WASHINGTON, July 2, 2009 - A group of prominent scientists today released a joint letter urging President Obama to issue a directive that the United States will not deploy any part of the proposed U.S. missile defense system in Europe before it is proven effective under real-world operating conditions.
Proceeding with deployment would result in large security, political and financial costs, according to the scientists, many of whom have served as government advisers on a range of military and security issues. Ten of the letter's 20 signatories have won a Nobel Prize, 15 are members of the National Academy of Sciences, and seven are members of the National Academy of Engineering.
Proposed by the Bush administration to defend against a potential attack from Iran, the U.S. European missile defense system would consist of 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a large radar in the Czech Republic. The interceptors would use a kill vehicle and a modified version of an interceptor booster fielded as part of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system in Alaska and California.
"This technology has not been adequately tested and has no demonstrated capability in a realistic attack scenario," the scientists' letter states. "None of the GMD tests have included realistic countermeasures or tumbling warheads. All flight intercept tests have been conducted under highly scripted conditions with the defense given advance information about the attack details."
The scientists also cite independent and U.S. government technical analyses that conclude that "any country that could field a long-range missile could also add decoys and other countermeasures to that missile that would defeat a defense system like that being proposed for Europe." As a result, they conclude that the planned system "would have essentially no capability to defend against a real missile attack."
Organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), the scientists' letter was released a few days before a summit between President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that runs from July 6 to July 8 in Moscow. Russia has expressed strong opposition to a U.S. missile defense system in Eastern Europe and has linked the proposal to other issues that would require its cooperation. The Obama administration is expected to announce its decision about deploying the system in the next few weeks.
