ALASKA MISSILE DEFENSE EARLY BIRD WEEKLY

MISSILE DEFENSE FUNDING DIFFERENCES UP FOR CONFERENCE DEBATE NEXT MONTH, Defense Daily, August 13, 2002. While congressional appropriators overall have supported the key components of the Missile Defense Agency's (MDA) $6.7 billion FY '03 budget request, a number of programmatic differences must be resolved between the House and Senate versions before passage of the final version of the bill . . . The House and Senate appropriators fully funded the MDA's Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) program at $2 billion and also the $534 million requested to proceed with construction of the GMD testbed at Fort Greely, Alaska . . . The Senate appropriators have proposed a $140 million cut to the $371 million request for Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) Systems Engineering and Integration. The House appropriators added $10 million to this account . . . The appropriators need to resolve differences on funding sea-based missile defense activities . . . While the House bill funds the $426 million request for the Sea-based Midcourse (SMD) program, the Senate bill cut $42 million from that account. That cut could impact the current SMD flight test plans . . . In another area, several cuts were made by both House and Senate appropriators to the MDA's activities for boost phase intercept. The Senate, for example, made a $135 million cut to the $463 million request for the Air-based boost program. The House made a $30 million cut. The Airborne Laser program is funded within that account and program officials said the cut would set back plans to buy a second ABL plane.

GLOBAL NEWS BREAKS #24

MONDAY, AUGUST 12, 2002

ISRAEL BUILDS ANTI-MISSILE UNIT TO AVERT IRAQI ATTACK, Reuters, August 9, 2002. Israel is building a second state-of-the-art anti-missile battery in the center of the country to fend off Iraqi attacks in the event of a U.S. assault on Baghdad, Israeli military sources said today. The Arrow-2 system, developed by Israel in conjunction with the United States, has been deployed for three years in the southern Negev desert, the sources said. The Israeli army said a new battery about six miles from the central town of Hadera was “for training purposes,” but the sources said it already had operational capability. A possible U.S. attack on Iraq and defiant public statements by Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, have heightened Israeli concerns over a repeat of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when Iraq fired Scud missiles at the Jewish state. “We must be prepared at all times to deal with the threat that we face from the east, the Iraqi threat,” Israeli cabinet minister Matan Vilnai, an ex-deputy chief of staff, told Army Radio.

MISSILE TRAINS, Moscow Times, August 12, 2002. Russia will retain a unit of train-mounted intercontinental ballistic missiles, one of the most powerful and menacing components of its nuclear forces, a top general said Friday. The Interfax-Military News Agency quoted the Strategic Missile Forces chief, Colonel General Nikolai Solovtsov, as saying the military will keep one division of the train-mounted missiles. One division includes up to five trains, each carrying three missiles, the agency said. Each missile carries 10 warheads. The RT-23 missile is known as the SS-24 in the West. Russia was supposed to scrap all its RT-23 missiles under START II, but Russia withdrew from the treaty in June after the U.S. abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

TAKING CARE OF AN ALLY, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, August 9, 2002 . . . Poland was among the first states which openly supported America’s intention to create the new missile defense system. Warsaw also was the first to announce its readiness to host elements of this system in Europe. Eighteen months ago General Czeslaw Pentas, Chief of Poland’s General Staff said there were no obstacles to locating such elements of the missile defense system as radars, missile silos and missiles in Poland . . . The political decision on stationing elements of the U.S. missile defense system in Poland was made two weeks ago, during President Aleksander Kwasniewski’s visits to the banks of the Potomac River . . . Hardly two weeks after the negotiations, Polish-U.S. consultations on the issue were held. Deputy ministers of defense and foreign affairs represented Poland, while the US delegation was under the head of Ian Brzezinski, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, the son of renowned Sovietologist Zbigniew Brzezinski . . . Poland’s involvement in the system shouldn’t be restrained to “stationing radar installations alone,” General Kozei said in a radio interview. “We must be involved in various elements of the system - primarily counteraction to missiles at the last stage of their flight,” he said. The press also announced possible construction of an early missile warning radar installation aimed towards the southeast in eastern Poland.

BATTLE GROUP EQUIPPED WITH AIR DEFENSE PLANNING TOOL, Defense Week, August 12, 2002. When the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) carrier battle group went to sea late last month, it went equipped with a new tool for planning and coordinating joint theater air and missile defenses. The technology, called the Area Air Defense Commander (AADC), has been in development for several years. But the U.S. Third Fleet is touting its use as an innovative “first” for the carrier battle group. AADC is installed aboard one of the group’s cruisers, the USS Shiloh (CG 67). The only other AADC unit is on the USS Mount Whitney (LCC 20), an amphibious command ship. AADC is a shipboard planning and coordination tool originally developed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., to provide joint forces commanders with a more integrated air-defense capability . . . AADC—a suite of computers, software and displays—generates air-defense plans that can recommend tactical placement of air-defense assets such as Patriot missile batteries and jet fighters. The Navy plans to install AADC units in 17 sites, including on command ships and Aegis cruisers.

LAWMAKERS FIND INFORMATION IN KEY MDA PLANNING DOCUMENT LACKING, Inside Missile Defense, August 7, 2002. Congressional Democrats say they are disappointed with a planning document that details the combat capability of the Bush administration’s Ballistic Missile Defense System the Missile Defense Agency recently sent Congress. The lawmakers were expecting much more detail than provided in the BMDS Technical Objectives and Goals document, which a handful of them reviewed in the last two months. For some, the TOG fueled a sense of frustration over what they call a lack of useful information available to Congress in overseeing the administration’s missile defense development efforts, congressional sources tell sister publication Inside the Pentagon. MDA, however, has informed lawmakers that documents describing BMD