[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 71 (Friday, June 9, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4918-S4920]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2001--Continued

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, when we were debating the authorization 
bill earlier this week, it had come to my attention that there would be 
an amendment offered dealing with the testing program of the National 
Missile Defense System and that some criticism was going to be cited in 
support of that amendment attributed to Mr. Ted Postol, who is a 
physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  That amendment has not yet been offered. We are now on the 
appropriations bill. I expect we will hear, during the debate on this 
bill, suggestions that we are either appropriating too much money for 
national missile defense or the program is flawed or in other ways 
criticism of this program on various--some imagined, some maybe real--
bases, complaining about the national missile defense appropriations 
and theater missile defense appropriations contained in this bill.
  I am rising today almost as a preemptive debate against these 
criticisms which I expect will be made by some Senators. They will use 
Mr. Ted Postol from MIT as the authority for their arguments. So I wish 
to give the Senate some background, particularly in view of the New 
York Times article this morning as an example of merchandising, again, 
of a lot of these arguments that have been made by Mr. Postol.
  On May 11, Mr. Ted Postol, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute 
of Technology, wrote to a number of Clinton administration officials 
claiming to have discovered evidence that the National Missile Defense 
system now being tested will be easily defeated by simple 
countermeasures, that the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization's own 
data proved this, and that BMDO and its contractors conspired to hide 
this information by tampering with flight test data. Mr. Postol also 
claimed that BMDO had altered the National Missile Defense flight test 
program in order to hide the truths he claimed to have discovered.
  Mr. Postol says he discovered the fatal weakness in the NMD system 
after studying BMDO data from Integrated Flight Test 1A, which was 
conducted in June, 1997, and was a test of a prototype kill vehicle 
built by the Boeing Company for the NMD interceptor missile. The test 
was not an attempt to destroy the target, but only to understand the 
seeker's performance. It was intended specifically to understand how 
well the infrared sensor on the kill vehicle performed, compared to 
expectations, when it encountered a target warhead and a number of 
decoys and other penetration aids.
  Mr. Postol contends that the results of Flight Test 1A showed that 
the NMD kill vehicle could not distinguish between a simple balloon 
decoy and an actual warhead, and that the entire test program, 
beginning with Integrated Flight Test 2, was restructured using far 
simpler targets to cover up this deficiency in the capacity of the 
vehicle to operate properly.
  This contention by Mr. Postol is just not true. The facts are that 
Flight Test 1A involved a kill vehicle built by the Boeing Company. 
Flight Test 2 was conducted with a kill vehicle built by Raytheon, and 
used exactly the same target complex as Flight Test 1A, contrary to Mr. 
Postol's claims. Simpler targets were used in Flight Tests 3 and 4 
because these tests had different objectives. Flight Tests 1A and 2 
were intended to characterize the performance of the competing seekers; 
Flight test 3 was the first attempt to intercept and destroy a target 
warhead. Just as testing of any new aircraft begins with a taxi test, 
then a simple takeoff and landing, the first NMD intercept testing 
began with a single warhead accompanied by a balloon decoy. Subsequent 
tests will become progressively more difficult, an approach which 
follows the recommendations of a panel of experts headed by retired Air 
Force Chief of Staff Larry Welch. In fact, the Welch panel recommended 
that the Defense Department attempt its first intercept without 
countermeasures of any kind, in order to begin the testing as simply as 
possible, but BMDO believed it was worth the risk to attempt a more 
complicated test.
  Mr. Postol appears to be unaware that the Boeing kill vehicle is no 
longer being used in the flight test program. The competing kill 
vehicle built

[[Page S4919]]

by Raytheon, which has independently developed software, was selected 
for the NMD system and has been used in every test since Flight Test 
1A.
  Mr. Postol claims to have discovered in the data from Flight Test 1A 
that--and I quote--``the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) will be 
defeated by the simplest of balloon decoys.'' The fact is that in 
Flight Test 3, on October 2, 1999, exactly the opposite happened, when 
the EKV disregarded a balloon decoy and successfully destroyed its 
target.
  This isn't the first time Mr. Postol has been notoriously wrong about 
our missile defense program. In 1994, when the United States was 
preparing to conduct the first flight test of its Theater High Altitude 
Area Defense--or THAAD--system, he and some of his colleagues at MIT, 
in an article in Arms Control Today, claimed to have demonstrated that 
theater missile defenses like THAAD would--and I quote--``almost 
certainly have significant capabilities against strategic RVs [reentry 
vehicles]'' and that any agreement permitting such capabilities would--
I quote--``significantly erode the ability of the ABM Treaty to control 
strategic defenses by allowing systems that could defend areas of tens 
of thousands of square kilometers.''
  As it turns out, in spite of that suggestion by Mr. Postol and his 
colleagues from MIT, even the government of Russia never complained 
about THAAD or similar systems which Mr. Postol said would so upset the 
strategic balance. And when other technical experts challenged his 
conclusions, Mr. Postol adopted the tactics of questioning the 
competence and integrity of his critics. A technical team under 
contract to the Defense Department reviewed Mr. Postol's THAAD findings 
and found they contained errors. Mr. Postol's response was to write a 
series of letters to government officials, accusing the technical team 
whose findings differed from his of ``spreading false and misleading 
information'' that ``impugns the scholarly reputation of myself and my 
colleagues.'' He accused the general officer heading the Ballistic 
Missile Defense Organization of mismanagement and of ``providing false 
information to members of the Russian Duma'' in an attempt to--in his 
words--``influence the Russian debate through subterfuge.'' Mr. Postol 
demanded that the Defense Department retract its study and issue a 
letter acknowledging its errors. DoD did none of this because they were 
right all along and it was Postol and his MIT colleagues who were wrong 
again.
  Two years later, in 1996, Mr. Postol's campaign against missile 
defenses had taken a new approach. In addition to arguing that systems 
like THAAD would undermine the Russian strategic deterrent, Mr. Postol 
argued that they would be easily defeated by countermeasures. He said 
in effect that U.S. TMD systems were so good that they would threaten 
the Russian strategic force and at the same time so bad that they could 
be easily defeated by even the simplest of countermeasures. Both those 
claims could not be true.
  Nonetheless, Mr. Postol continued to promote this argument, and 
created detailed drawings illustrating how an aspiring missile power 
might go about deploying countermeasures to U.S. defensive systems. 
These ideas were elaborated in an 80 page document which Mr. Postol 
distributed widely and which was eventually made available on the 
internet, so that anyone--including those who would benefit most from 
measures that could defeat U.S. weapon systems--could obtain it.
  The claims that Theater Missile Defenses would both threaten 
deterrence and at the same time be overwhelmed by simple 
countermeasures is now being made by Postol and his co-authors for 
National Missile Defense. He is arguing that any nation which can build 
a long-range ballistic missile can necessarily build in measures that 
will allow it to penetrate missile defenses.
  At the same time, these scientists believe, or say they believe, that 
deployment of a limited NMB system--even though they believe they can 
scientifically prove it will not work--will cause Russia to maintain 
higher force levels and China to construct a strategic buildup. All of 
this is contained in an elaborate, glossy, 175-page document which Mr. 
Postol and his colleagues have distributed widely.
  It is relatively easy to conceive of devices that are theoretically 
possible using scientific principles. The best science fiction employs 
just such an approach. But it is another thing altogether to transform 
those concepts from the realm of ideas into hardware. Actually 
engineering a complex device like a weapon system is far different from 
merely imagining it. For every idea that is transformed into hardware 
and subjected to the real world's trials, many others, thought up by 
smart people with Ph.D.s from the best universities, are discarded as 
impractical. Countermeasures are no less subject to this reality than 
are the weapon systems they are intended to frustrate. Imagining is one 
thing; designing, building and testing is quite another.
  Countermeasures aren't free. Every countermeasures which someone 
attempts to put on a ballistic missile costs real money. 
Countermeasures also consume weight and space, which mean lowered 
performance or less payload. Countermeasures introduce complexity, 
which means more things can go wrong and engineers must spend more time 
trying to ensure they go right. Engineers trying to perfect 
countermeasures are diverted from other activities they could be 
working on, such as extending a missile's range or improving its 
reliability. In short, successful pursuit of countermeasures means 
sacrificing something else, and some may not choose to make that 
sacrifice.
  Countermeasures are an issue that must be taken seriously by the 
designers of our missile defense systems. And, fortunately, they are. 
Whether the weapon is an artillery piece or a ballistic missile, it 
will have to confront efforts to counter it. In fact, missile defense 
is itself a countermeasure to the ballistic missile. Missile defense 
should not be abandoned because of the probability that someone will 
attempt to develop a countermeasure. The talented men and women of our 
National Missile Defense program--who are operating in the real world 
in which ideas must be translated into hardware that works--are 
anticipating and preparing for countermeasures. This is a point that 
has apparently been lost on Mr. Postol and his concerned colleagues, 
who would have us believe that new capabilities materialize because 
they can imagine them.
  I believe we are going to see more not less criticism as we move 
forward to implement the provisions of Public Law 106-38 and deploy our 
national missile defense system. Some of the critics have impressive 
academic credentials. Fortunately, however, people who are impressive 
experts in the design and construction of our modern weapons are 
working hard to carry out the mandates of our government to build 
missile defense systems that will protect our country and all our 
American citizens.
  An interesting article was published this week in the June 5 issue of 
National Review, written by John O'Sullivan, entitled ``By Winding 
Stair,'' which discusses missile defenses and its antagonists. This is 
an interesting article and is relevant to the subject I have discussed. 
I ask unanimous consent a copy of that article be printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                            By Winding Stair

                          (By John O'Sullivan)

       Although at a glacial speed, and obstructed at every stage 
     by the Clinton administration, America is moving steadily 
     toward the deployment of a national system of missile 
     defense. Public opinion has always been in favor of a 
     commonsense protection against missile attacks from rogue 
     states or accidental launches. Most Americans believe, 
     indeed, that they already enjoy such a defense and are 
     shocked when pollsters inform them otherwise. It was the 
     politicians who needed convincing.
       A growing sense of U.S. vulnerability led Congress to pass 
     legislation in May 1999 mandating the deployment of a limited 
     national missile-defense system as soon as technically 
     possible. President Clinton signed the legislation, though he 
     continues to drag his feet, insisting that a final decision 
     to deploy will not be made until later this year on the basis 
     of interceptor tests. Given that 2000 is an election year, 
     however, and that there is growing bipartisan support for a 
     decision to deploy, it looks a foregone conclusion.
       If this progress is a reminder of Bacon's dictum that ``all 
     rising to a great place is by winding stair,'' it is at least 
     spiraling in the right direction. But among America's NATO

[[Page S4920]]

     allies, a very different mood prevails. Europe as a whole has 
     not fundamentally rethought its view of missile defense since 
     the morning after Ronald Reagan's ``Star Wars'' speech, when 
     it collectively decided that such schemes were technically 
     impractical, strategically destabilizing, and a threat to 
     arms control. To these earlier criticisms it now adds 
     the post-Cold War complaint that an American decision to 
     build missile defenses would alienate the Russians. Thus, 
     Europeans on the NATO conference circuit regularly snipe 
     at the proposed U.S. missile defense.
       What is curious about this frozen attitude is not so much 
     that it neglects the new risks from rogue states as that it 
     ignores the fact that they especially threaten Europe. As 
     seasoned defense expert William Schneider Jr. points out: 
     ``Current developments will enable proliferators in the 
     Middle East and Asia to place all of Europe within range of 
     ballistic missiles [possibly armed with mass-destruction 
     warheads] within five years.'' And this threat is growing--
     with 36 nations possessing ballistic missiles, 17 nations 
     thought to have chemical- and/or biological-warfare programs, 
     8 nations certainly owning nuclear weapons, and 4 nations 
     believed to be ``of nuclear-proliferation concern.'' 
     Unfortunately for Europe, three of these last four are Iran, 
     Iraq, and Libya, all on the periphery of the continent.
       When such inconvenient facts are pointed out--and they 
     seldom are--Europeans take refuge in the argument that 
     deterrence will protect them against minor rogue states even 
     more securely than it did against the mighty Soviet Union. 
     Now, deterrence may well work for the major powers like 
     Russia and China, which have relatively stable political 
     establishments and a great deal to lose--though it has to 
     fail only once for disaster to occur. But there are a number 
     of reasons for doubting this assurance in other regards. In 
     the first place, deterrence cannot protect against accidental 
     launches, the danger of which increases with proliferation 
     among states that currently operate unsafe airlines. Nor can 
     it protect against a missile launched by a terrorist group 
     with no return address. Nor can it provide a cast-iron 
     defense against the miscalculation of a megalomaniac warlord.
       And there is a more subtle danger. Will European nations be 
     prepared to intervene to prevent the spread of Third World 
     conflicts if their intervention provokes threats to 
     retaliate with ballistic missiles? This danger is 
     discussed in ``Coming into Range,'' a report by the all-
     party Missile Proliferation Study Group in London. As it 
     points out, Britain's defense planners have rightly been 
     praised for their proposed creation of a Joint Rapid 
     Reaction Force, built around two new aircraft carriers. 
     The JRFF is intended to enable Britain to intervene 
     swiftly and in force around the globe, and it is doubtless 
     especially welcome to the Pentagon and the State 
     Department as both potential military assistance and 
     political cover. But the absence of a missile-defense 
     system covering Britain may render the force largely 
     useless. ``The reality,'' says the study group's report, 
     ``is that in the absence of protection the crisis might 
     literally come to us as the result of dispatching our 
     forces to the crisis and, that being so, no decision to 
     deploy those forces could be made.'' And if that is true 
     for Britain, which, like France, still retains a culture 
     of military patriotism, how much more likely it is that 
     largely debellicized nations like Germany and Belgium will 
     shrink from military actions that entail such heavy risks. 
     If Saddam Hussein had had long-range ballistic missiles 
     capable of hitting Berlin, Paris, and London in 1990, how 
     many European nations would have taken part in the Gulf 
     War?
       The implications of this for Europe are very serious. If no 
     Western power deploys missile defense, which is what the 
     Europeans now seem to want, then within a short time every 
     NATO member will be a potential target of nuclear, chemical, 
     or biological attack. Yet if only the U.S. has such a system, 
     that might lead to rogue states' threatening to strike at 
     European targets in retaliation for purely American military 
     interventions. In either event, Europeans would be hostages--
     and the present system of international relations that rests 
     ultimately on the West's willingness to use force would 
     gradually unravel. The logical solution would seem to be an 
     American-led worldwide system of missile defense organized 
     and deployed, at least in part, through NATO.
       Why do the Europeans not agitate for this? In part, no 
     doubt, the explanation is intellectual inflexibility. They 
     have been assuring the Americans for so long now, that ``Star 
     Wars'' is a pipe dream that they cannot easily bring 
     themselves to see that it has become a strategic necessity. 
     And since one thread of French foreign policy in recent years 
     has been to restrain what it sees as the overwhelming 
     ``hyper-power'' of the U.S., Paris instinctively opposes 
     anything that buttresses it. The unspoken objection to a 
     missile-defense system is that it would work.
       The Europeans' spoken, or admitted, objections are another 
     matter. One is that the continent's governments, especially 
     the Germans, have made arms control an unquestionable 
     desideratum of foreign policy. They are accordingly very 
     reluctant to endorse a policy that requires the rewriting or 
     abandonment of the ABM treaty. It would ease their 
     consciences if the Russians could be induced to go along with 
     any such renegotiation. But the Clinton administration called 
     off negotiations with Moscow on missile-defense cooperation 
     in its first term, and at present it seems to see Mr. Putin 
     as its ally against Congress on the issue. Both the Russians 
     and (therefore) the Germans can probably be won over by a 
     sufficiently determined president and a few sweeteners. But 
     that probably requires a new man in the White House.
       The other big problem is the nexus of money and the 
     European Security and Defense Policy. The ESDP is a non-
     solution to a non-existent problem. It has no military value, 
     but has the potential to divide the NATO alliance. In their 
     zeal for Euro-integration, the Europeans have committed 
     themselves to it, and the Americans, not wishing to confirm 
     the French stereotype of a hegemonic Uncle Sam, have 
     grudgingly gone along. Useless though it is, the ESDP will 
     cost money at a time when the Europeans have very little to 
     spare--indeed, the budgetary rules of the Maastricht treaty 
     actually prevent their increasing defense expenditure. So 
     there is great reluctance to consider any other program, in 
     particular anything as costly as a NATO missile defense, even 
     though, unlike the ESDP, it would actually provide Europe 
     with more defense.
       Of course, there are hopeful signs. Realization of their 
     vulnerability is finally beginning to dawn on the British--
     notably on defense secretary Geoff Hoon. Because the U.S. 
     wants to use British facilities such as the Fylingdales Early 
     Warning Station in its own system, London sees the prospect 
     of Anglo-American cooperation in return for military 
     contracts and a share of the anti-missile umbrella. And much 
     would change in NATO, as it did in 1981, if the next 
     president proved to be a determined advocate of missile 
     defense. After all, the Europeans have not been the only 
     skeptics. Missile defense has had to contend with a hostile 
     White House since 1993.

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, on behalf of the Chairman of the Budget 
Committee, who is necessarily absent, I submit his budget statement and 
scoring table on S. 2593, the Department of Defense appropriations 
bill.
  I support S. 2593, the Defense appropriations bill for fiscal year 
2001. As scored by the Congressional Budget Office without any further 
adjustments, the pending bill provides $287.6 billion in total budget 
authority and $178.9 billion in new outlays for the Department of 
Defense and related activities. When adjusted for outlays from prior 
years, the bill totals $277.2 billion in outlays.
  The bill, as reported, is consistent with the level of budget 
authority made available by the 2001 congressional budget resolution. 
It is also within the allocation of budget authority and outlays made 
available pursuant to section 302(b) of the Congressional Budget Act of 
1974.
  S. 2593 provides a 2.4 percent increase in overall procurement 
spending, a 4.5 percent increase in research and development, and a 0.4 
percent increase in Operations and Maintenance.
  I support this bill, and I urge its adoption. I want to complement 
the chairman of the Appropriations Committee for his work on this 
legislation.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a Senate Budget Committee 
table displaying the budget impact of this bill be placed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the table was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

  S. 2593, DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS, 2001--SPENDING COMPARISONS--SENATE-
                              REPORTED BILL
               [Fiscal year 2001, in millions of dollars]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                            General
                                            purpose  Mandatory    Total
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Senate-reported bill:
  Budget authority.......................   287,415        216   287,631
  Outlays................................   276,959        216   277,175
Senate 302(b) allocation:
  Budget authority.......................   287,415        216   287,631
  Outlays................................   279,578        216   279,794
2000 level:
  Budget authority.......................   268,605        209   268,814
  Outlays................................   261,933        209   262,142
President's request:
  Budget authority.......................   284,305        216   284,521
  Outlays................................   275,871        216   276,087
 
SENATE-REPORTED BILL COMPARED TO:
 
Senate 302(b) allocation:
  Budget authority.......................  ........  .........  ........
  Outlays................................    -2,619  .........    -2,619
2000 level:
  Budget authority.......................    18,810          7    18,817
  Outlays................................    15,026          7    15,033
President's request:
  Budget authority.......................     3,110  .........     3,110
  Outlays................................     1,088  .........     1,088
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: Details may not add to totals due to rounding. Totals adjusted for
  consistency with scorekeeping conventions.

  Mr. INOUYE. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.




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