The SDI program will also complicate efforts to achieve limits on advanced weapon proliferation through unilateral restraint, multilateral arms control, or international cooperative regimes. The case for deploying theater missile defenses with capabilities beyond those of the improved PAC-3 Patriot remains unclear. There is little prospect within the foreseeable future that the United States or its allies will be threatened by Third World ballistic missiles that cannot be addressed by Patriot. And counterforce strikes against missile launchers may be a more cost-effective response to the missile threat. Intercepting tactical and theater ballistic missiles faces the same challenges to system effectiveness faced by strategic defenses.
More advanced systems remain untested, and testing experience to date has produced mixed results.
While the Bush Administration engaged the Russians in negotiations aimed at loosening or eliminating Treaty restrictions, the Clinton Administration should reverse course, and focus on more restrictive limitations distinguishing between permitted and prohibited systems. The costs of currently contemplated anti-missile systems are modest compared with the trillion dollar fantasies of a decade ago. But the more than three billion dollars that is proposed for anti-missile systems each year for the remainder of this decade is far in excess of actual requirements. And it remains uncertain how the new Congressional majority will respond. But it must be clear to all that bringing these other systems to operational status will require far larger expenditures than are currently contemplated.