OK, so now we know that the antimissile defense system that we
spent $120 billion on over the past 40 years doesn't work, never has,
never will. But that doesn't mean that the president should hesitate to
throw even more money at defense contractors--why break with tradition?
We merely need to lower our expectations for the program's success and
not be overly critical of progress reports that are faked.
The Pentagon's efforts to shoot down a missile in space are inevitably
rigged because the damn things move so fast and it will always be just
too difficult to detect decoy balloons, which disguise the target from
the real thing. The latest debunking analysis, by Theodore A. Postol of
MIT, confirms the story of decades of anti-missile system failures: The
tests only work when the testers cheat.
The Pentagon responded by slapping a "secret" classification on
Postol's letter to the White House summarizing his findings, even though
it was based on data publicly revealed in a whistle blower's lawsuit
against a defense contractor designing the antiballistic missile. Postol,
a highly respected critic of the program, said that the Pentagon "is most
likely attempting to illegally use the security and classification system
to hide waste, fraud and abuse." So, what else is new?
But just because an ABM system never will be capable of protecting us
from enemy missiles is no reason for the president not to agree to spend
an additional $60 billion on the project, as he is considering doing. If
the standard is only to fund weapons systems that can fulfill a useful
purpose, then we would eliminate 90% of the military procurement
industry. For example, we could hardly have justified building the B-2
stealth bombers designed to penetrate Soviet radar, at $2 billion apiece,
long after both the Soviets and their radar ceased to exist.
How sad for the high-tech defense industry that we have no high-tech
enemies left. Russia has a crumbling nuclear force, prone to theft, and
building an ABM system only diverts them from the task of getting rid of
weapons they can no longer properly maintain. Messing with the ABM also
screws up the nonproliferation and test ban treaties, which are the only
hope of getting the nuclear genie back in the bottle. Our potential
enemies these days are called "rogue nations," or "terrorists," precisely
because they are military primitives who don't have the slightest hope of
surviving a frontal nuclear attack on the U.S. We have 6,000 nuclear
warheads, on reliable solid-fuel rockets, on hair-trigger alert to slam
back at any nation that dares fire on us, and even China, the bete noir
of the moment, has only 20 liquid-fueled missiles. And its missiles
require an embarrassing 24 hours to assemble and are easily spotted by
our satellites, providing ample warning to destroy them on the ground.
As for those like Iraq or some stateless terrorist group, why would it
use an intercontinental missile to drop a nuclear bomb on us? To launch
such a weapon would telegraph where the attack originated, inviting an
obliterating response. Much better to smuggle nuclear explosives across
the Mexican border hidden in the bales of marijuana that daily enter our
country by the truckload.
With the end of the Soviet Union, the enemy is no longer high-tech
competitive, and our defensive systems have to be ratcheted down to deal
with the threat of low-tech nuts. Remember that the most devastating
attack recently on U.S. soil was that fertilizer bomb in Oklahoma City.
But designing defenses against future fertilizer bombings is not as
glamorous or profitable as pretending to shoot down missiles that don't
exist in outer space.
We therefore must find a new justification for subsidizing defense
contractors that admits its true purpose--to create profit and jobs for
the military-industrial complex. Those profit-makers give campaign
contributions in huge amounts, and their workers do vote.
What I propose is not ending such subsidies but rather using them to
encourage more fruitful work. A long list of better projects for defense
contractors quickly comes to mind, beginning with the safe destruction of
the world's supply of existing nuclear weapons and weapons grade materiel
and hiring unpaid Russian nuclear scientists lest any be tempted to sell
their expertise to the bad guys. After that, the defense industry could
set to work producing a really good electric car.
But in any case, the president could assure the defense contractors
that they will get their federal dollars as a subsidy for not trying to
produce a destabilizing ABM system the same way we pay farmers not to
grow unwanted crops.
Copyright 2000 Los Angeles Times
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