Panel II of a Hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's National Security and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee - Oversight of Missile Defense (Part Three): Questions for the Missile Defense Agency
Interview
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REP. 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.
REP. SHAYS: Okay. Then what should my understanding be?
MR. CIRINCIONE: I would end the agency. I think we need a better and more efficient procurement and research vehicle than we've had over the last 25 years.
REP. SHAYS: So is your view that the missile defense program should continue done differently, more slowly and so on? Or do you --
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.
REP. SHAYS: Well, 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's -- it is expensive, but I think it's something that the United States can afford. What I don't support is deploying systems that have no demonstrated operational --
REP. SHAYS: Okay. I hear you. Thank you.
MR. COYLE: -- effectiveness.
REP. SHAYS: 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 -- while 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, that 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, or do you think -- 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're 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 and it was only after this committee did an investigation that those claims were considerably scaled down. The General Accounting Office estimated we hit four out of 44. Some independent experts don't think we did any.
REP. SHAYS: Right.
MR. CIRINCIONE: My personal estimate was two as the result of our investigation.
REP. SHAYS: But the point is, you have a sense that --
MR. CIRINCIONE: But you could do this.
REP. SHAYS: Right.
MR. CIRINCIONE: You could improve the Patriot and you could improve the Thad, or develop a new system that might have a better shot at intercepting Scuds.
REP. SHAYS: Does it get more difficult as --
MR. CIRINCIONE: As the range of the missile increases, the difficulty of intercepting it increases.
REP. SHAYS: Is that because of the decoy measures?
MR. CIRINCIONE: It's because of the speed of the target and because of the -- and the countermeasures.
REP. SHAYS: Okay.
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 us -- 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 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 a Patriot or PAC-3.
REP. SHAYS: Okay.
MR. COOPER: I think it's not quite as simple as it's been stated here. The countermeasures apply, as I tried to make a 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, 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 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 doesn't guarantee you that you can deal with this problem. That was my point about if you work that problem, you make the countermeasures and problem easier outside the Earth's atmosphere. And now PAC-3, I believe, is an exoatmospheric interceptor, is it not. It's hit the Gill (ph), I know and it should have worked against the Scud whether -- if it had been launched. But I don't know that --
(Cross talk.)
REP. SHAYS: Let me ask you then 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. They -- 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.
REP. SHAYS: I'll get you in the next -- I mean, I'll pursue this in the next round.
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REP. CHRISTOPHER SHAYS (R-CT): 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 anecdote to it?
MR. COOPER: Since I put that in my testimony, I'll go first.
REP. 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 point it out. And it's a little astounding to me that on 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 1960s, 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.
REP. SHAYS: But what strikes me -- what I'm struck, the fact though, 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 make that case, you're 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 secondly, just bringing a ship in and you know, 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 effect, against scuds. And the sea-base -- the Aegis has already demonstrated the capability.
REP. SHAYS: Yes. But what we would have to do in that case is we would have to set up something off my property on Long Island Shore -- I mean, on Long Island in Connecticut. 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 are stationed in ports along both of our coasts. We have some 84 Aegis ships --
REP. SHAYS: Yeah, but we wouldn't have the time notice to --
MR. COOPER: No. They're there! My point is to they're down at Norfolk, right now. And their ships are around. If they have the rounds on board that can shoot down relatively short-range missiles -- and they can. They've demonstrated that. They have a success record of whatever it is. Twelve or 14 --
REP. SHAYS: I don't want 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 envision that.
MR. COOPER: I've looked at the footprints on this problem and a couple of ships is what you need. And if they're moving, periodically -- as they do. I'm not suggesting that we establish picket ships along our coastline. That would drive my Navy friends crazy. I'm not suggesting that.
REP. SHAYS: Let me hear from our other two witnesses.
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 on the desert at they do on the ocean. Did they fire them from ships? No, they fired 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're describing there. The only part 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 under fly most anti-missile systems, even if one could figure out an operational footprint.
We had a system called the Matador in the late '50s, early '60s, 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 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!
REP. SHAYS: Let me just say that my -- Just remember when the -- when Iraq went into Kuwait and we got them out, some of the weapons systems we had, I was reminded by someone in Congress, he said: The systems that worked were developed 10 and 20 years ago. The systems you're 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 we need to keep moving on this effort. But I sure as heck want to make sure we don't deploy it 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.
REP. SHAYS: Thank you.
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