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No. 489-00
(703)695-0192(media)
August 7, 200
(703)697-5737(public/industry)
(http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Aug2000/b08072000_bt489-00.html)
Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen today issued the following statement
on National Missile Defense (NMD):
"Components of the Department of Defense are currently completing their
assessment of the program to develop a National Missile Defense system. A
number of difficult issues remain to be resolved before they can report to me.
"I will make no recommendation about the future of the NMD program
until I have analyzed their findings. I expect that to happen and to report
to the president within the next few weeks. Recent reports that I have made
a decision on this matter, preliminary or otherwise, are wrong.
"There is no immediate or artificial deadline for a recommendation
to the president. NMD is an important and complex program. My goal is to
make the best possible recommendation based on the president's four
criteria, not the earliest possible recommendation. The president fully
supports this approach."
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon's assessment of how and when to move forward with a national
missile defense will take several weeks longer than planned, Defense
Secretary William Cohen said yesterday.
As a result, Cohen is unlikely to recommend a course of action to President
Clinton until early September, officials said.
That still would give Clinton time to decide before leaving office whether
to authorize initial steps toward building a new missile-tracking radar in
Alaska, a key first step to deploying a national missile defense.
Cohen previously had indicated he would make his recommendation to Clinton
by mid-August following an internal Pentagon study, called a deployment
readiness review.
"A number of difficult issues remain to be resolved," Cohen said in a brief
written statement. These issues, including whether the rocket booster to be
used for the antimissile system can be ready for full-scale production by
2003, must be settled before the Pentagon provides the internal assessment,
he said.
Another unsettled question is whether the Pentagon should go ahead as
scheduled with the next flight test this fall of the antimissile system.
Officials are considering putting it off until December or later. The last
two flight tests, the most recent of which was in early July, failed,
raising questions about whether the Pentagon was pushing too hard to meet a
target date for deploying the system by 2005.
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