This following comes from Senator Lieberman's floor statement on the Lieberman-Sessions Amendment, which was adopted by voice vote into the National Defense Authorization Act yesterday afternoon. If you want to know why the Senate voted unanimously in favor of the amendment, expressing the sense of the Senate that the administration should continue planning and funding for the installation of ground-based interceptors in Poland and a radar site in the Czech Republic, just look at the maps below.
The Context: "[O]n July 8, 2008, the United States and the Czech Republic agreed on establishing an American ballistic missile defense radar site on Czech territory. Two months later, on August 20, the United States and the Government of Poland reached a similar agreement under which we would deploy 10 ground-based interceptors to Poland. Just less than a year after these agreements, at a June 16 hearing at our Senate Armed Services Committee, Deputy Secretary of Defense Bill Lynn told the members of the committee: 'We think there are a number of ways to address [the Iranian] threat and one of the options is to deploy the missiles in Poland and the radar in the Czech Republic, and we are certainly evaluating that option as well as other possible options.'"
The Crux: "The findings of this report clearly demonstrate that the Ground-based Midcourse Deployment in Poland and the Czech Republic is the most effective and affordable option that is before us today. I am particularly struck by the report's conclusion that the alternatives to the GMD system in Poland and the Czech Republic would significantly reduce America's ability to provide a layered defense for our American homeland against the eventual threat of intercontinental ballistic missiles launched by Iran or anyone else in that region against the United States of America…
"I want to draw the attention of my colleagues to a pair of maps that I think indicate the differences as CBO found them between the planned GMD system in Poland and the Czech Republic and the proposed land-based SM-3 block IIA system that I think is a favored alternative-a possible alternative- I don't mean it is selected, but one looked at with great interest by the Defense Department. Incidentally, these maps were prepared by the Congressional Budget Office and included in the study ["Options for Deploying Missile Defenses in Europe"], which I would commend to my colleagues to read in full.
"On the first map here we can see the planned GMD system in Poland and the Czech Republic would provide a layered defense for the entire continental United States. In other words, this is the area that would be defended. Most of Europe, if a missile were fired from Iran, and all of the United States would be covered. That means the concept of shoot-look-and-shoot would be in effect a defense for our entire population.
"The second map shows the capabilities of a prospective land-based SM-3 IIA block system, which is quite different. You can see that this one, as the CBO estimated, only covers a portion of the United States… In fact, on a population basis, because there is a concentration of population, of course, on the east coast, almost 80 percent of the population would be left uncovered by this redundant defense. All States west of the
"Mississippi, for example, would not be defended by this system.
"In terms of operational capability, it is also important to note that the components of the proposed GMD system for Europe are much farther along in their development and purchase closer to being proven to work than the proposed SM-3 Block IIA interceptor, which may not be available until close to 2020. So the consequences of pulling away from the Poland and Czech Republic system are serious in the near term."
The Conclusion: "As the Department of Defense now undertakes its review of the planned GMD deployment to Europe and possible alternatives, this amendment would express the Senate's opinion of what we expect our missile defenses in Europe to deliver, generally. It would state that the United States expects those missile defenses to be the most capable and affordable and give a defense in the short term, not just to our allies in Europe but to our fellow citizens throughout the United States of America."
