WASHINGTON -- Missile defense has cost the United States tens of billions in research dollars, soured relations with Russia and China and roiled congressional and presidential politics.

All this from a high-tech Pentagon system only in the testing phase, beset by numerous and embarrassing malfunctions.

Since March 1983, when President Ronald Reagan envisioned an elaborate space-based shield of sensors and weapons that would protect the entire nation from a Soviet nuclear attack, missile defense has enthralled many Republicans and some Democrats. Think-tank experts and scientists have dueled over whether "star wars" was a costly joke or a noble goal.

With the end of the Cold War, missile defense became a back-burner issue, eating up $60 billion in funding over the years with no system on the horizon. When PresidentClinton came into office, he made derisive comments about "star wars," deciding to focus on shorter-range missile threats to U.S. troops and ships overseas, so-called "theater defense" that seemed more technologically achievable.

Then last summer everything changed.

In July, a panel headed by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that rogue nations such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea were working faster than the CIA realized on missiles that could strike the United States, at any time, without warning.

Weeks later, North Korea stunned the world by launching a missile over Japan with an estimated range of 1,200 miles.

Iran was testing its own ballistic missiles.

Now, China has been accused of stealing plans for the most sophisticated U.S. nuclear technology: a miniaturized nuclear bomb called the W-88. Overnight, China became more threatening, said analysts, and could use the plans to develop multiple-warhead missiles capable of reaching America.

Cold War redux

It was almost a return to those early and dizzying Cold War years: China and Russia testing their own A-bombs, the Rosenbergs guilty of passing nuclear secrets to the Soviets.

In February, the Clinton administration was forced by events to increase spending on a national missile defense system by $6.6 billion, though for a much more modest system than the one proposed by Reagan.

Then last week, with Republicans threatening to make the matter a major campaign issue, Clinton and congressional Democrats did an about-face and agreed to support legislation calling for the deployment of a national missile defense as soon as "technologically possible." Clinton plans to decide by June 2000 whether to construct a national missile defense system by 2005.

"What we're saying today is you don't have that choice and we have the votes to override the veto. We want action," said Rep. Curt Weldon, a Pennsylvania Republican who has been one of the leading supporters of a national missile defense. The vote was "the single biggest repudiation" of President Clinton on a national security issue, Weldon crowed.

"It means that formally the policy of the United States government is no longer to leave its people vulnerable to a missile threat," said Frank J. Gaffney Jr., a missile defense proponent with the Center for Security Policy. "I think it's a sea change."

Gaffney and some congressional Republicans are using the vote to press for an even more ambitious missile defense, while GOP presidential contenders, principally Steve Forbes, are making the policy a centerpiece in their quest for the White House.

Reagan's dream of a huge space-based system has evolved into a more modest land-based national system designed to defend all 50 states. The Pentagon is also working on theater missile defense systems to protect U.S. troops and naval vessels in contained areas overseas.

John Pike, of the Federation of American Scientists, said both Clinton and the Democrats caved in to pressure for national missile defense -- even though it has failed in 13 of 15 tests. "The president made a decision not to give the Republicans a foreign policy issue," said Pike. "The congressional Democrats have gone along with that."

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., a Delaware Democrat, dismissed the missile defense measure as a "political document, not serious legislation" -- even though he voted for it. The administration would still have to weigh a national missile shield with the "equally important objective" of arms control with the Russians, said Biden.

Biden, Pike and other arms-control advocates fear that the Russians will balk at further reductions in nuclear weapons if the United States presses ahead with a national missile defense.

Russian leaders are incensed by the recent developments in America, worried that any missile shield will upset the "balance of terror."

Arms control problems

Last week the Russian Foreign Ministry said the congressional vote for national missile defense "poses a serious threat to the whole process of nuclear arms control." Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, who will hold talks in Washington this week, said missile defense plans could ignite a new arms race.

It was the perverse idea that both the Russians and the Americans could annihilate each other with thousands of nuclear weapons that kept the peace for so many years. When the Soviets and Americans signed the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, that perversity was written between the lines.

The treaty prohibited any space-based or sea-based missile defense systems, allowing only limited defensive measures that would not upend the policy of MAD -- mutually assured destruction. Even the limited American proposal of a ground-based system of sophisticated radar and up to 100 interceptor missiles will require amendments to the treaty.

The treaty allows defense only of the U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile fields of North Dakota, not the entire United States. And the Pentagon is considering placing the system in Alaska, rather than the treaty-approved site of Grand Forks, N.D.

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, one of only three senators who voted against the measure, said arms reductions with Russia have proved too successful to jeopardize with a questionable missile defense system.

Russian nuclear weapons have dropped from 45,000 warheads in 1986 to fewer than 6,000 today, Leahy noted. Russia's lower house of parliament, the Duma, is scheduled to begin debating an arms control agreement next month.

Signed in 1993, the START II arms reduction pact has already been approved by the U.S. Senate. Should Russia accept the agreement, Leahy said, the number will be reduced to 3,500 missiles for each country.

"Verifiable arms control agreements give us greater security, more quickly," said Leahy, "and at a fraction of the cost of missile defenses."

But Republicans say Russia has nothing to fear from America's limited missile defense system, which is designed to intercept an errant missile accidentally fired from Russia or China or one deliberately fired from a rogue state like North Korea.

Last week a group of U.S. representatives, including Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett, a Maryland Republican, traveled to Moscow in an effort to calm Duma members.

"We tried to assure them that this was not being hostile to them," Bartlett said. "We know there was no way we could protect ourselves from their entire arsenal. Their response was predictable: 'Why would you want to scuttle START II?' "

Unless Russia agrees to modify the ABM treaty to allow a national missile defense, Republican leaders said, the United States should consider withdrawing from the agreement.

But Eugene J. Carroll Jr., a retired rear admiral with the Center for Defense Information, said the treaty and arms control with the Russians are too important to brush aside. Carroll doubted that rogue nations or terrorists would try to strike the United States with a missile since they would be inviting massive retaliation.

Moreover, Carroll said, few countries have the technological expertise to test and develop an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching America. The United States has spent billions of dollars and devoted more than 80 tests toward a continuing effort to perfect the Trident, a long-range sea-based nuclear missile. Those who cite the North Korean launch, Carroll pointed out, "ignore the fact it was a failure."

While America builds a costly defense shield to destroy missiles in space, said Carroll, a rogue nation or terrorist could easily slip into an American port or city with a nuclear device, chemical or biological weapon.

So far, tests of both national and theater missile defenses have been failures, said Pike of the Federation of American Scientists. The last successful national missile test was in 1991, while the Army's high-altitude theater missile has missed its last five attempts.

Optimism from Pentagon

But the Pentagon said that failures were the result of quality control problems or a faulty "kill vehicle," the warhead that destroys the incoming missile. Officials are convinced that they have worked out the problems.

Air Force Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, said that in two tests for a national system, an interceptor was able to pick out warheads among decoys in space. And the first full-blown test of what has become known as a "bullet hitting a bullet" -- the interceptor detecting and destroying the incoming missile -- will be conducted this summer.

A target missile will be launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, while the interceptor missile, with its "kill vehicle" and sensors, will be launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the Central Pacific. With each missile traveling more than 15,000 mph, the interceptor will try to pick out the 5-foot-long target from among decoys.

There is "a lot of confidence" that the test will succeed, said Lehner, who pointed to more theater missile defense efforts in the coming weeks.

On March 29, the Army is scheduled to mount its sixth high-altitude theater test at White Sands, N.M., after the run of five failures. The Army was encouraged when another short-range Army system, the Patriot III, was successful in destroying a test target last week.

The Navy, meanwhile, will try its Aegis air defense system at White Sands this summer, with sea trials expected in the fall. "We have a lot of testing ahead of us," said Lehner.

Some opponents of national missile defense, such as Leahy and Carroll, say the United States should push ahead with theater systems as a way of protecting U.S. troops and allies.

The conservative Heritage Foundation, meanwhile, says the Navy's Aegis system of ship-based radars and missiles could also provide a national missile defense. It would be less costly and more effective than placing ground-based interceptors in Alaska or North Dakota. That move is drawing some supporters in Congress.

But there's one problem with it: The sea-based system would violate the 1972 ABM treaty.

Pub Date: 3/21/99