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STATEMENT
OF
PAUL WOLFOWITZ
DEPUTY SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
BEFORE
THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE
MILITARY PROCUREMENT AND MILITARY RESEARCH AND
DEVELOPMENT JOINT HEARING ON MISSILE DEFENSE
JUNE 27, 2002
Chairman
Hunter, Chairman Weldon, Members of the
Committee, thank you for the opportunity to
appear before you to discuss our Missile Defense
Program. Your
committee has been a strong supporter of this
program in the past and we look forward to your
continuing support as we work through the FY03 National Defense Authorization Act.
Today,
I would like to provide a brief update on our
missile defense policy as a backdrop to General
Kadish's testimony. But first, I would like to
take a moment to reiterate Secretary
Rumsfeld's concerns about the missile defense
provisions in the Senate version of the bill.
General Kadish will be prepared to
address these issues in more detail.
Let
me begin by commenting on yesterday's action
by the Senate.
The current Senate version of the
authorization bill would permit the President to
apply up to $814 million in inflation savings to
the missile defense program to offset the cuts
by the Armed Services Committee.
However, should those inflation savings
not materialize, it would severely delay the
fielding of a contingency capability against
emerging medium and long-range ballistic missile
threats and cripple our efforts to development
boost-phase defenses.
If those inflation savings are not
available, it could also force the lay off of
hundreds of people -- the bulk of them engineers
- and thereby adversely affect our ability to
attract and retain the finest minds of our
nation to address one of its greatest
technological challenges and field an effective
system at the earliest possible date.
The
Senate bill continues to impose a number of
burdensome statutory restrictions that would
undermine our ability to manage the program
effectively, divert management attention away
from critical program execution, and result in
further unnecessary delays.
We will continue to provide Congress with
all the information necessary to perform its
oversight function.
Such statutory restrictions are
unnecessary in light of the steps we have
already taken to increase accountability and
oversight over the missile defense
program.
To
succeed in missile defense we have streamlined
oversight - the Director of MDA will regularly
and frequently brief the Senior Executive
Council, which is chaired by myself and includes
the Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology
and Logistics, and the Service Secretaries.
The Services and other oversight
organizations, including the test community,
have full access into the program and provide
advice to the SEC on a regular basis.
The end result will be faster decision
cycles while maintaining the highest standards
of oversight.
Let me underscore that we remain
committed to working with Congress and sharing
all relevant information to allow you to fulfill
your oversight responsibilities.
For
these reasons, if missile defense reductions and
restrictions are included in the version of the
bill adopted by Congress, the President's
senior advisors will recommend that he veto the
bill.
Six
months ago, the president announced our
intention to withdraw from the 1972 ABM treaty.
The President took this step as part of a
broader change in our defense policy to reflect
new threats we face along with the fundamentally
different relationship we have with Russia
today. Earlier
this month, that withdrawal formally took place.
As a result, we are now free to develop,
test and deploy effective defenses against
missile attacks from rogue states like North
Korea, Iraq, and Iran - states that are
investing a large percentage of their resources
to develop weapons of mass destruction and
offensive ballistic missiles at the expense of
the basic needs of their people.
The
scope of this growing threat to the U.S. and our
allies and friends is compounded by the fact
that the states that are developing these terror
weapons have close links to a variety of
terrorist organizations.
States or even non-state actors could use
container ships to launch shorter-range missiles
against our territory.
As the president stated in his State of
the Union Address, we must not allow the
world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us
with the world's most dangerous weapons.
In
response to this new strategic environment, the
president called for a new approach to
deterrence that reduces our reliance on
offensive nuclear weapons and emphasizes
defensive systems. The Nuclear Posture Review
(NPR) further underscored the point that relying
solely on offensive nuclear forces is
inappropriate for deterring potential
adversaries.
As the president stated, "Cold War
deterrence is no longer enough.
To maintain peace, to protect our own
citizens and our allies and friends, we must
seek security based on more than the grim
promise that we can destroy those who seek to
destroy us."
Moving
forward on missile defense, particularly by
taking advantage of new technological
opportunities, is an essential part of a
strategy to provide the range of capabilities
necessary to defend against the broad spectrum
of new threats and challenges we will confront
in the 21st century.
In short, by reducing an opponent's
incentives to seek or use missiles, defenses can
contribute to our goals of deterring missile
attack, dissuading opponents from acquiring
missiles, assuring our allies and friends
against missile threats, and defeating limited
attacks in the event of conflict.
With
the ABM Treaty now behind us, our task is to
develop and deploy effective defenses against
the full range of missile attacks - whether
from short, medium, or long range weapons.
Indeed, the president is committed to
developing and deploying a missile defense
system as soon as possible to protect the
American people, our deployed forces, as well as
allies and friends against the growing missile
threats we face.
We
will continue to move forward with a robust
research, development and testing program that
is designed to take advantage of new
technologies and basing modes.
Recent tests provide a foundation on
which to proceed.
Development and testing will continue,
but we will also begin to deploy effective
layered defenses against limited missile attack.
Just a few weeks ago, we broke ground in
Alaska on silos to house missile defense
interceptors.
These silos, to be completed in 2004, are
part of a missile defense test bed that could
also give us, for the first time, a limited
emergency capability to protect our country
against ballistic missile attack in a crisis.
Over time we hope to improve these initial
defenses, building additional silos there and
possibly in other locations for operational
deployment of ground-based interceptors.
Sea-based missile defenses and a
prototype Airborne laser are also capabilities
we could look forward to by mid-decade.
And we are moving forward with our
efforts to field defenses to deal with
shorter-range missile threats.
As
these emerging long-range missile threats also
endanger our allies and friends around the
world, it is essential that we work together to
defend against them, an important task the ABM
Treaty prohibited.
The strategic rationale for providing
missile defense protection to our allies was
clearly stated by Secretary Rumsfeld in his
remarks at the NATO Defense Ministerial earlier
this month: "Rogue states capable of
delivering WMD to Western capitals could make
building future coalitions against aggression
difficult, if not impossible."
NATO's
Defense Ministers noted, in turn, in their June
Statement on Capabilities, that "there is
currently an alliance consensus on the need to
deploy theater missile defenses to protect our
deployed forces," and that "Alliance
territory and population centers may also face
an increasing missile threat."
As a result, Defense Ministers concluded
"the Alliance needs to examine options for
addressing this increasing threat in an
effective and efficient way through an
appropriate mix of political and defense
efforts."
The
U.S. will be working with its NATO allies to
explore options for providing protection for
alliance territory and forces against the full
range of missile threats.
In July, an interagency team will visit
NATO capitals for detailed discussions on
missile defense, to include ways in which allied
countries can participate in our missile defense
program. Similar
consultations will be held with our Asian allies
and friends.
The
end of the ABM Treaty also marks an historic
milestone in our strategic relationship with
Russia. We
are finally moving beyond the Cold War.
We no longer have a treaty that divides
us by assuming that our security is derived from
our ability to destroy each other.
Instead, the U.S. and Russia are building
a new relationship based on common interests and
values, rather than the threat of mutual
destruction.
Nothing
reinforces this point more than the
accomplishments of the Moscow Summit last May,
particularly the reductions in strategic nuclear
forces. Just
as important, perhaps, is that President Putin
and President Bush agreed to look for ways to
cooperate on missile defenses, including
expanding military exercises, sharing early
warning data, and exploring potential joint
research and development of missile defense
technologies.
When
President Bush emphasized moving forward on
missile defense and a new strategic framework
with Russia in May 2001, some predicted dire
consequences for U.S.-Russian relations and the
start of a new arms race. In fact, the opposite
occurred. As
a result of hard work and determination on both
sides, relations with Russia - and between
Russia and our NATO allies - are entering a
new a promising era. We have agreed to cooperate
on a host of economic, political, and security
issues of common interest, including missile
defense. And
we have agreed to reduce our offensive forces to
the lowest levels in decades.
The
U.S. has now departed from these Cold War
artifacts -- the ABM Treaty and the balance of
terror -- and adopted a new approach to
deterrence and defense, and established a
cooperative strategic relationship with Russia. Further, we have fostered a security environment and good
relations with allies and friends that now allow
us to make substantial progress on the
programmatic side of our missile defense program
as represented by our budget priorities.
We need to seize this historic
opportunity if we are to meet new challenges and
make the word a safer place for all.
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