By Victoria Samson, CDI research analyst

The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) chalked up a successful flight intercept test of its Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system on Friday, Sept. 28.  During the $85 million test, a target missile flying from Kodiak, Alaska, was intercepted several hundred miles off the coast of Los Angeles from an interceptor launched out of Vandenberg AFB, Calif.  Does this mean that thanks to this program, we are safe from an as-yet-to-emerge North Korean or Iranian ICBM threat? Not in the slightest.

There has been some serious shuffling of terminologies and tortured logic in reports about this test.  According to MDA officials, Friday’s test marked the sixth successful intercept out of 10 tests, while a headline on the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance’s website read, “Seventh GBI [ground-based interceptor] Test Successful.” Both of these assertions are only telling part of the story, and in doing so are omitting crucial bits that would color how one would view the effectiveness of the GMD system. 

According to independent analysis of the program conducted by Center for Defense Information analysts, this test marks the seventh intercept out of thirteen attempts.  This ratio makes a very different overall record of success, just going by the numbers.

MDA has long avowed that flight tests where the interceptor didn’t leave the launch pad because of problems with the engineering (which occurred in December 2004 and February 2005) shouldn’t “count” when toting up the program’s overall successes, although if that were to happen during an actual time of conflict, it would have disastrous results.  Instead, it looks like a way in which to skew the results to show MDA’s efforts in a more flattering light.  Also, during the last test before this one – held in May, and of which this test was an exact replica – the plug was pulled because the target didn’t fly where they thought it was supposed to go; this indicates exactly how scripted the tests have become. 

Perhaps the strongest question mark comes from MDA’s assertions that the last successful test flight intercept of the GMD system now should not be included in the overall success column.  This was the September 2006 test where the Pentagon scored its first GMD flight test intercept in just under four years.  Oddly enough, it was trumpeted at the time as an intercept and a success.  Now, however, MDA is backtracking and stating that because an intercept wasn’t the primary objective of the September 2006 test, it should not be included in the whole tally. 

If that is indeed the case, then MDA’s much-vaunted GMD system, the one that takes the lion’s share of the missile defense budget, the one that the United States is looking to expand to Eastern Europe, and the one that is souring relations with Russia, last scored an intercept five years ago, in July 2002 – hardly a program that is barreling along, success after success. 

Furthermore, the last two tests – the one on Friday and last May’s – did not include any countermeasures.  The GMD program started off its first intercept attempt in October 1999 with a simple decoy. Eventually, the program built up to three decoys during the 2002 tests, after which, the decoy number dropped considerably.  This is an important point to make, as one of the biggest frailties of the missile defense system is its inability to determine in a cloud of objects which is the threat missile and which is a harmless decoy.

According to Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, head of MDA, “Does the system work? The answer is yes to that…Is it going to work against more complex threats in the future? We believe it will.”  This false sense of security granted by Obering’s statement is made worse by inaccurate predictions about future capabilities.  MDA is planning on finally including countermeasures in its next flight test of the GMD system, which currently is scheduled for some time next spring.  The United States was testing GMD interceptors against targets with decoys back in 1999, but had to stop after a few years because of problems with discrimination.   So essentially the threat the United States is testing against will be as challenging as it was nearly a decade ago.

Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., head of U.S. Northern Command and of North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD), stated that, “We can bring missiles up or take them down as need be so that they can continue doing the testing,” and went on to say, “I’m fully confident that we have all of the pieces in place that, if the nation needed to, we could respond.”  If that is the case, then why continue with development?  According to Renuart, the system can do what we need it to do.  Of course, that is not actually the case.  And “responding” is vastly different than “destroying a threat” or “reliably defending the United States.”

Riki Ellison, head of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, which heavily promotes missile defense, boasted, “The remarkable technical feat demonstrated today for the 7th time clearly gives our country security and reassurance that the current 23 Ground Based Interceptors deployed in California and Alaska can and will protect our public from long-range ballistic missiles.”  This was not done, as the system has not proven it can reliably replicate its accomplishments.  Two intercepts by the operationally configured warhead – one of which has been disavowed by the MDA – does not a dependable system make.  

Finally, if MDA is going to go back and redo its test assessments, perhaps it should take the July 2001 intercept out of the success column.  During that test, a test target was indeed intercepted; however, the GMD system falsely computed that the target had been missed.  The system did not work as planned. 

This back-and-forth over what constitutes a test, a success, and a failure may seem to outsiders like petty bickering.  Yet budget decisions are being made, foreign policy is being crafted, and major defense acquisition programs are being shaped by the false assumption that the missile defense system has delivered a limited defensive capability.  Going by the program’s performance during actual flight tests – and that is the most important input to the equation of determining the overall system’s reliability – what the United States has is, at best, a weapon system that is still taking baby steps along the path of development.