1. ASCMD,
5.2 RECOMMENDATIONS
5.2.1 Prioritization of Cruise and Ballistic Missile Defense Programs Antiship cruise missile defense, overland cruise missile defense, and ballis-
tic missile defense will all be necessary for naval (and joint) forces conducting 21st-century military operations for a number of reasons:
• ASCMD—Antiship cruise missiles in the hands of potential adversaries are numerous, sophisticated, and widespread. Every naval combatant becomes a target whenever it enters a theater and must defend itself effectively if it is to be an asset rather than a liability.
• OCMD—In the future, land attack cruise missiles will allow potential adversaries to deny military forces access to ports, airfields, and other entry points. In effect, the Navy has no OCMD capabilities, and building such capa- bilities will require time and investment.
• BMD—Tactical ballistic missiles are widespread weapons of terror and potential mass destruction. Naval forces need capabilities to provide ballistic missile defense to ports, airfields, and other entry points until assets arrive in- theater from other Services. In the future, longer-range ballistic missiles will become more prevalent and an adequate theater ballistic missile defense will require defense in depth.
With the exception of developing a robust capability for OCMD, there is little disagreement within OPNAV and the Navy acquisition community con- cerning missile defense programs. Moreover, all Navy ballistic missile defense programs are matched to funding limitations or BMDO-imposed cost constraints and as a result have adopted evolutionary development programs that defer the development of necessary capabilities until far into the future.1
In the likely event that budget levels will not be sufficient to fund all cruise and ballistic missile defense efforts fully, the committee believes that the De- partment of the Navy will need to assign funding priorities for R&D efforts as follows:
1. ASCMD,
2. Area defense of forces and assets ashore against both overland cruise missiles and ballistic missiles (NAD system), and
3. The NTW system.
The committee’s rationale for according first priority for R&D funding to ASCMD is that if the Navy does not have a robust ASCMD capability, its abili- ties to undertake or support operations in littoral areas will be seriously limited.
1The committee is also concerned that in those areas where naval R&D needs and priorities are not supported by BMDO investment, there is no safe mechanism for the Department of the Navy to apply funding of its own. Furthermore, the committee believes that if the Department of the Navy allocates R&D funds for theater missile defense, congressional committees will most likely cut those funds on the basis that missile defense R&D has already been accounted for in the BMDO budget. In the end, there is no investment for theater missile defense R&D. Therefore, the committee believes that a stronger organizational link should be established between the Department of the Navy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and BMDO in order that R&D be supported.
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 133 The committee could not come to a consensus on the relative prioritization of R&D funding between OCMD and NAD. All members of the committee recognized that defense against land attack cruise missiles and defense against ballistic missiles are necessary components of the same mission, particularly if the Navy is to protect forces and assets ashore.
Some argued that since ballistic missiles are widely available to probable or potential adversaries, and since land attack cruise missiles currently are not widely proliferated, priority for R&D funds should be assigned to the NAD program.
Furthermore, ballistic missiles, which may be configured to carry weapons of mass destruction, can have a major political impact on allies and on forces ashore.
Others argued that the development of an OCMD capability (be it naval or joint) was essential for the protection of forces ashore against a threat that would have a high probability of proliferating if no such defense were to be developed.
Those who supported a relatively high priority for R&D funding for OCMD also pointed out that that the most effective means of developing an OCMD capabil- ity is through the use of an elevated detection platform. The same elevated platform and sensor system that is needed for OCMD can be used to extend the detection horizons of a surface ship. Thus, sensor developments that will be necessary to provide OCMD capabilities will also contribute to the improvement of the Navy’s ASCMD capabilities.
Although the committee could not achieve a consensus on the relative prior- ity for R&D funding between OCMD and NAD, it had significant concerns that R&D funding for the development of a competent OCMD capability has been relatively limited. Unless R&D funding for OCMD is given higher priority than it currently has, the prognosis for the development of OCMD capabilities will continue to be bleak. Furthermore, if the Navy cannot provide OCMD in sup- port of Marine Corps or Army forces ashore, at least in the early stages of operations, then the full potential of naval expeditionary forces (as envisaged in Forward…From the Sea and OMFTS) will not be achieved.2 Thus, without a land attack cruise missile defense capability to supplement its ballistic missile defense capabilities, the ability of naval forces to influence events ashore will be limited to attacks on stationary targets with standoff missiles and air-delivered ordnance.
In its assessment of the Navy’s existing and planned ballistic missile de- fense capability, the committee would emphasize the NAD system over the NTW
2Some might argue that in a developed theater the Army’s Patriot advanced capability (PAC-3) would be deployed. As currently configured, PAC-3 does not depend on the availability of an elevated air moving target indication radar to detect and track missiles that make maximum use of terrain obscuration in order to evade detection by ground-based radars. Thus, until PAC-3 is provid- ed with a robust capability to negate missiles that employ terrain-obscured trajectories, no OCMD capability exists.
system.3 The basis for this emphasis on NAD relates to BMDO’s role in de- fense-related development and acquisition for TMD systems. In some devel- oped theaters, competent land-based theater missile defense systems might be predeployed. For example, if the development and deployment of the Army’s THAAD system were successful, it could provide significant midcourse engage- ment capabilities in a theater where it had been deployed prior to the onset of conflict. In addition, if the development and deployment of the Air Force’s ABL system were successful, it could provide ascent-phase engagement capabilities against shorter-range ballistic missiles. In such circumstances, the NTW system would supplement the projected capabilities of these systems in addition to the projected endo-atmospheric ballistic missile engagement capabilities of both the NAD and the Army’s PAC-3 systems.
Recommendation: The Secretary of the Navy, the Chief of Naval Opera- tions (CNO), and the Commandant of the Marine Corps (CMC) should assign R&D funding priority in the following order: (1) antiship cruise missile defense, (2) area defenses against both overland cruise missiles and ballistic missiles (NAD system) for the protection of forces and assets ashore, and (3) the NTW system.