. They don’t

know when the rocket is going. They know they’re going to be on

a test range and there’s a time window in which it is. But they actually come as close, I believe, as you can come to operational testing as a part of a development activity. Now, to be sure, they’re not

doing the midcourse countermeasures that you folk are interested

in either. But that’s not part of their design at this point.

Mr. CIRINCIONE. Let me quickly agree. I was talking about the

midcourse intercept demonstrations. I agree that in the theater defenses, there’s been more realistic testing.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. Shays, you’re recognized.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Mr. Cirincione, my understanding is that you would end the program, just shut it down. Is that correct?

Mr. CIRINCIONE. Oh, no, sir.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Then what should my understanding be?

Mr. CIRINCIONE. I would end the agency. I think we need a better, more efficient procurement and research vehicle than we’ve

had over the last 25 years.

Mr. SHAYS. So, is your view that the missile defense program

should continue, done differently, more slowly and so on?

Mr. CIRINCIONE. A refocused effort to concentrate on getting

near-term capabilities into the field for our troops and allies faced

with theater threats and do more focused research on long-term defensive capabilities before moving to a procurement and deployment program for those.

Mr. SHAYS. I’m happy to ask the question. Because, Mr. Coyle,

would yours be somewhat similar in position? Or how would it differ?

Mr. COYLE. Mr. Shays, I support research and development on

missile defense. I think it is expensive, but I think it’s something

that the United States can afford.

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What I don’t support is deploying systems that have no demonstrated operational effectiveness.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. I hear you. I want you to react to this. First off,

I’ve always been—I had been very skeptical of the missile defense

program. And I voted to continue it. But I said we shouldn’t deploy

until we have a system that works. But I remember during the

first—well, with getting Iraq out of Kuwait and the SCUD missiles,

there was some comfort that I had that there was a PATRIOT missile that somehow could maybe intercept a SCUD missile which

was not all that accurate. But I thought, you know, psychologically

it was good. And at times, it seemed to work. Do you think that

a missile defense system is more apt to work on short-range, medium-range, or long-range? And I’ll ask all three of you. Which is

the easier, and which is the more difficult? I’ll start with you,

Mr.——

Mr. CIRINCIONE. I believe we can develop effective and reliable

defenses against short-range missiles, primarily because you do not

have the countermeasure problem. You are intercepting these systems in the atmosphere where countermeasures cannot operate.

This is still a difficult task, and historically we’ve had, again, exaggerations of our capability. Mr. Shays, you remember the claims

that we had intercepted 41 out of 42 SCUDs. It was only after this

committee did an investigation that those claims were considerably

scaled down. The Government Accountability Office estimated we

hit 4 out of 44. Some independent experts don’t think we hit any.

My personal estimate was two as a result of our investigation.

Mr. SHAYS. But the point is, do you have a sense that——

Mr. CIRINCIONE. You could do this. You could improve the PATRIOT or improve the THAAD or develop a new system that would

have a better shot at intercepting SCUDs.

Mr. SHAYS. Would it get more difficult——

Mr. CIRINCIONE. As the range of the missile increases, the difficulty of intercepting it increases.

Mr. SHAYS. Is that because of the decoy measures?

Mr. CIRINCIONE. It is because of the speed of the target and because of the countermeasures.

Mr. SHAYS. Tell me how you would agree or disagree with what

I just heard, Mr. Coyle.

Mr. COYLE. Mr. Shays I was very interested in the question you

asked General Obering this morning about PATRIOT. He said

that—and I believe the context of your question was about PAC–

3 against SCUDs. PAC–3 is still untested in battle against SCUDs

because Iraq didn’t fire any. And so I didn’t understand his answer.

And I thought it was misleading because he said all of the missiles

that Iraq fired at us were destroyed or shot down. And you can go

through the news accounts of how many missiles were fired by Iraq

each day, of which kind, and by our count, there’s a couple hundred—excuse me, a couple dozen missiles that Iraq fired, not

SCUDs but shorter-range missiles of other types, including cruise

missiles that were not shot down by PATRIOT or PAC–3.

Mr. COOPER. I think it’s not quite as simple as it’s been stated

here. Countermeasures apply, as I tried to make the point in my

testimony, in all of the phases of flight. The difficulty that we had

in shooting down the SCUDs in the first Gulf war, for example,

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had to do with the fact that Saddam Hussein took three SCUDs

and he welded two together out of this to get the extended range.

When they went out of the Earth’s atmosphere and they were in

space for some considerable amount of time, they went like this

and came down hind part first and they broke up. And the warhead corkscrewed into the Earth’s atmosphere, pulling, I don’t remember now, but multiple Gs, and the PATRIOT couldn’t keep up

with it. So simply because it’s a short-range missile and it’s going

in the atmosphere, it doesn’t guarantee you that you can deal with

this problem. That was my point about, if you worked that problem, you make the countermeasures a problem easier outside the

Earth’s atmosphere.

And now PAC–3, I believe, is an exo-atmospheric interceptor, is

it not? It’s hit the gill, I know, and it should have worked against

the SCUD if it had been launched, but I don’t know——

Mr. SHAYS. Let me ask you one last question, Dr. Cooper. Do you

agree that it is easier to deal with the short range versus the intermediate or the long range?

Mr. COOPER. In principle, it is, yes. But I believe the technology

is there to deal with all three. The countermeasures problem I believe is one you have to take into account. And I think it should

be taken into account as a part of the design. To that degree, I’m

inclined to side with Dr. Coyle. The reality is that, when you ask

what is going on in the program today, you can’t assume that you

are starting with a clean sheet of paper.

General Obering, you know, inherited a program that was in a

given direction.

Mr. SHAYS. I’ll get you in the next—I mean, I’ll pursue this in

the next round.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Dr. Cooper, how much would you advise Congress should spend

over the next 20 years in missile defense?

Mr. CIRINCIONE. Sir, I haven’t really considered that problem. I

don’t consider the amount of money that’s being spent out of

bounds. I might quibble with how it’s being spent but not the

amount. It is not inconsistent with the amount of money that we

were spending on my watch when it was mostly—a lot of it was

R&D in any case. If you take into account inflation, I think it was

$4.5 billion is what I recall in 1991, 1992.

Mr. TIERNEY. Do you support the allocation of national security

resources, money primarily, according to sort of what the threat

likelihoods are? Do you think we ought to make an assessment of

what the likelihood of the threats are and then decide how to spend

our money on that?

Mr. COOPER. I do believe we should have threat-based design and

development.

Mr. TIERNEY. Would you agree that the bigger threat to the

United States at this point in time is actually some asymmetric

threat, some terrorist sending something over in a container or on

a ship or being offshore on a small boat and lobbying something in

from there?

Mr. COOPER. As I indicated in my testimony, I am very worried

about that. And that’s how I spend most of my time these days, is

worrying about nuclear smuggling out of the former Soviet Union.

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That said, I think the other is a serious problem. And the problem is, you can’t turn a switch. I mean the complaint that people

have about the Missile Defense Agency in some sense and the programs is how long this is taking and how much money it’s costing.

And it’s a difficult problem. And no one I think disputes that fact.

But I believe we need to be working on it.

Mr. TIERNEY. I guess that’s part of it, but the larger part of it

is people are disputing the fact that we’re buying before we’re testing. I haven’t heard anybody really come out and say, I don’t want

to spend the money on research and development. Maybe it’s out

there. But I hear some concern. But I think Mr. Coyle makes a

point on that, that there’s a lot of procurement going on. Maybe

you’d like to expand on that, Dr. Coyle.

Mr. COYLE. For all other U.S. military systems, we don’t go into

so-called full-rate production or large quantities of production until

the system is shown to be operationally effective. It’s a good policy.

It helps the Congress know when it’s time, when a system is ready.

I think the same policy ought to apply to missile defense procurements, but so far, it hasn’t.

Mr. TIERNEY. Under that policy with respect to the intercontinental ballistic missile defense, the midcourse defense, what procurement is going on now would not be being made if we followed

the policy?

Mr. COYLE. Well, we wouldn’t be buying the hundreds of interceptors that are proposed to be bought. In my testimony, based on

my research, I counted 635 new interceptors proposed to be bought

between now and 2013. General Obering said it’s going to be twice

that, that the JROC has recommended something like 1,200 new

interceptors to be bought in that period. I wouldn’t go forward with

that.

Mr. TIERNEY. Why not?

Mr. COYLE. Because those interceptors have yet to demonstrate

their capability to deal with realistic threats under realistic operational conditions.

Mr. TIERNEY. And I think we talked about this a little bit at the

last hearing. But what we’re talking about demonstrating their capabilities. We’re not talking about a one-off test where they hit it.

I mean, each thing that you are testing, you probably need more

than one successful test in order to get some level of comfortability

that you have some confidence in the system. Is that correct?

Mr. COYLE. Yes. But I don’t think it’s affordable to do what they

would call statistically based testing where you do, you know, hundreds. I don’t think that’s something that you would want to spend

money on. But you find out in realistic operational tests very quickly whether or not you’ve got a problem. If the first two or three

that you do under these new conditions don’t work, you don’t have

to do hundreds of tests to get statistical confidence about that. If

the first two or three don’t work, you know you’ve got a problem.

Mr. TIERNEY. Did you hear anything in this morning’s testimony

that would change your mind about the statement you made in

earlier testimony that it could take another 50 years before the

operational realistic testing of this program is done?

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Mr. COYLE. No, I didn’t. And in fact, I read the responses that

the Missile Defense Agency wrote to my comment about that. And

they didn’t refute it. They just talked about something else.

Mr. TIERNEY. OK.

Mr. CIRINCIONE. Mr. Chair, could I just add something to the test

issue?

Mr. TIERNEY. Sure.

Mr. CIRINCIONE. You have to remember that we’re testing these

or demonstrating these very differently than we had any, even

antimissile systems of the past. The first time we deployed an antiballistic missile defense system, the Sprint Safeguard System in

North Dakota, we had 111 tests of those interceptors before we deployed them, and these were real tests, shooting them. And we

found some problems, and we corrected them. And by the time we

fielded that system, at least they were technologically capable.

We’re not coming close to that level of testing with this system. As

I recommended last time, I don’t believe we should be deploying

anything until we have a realistic test to see if we can intercept

a missile that is deploying decoys that look the same as the warhead. And if we can’t do that, I just don’t see the point of deploying

a system. You have my chart up there on the screen, what I did

after our last testimony was do year-by-year calculations with my

staff. And we found out that over the last—well, I guess 15 years

there, we’ve got a steady decline in the number of long-range and

intermediate-range and medium-range ballistic missiles being deployed, but we’re spending three times the amount on antimissile

programs than we were during any period of the cold war. So, in

other words, we used to spend about $4 billion a year. Now we’re

up to somewhere around $12 billion if everything’s included. Even

accounting for inflation, it’s still twice as much. It just doesn’t

make sense.

Mr. TIERNEY. So we’re spending more on that than we are on the

short range and medium range?

Mr. CIRINCIONE. This is our total missile budget now. So we’re

spending more now on antimissile defense than we were during

any year of the cold war, not just—you know by a double or three

times the amount during any period of the cold war, even while the

threat has drastically been reduced.

Mr. TIERNEY. Doctor, go ahead.

Mr. COOPER. I’m pleased to take credit for some of that shrinkage. I spent 5 years in Geneva in talks in the Soviet Union. And

that’s the reason you are seeing the decay in long-range missiles.

That doesn’t give me a great deal of comfort if I’m worried about

North Korea and Iran. And let me say, I haven’t forgotten about

Russia and China either.

Mr. TIERNEY. Except we’re not targeting the MDA program

against them.

Mr. COOPER. Well, I understand that. But that doesn’t give me

a lot of confidence.

Mr. TIERNEY. I understand that.

Mr. COOPER. I’m concerned still about the accidental and unauthorized launch that I designed the system against 10 years ago.

So, and I was thinking about Russian and Chinese missiles then.

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So I am for more effective capability than we’re designing today in

part for that reason.

Mr. TIERNEY. OK. Thank you.

Ms. McCollum, do you have any other questions?

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Last week in the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee,

General Obering said, ‘‘quite frankly, I’d like to see a missile race.’’

Mr. COOPER. I’m sorry?

Ms. MCCOLLUM. General Obering in the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee last week, there was discussion about a

missile race between the United States and an adversary such as

North Korea or Iran. And he said, ‘‘frankly, I’d like to see such a

missile race.’’ I would like to know from you gentlemen if you think

that would be a good thing. And that’s kind of a—that’s one question, but I do want to just go back and talk about some of the other

things he said today in his testimony that I think goes with that.

He said, without a program such as the missile defense program,

the United States weakens its negotiation position in diplomatic

talks if we don’t have a program going. But there’s a difference between a program and encouraging or being supportive of a fullblown escalation. So I’d be interested in hearing what you gentlemen would have to say about that. And he also went on to say that

if we stop funding our program, our enemies will know our

vulnerabilities, and they will attack us using ICBMs. So I’d like to

get your perspectives kind of on some of the General’s comments.

And I think, you know, to take his logic a step farther, and this

is me taking it a step farther, we’re currently spending $100 billion

each year, and we don’t have a functioning long-range system. And

the General, you know, said everything was on track on time,

which I think we can all agree, in my opinion, it’s not. So if we can

spend $10 billion and maybe thwart our enemies, then what’s to

stop us from just saying, OK, we’ll spend $50 billion or we’ll spend

$500 billion? That will even make us stronger against our enemies.

So I’d like your reaction on some of the things that he said today,

and if you’re concerned about an escalation with a missile race.

Mr. CIRINCIONE. Let me start. I think General Obering’s statement was the equivalent of ‘‘bring it on.’’ You might understand

why someone would make a statement like that, ‘‘I’d like to see a

missile race.’’ But I can’t believe that in hindsight he doesn’t regret

those remarks. It’s certainly not in the U.S. national security interest to see a missile race even between two countries, let alone the

many countries that might join such a race. Two, that having an

antimissile capability strengthens our negotiating leverage, that

might be true. I don’t see any evidence that it has factored into

North Korean or Iranian thinking though. So I don’t know how one

could prove that statement. The North Koreans have had two failed

tests of a medium- or intermediate-range missile, the Taepodong

series, and they have stimulated with those two tests millions of

dollars in U.S. expenditures. It might be that they think that they

have the advantage here, that they are distracting us, but by their

demonstration shots.

The missile facility itself, even if we did continue the deployment

of the Alaska system, this system is very, very vulnerable to asymmetrical responses. It’s highly unlikely that a country like North

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Korea would simply shoot its missile off and wait to see if the

United States could intercept it. They would do what any military

force does in battle. You would suppress the enemy’s defenses before you launch your attack. You would go out and knock out the

eyes and ears of that system. You might send frogmen to blow up

the radar or sink the floating radar. There are a half of dozen

things one could think of that North Korea would do that have

nothing to do with missiles or interceptors that might make this

system completely ineffective before they were actually to launch it.

No. 3 and finally, if the President is allowed to do what he wants

to do and negotiate a deal with North Korea, I think we’re going

to see the North Korean missile threat disappear, the same way

Ambassador Cooper helped negotiate a reduction in the Soviet missile and then Russian missile threat. I was just at a briefing last

night by Sig Hecker, the former Director of Los Alamos, who came

back from his fifth trip to North Korea, fairly optimistic about our

possibilities of containing and eliminating both the nuclear program and the missile program. If we were able to do that, and we

will know in another year or so, I don’t see the point of what the

Alaska deployment is. I would think, at that point, the Congress

would be faced with the decision of whether they shut it down or

not, and I would recommend shutting it down.

Mr. COOPER. I’d like to, I think, speak for—or in support of General Obering’s comments about the importance of having a serious

missile defense program going and influencing the behavior of

maybe North Korea and Iran. If we have a serious program that

can frustrate or deal with what they’re building, I mean, it’s correct

to say that it’s a big deal to build long-range ballistic missiles. I

mean, that’s a point that no one is going to dispute. On the other

hand, it only took us 41⁄2 years to do that the first time out you

know 40 years ago. So you don’t have a lot of time if you wait until

the threat appears to build a defense. And that’s no mean feat either.

Working hard on missile defenses, the SDI program I believe is

the reason for that reduction up there in the 1980’s. I don’t think

there’s much doubt of that. I saw it firsthand across the table from

the Russians at the time. That’s what got their attention. That’s

what got them to the negotiations. That’s what kept them serious

throughout. That’s why Reagan walking out of Reykjavik was a

turning point. Akhromeyev, who led the Soviet military, said as

much to Vernon Walters at the time. So the fact that the United

States was serious in trying to work this problem, very difficult

problem that we all agree was there, I think was instrumental in

supporting our arms control agenda and worth every penny of the

SDI investment. And I believe the same thing would be true today

if it were successful in supporting whatever it is you want to say,

negotiations with North Korea and Iran to hold things back, to

short-range missile, short and medium-range missiles. I don’t think

you can imagine though that success. I think you have to have a

real program. I think it has to be directed toward real capability.

And it has to show progress. And I do agree that it has to involve

realistic testing to deter them in doing that. But you don’t get it

on the cheap. I don’t believe you get it on the cheap.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, sir.

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Mr. Shays, you’re recognized.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. I’d like all three of you to respond to

what Richard Garwin, a Democratic witness—excuse me—a witness that was opposed to the program and spoke of his fear of missiles launched from ships close to the shore. Is that a fear? And is

there an antidote to it?

Mr. COOPER. I’ll start. Since I put that in my testimony, I’ll go

first.

Mr. SHAYS. Since you what? I’m sorry.

Mr. COOPER. I put it in my testimony. I do believe that is a serious problem. And it has been recognized to be a problem for a long

time. Don Rumsfeld and his commission in 1998 pointed it out. It’s

a little astounding to me that during his full tour and watch nothing was done about it. I believe that—well, General Obering pointed out that we’ve launched missiles off of ships. Actually, we first

did that in the 1960’s as I recall. And I believe that Paul Wolfowitz

testified that the Iranians had done that. So the idea that you can

launch a missile off of a vessel is not novel.

Mr. SHAYS. So, but it would strike me that—what I’m struck by,

the fact—if that’s the case, it makes any missile defense system

seem to me even less beneficial because they pretty much get within the range of avoiding a missile defense system. So if you made

that case, you are really saying—so there’s two ways now that I’m

thinking you can get through the system. One is with decoys, long

range. And second, just bringing the ship in. That’s, you know,

that’s in coming underneath. How would you respond to that?

Mr. COOPER. I believe there is a defense against the threat of

short-range missiles. In fact, it’s the same defense that we use, in

fact, against SCUDs. And the sea-based, the Aegis, has already

demonstrated——

Mr. SHAYS. What we would have to do in that case is we’d have

to set up something off my property on Long Island Shore—I mean,

on Long Island, CT. I mean, that seems unrealistic. We wouldn’t

know where to position those missiles.

Mr. COOPER. We have ships that are regularly, not on patrol but

they’re stationed in ports along both of our coasts. We have some

84 Aegis ships.

Mr. SHAYS. But we wouldn’t have the time notice to——

Mr. COOPER. But they’re there. My point to you is they’re down

at Norfolk right now, and their ships are around if they have the

rounds onboard that can shoot down relatively short-range missiles, and they can. They’ve demonstrated that. They have a success record of whatever it is, 12 or 14——

Mr. SHAYS. I don’t want to spend too much of my time on this.

But I think you would agree that, you know, if you know that you

have a threat and you preposition, but I can’t imagine us

prepositioning all along the coast of the Atlantic, the Caribbean,

and the Pacific. I just can’t, I can’t envision——

Mr. COOPER. I’ve looked at the footprints of this problem, and a

couple of ships is what you need. And if they’re moving periodically, as they do—I’m not suggesting we establish picket ships

along the coastline. That would drive my Navy friends crazy.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me hear from our other two witnesses.

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Mr. COYLE. Mr. Shays, Iraq actually demonstrated the capability

that you’re describing in Operation Iraqi Freedom, the beginning

part of Operation Iraqi Freedom when they fired cruise missiles,

low-flying cruise missiles that were developed for flying across the

ocean, but the desert is pretty flat. And so they work just as well

in the desert as they did in the ocean. Did they fire them from

ships? No. They fired them from land, and our PATRIOT system

did not intercept them. It’s not designed to intercept them and

doesn’t have that capability. So Iraq demonstrated a good part of

the threat that you are describing there. The only thing they didn’t

demonstrate was doing it from a boat. Now, hopefully, the Coast

Guard would intercept that boat or somebody else would intercept

it. But I think it’s a genuine concern.

Mr. CIRINCIONE. Just very quickly, this is a very real problem.

I think there’s broad agreement on this. And it’s not just SCUDs

fired from tankers. It’s cruise missiles fired, which would underfly

most antimissile systems, even if one could figure out an operational footprint.

We had a system called the Matador in the late-1950’s early

1960’s that fired from a submarine. It was a really cool cruise missile. You can see it out at the Air and Space Museum out at Dulles.

So if we could do it then, it’s certainly within the range of many

countries’ capabilities now. I don’t know how you defend against

something like that.

Mr. COOPER. One of the reasons I keep coming back to Aegis is

the point of Aegis ballistic missile defense is to modify an air defense system that is deployed around the world. It can defend

against cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. That’s its forte.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just say that I just remember when Iraq went

into Kuwait, some of the weapons systems we had, I was reminded

by someone in Congress who said the systems that worked were

developed 10 and 20 years ago. The systems you are voting on now,

Congressman—he was saying this to me as a new Congressman—

will have impact to some Congress 10 years and our military and

our country 10 or 20 years later.

So I do believe that we need to keep moving on this effort. But

I sure as heck want to make sure we don’t deploy until we know

it works. And I am comforted to know that, on a short-range basis,

if we can anticipate an attack, it is an important element. And I

think all three of you agree that we could have some success there.

Mr. CIRINCIONE. I think we can. I think we must. And I think

that makes it all the more urgent that these short-term systems

get the focus of the funding and the testing.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. I think those kind of questions, Mr.

Shays, do help us to at least focus on what we need to focus and

redirect the resources in some sense, which is, I guess, the underlying focus of these hearings to a large extent is that we don’t have

unlimited resources, and we do have some measure of risks and

threats are more prevalent than others. And I’m not sure that

we’re doing a great job in the Department of Defense so far in

aligning the resources that we have with the more prominent risks

and accelerate them to the point that we should.

I am just about done here. I don’t know, Mr. Shays, if you have

any other questions. There are a million more questions we could

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ask, and we could keep people here all day. I know Mr. Coyle has

homework that he has taken on voluntarily.

If either of you gentlemen wish to submit anything, we will certainly be more than happy to receive it and read it. There may be

some that you want to respond to.

Dr. Cooper, before we leave, you have had less time in front of

us than the other two have. Is there anything else that you would

like to add or contribute?

Mr. COOPER. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. And I’m

happy to be responsive in any way you wish as a follow on.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, sir, for that.

Mr. Coyle, anything you would like to add?

Mr. COYLE. No, thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. Cirincione.

Mr. CIRINCIONE. It’s a pleasure to be back in front of my old committee. Godspeed.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you all very much.

Thank you, Mr. Shays.

[Whereupon, at 1:33 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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