Daring to Disarm: A Conversation with Lt. Gen. Robert Gard

George Kenney of the blog Electric Politics recently interviewed the Center's Chairman, Lt. Gen. Robert Gard Jr. (USA-ret.), on not only arms control, but also NATO, Afghanistan, Gard’s combat experience in Korea and Vietnam, and a few other topics. Click here for the intro or here to jump straight into the interview (MP3).

From Electric Politics:

The thing about nuclear weapons is, nobody can easily afford to make a mistake. Odds are, the more nuclear weapons people have, the more likely a mistake, and the more likely that a warhead, equipment, or know-how goes astray. On the other side of it, arguments about how to "win" a nuclear war remain implausible. So it's hard to see how these particular weapons are good for anything. Frankly, they're too dangerous to keep. But having built them, how do we get rid of them? For some deep insight I turned to Lt. General Robert G. Gard, Jr. (USA, ret.), Chairman of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. He's got a lot of sensible suggestions that should be relatively easy to implement, provided, of course, that some Republican Senators can agree to new, and renewed, nuclear arms control treaties. We also talk about NATO, Afghanistan, the General's early combat experience in Korea and Vietnam, and several other topics. It was very gracious of General Gard to take the time and I much appreciate it. Total runtime an hour and ten minutes. It's an honor to serve.

Center Chairman, Lt. Gen. Robert Gard, at Gitmo Signing

An interesting historical note: The Center's Chairman, Lt. Gen. Robert Gard Jr. (USA-ret.), was on hand today for President Obama's signing of the executive order that requires Gitmo be closed within a year. Gard is second from the right.


Obama recognized Gard and others for their work on Gitmo.

Lt. Gen Robert Gard: Right Wing Fear Machine

The Huffington Post published today an excellent piece by the Center’s chairman, Lt. Gen. Robert Gard, that responds to some bombastic missile defense claims (no pun intended) made by the Heritage Foundation. Full text below.

The younger and more internet-savvy members of our staff showed me a new video clip last week entitled "33 Minutes." It comes courtesy of the unabashed hawks at the right-wing Heritage Foundation. The title refers to the amount of time it would take an intercontinental ballistic missile or 'ICBM' to reach the United States. Apparently the clip is merely a preview of a longer movie set to be released in February 2009.

Watch it for yourself, but you might want to put the kids to bed first.

Kudos to Heritage for catching the typo they included in the YouTube version at 1:54 - "Balliatic"? - and correcting it on their website. Sadly they forgot to iron out other mistakes of a more substantive nature. I'll leave the mockery to others and stick to three main points.

First, Heritage commits the ultimate faux pas in national security analysis: It proposes a solution that doesn't achieve their primary objective. Robert Joseph, a committed arms racer and intellectual heir to John Bolton, says early on in the video that "my number one concern today is a terrorist with a nuclear weapon." A legitimate fear, to be sure, especially when you consider that the final report of the bipartisan Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism predicted that such an attack will "more likely than not" occur somewhere in the world by 2013.


The problem, of course, is that missile defense won't stop nuclear terrorism. How exactly will missile defense interceptors in Europe stop a terrorist with a small nuclear explosive device from entering the United States through Canada? Or prevent a shielded nuclear device, invisible to cargo detectors, from being smuggled into a U.S. port aboard a ship? Missile defense, obviously, is useless against these kinds of terrorist attacks.

Second, Heritage is guilty of fear-mongering without supplying the appropriate facts and context. That is the height of irresponsibility. The video begins by stating that over 20 countries have a ballistic missile capability. Yet, as arms control expert Joseph Cirincione pointed out at a congressional hearing on missile defense earlier this year, nearly all countries that possess ballistic missiles today are allies of the United States and possess only short-range missiles that threaten their neighbors, not the American homeland.

Lt. Gen. Henry Obering raises the specter of the United States only having 33 minutes to respond if Iran or North Korea launches an ICBM at us. Unfortunately, this frightening scenario becomes not quite so scary when you remember that neither country currently possesses a missile proven to be capable of hitting the continental United States. Though U.S. intelligence assessments have concluded that North Korea and Iran could develop such an ICBM several years in the future, deploying an unproved and unworkable missile defense system is not the way to change these states' behavior in the meantime. Currently deployed long-range missile defense systems remain an answer in search of a problem.

Third, Heritage praises missile defense for things it can't yet do. The reason for this boosterism is simple: missile defense is a theology, not a technology, for many conservatives. Gen. Obering claims that missile defense technology is so advanced that "we now are able to hit a spot on the bullet with a bullet." Later in the video, however, Kim Holmes confesses that "we do not have enough capability right now to do what we need to do." Well, which is it guys? Does the system work or doesn't it?

In the past nine years, the ground-based midcourse missile defense system has made eight successful intercepts out of thirteen tests. Because the system is still in the developmental phase, all of these tests have been highly scripted - including the "successful" test on December 5. They do not represent what might happen were a missile actually to be launched at the United States. That's why the Government Accountability Office concluded in February 2008 that tests completed to date "are developmental in nature and do not provide sufficient realism" to determine whether the system "is suitable and effective for battle." Our missile defense system still cannot neutralize a missile threat that employs even relatively simple decoys that could be developed by any country able to build complex, long-range, nuclear-tipped missiles.

Robert Joseph opens the video with a cheap shot at President-elect Barack Obama. "Hope is not a good foundation for a national security strategy," Joseph sneers. I'm sure Joseph would point to President Ronald Reagan, patron saint of the Heritage Foundation, as the model for a strong national leader.

What's funny is that in one of the most famous speeches of his administration, Reagan talked about something that offered "hope for our children in the 21st century" and "hope for the future" and "a vision of the future which offers hope." Know which speech it was?

It was Reagan's address to the nation introducing the Strategic Defense Initiative or 'Star Wars,' his flagship missile defense program.

Oops.

Diplomacy, deterrence, and containment have been and will continue to be far more effective than missile defense as protection against a ballistic missile threat to the United States. One should keep that in mind when the Heritage Foundation's movie accompanies a full court press for more money to field an unworkable missile defense system in 2009.

Lt. Gen. Robert Gard and Kingston Reif: Time to Rethink Missile Defense

The Center’s chairman, Lt. Gen. Robert Gard, and Kingston Reif wrote a terrific piece on what should be done about missile defense that appears in today’s Defense News.

Time to Rethink Missile Defense
By Lt. Gen. Robert Gard and Kingston Reif
Published in Defense News on October 20, 2008

Despite the Bush administration's investment of an estimated $60 billion since 2001, U.S. national missile defense continues to be an unnecessary and counterproductive enterprise. Testing objectives consistently are not met, cost overruns and scheduling delays are rampant, and relations between the United States and Russia are worse than at any time since the end of the Cold War, thanks in no small part to squabbling over the proposed third missile defense site in Europe.

With the U.S. government on autopilot until January 2009, it falls to the next president and Congress to set realistic expectations about what national missile defense can and cannot do. Three essential changes should be made immediately to shake off the misguided policy-making of the Bush years and set U.S. missile defense back on a productive course.

1. Shift resources away from expensive, unproven and unnecessary systems aimed at countering future long-range threats, and reallocate funding to higher priority systems aimed at existing short- and medium-range missiles.

According to the U.S. intelligence community, a state seeking to strike the U.S. homeland with a nuclear weapon would find it far simpler and less expensive to employ either ship-launched, short-range missiles or some form of non-missile means, such as a container entering a U.S. port.

American troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan or in bases across the world are not threatened by intercontinental missiles, but by short- and medium-range missiles, of which Iran and North Korea possess plenty.

Iran and North Korea, the raison d'être of America's intercontinental missile defense programs, are likely a decade away, at the earliest, from developing nuclear-armed intercontinental missiles. Thus, short- and medium-range missiles constitute the clear and present danger to the United States, not intercontinental missiles.

2. Restructure the extensive resources of the U.S. government to effectively combat the ballistic missile threat.

In exempting it from normal acquisition, testing and reporting requirements, the Bush administration gave the organization responsible for developing missile defenses, the Missile Defense Agency, unprecedented decision-making flexibility. This allowed the agency to avoid providing full cost estimates of its systems while deploying interceptor missiles not rigorously tested under realistic battlefield conditions.

The next administration should dissolve the Missile Defense Agency and transfer the various systems back to the military services that originally oversaw them before the agency was created.

3. Spend greater political capital pursuing diplomatic engagement to reduce the missile threat.

Deterrence, containment and diplomacy have been and will continue to be far more effective weapons against ballistic missiles than interceptors.

During the Cold War, the United States successfully negotiated reductions in the number of U.S. and Soviet missiles and bombers, as well as the elimination of intermediate-range missiles from each country's respective arsenals. There is no reason this approach cannot be repeated successfully today.

While the Bush administration should be commended for negotiating an end to Libya's nuclear program and making progress on denuclearization talks with North Korea, it remains adamantly opposed to direct diplomatic engagement with Iran and has shunned efforts to negotiate deeper, binding and verifiable nuclear weapon reductions with Russia. Such an a la carte attitude to diplomacy has not made America safer.

Executing these three changes will not be easy, as the status quo has the support of key constituencies inside and outside of government. However, with strong presidential and congressional backing, they could go a long way toward ensuring America's missile defense programs are focused on real threats, remain cost-effective, and are deployed as a complement - not an alternative - to deterrence, containment and diplomacy.

Retired Lt. Gen. Robert Gard is chairman of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, where Kingston Reif served as the Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellow.

Lt. Gen. Robert Gard Debates Frank Gaffney on the Impact of the NPT

The Center's senior military fellow, Lt. Gen. Robert Gard, debated Frank Gaffney on the impact of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty on U.S. policy both then and now on CSPAN earlier today.

Click here to watch the debate using either Flash or Windows Media Player.

Lt. Gen. Robert Gard: Nuclear Terrorism a Serious Threat

Lt. Gen. Robert Gard, a senior military fellow at the Center, had a terrific op-ed published in the Knoxville News Sentinel today. It comes on the heels of a Center outreach trip to Tennessee.

In the piece, Gard argues that when it comes to nuclear terrorism, the U.S. government has been walking when it should be running.

Gard concludes,

It is incredible that our government is failing to accord the highest priority to taking the actions necessary to prevent terrorists from carrying out their threat to detonate a nuclear weapon on the territory of the United States, which would forever change our way of life.

And where is the clamor from the body politic?

The full op-ed can be found here.

Star Wars Turns 25 Years Old, but Effective and Capable Missile Defense Still Elusive

The Center's senior military fellow Gen. Robert Gard and director John Isaacs released today a phenomenal report on America's missile defense program.

The analysis covers Congressional, scientific, governmental, and military support for and opposition to a national missile defense program from Reagan's push in 1983 to the present administration.

The authors conclude that no elements of the ground-based system should be deployed until they are proven effective at accomplishing their mission, and capable of protecting the United States.

Highlights included here, and links found below:

[The National Missile Defense Act of 1999] endorsed missile defense deployment but with important qualifiers. It directs the Department of Defense "to deploy as soon as is technically possible an effective national missile defense system that is capable of defending the territory of the United States against a limited ballistic missile defense attack" [emphasis added].

[snip]

The 1995 National Intelligence Estimate pointed out that any country that can successfully flight test an ICBM, a complex undertaking, will be able to develop numerous countermeasures to penetrate a missile defense system.

[snip]

Yet procurement and deployment of ground-based mid-course interceptors continues. In 2007, 10 interceptors were deployed, bringing the total to 21 at Fort Greely, Alaska, and three at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The intent is to reach 54 interceptors – 44 in the United States and 10 in Poland – by 2013.

[snip]

System intercept tests have not employed realistic decoys, or any decoys at all, in the two most recent tests. Discrimination remains the Achilles' heel of the ground-based mid-course system.

[snip]

It is evident that the ground-based mid-course system does not meet the conditions for deployment specified in the National Missile Defense Act of 1999. It has not demonstrated that it is effective in accomplishing its mission or that it is capable of defending the territory of the United States. Phillip Coyle, Director of Operational Test and Evaluation during the Clinton administration, has called ground-based mid-course "a scarecrow, not a defense," and Richard Garwin has said the system is "totally useless."

According to the Congressional Research Service, more than $120 billion has been invested in missile defense since President Reagan's speech 25 years ago, much of it on the system to protect the United States. Given the fact that delivery of a nuclear weapon against the United States is far more likely by means other than an ICBM, which leaves a return address, the opportunity costs are very high in military terms alone, not to mention other higher priority national security and domestic programs. The further deployment of elements of the ground-based mid-course system should be suspended until research and development can demonstrate that the problem of discrimination can be solved successfully.

Click on each of the following for the full text, PDF, and press release.

The Folly of Attacking Iran: Lessons from History

JustForeignPolicy.org released yesterday an excellent video on the historical backdrop to the current standoff with Iran. It reveals the dangers of an armed U.S. intervention and promise of diplomacy and stars the Center's Senior Military Fellow, Lt. Gen Robert Gard (USA, ret.), as well as a stellar group of Iran experts, including Stephen Kinzer, Trita Parsi, and Barbara Slavin. The video complements the organization's national Folly of Attacking Iran Tour. Check it out below.

Lt. Gen. Robert Gard: Obering Overstates Missile Defense

The Center’s Lt. General Robert Gard (USA, ret.) today released a trenchant analysis criticizing recent assertions made by Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.

Entitled Excessive Claims for Missile Defense, Gard argues that Obering drastically overstates the capability of the GMD missile defense system, and that the system has been prematurely deployed and could be easily defeated by countermeasures. Gard’s complete analysis is provided below.

In his article “Missile Defense Hits the Mark: Increasing Success Undermines Critics” (Defense News, July 23, 2007), Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA), carries the traditional and laudable “can-do” attitude of the military too far. He claims an operational capability, yet to be demonstrated, for the Ground-Based Mid-Course (GMD) system, designed to protect the U.S. against a limited attack from warheads launched on long-range ballistic missiles by so-called rogue states. Such hyperbole not only misleads Congress and the public, but it could be dangerous if national security decision makers relied on an unproven defense in an emergency.

General Obering states flatly that the U.S. “had an operational capability to defend against a missile launched at the United States” at the time of North Korea’s abortive attempt in July 2006 to launch a Taepodong-2 missile with an estimated range of 2,500-3,700 miles. This, he says, provided the president with “an alternative other than pre-emption and retaliation.” He failed to mention that our huge nuclear arsenal and overwhelming conventional military superiority provide effective deterrence against such an attack.

There are two separate camps of wrongheaded critics of GMD, according to Obering: (1) the near-term deployment of the GMD system is misguided and (2) the system’s susceptibility to countermeasures makes its deployment an imprudent, futile exercise. There is, however, nothing mutually exclusive between the two points of view, and there is considerable evidence to support the critics. Count me as a charter member of both camps.

MDA has prematurely deployed elements of GMD, including 19 interceptors, while the complex system of systems is in its developmental phase. The fancy name for this approach is “spiral development,” sometimes called “concurrency.”

The idea is to accelerate operational capability by deploying a weapons system or its components in the developmental stage in the hope that only minor modifications will be necessary to correct the earlier mistakes in producing an operationally effective system.

Yet the Governmental Accountability Office, congressional oversight committees and even the Pentagon’s own Defense Science Board of outside industry experts have repeatedly warned of the perils of concurrency. This acquisition approach has led to notorious procurement fiascos and cancellation of unworkable systems after the government had spent billions of dollars.

Premature deployment of a complex system of systems runs a high risk that critical technologies will not function as intended. At best, this can result in significantly increased costs, but more likely a necessity to return to the drawing boards for re-design, with the resultant waste of billions of dollars in the case of GMD.

Moreover, a key element of the GMD system is not even scheduled for completion until far into the future. The Missile Defense Agency has characterized the Space Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS) as “an essential element” in all but a most rudimentary mid-course system. The launch of test satellites just to determine the feasibility of tracking missiles and warheads from space has been postponed yet again. Even if the technology should prove to work, deployment of this sub-system cannot be accomplished until well into the next decade at the earliest.

When asked about the capability of the GMD system in August of 2006, after the claim of operational capability during the Korean missile test, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, hardly one of the critics, said he would withhold judgment until all the pieces are put together in operational tests, which are not yet even scheduled.

There are credible technically qualified critics who believe that there is no current technology, nor any in sight, that can defeat countermeasures easily available to any nation, even a rogue state, that can develop an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). A 1999 National Intelligence Estimate of the Ballistic Missile Threat through 2015 concluded that any country that can flight test an ICBM will be able to develop countermeasures to penetrate a missile defense system.

This confirmed an Office of Technology Assessment report of 1988 noting that decoy designs are very difficult to counter with passive infrared sensors in conjunction with radar, the only capability currently available. Previously, the defense Science Board in a 1987 review concluded that passive infrared sensors could discriminate only the most primitive decoys and debris.

The former Chief Scientist and Deputy Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, George Rathjens, and the former chair of the Federation of American Scientists, Karl Kaysen, more recently expressed strong doubts that the problem of discriminating between incoming warheads and countermeasures could be solved in the near future, if ever.

These evaluations and their own personal knowledge have led a former director of the Defense Test and Evaluation Agency, Philip Coyle, to conclude that GMD is “a scarecrow, not a defense.” A distinguished defense scientist, Richard Garwin, has stated in characteristically blunt terms that GMD is “totally useless.”

Perhaps unintentionally, General Obering appeared to confirm the problem presented by countermeasures by stating in his article that “the Multiple Kill Vehicle system … will allow us to handle decoys and countermeasures.” Not only is his conclusion questionable, but the complex sub-system to which he refers is in its early developmental phase.

Since the launch of a ballistic missile can be traced to its source, it is highly doubtful that a rogue state would choose to attack the U.S. in this fashion, thereby inviting a devastating retaliatory strike. Even in the unlikely event that the expensive GMD system of systems eventually proves workable, the opportunity cost of its deployment should be compared to expending the funds to counter more likely threats to U.S. security.

Lt. Gen. Robert Gard: National Missile Defense in Europe Premature and Unwise

The Center’s Lt. General Robert Gard (USA, ret.) put out an insightful report on missile defense this week. Titled National Missile Defense In Europe: Premature and Unwise, the full report is available here.

I had a chance to talk with General Gard about his report, which you can watch here or on the Council for a Livable World’s V-blog.



Gard’s report starts out with an overview of the administration’s proposal:

p.1 - The plan for the new European complex is to transfer a narrow-beam X-band midcourse tracking radar from the Pacific Test Range to the Czech Republic and to deploy up to 10 silo-based long-range inceptor missiles in Poland. The program also calls for forward-basing an acquisition radar—designed to provide detection, initial tracking, and cueing information—to a location not designated.

The national missile defense system, now called the Ground-Based Midcourse Missile Defense System (GMD), is being developed to protect the United States against a limited attack from warheads launched on long-range ballistic missiles by so-called rogue states. The intent is to destroy incoming weapons during their flight in space, called the “midcourse” phase of their trajectory.

Gard then identifies multiple problems with the system that demonstrates the Bush proposal to indeed be “premature and unwise”, as suggested by the report’s title. Below are some highlights of the report, with the full text available here.

p.1 - GMD is still in its developmental phase, by no means ready for deployment. It has not demonstrated the capability under realistic conditions to destroy a target in space, and operational testing of the system is not yet even scheduled. Knowledgeable defense scientists believe the system will never be able to defeat countermeasures that any nation capable of fielding complex intercontinental ballistic missiles will be able to employ with ease.

p.2 - Recently… the [Missile Defense Agency, MDA] concluded that without deploying elements of GMD in Europe, other system components could protect the entire U.S. against an Iranian attack by 2011, well before that country will be able to field an intercontinental missile capability.

MDA also claims that deploying GMD in Europe will promote regional stability. But the announcement of the deployment and the reaction to it has in fact created considerable instability. Russian President Vladimir Putin has angrily denounced the deployment… Carrying out Putin’s earlier threat, Russia formally suspended participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty on July 14.

p.3 - The complex in Europe will have only 20 minutes to detect, track, and intercept a missile launched from Iran. This would present a highly difficult challenge to a system that has met stringent test standards and is manned by a well-trained crew on quick-reaction alert. But essential operational testing to prove the effectiveness of the system is not yet even projected for the European complex.

The European deployment is currently estimated to cost a little more than $4 billion. If past is prologue, this will increase substantially.

The bottom line is a no-brainer: the third GMD missile defense complex, programmed for deployment in Europe, should be put on ice.

Lt. Gen. Robert Gard: Euro-BMD bad for U.S.

The Center’s Senior Military Fellow, Lt. Gen. Robert Gard, recently wrote a tremendous op-ed in which he calls the Bush administration’s decision to build a national missile defense complex in Europe “premature, misguided, wasteful of billions of dollars and damaging to U.S. relationships with our European allies and Russia.”

Gard begins...

National missile defense, now called the Ground-Based Midcourse Missile Defense System, or GMD, is being developed to protect the United States against a limited attack from warheads launched on long-range ballistic missiles by so-called rogue states. The intent is to destroy incoming weapons during their flight in space, called the "midcourse" phase of their trajectory.

Yet GMD is still in its developmental phase, by no means ready for deployment. It has not demonstrated the capability under realistic conditions to destroy a target in space, and operational testing of the system is not yet even scheduled. Knowledgeable defense scientists believe the system will never be able to defeat countermeasures that any nation capable of fielding complex intercontinental ballistic missiles will be able to employ with ease.

Click here to read the complete article in which Gard runs down a litany of problems associated with the Bush administration’s initiative to expand missile defense to Europe.