Politics

Full Steam Ahead On Space Warfare

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

July 12, 2001 / 10:32 AM EDT / CBS

The Bush administration outlined details of an aggressive program to develop missile defenses, including new test facilities in Alaska that would be developed next year and built in 2003.

Meanwhile, the State Department has notified its diplomats around the world that tests of a U.S. anti-missile system soon will come in conflict with a 1972 treaty with Moscow.

The Pentagon has scheduled for Saturday its first flight test in a year of interceptors designed to shoot down long-range missiles. An attempt last July failed.

The tests, a 14-page memorandum to all U.S. diplomatic posts said, "will come into conflict with the ABM treaty in months, not years."

"The world has changed fundamentally and the rationale for Cold War arrangements no longer exists," says the memorandum sent to U.S. embassies and consulates July 3.

In Washington Thursday, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the Senate Armed Services Committee that in pursuing missile defense the administration expected to "bump up" against the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty "in months rather than in years."

But before that he expected the United States to reach agreement with Russia, the other party to the 1972 arms control treaty, so that Washington could avoid violating the treaty but at the same time "move beyond it."

At the same hearing Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, head of the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, said the new test facilities the administration is planning would make use of early warning radars at Beale Air Force Base in California and Cobra Dane at Shemya Island in Alaska, and use Alaska's Kodiak Launch Facility to launch targets and interceptors.

"The test bed will also include up to five ground-based silos at Fort Greely, Alaska. We anticipate a prototype ground support capability, to include launch facilities, sensors and networked communications, will be developed in FY 2002 and built in FY 2003," he said in a statement to the committee. The U.S. financial year begins in October.

The chairman, Sen. Carl Levin, has been skeptical of the technical feasibility of a missile defense. The Michigan Democrat was expected to press for more reviews before implementing a missile defense system.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, meantime, planned to address a Congress conference Thursday on missile defense, focusing on what he and others argue are new missile threats from smaller states antagonistic to the United States.

Deployment of an interim ground-based system in Alaska could be completed as early as 2004, said the unclassified memorandum.

Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman, confirmed that "we have given to our embassies basic arguments on the need for a new strategic framework, for moving beyond the strategies of the Cold War."

Bush has called the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia a relic of the Cold War. It bans deployment in any state except North Dakota of a U.S. shield against long-rang missiles.

Russian President Vladimir Putin opposes setting aside the treaty and has warned it could touch off a new nuclear arms race. He has suggested negotiations to reduce U.S. and Russian arsenals.

Many U.S. allies are skeptical or noncommittal of the Bush administration's aspirations.

On Wednesday, Britain's foreign secretary, Jack Straw, agreed with Bush's assessment of a growing nuclear danger in the world. But he signaled on a visit to Washington that his government intends to withhold a judgment on an anti-missile system while the administration weighs its options.