A soon-to-be-released Pentagon study says expanding the Navy's Aegis ship-based missile defense system to protect all 50 states would cost $16 billion to $19 billion, much more than the figure put forward by advocates of the idea.

Although some early supporters of the Navy system said it could be fielded for as little as $2 billion to $4 billion by expanding the existing Aegis infrastructure, a study by the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) shows "it will not be the quick, cheap or easy solution that some outside advocates may have advertised," the BMDO director, Air Force Lt. Gen. Lester L. Lyles, told Congress this week.

The Clinton administration recently decided to push ahead with a limited national missile defense system, promising a presidential decision on deployment next year and adding $6.6 billion in future funding to next year's budget. Although the administration is focused on a ground-based system, some members of Congress and outside groups have pressed instead for expansion of the Aegis system as a quicker, cheaper approach.

But the BMDO study points out that the Aegis system has a severe limitation beside cost. Because its radars to detect missile launches are aboard Navy cruisers and destroyers, the system must be provided "sufficient warning of the impending attack to deploy within a few hundred kilometers of the threat launch location or the specific area to be defended," according to Lyles.

A major part of the high cost of a nationwide sea-based system arises from the need to build three new Aegis-type vessels so there can be ship rotation. But the high cost also comes from the price of the newest planned sea-based Standard missile interceptors that would be carried on each ship. Without these upgrades, the Aegis system "would have no useful capability against intercontinental ballistic missiles or submarine-launched ballistic missiles," the report concludes.

The BMDO study was conducted "without consideration of, and without prejudice to, the terms and requirements of the ABM Treaty," Lyles said. The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty specifically bars sea-based systems and the Clinton administration is seeking to develop and test a land-based system that will comply with the treaty, although deployment might require treaty modifications.

A Heritage Foundation missile defense study team in 1996 recommended modifying the Aegis to intercept incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles. A 1997 update of that notion was picked up by several members of Congress. Heritage President Edwin J. Feulner Jr. said last year that "by the year 2003, the United States could mount an effective, mobile missile defense that would protect all 50 states as well as American troops abroad and the territory of America's allies, all for an estimated $1.5 billion to $2 billion per year over five years."

The BMDO report does say that the unmodified Aegis system could meet another potential third-country threat to the United States -- that of cruise missiles from ships or submarines near the coast. Even without upgrades, the Aegis system "could have a capability against shorter-range threats attacking U.S. coastal targets," according to the report.

Lyles said the study concludes that "the most practical and effective role" for a sea-based Aegis system "would be to supplement" a land-based ballistic missile defense system. He added that such an approach is not yet contemplated and would require additional funding.

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