MISSILE IMAGINATION

The same day that the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks warned that an outdated Cold War mentality and government structure failed to understand the looming threat of terrorist groups like al-Qaida, the first piece of a controversial missile defense shield was quietly installed in Alaska.

Rather than ensuring that America becomes safer, this work shows that the Pentagon and White House, with the approval of Congress, are continuing to devote limited federal resources to a costly and unproven – and possibly unneeded – project when more attention and funding should be focused on fighting terrorism.

Last week, a ground-based missile interceptor was lowered into a silo at Fort Greely in Alaska’s interior. Five more interceptors are scheduled to be installed there and another four in California by the end of the year. Congress has appropriated more than $10 billion for the missile defense system in the next fiscal year and the Missile Defense Agency estimates costs will run as high as $53 million in the next five years. The entire system could cost up to $1.2 trillion.

And it might not work. The system involves 10 separate high-tech systems, including six satellites and ships at sea. So far, the interceptors have performed poorly in tests, even when given advanced information that would not be available in a real attack.

Much of the system remains untested because the Pentagon has waived testing requirements.

Further, the system is set up to deter an unlikely threat. It is designed to down an incoming missile over the Pacific Ocean. However, repeated intelligence assessments have concluded that terrorists trying to infiltrate the United States and obtain weapons are a much larger threat than missile attacks by rogue states.

A group of 49 retired generals and admirals earlier this year urged the president to postpone deployment of the missile system in favor of devoting resources to protecting our borders and port facilities against terrorists who might try to smuggle weapons of mass destruction into the United States. They also recommended spending the missile money on securing the many U.S. facilities containing nuclear weapons and materials so that these don’t end up in terrorist hands.

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States faulted myriad government agencies for a lack of imagination prior to the Sept. 11 attacks. Building an imaginative, yet far from proven, missile system to defend against a threat that experts have concluded is far less menacing than small groups of determined terrorists likely isn’t the kind of creative thinking the 9-11 commission had in mind.