After the successful U.S. interception of a simulated North Korean warhead in a 2007 test, Lt. Gen. Henry Obering III expressed great confidence in the capabilities of the U.S. missile defense program. “Does the system work? The answer to that is yes,” Obering, then the program’s director, told reporters at a briefing.
Last Friday, after a year-long study, the General Accountability Office expressed far less confidence and issued a clarification of sorts: The Pentagon, it said, really has no idea if its missile defense systems will do their job, because over the past several decades it hasn’t concocted validated targets to test them, fielded proven interceptors, or even collected all the data needed to assess their early performance.
Deployment of the interceptors Obering praised, the GAO warned, had been rushed to meet a 2004 deadline set by President George W. Bush. The design was not fully tested before production got under way — a frequent occurrence at the Pentagon — and the results were “unexpected cost increases, schedule delays, test problems, and performance shortfalls,” according to its report.
This troublesome pattern of concurrently testing and manufacturing interceptors and related equipment is now being repeated by the Obama administration, the independent audit agency said in its 100-page report.
Due to President Obama’s decision in 2010 to deploy missile defenses in Europe by 2015 and improved interceptors by 2020, the program “continues to undertake highly concurrent acquisitions,” it said. While a spate of recent test failures has slowed or halted production of three of the program’s four types of interceptors, the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency plans to buy 29 more of another type that failed in testing last year. The cost will be $389 million.