Cartwright Sees Missile Defense Shifting

By John M. Doyle

The vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said March 23 that he envisions the future mission for missile defense shifting from protecting the homeland to protecting U.S. troops deployed overseas, as well as allies and friends.

Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright said the shift will be due to changing threats in the future. And that will require an architecture “that has the flexibility to address the unknown.” Cartwright says that thinking means a shift in acquisition emphasis from the weapon to the command and control sensor network.

“A system that morphs itself in 30 days into the threat is really what we’re trying to buy,” Cartwright told attendees at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ missile defense conference in Washington. “It’s always about staying ahead of the threat,” Cartwright said, adding that the objective is to “impose significant costs” on an adversary to develop better weapons, rather than having their innovations drive U.S. defense spending.

Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.) told the AIAA gathering that the Bush administration placed too much emphasis on defending against a long-range ballistic missile attack, even though Iran does not yet have that capability, while ignoring the threat of short- and midrange missiles, which Iran does have.

For that reason, among others, she said, President Barack Obama’s decision to review the plan to place a missile interceptor system in Poland and the Czech Republic “is fully justified and necessary.” While it was important to try to work with Russia, which strongly objects to a missile defense system in Eastern Europe, she added that Russia “should not, and does not have veto power” over U.S. defense planning.

Photo: DoD