Budget mess threatens missile defense

During a recent simulation, a siren erupted inside a bunker at Fort Greely, roughly 100 miles southeast of Fairbanks. Systems, sensors and interceptors were checked. Radars tracked a hypothetical, computer-generated incoming ballistic missile as it streaked high above the Pacific Ocean.

Before the mock missile could start the second half of its ominous flight path toward Alaska, a computer simulated the launch of an interceptor missile from an underground silo at Fort Greely, blowing the imaginary missile out of its virtual sky.

The entire engagement, from alarm to explosion, took just minutes — about the time it takes to toast a bagel for breakfast.

Thankfully, this was just a practice scenario, one that members of the Alaska National Guard assigned to the 49th Missile Defense Battalion run through just about every day to sharpen their skills in preparation for a nuclear ballistic missile attack, should it ever come.

These soldiers are out there 24 hours per day, 365 days per year, working in six-person shifts on the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense System (GMD), which has destroyed live ballistic missiles in numerous realistic tests using interceptors at Fort Greely and at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, along with radar, sensors, and communications systems strung across 15 time zones to protect the United States. As Alaska’s lieutenant governor, I support Gov. Sean Parnell’s emphasis on emergency preparedness. For emergencies related to acts of war, this administration and leaders of other states can be glad that we have a missile defense system for strategic deterrence and defense.

In the 1990s, as a citizen, I worked hard to get Congress to recognize America’s need for a ballistic missile defense system. Before the U.S. withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) in 2002, construction of our current defenses at Fort Greely was illegal, and defense of all 50 states was impossible.

Continued support of these defenses and our other aerospace assets, such as the Kodiak Launch Complex, is one way the U.S. maintains its lead in aerospace development.

Yet, GMD and many other programs critical to our national security could take a devastating budget cut if Congress passes $600 billion in additional defense budget cuts through a process known as “sequestration.”

This little-understood legal process — part of the debt ceiling deal passed last summer by Congress — would cut the budget of every defense program equally, from trash pickup to body armor.

The GMD budget has already been cut in half in recent years, and currently its entire budget is less than a quarter of 1 percent of the $600 billion in defense cuts that “sequestration” would demand.

Cutting GMD by just 25 percent could delay testing or pause the deployment of the full complement of planned interceptors, leaving us vulnerable precisely at the moment that rogue nations are accelerating their nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

North Korea continues to test its Taepodong-2 missiles, which are said to be capable of reaching an Alaskan city with a one-ton payload. Iran recently shocked the international community by unveiling new protected underground silos and shooting a satellite into space on the back of what is essentially a long-range ballistic missile.

A report released by the International Atomic Energy Agency last year included an alarming assessment about Iran’s drive to develop nuclear missile warheads.

America’s missile defenses — based on land, sea, air and space systems — need continued improvement to defend against the threats of tomorrow.

If the Missile Defense Agency has to delay testing by even one year or pause the deployment of the full complement of planned interceptors, it could leave us vulnerable.

Should Congress reach an agreement on smart cuts to the budget, critical national security programs like homeland missile defense can be saved from the budget-cutting scalpel.

But if a deal falls through, the sequestration cuts could decimate the very missile defenses that would protect the U.S. if the next siren that sounds at Fort Greely is not a test.

Mead Treadwell was elected Alaska’s lieutenant governor in 2010.

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