Where you stand depends on where you sit. That’s the only conclusion we can draw from Gen. Trey Obering’s commentary defending the Missile Defense Agency’s (MDA’s) approach to protecting the American people from ballistic missile attack.

In his July 23 comments, Obering ridicules critics who advocate different operational concepts for American defense and appears to equate them with those who oppose missile defense entirely.

We object. We fall into the camp that believes the U.S. administration’s missile defense programs can be improved, with the same or even less funding, to better defend the American people as well as our deployed troops and allies.

For the past several years, we have served on the Independent Working Group, a nonpartisan panel of experts committed to building a truly capable defense against ballistic missile attack. Our 2007 report, “Missile Defense, the Space Relationship, & the Twenty-First Century” (accessible at http://www.ifpa.org/pdf/IWGreport.pdf), praised the Bush administration’s contributions to the deployment of a ballistic missile defense system, chief among them its courageous decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002.

But we also asserted that the growing number and sophistication of ballistic missile threats arrayed against the United States require “the deployment of a system capable of constant defense against a wide range of threats in all phases of flight: boost, midcourse and terminal.”

And we argued that, beyond the initial two ground-based interceptor sites in Alaska and California, the Pentagon should focus on building more cost-effective sea-based and space-based defenses.

The Pentagon has stopped far short of this mark, however. Instead of fielding a layered system of ground-, sea- and space-based defenses to provide multiple opportunities to destroy incoming missiles, the so-called “balanced” approach described by Obering focuses overwhelmingly on ground-based midcourse defenses, places insufficient emphasis on sea-based missile defenses and grossly neglects space defenses.

This choice is baffling. For less than 10 percent of the MDA’s $10 billion-per-year budget, the Navy has amassed an impressive test record: nine successful intercepts in 11 attempts with its SM-3 interceptor (10 for 12 if the Navy’s successful test of its SM-2 Block 4 is also counted).

Impressive indeed, compared with the five-for-10 record of the Alaska ground-based interceptor system — especially if we recognize that six Aegis ships are deployed today in the Pacific with this intercept capability.

The good news is that we have a growing number of Aegis ships at sea able to shoot down short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. The bad news is that Obering has not seen fit to give the ships already protecting Japan an ability to shoot down long-range ballistic missiles as they rise out of North Korea and head toward America.

At a price tag of just $25 million for software fixes, investing in this expanded capability is something of a no-brainer. And the jointly funded U.S.-Japanese program to improve the existing SM-3 interceptor will improve the defense of both countries.

Then there is the matter of ship deployment. Of the 18 being given the SM-3 intercept capability, 16 are headed to the Pacific (the six already there are mostly protecting Japan). For just $62 million more, the Navy could begin outfitting another nine of the 80 Aegis ships around the world and deploy a contingent of 11 to defend against terrorists launching Scuds off our East Coast, as well as against Iranian ballistic missiles.

As for space-based defense, it is both possible and essential. Since the 1960s, studies have consistently shown that space-based defenses could provide the most effective way to neutralize ballistic missiles. This is because a constellation of space-based interceptors can shoot down missiles from anywhere in the world as they rise from their launchpads, while their rockets are still burning and they are most vulnerable.

By the late 1980s, it was clear that such a global defense was both feasible and affordable. Indeed, during the Reagan and Bush-41 terms, the Strategic Defense Initiative developed all the essential technologies to the stage that such a system could have been built.

Withdrawing from the ABM Treaty removed the legal constraints on testing and deploying space-based missile defenses. However, to date, the administration has made no effort to develop such a capability.

As the anti-satellite test carried out by China in January amply demonstrated, a growing number of U.S. adversaries and strategic competitors are seeking to exploit, even dominate, space for military and commercial purposes. If the United States does not protect its interests in space — including through the deployment of missile defenses — we may soon find our security, which is critically dependent on our space systems, at the mercy of nations that have.

It is long past time for the U.S. government to revive the technologies and concepts needed to build a truly robust defense. The technology for such an approach is mature. All that has been missing is the political will to pursue the national policy stated by Congress in 1999: to build an effective defense against ballistic missile attack for the American people “as soon as technologically possible.”

 
Ilan Berman is vice president for policy of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington; Ambassador Henry Cooper was Strategic Defense Initiative director under President George H.W. Bush; Robert Pfaltzgraff is Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of International Security Studies, The Fletcher School, Tufts University.