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Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona wrote an op-ed for Military Space and Missile Forum magazine about FY10 missile defense spending. He says President Barack Obama’s new missile plan includes protection against shorter-range missiles. Although countries have more short- and medium-range missiles than long-range, there are missiles capable of reaching the U.S.

Franks reminds us that Iran and North Korea are bound and determined to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) capable of reaching our shores.

“And yet paradoxically, while all of these events are taking place, our Ground-Based Midcourse Defense element, the one and only system we have in place to defend the homeland of the United States from ICBMs, sustained a 35 percent cut over last year’s appropriated amount. In addition, the administration halted the number of interceptors being emplaced at 30, rather than the full 44, as had been planned.”

While the administration has shifted resources to shorter-range missiles, it fails to consider the lethality of long-range missiles. “It would take only one nuclear armed ICBM to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent Americans.”

To read the full text of Franks’s op-ed, download it here. (PDF)

 
Last week, President Barack Obama announced the nomination of missile defense critic Philip Coyle to become the administration’s Associate Director for National Security and International Affairs at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. (Source)

A former assistant secretary of defense and director of operational test and evaluation at the Pentagon, Coyle will advise the president on various scientific and national security issues. He called Bush-era testing on ballistic missiles “shoddy” and “thin” and disparaged the former president’s plan to deploy missile defense shields to Poland and the Czech Republic.

“In my view, Iran is not so suicidal as to attack Europe or the United States with missiles,” Coyle said. “But if you believe that Iran is bound and determined to attack Europe or America, no matter what, then I think you also have to assume that Iran would do whatever it takes to overwhelm our missile defenses, including using decoys to fool the defenses, launching stealthy warheads, and launching many missiles, not just one or two.”

Given these statements, Coyle obviously doesn’t believe Iran might have an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) by 2015. The U.S. is developing land-based SM-3 missiles to counteract this threat, but the target date for completion is 2020, five years after Iran’s possible ICBM capabilities.

Despite these projections, Coyle believes our country’s spending on missile defense isn’t justified.

As a vocal critic of Bush’s missile defense and supporter of Obama’s way of thinking, Coyle likely will breeze through the vetting process and take his place among the president’s team of appeasement-minded advisors.

Read more at the Foundry blog.

 
Last week, Vice President Joe Biden visited Poland and the Czech Republic, the first such visit to the region by a high-level official since the President Barack Obama dropped plans to deploy missile defense shields to those countries. The Heritage Foundation‘s Peter Brookes commented on the new missile defense shield plan proposed by the administration.

“In pulling the plug on the Bush missile-defense plan in Eastern Europe last month,” Brookes writes in the New York Post, “the White House came up with a new architecture based on a new evaluation of existing intelligence on the Iranian ballistic-missile threat…The Pentagon now insists Iran is moving faster on its short- and medium-range ballistic-missile programs than on its long-range ICBM effort, against which the Czech and Polish sites were aimed. (Of course, many experts think progress in one missile program supports another.)”

The new plan may protect Europe, but what about the Iranian threat to the U.S. and Israel? Land-based SM-3 missiles, designed to protect us and our ally, are in development. The target date for completion is 2020, but Iran could have an intercontinental ballistic missile by 2015.

“[T]he Obama administration thinks that if the Iranian ICBM comes online before the land-based SM-3s are developed and in place, the West Coast, Bush-era missile-defense sites give us some breathing room…Not really.”

Brookes notes that the “West Coast” system was created to protect us from North Korea, not Iran. Sites that would protect us from Iran (in Alaska and California) may not be adequate, especially since the administration reduced interceptors at those sites.

“That means there’s a gap in our defenses against an Iranian ICBM strike until the land-based SM-3s are operational, which, by the way, will almost certainly face funding and engineering-development challenges.”

Other problems with the new plan are cost, efficiency, and concerns that Russia will once again “negotiate” with the U.S. to curb development of another weapon.

“It’s…a good time to remind ourselves that the purpose of defense is to be technologically ahead of the threat, not behind it — which is where we’ll be if we’re not careful,” Brookes writes.

Read the full article at the New York Post.

 
While the Obama administration plays semantics games and underestimates Iran’s missile and nuclear capabilities, Pentagon officials say the U.S. is taking Iran’s long-range missile threat seriously.

In August, the National Air and Space Intelligence Center released a report that concluded Iran would have the capability to reach the U.S. by 2015. Pentagon officials testified before the House Armed Services Committee last week that the U.S. will have the capability to shoot down Iran’s long-range missiles. Ground-based missile interceptors will be deployed to the west coast in 2010. (Source)

Under its “defense umbrella,” the U.S. will deploy Aegis interceptor-equipped navy ships to the Mediterranean to help protect Israel, Iran’s prime target.

Lawmakers who oppose Obama’s defense plans contend that Iran’s intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) could threaten the U.S. and parts of western Europe. The president cut missile defense by $1.4 billion, which reduced ground-based interceptors to be deployed in Alaska and California from 44 to 30. Pentagon official Michele Flournoy said those 30 interceptors will “provide the United States with full protection of the homeland against an Iranian ICBM threat.”

Lieutenant General Patrick O’Reilly of the Missile Defense Agency echoed the sentiment.

The administration purports to have new intelligence showing Iran does not have a long-range missile and will not have one until 2015 at the earliest. When Bush was in office, the low end of the estimate was 2012. What if Obama is wrong?

Republican Rep. Howard McKeon, member of the House Armed Services Committee: “Let me simply say, I’m skeptical. Intelligence is a fickle business.”

Indeed, but Obama believes money and energy should be focused on shorter-range missiles, at the expense of longer-range protection. As we’ve said before, unless the administration knows something specific about Iran’s capabilities that hasn’t been reported in the media, there’s little reason to make assumptions that downplay Iran’s intentions.