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CNN Live Saturday

Missile Defense Debate Continues Amid War on Terror

Aired June 01, 2002 - 18:01   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: Well, the war on terror is adding some fuel to a future debate about future defense of the U.S., and whether building a giant protective missile shield is something that could work.

CNN National Security Correspondent David Ensor examines the debate over missile defense.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Within days after the U.S. pulls out of a 1972 treaty banning national missile defense, ground will be broken in mid-June at this military base in Alaska. Silos for five or six massive interceptor missiles will be dug, the first step towards what President Bush hopes will become a comprehensive system, which can protect the nation from missile attack.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We know that the terrorists, and some of those who support them, seek the ability to deliver death and destruction to our doorstep via missile.

ENSOR: Critics charge the billions to be spent on more tests of ground-based missile defense technologies will likely be wasted.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The ground-based system in Alaska is largely symbolic. It is what it purports to be. It's a test system. These missiles have very little capability, even in an emergency situation.

ENSOR: Using sophisticated radars at sea and on land, the system is designed to stop, for example, several nuclear-tipped missiles fired from North Korea. Building on the missile interceptor technology first seen in the Patriot missiles of the Gulf War and used in the Israeli Arrow Missile Interceptors, the Pentagon hopes to construct a shield covering the entire fifty states and some allies in overseas bases besides. An impossible dream, says the former head of Pentagon Weapons Testing.

PHIL COYLE, FORMER PENTAGON WEAPONS TESTER: The Pentagon briefings for missile defense show what look like Plexiglas domes over the United States or other territories that we're trying to defend. And we are to imagine that enemy missiles bounce off those domes like hail off a windshield. If we knew how to build a system like that, I think everyone would be for it. But, we just don't. ENSOR (on camera): Anytime soon?

COYLE: Not for many years.

ENSOR: In the Bush administration?

COYLE: I don't think so.

ENSOR (voice-over): Missile defense advocates argue that by including sea-based and space-based systems banned under the soon-to- be-scrapped Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a workable system may be closer than we think, and the U.S. has no real choice, they say, but to spend tens of billions trying to develop it.

JAMES LONGLEY (R), FORMER CONGRESSMAN: Yes, the technology is daunting, but on the other side of that, the risk of danger to the country is enormous. We are talking about a scale of destruction that we've never seen in the history of the world.

ENSOR: Advocates expect the president to fight some recent Congressional efforts to trim the missile defense budget. Defense contractors see the field as a major growth industry.

David Ensor, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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