The Pentagon plans to begin operation of a national missile defense system this summer, putting the first missile interceptors on alert weeks ahead of a previous autumn deadline, according to senior defense officials.
The accelerated schedule, if realized, would enable President Bush to claim fulfillment of a major 2000 campaign pledge earlier than officials had indicated. The United States currently lacks a defense against intercontinental ballistic missiles. Erecting such a system has been not only a top Bush priority but also a longtime Republican Party goal.
Democratic lawmakers have challenged the urgency and expense of the project, and scientists and other critics have warned that Bush's approach relies on unproven technology.
Disclosing the planned summer start, Pentagon officials insisted in interviews that politics played no part in revising the schedule. They said the change grew out of the realization that the system could begin providing some anti-missile protection before all 10 of the interceptors slated for fielding this year had been lowered into silos in Alaska and California.
"If we could have some capability, we'd be negligent not to put it out as early as we could," said one senior military officer involved in the program. "It has nothing to do with a politically motivated date. We've never been told to speed it up."
Whether the Bush administration is moving too fast to deploy the anti-missile system was in dispute even before the latest shift, with the Pentagon's own top weapons evaluator recently raising a warning flag. In a status report last month on major new weapons programs, Thomas P. Christie, director of the Pentagon's office of Operational Test and Evaluation, said a shortage of testing data would likely make it difficult for him to assess the system's effectiveness ahead of any deployment this year.
He expressed concern about the small number and relatively simple nature of flight tests, noting they have used the same course each time and have relied on surrogates and prototypes for key elements still under development. Problems with a new booster, designed to carry the interceptor vehicle into space, prompted the Pentagon to suspend flight intercept attempts after the last test in December 2002.
The next flight tests are scheduled for May and July; thus, the Pentagon could end up activating the anti-missile system before results of the summer tests have been fully assessed.
Nonetheless, program officials say that previous tests have given them enough confidence to justify a recommendation to go forward this summer. In eight tests since 1999, interceptors have scored five hits against mock warheads, validating — in the view of program officials — the principle of using a missile to hit a missile.
"We have seen nothing in terms of a showstopper that would prevent us from putting the system on alert," the senior military officer said.
The system relies on land-based interceptors to soar and ram into enemy warheads headed toward the United States. It is intended as just one layer of what Bush envisions will be a multilayered network of defenses. Other systems under development are aimed at striking missiles soon after launch with land- or sea-based interceptors or airborne lasers. Should a missile survive these layers of defense, another system of interceptors would target it as it descended.
Adopting a phased approach to establishing this expansive network, Bush in late 2002 ordered the deployment of the first 10 long-range interceptors by the end of 2004 — six at Fort Greely in Alaska and four at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Internally, Pentagon officials set Sept. 30 this year as the deadline for opening the Fort Greely facility.
The idea of going on alert earlier at Fort Greely emerged from a military exercise before the U.S. invasion of Iraq last year, the senior officer said. The exercise, which involved Patriot anti-missile batteries and focused on devising an air defense network for the Iraq war, showed the benefit of putting some network elements into service before all were in place.
A senior Pentagon civilian also cited Israel's experience in the past few years with its Arrow anti-missile system. Individual elements of that system have been declared operational as soon as they have been built.
"The Israelis have done that for deterrence purposes," the official said. "They have wanted to send a message to their neighbors that the system was ready, even if still had a ways to go."
The Pentagon plans to start loading interceptors into silos at Fort Greely in May or June, continuing through the autumn there and into January at Vandenberg. Software improvements to a critical tracking radar, known as Cobra Dane and located on Shemya Island in the Aleutians, are due for completion in July. Shortly after that, the anti-missile system could go on alert for the first time.
"We anticipate that it would be before the September time frame that we've used as a planning date in the past," the senior officer said.
By starting the system, while still installing the first batch of interceptors, operators can gain early experience and quickly spot any potential glitches, thereby smoothing the way for completion of the deployment, officials said.
"What we're trying to get away from is the idea that we're going to have one switch that we're going to throw at midnight on a certain date, and everything is going to be operational," the senior officer said.
By the end of 2005, plans call for adding 10 more interceptors at Fort Greely as well as 10 ship-based, intermediate-range interceptors, a new floating tracking radar and an upgraded radar at Fylingdales in Great Britain. In his 2005 budget request, which goes to Congress this week, Bush is seeking more than $10 billion for missile defense, up from $9.1 billion this year.
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