The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Held a Hearing to Assess Ballistic Missile Threat

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing
today to investigate the necessity of a ballistic missile defense
system and assess the relative threats of conventional and
non-conventional attack.

March 23 will mark the 25th anniversary of President Reagan’s
announcement of the now famous ‘Star Wars’ Anti-Ballistic Missile
system. 120 billion has been spent on the project to date, now at a
rate of nearly 10 billion a year, a rate projected to double in the
coming years.

Ranking member Dan Burton (R-IN5) stressed the potential for unseen
threats and the need for a mulit-faceted approach to security
including missile defense.

Witness Joseph Cirincione, President of the Ploughshares Fund,
emphasized the fact that the threat from ballistic missiles has
decreased since the late 1980’s both in number of missiles and number
of countries with missiles by about 80%. He said many of the missiles
that remain in the current count are in friendly hands, and most are
“SCUD” type, or shorter range.

Baker Spring, an F.M. Kirby Research Fellow at the Heritage
Foundation, claimed that we live in a ‘multi-polar missile world’
demanding a reworking of current ABM strategy to include space and sea
based options and deal with threats from North Korea, Iran, and the
potential for allied nations to pull the U.S. into conflict.

Steven Hildreth, a specialist in Defense and Foreign Affairs for the
Congressional Research Service, stated that the technology and effort
required to create ICBM’s and ABM systems is so large that only 5
nations have ever succeeded, despite estimates of vast proliferation.
He downplayed the likelihood of further nations going to such legnths
and costs.

Dr. Steven Flynn, Senior Fellow for National Security Studies for the
Council on Foreign Relations, reminded the committee that much more
money is spent on protecting military bases than on protecting cities.
The same is true of missile defense in relation to non conventional
attacks. Such practices, he claims, provide incentive to strike in the
latter fashion.