THE Bush administration is deliberately planning to destroy the 1972
Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty by building anti-missile facilities in
Alaska, arms control experts claimed last week. They say the Pentagon could test
the feasibility of a missile defence shield without breaking the treaty.
Philip Coyle, who was head of missile defence testing under President Clinton
and is now with the Center for Defense Information in Washington DC, says: 鈥淭he
ABM treaty is not an obstacle to the proper development and testing of a
national missile defence system.鈥�
In a successful test last weekend, a dummy warhead was launched on a
Minuteman missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Twenty minutes
later, a prototype interceptor took off from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall
Islands, 7700 kilometres away in the Pacific. The Pentagon reported that the
interceptor hit the dummy warhead about 10 minutes later at an altitude of 225
kilometres. Both missiles were annihilated in the 24,000-kilometres-per-hour
collision.
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For most of the test, radar on Kwajalein tracked the target and guided the
interceptor. Then for the critical few seconds before impact, control shifted to
sensors on the interceptor.
The US is planning another 20 tests between now and 2005. Preparing the
ground for these tests, the administration told US embassies last week that 鈥渢he
US needs release from the constraints of the ABM treaty鈥�. The administration
says these tests will contravene the treaty 鈥渋n months, not years鈥�.
But Joseph Cirincione of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC told New 杏吧原创
that the type of test just carried out, and those planned for the next few
years, are within the terms of the ABM treaty so long as they use agreed testing
sites such as Kwajalein. The administration, however, wants to intercept
missiles from Alaska, which is not an agreed site. 鈥淪hooting a missile into
Alaska, or building radar to detect it or interceptors there, would violate the
treaty,鈥� he says.
There is no advantage in firing test missiles from California to Alaska
instead of Kwajalein, Cirincione says. And firing them from Alaska to Kwajalein
would usefully simulate the north-south trajectory of an attack on the US, but
wouldn鈥檛 contravene the treaty.
By involving Alaska, Bush鈥檚 administration specifically chose a test site
that would violate the treaty, claims Cirincione. 鈥淔or some people in the
administration, the whole point of missile defence is to drive a stake through
the heart of the international treaty regime,鈥� he says.
Building work on test facilities at Fort Greely in Alaska is due to start
this summer. Russian officials are quoted as saying they will regard 鈥渢he first
cubic metre of concrete鈥� as US withdrawal from ABM.
