The Pentagon is wasting no time consigning the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to the dustbin of history, pushing ahead with plans to test and deploy a multibillion-dollar missile defense system prohibited under the accord.
With the United States set to pull out of the treaty Thursday, workers will break ground Saturday on a test site at Ft. Greely, Alaska. The facility could not have gone forward under the 30-year-old pact.
The Bush administration hopes to have the five test interceptors at Ft. Greely operational by the end of 2004.
Also, the Missile Defense Agency plans its first test Thursday of a sea-launched interceptor designed to destroy incoming missiles 100 miles above Earth.
The timing is coincidental since the trial is allowed under the treaty, officials said.
An Aries ballistic missile will be launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on the island of Kauai, Hawaii. About six minutes later, an Aegis guided missile cruiser tracking the missile 200 miles to the northwest will fire the new SM-3 interceptor at the target.
Still, the test is important because ship-fired interceptors will play a significant role in the limited national missile defense system that the Bush administration hopes to put in place by 2008.
The developments come after a Pentagon decision to classify as secret the information about the targets and decoys used in future tests of ground-based interceptors.
Defense officials say the secrecy is necessary to prevent adversaries from learning how to defeat the interceptors, which are further along in testing than their ship-based counterpart. But critics in the scientific community and in Congress say the secrecy will make it harder to conduct outside oversight.
The missile defense program has been plagued by questions about its effectiveness and feasibility. Some experts contend the system envisioned by Bush will cost more than $200 billion.
The 1972 ABM Treaty served as a centerpiece of successful nuclear arms control between the United States and the former Soviet Union. It is the first major arms-control agreement from which the United States has withdrawn.
The treaty, aimed at preventing a pre-emptive strike, banned the adversaries from building a system to defend against attack from nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles.
