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30 January 2006 |
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Editor's note: The following is reporter Sam Bishop's first-person account of playing a missile defense war game with other reporters courtesy of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency and Republican Sen. Wayne Allard of Colorado. The presentation is designed to show people a video-game-like version of how the missile defense system operates. WASHINGTON--My apologies to the good folks who operate the Cobra Dane radar at Eareckson Air Station, and to the seals, birds and other occupants of Shemya Island near the far western end of Alaska's Aleutian chain. In a missile defense war game last week, I let them be obliterated by a nuclear warhead. I played "Mr. President" in the game, an exercise brought to the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., courtesy the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency and Republican Sen. Wayne Allard, a missile defense booster from Colorado. Tuesday morning was for media; the rest of the week was for members of Congress and staff. The presentations in the Dirksen building began two weeks in advance of President Bush's presentation of his annual budget proposal to Congress. Asked whether the presentation was designed to shore up waning support for the missile program, retired Vice Admiral David Frost said "not at all." Frost, a consultant to the missile agency, led the pre- and post-exercise discussions. "Our objective here is simply to increase the understanding of how the system operates," Frost said. "I know you all know this, but we're on the verge of making some degree of operational readiness of new capabilities, really powerful new capabilities, and that's why we're doing this now." Still, within both his introduction and the "hotwash" he led afterward, Frost prompted participants to think about how the U.S. defensive strategy changes with a missile defense system. And without. "One important thing is that Congress here spent a lot of money on missile defense so far, and part of its value, maybe even the largest part of its value, is its deterrence value," Frost said. "We hope to make it clear to other countries that it's sort of pointless to attack us. This game is not focused on that. I only mention that because it's important to remember that. We hope that the scenario that you are going to play never happens." I hope so, too, because if it did, Alaskans would have one incinerated 4-mile-long island. And I'd feel somewhat responsible, even though my actions as "Mr. President" in the war game were little more than acknowledgements of split-second decisions made by others on the front-line computers. Whether the missile defense system now protects or will ever protect Alaska from a nuclear warhead is a matter of debate, though. "Any president that relied on this missile defense system for national security decisions is relying on a chimera, on a mirage," said John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World, when I asked him about whether the war game exercise offered any useful strategic insights. While military developers acknowledge the system is not complete, critics such as Isaacs say the challenge of discriminating between real and decoy warheads is so great that the multi-billion dollar system may never make any meaningful contribution to U.S. security. "It must be noted that knowledgeable scientists doubt that the problem of mid-course discrimination can be solved effectively in the near term, if ever," the Washington, D.C.-based council states in its summary of the issue. Supporters, though, say the nation must try. "Until we have a system like this, we are completely vulnerable," said Riki Ellison, founder of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance. "We want it now, we want it in the ground, we want it to defend us." By creating a barrier against attack on the United States, Ellison told me, the system will discourage other countries from even trying to build more offensive missiles. The system can't do that yet, he acknowledged, so he believes Congress needs to keep the money flowing until it does. "Until that point, we are not in a position to deter proliferation of these weapons," he said. The scenario The proliferation of such weapons was one of the assumptions underlying our war game Tuesday. The game featured a fictional country called Midland set in the Sea of Japan, between that country and the Korean Peninsula, with five to seven nuclear-tipped missiles capable of reaching the U.S. Midwest and a willingness to use them. The geography was no accident. Sen. Allard, in his introduction, said nearby North Korea has nuclear missiles that could threaten the United States. "I believe we all have come to the conclusion that there is a technology out there where they can reach our coast in the United States," he said, adding that his assessment was based on testimony to congressional committees. Not all believe this ability exists, but even some skeptics of missile defense, such as Isaac's Council for a Livable World, acknowledge the possibility could arise. "In mid-September 2003, it was reported that North Korea probably is developing a ballistic missile with a range of some 9,000 miles, similar to the three-stage missile tested in 1998, which could reach targets throughout the U.S.," the council notes on its Web site. Frost, for his part, said the game's parameters were "close to real." "The systems you are going to play with today are either in the field or on the way to being in the field this year," he said. The systems included not only 10 long-range interceptors, eight of which now wait in place at Fort Greely southeast of Fairbanks, but also 80 short-range Patriot interceptors stationed in South Korea and Japan. An Aegis ship near Japan, the USS Lake Erie, carried eight short-range interceptors--Standard Missile 3s. Radars operated in Japan, on Shemya Island and on a converted oil drilling platform floating in the mid-Pacific Ocean. About a dozen reporters and editors sat at cubicles decorated to convey a sense of their locations. Camouflage fabric hung over the Patriot bunker in South Korea. A glowing ship's light, wrapped in a protective wire cage, stuck out from the Lake Erie cubicle wall. Posters depicting various radar and computer faces adorned the cubicle walls. They even had a fire extinguisher. All desks featured a large computer screen with continents of the world outlined in green. A mouse allowed participants to zoom in, out and around, like a simplified Google Earth. The screens represented the end point on the yet-to-be-finished "Command Control Battle Management Communications" system, which will not only collect and deliver information from all the radars and satellites but also allow controllers to fire missiles in response. Brig. Gen. Robert Dehnert, director of "C2BMC," told us the real system would start using information from the sea-based X-band radar this year and would have globally integrated "fire control" by the end of 2007. The screen started to glow red over Midland shortly after we all sat down. Missiles were rising. At first, they were short-rangers, headed for Korea and Japan. Patriot missiles from our bases and Japan's rose to meet them, eventually catching 41 of 42. A few minutes after the short-rangers launched, seven long-range missiles headed out from Midland, pointed at Fort Greely, Shemya Island, Hawaii, Los Angeles and three other military bases in the continental United States. The battle In my position as president, I wore a headphone connected to a box that allowed me to hear the secretary of defense, the U.S. regional commanders and a few other top players as they reacted. I flipped a switch when I wanted to say something, but that didn't happen much. Most of the fire decisions seemed to occur without much input from my position, in accordance with pre-set plans. Not all went according to plan or according to orders, though, said Bill Gertz of The Washington Times, who was acting as director of the Missile Defense Element under the Northern Command in Colorado. He said he initially ordered that two interceptors chase the missile headed toward Hawaii because he was advised that if one missed, there wouldn't be time to send another. However, somehow two interceptors were also launched at each missile approaching Fort Greely and Los Angeles, he said. So within moments, nine of our 10 interceptors were in the air. "That used up more of the resource," Gertz said later of the bungled orders. It also set up Shemya for toasting. "I decided to let the one go (to Shemya) because if for some reason there was another missile that they hadn't launched, at least we'd have one (interceptor) left," he said. "That was a gray area." In the end, it wasn't clear whether we could have caught that missile headed for Shemya anyway. By the time Gertz' decision came to me, and perhaps even by the time he was weighing it, it was too late. The one interceptor left at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California was too far from the Aleutains to catch the Midland missile in time. "The understanding that we were given was that there was no opportunity, that it couldn't be launched," said Andrea Shalal-Esa, a Reuters reporter who played the Northcom commander. "I think that was true almost immediately," said Vice Adm. Frost. So I, as president, simply concurred in the decision not to fire the Vandenberg interceptor, and then I listened as the commanders confirmed a nuclear strike on the island a few minutes later. The hotwash Frost, summing up afterward, said he hoped the exercise showed two things. First, decisions are better made if operators can train on the system. "The second take-away is that it would have been nicer to start with 20 defensive missiles instead of 10," he said. "Then you could have shot two at everything and seen what happened." Frost also asked me a question that I found difficult to answer, as a reporter charged with maintaining an objective exterior. "I suppose it's worth asking, Mr. President, what are your options if you were thrown into this situation if you didn't have the defense at all, like a couple years ago. Now what are your options?" Frost asked. I groped for words, seeing immediately the potential for such a question to betray my personal view of the wisdom of a missile defense system. "Well, you, I mean, you presumably you watch to see what happens and try to focus on warning people the extent that you can," I said, offering the most non-judgmental statement I could muster. "Yes, and the only other option you have is to attack first, get them on the ground before they fly," Frost said. That didn't seem to be an option in this scenario, I said. Northcom commander Shalal-Esa, however, said it actually was. We had a few minutes after the launch of the short-range missiles where we could have fired on Midland's long-range silos, she said. It simply hadn't occurred to me. History might judge me harshly as a commander-in-chief. The advocates I summarized our war game for both the pro-missile defense Ellison and the skeptical Isaacs, asking each whether such exercises would be useful for congressional decision-makers. Isaacs noted that the Defense Department's own testing office and the Congressional Research Service have both recently said there is no way to know how effective the system is because there has been no realistic testing. "I can't say one-in-seven or six-in-seven is correct. Nor can the Pentagon," Isaacs said. "Any simulation like this is based on fantasy as opposed to reality ... The exercise is a phony exercise, no better than a computer game." He said the demonstrations to Congress last week were most likely designed to rally backers at a time when the missile defense's $9 billion annual budget is crowding other defense spending priorities. "The program is in serious trouble and the Pentagon needs to retain support," he said. "The exercise is designed to make people think it's a workable system." It's just the latest example of the well-funded program using public money to lobby for itself, he said. A few years ago, the agency produced a missile defense coloring book to promote its work, he said. Ellison, however, said he doesn't think the war games were intended to influence funding decisions. "The threat drives the funding for this," he said. "If there was no threat then there would be no funding." Nor do such games seek to demonstrate a working system to skeptical members of Congress, he said. The games simply show them the kinds of systems the public's money has provided and what kind of systems might still be needed, he said. Ellison, who participated in a missile defense war game about a year ago, said he felt the experience illustrated the complexity of the challenges remaining. "We don't have this system that can work today," he said. "This should be an eye-opening exercise. The issue here is we are completely vulnerable. We aren't completely, 24-hour operational." Whether the missile defense system can ever end that vulnerability, and, if so, at what cost, will remain questions for members of Congress as they begin another year. Washington, D.C., reporter Sam Bishop can be reached at (202) 662-8721 or sbishop@newsminer.com .
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