ACCESSION NUMBER:281810
FILE ID:POL204
DATE:05/04/93
TITLE:PENTAGON SEEKS IMPROVED THEATER MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM (05/04/93)
TEXT:*93050404.POL
PENTAGON SEEKS IMPROVED THEATER MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM

(O'Neill says SDI focus no longer space-based)  (660)
By Paul Malamud
USIA Staff Writer
Washington -- The SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) program is alive and
well, but it is focusing for now on ground-based rather than space-based
systems, says Major General Malcolm O'Neill, acting director of the
Strategic Defense Initiative Organization.

O'Neill spoke to a Senate Armed Services subcommittee May 4 in support of a
requested $3,800 million for SDI in fiscal 1994, which is about $40 million
less than was appropriated in FY '93.

"Acquisition of improved theater missile defense" is the Pentagon's first
priority and "the development program for a Limited National Defense"
ground-based anti-missile system is second, he said.

The space-based interceptor program known as "Brilliant Pebbles," he said,
has been recast and stripped of most funding by the Clinton administration,
so it is now little more than a research effort.

"Our fiscal year 1994 effort keeps theater missile defenses on the schedule
demanded by the threat," O'Neill said, but "slips the option for deployment
of a limited national missile defense capability from 2002 to no sooner
than 2004."

He said that "global proliferation of ballistic missile technology and
weapons of mass destruction has become one of the most immediate and
dangerous threats" to U.S. survival.

According to O'Neill, "more than a dozen countries have ballistic missiles,
and more have programs in place to develop them."  He added that "dramatic
political changes could betray weaknesses in Moscow's command and control
system for their nuclear forces that neither we nor the Russians could have
anticipated."
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In addition, O'Neill warned, "ballistic missiles will be used in future
regional conflicts as they were most recently during the Persian Gulf War."

He said the Pentagon wants to "move as quickly as possible to develop
advanced wide-area theater missile defenses" using "an upper-tier...system
to intercept theater ballistic missiles at high altitudes" as well as "a
lower-tier system capable of handling short-range missiles" that are missed
at higher altitudes or underfly the upper tier.  Some of these
capabilities, he explained, can be achieved by improving existing systems.

O'Neill said the upper-tier part of the system, Theater High Altitude Area
Defense (THAAD), might be available in prototype form by the middle of the
decade.  He said that after the year 2000, the development of advanced
"space-based sensors, such as 'Brilliant Eyes' for missile tracking, can
significantly enhance the coverage of both lower and upper tier theater"
defenses.

The National Missile Defense (NMD) program schedule "retains the option of
developing for deployment an ABM Treaty-compliant defense of the
continental United States in 2004," he said, adding that Brilliant Eyes
tracking would be essential to this program to help ground-based
interceptors "provide full coverage of the continental United States."

Such a system, he said, may be able to provide "coverage against limited
strikes from China, the former Soviet Union...bastion-based submarines, and
anywhere in the Middle East."  However, he said, "to obtain full coverage
of the entire United States...additional ground-based interceptor sites
that are presently prohibited by the 1972 ABM treaty will be required."

Asked why U.S. allies aren't helping to pay for these systems, which may
well be used in their defense, O'Neill pointed out that the U.S. government
is working on such a system with Israel, and that nation is contributing
funding and research.

He also emphasized that the anti-missile defenses will protect U.S. troops
in combat, noting, "We took 20 percent of our casualties in Desert Storm
from a single tactical ballistic missile."  Putting theater missile
defenses on naval vessels will also help protect U.S. forces on the ground,
he said.

The administration is undertaking a "comprehensive review" of the SDI
program and its relationship to the ABM treaty, O'Neill said.

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