5 December 2003
Experts sceptical of effectiveness of missile defence
Reporter: Rafael Epstein
abc.net.au

Former Assistant Secretary of Defence, Philip Coyle, says elements of the system being deployed next year have not been fully tested and the final project could cost US$1-trillion.

Rafael Epstein with this report.

RAFAEL EPSTEIN: Throughout the Clinton administration, Philip Coyle was director of Operational Tests and Evaluations for all US military systems. As Assistant Secretary of Defence he had a key political oversight role in assessing the value of missile defence.

He does not believe the US has anything to gain practically from Australia's involvement.

PHILIP COYLE: Say North Korea were to launch a missile towards the United States, Australia's not in the right place to see that. While it could certainly help to relay signals from other satellites, it's too far away to be able to see the first launch of an enemy missile in a place like North Korea.

RAFAEL EPSTEIN: At the most it's political advantage for the US in the region?

PHILIP COYLE: Yes, I suppose as these systems develop the participations will become more substantive, but right now everybody is just looking for ways that various countries can participate sort of on the margin, if you will.

RAFAEL EPSTEIN: Philip Coyle says it may be possible for one missile to hit another, but no tests have so far shown it's possible in battle-like conditions.

PHILIP COYLE: Pentagon briefings show what look like plexiglass domes covering the United States, and you are to visualise that enemy missiles would bounce off this dome like rain off of a windshield. If we could build a system like that, probably everybody would be in favour of it. The trouble is we don't know how to do that.

Most air defence systems are typically 25 or 30 per cent effective, and if we can do that well with missile defence that will be quite an accomplishment.

RAFAEL EPSTEIN: It sounds like it's zero per cent at the moment though.

PHILIP COYLE: That's about right, yes. You also have to worry about how your adversaries might respond. For example, currently today China only has about 20 intercontinental ballistic missiles that can reach the United States. If the United States is successful in building a missile defence system, China's logical response would be to build thousands of ICBMs so that they could overwhelm US defences.

RAFAEL EPSTEIN: Ted Postol is a professor of Security Studies at MIT in Boston. He was one of the first to point out the Patriot anti-missile systems used in Israel in 1991 did not work, and he was one of the first to point out Pentagon interceptor missiles still cannot tell the difference between decoys and real incoming missiles. So, he says, missile defence does not work even against the rogue state threat.

TED POSTOL: A single missile might be able to carry hundreds of decoys, potentially, and it's unrealistic to think of an adversary who has the capability to build ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads, after some period of time they'll produce a second missile and a third and so on, but I think it's unrealistic to assume that you're dealing with an adversary who only could fire a single missile.

RAFAEL EPSTEIN: So how would you sum up national missile defence and the system that it is?

TED POSTOL: There's really no sound reason to believe that this system will  ever work. This is a troublingly cynical attempt on the part of the current American administration to claim that it's defending people when in fact it has no chance of defending people.

DAVID HARDAKER: Ted Postol, Professor of Science, Technology and National Security at MIT in Boston. Rafael Epstein with that report.