GAO Urges Better Tests Of Missile Defense System
March 11, 2004
By Bradley Graham, Washington Post Staff WriterThe Pentagon has taken some steps toward more realistic testing of the antimissile system that it plans to deploy this year to protect the United States, but many aspects of the system remain to be tested, according to a congressional report.
The report, prepared by the General Accounting Office, expressed concern about a lack of test data showing whether the system can work using all its final parts instead of prototypes, and whether it can adequately identify warheads in a field of decoys. Also still to be demonstrated, the report said, are such actions as multiple launches of interceptors, nighttime intercepts and operations under adverse weather conditions.
The report, a copy of which was made available to The Washington Post ahead of public release today, focused on assessing the Bush administration’s efforts against a list of 50 recommendations issued in the final weeks of the Clinton administration by Philip Coyle, then the Pentagon’s chief weapons evaluator. President Bill Clinton decided in August 2000 not to proceed with deployment of the antimissile system pending further development and testing.
President Bush has substantially altered the program, expanding the scope of experimentation and committing the country to deploying a rudimentary national antimissile system by the end of 2004. Even so, most of the recommendations put forward by Coyle “are still relevant,” the GAO report said, “because the technical challenges and uncertainty with developing, testing, and fielding effective defensive capabilities … remain significant.”
“The administration hasn’t gone through the technical and testing steps the way they’ve been advised to do by the Pentagon’s own operations and testing people,” said Rep. John F. Tierney (D-Mass.), who requested the GAO review. “The report very clearly indicates that there’s not been enough progress to give us any sense of security and comfort that this system is at a place where it ought to move forward.”
The report said construction of a “test bed” facility in Alaska will help bring more realism and complexity to a testing program whose eight flights have been limited to a single scenario — a target missile has flown out over the Pacific from California and the interceptor has launched from the Marshall Islands. Greater attention also is being paid to improving the system’s ability to distinguish enemy warheads from decoys, the report said.
But the report warned that test plans through 2007 do not include sufficiently challenging targets and decoys. It said the first attempt at launching two interceptors against two targets is not scheduled until 2007. And no plans exist to assess the effects of severe weather on the system’s performance or to conduct flight tests “under unrehearsed and unscripted conditions,” the report said.
The antimissile system, when activated, will rely on tracking data from an old surveillance radar in Alaska, called Cobra Dane. But the report noted that the radar will not have been tested in its new role and will lack the ability, even with software improvements being completed, to provide more than a rudimentary analysis of incoming missile threats.
[For full text of the report, see http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-254]
[For highlights of the report, see http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d04254high.pdf]