General Leonid Ivashov, head of the Russian Defense Ministry’s department of international co-operation, was speaking yesterday before talks expected soon between American and Russian officials on Mr Bush’s plan to build defenses against ballistic missile attack from rogue states.

Also facing the axe is the idea that space should be free of offensive weapons to avoid an extraterrestrial arms race. Under the new thinking in Washington, space is likely to be viewed as a legitimate battleground.

The Russian general made clear, however, that Moscow still firmly opposed scrapping the treaty, which bans the deployment of a national anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system.

Mr Bush’s determination to push ahead with missile defense is only one aspect of a wholly different military strategy that is now beginning to emerge in Washington as the comprehensive review undertaken by Donald Rumsfeld, the Defense Secretary, draws to a close.

The Bush vision will be disclosed in full next month and will embrace a giant advance in military technologies. It will focus on air and space to protect the United States and American and Allied forces deployed around the world.

Also facing the axe is the idea that space should be free of offensive weapons to avoid an extraterrestrial arms race. Under the new thinking in Washington, space is likely to be viewed as a legitimate battleground, if only to ensure the protection of America’s rapidly growing network of military and commercial satellites.

Mr Rumsfeld’s panels of experts have assessed existing strategies and equipment on the basis of their “transformational” qualities — their relevance at a time when dangers have changed and are more unpredictable.

This is why missile defense has been given such high priority — because, based on the perceived threat from potentially hostile states arming themselves with long-range ballistic missiles and non-conventional warheads, few weapons in the present inventory can come close to providing the required protection. There are medium-level and low- level anti-missile systems being developed, such as the next generation Patriot (of Gulf War fame) weapon and the MEADS (medium extended air defense system) program that the Americans are working on with the Germans and Italians.

However, Mr Rumsfeld is now looking at up to a dozen elements of a ballistic missile defense program The plan is to research and develop all possible systems and those that turn out well will be deployed quickly. They cover three categories: boost phase — hitting the enemy missile in its first stage, either with an airborne laser on a Boeing 747, from a shipborne missile system or with a space-based laser; mid-course phase, destroying the missile with land-based interceptors in Alaska; and the terminal phase, intercepting the missile as it approaches re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, using the US Army’s theatre highaltitude area defense system (THAAD), or a modified shipborne weapon. There are, at present, no deployment plans, just intensive research programs to find the most technologically competent system or systems to provide the ballistic missile defense that Mr Bush feels is vital for his vision of a defense and deterrence strategy.

As part of this leap forward in thinking, Mr Rumsfeld’s experts are seriously considering scrapping the decades-old two-wars strategy, under which America was supposed to be capable of handling two big conflicts simultaneously. The new strategy would call for the Armed Services to fight one big war while conducting several other smaller operations. In this concept, substantial resources devoted to keeping units up to strength to fight two wars could be released for other priorities, such as missile defense, protection of satellites and counter-terrorism.

The result could be a reduction in land forces, ships and aircraft. Changes in strategy would also help to resolve the problem of how to replace aging equipment.

Bases could also be closed. Since 1988, 95 significant military bases have been closed, saving $14 billion, and it has been estimated that up to a quarter of the surviving bases could also face closure under Mr Rumsfeld’s review.

Key “transformational” weapons identified by the Rumsfeld panels are understood to include Trident nuclear missile submarines converted to fire conventional cruise missiles; B2 Stealth bombers armed with smalldiameter precision bombs; unmanned aerial vehicles, some of them armed with missiles; ships armed with precision cruise missiles; and, possibly, space-launched conventional weapons.

One of the key unmanned aerial vehicle programs, Global Hawk, is being accelerated. This “drone” will be able to survey, in one day, an area equivalent to the state of Illinois (57,918 square miles) while providing imagery with a 3ft resolution. Unmanned platforms will also become missile carriers.

While these systems appear on the “A” list, regarded as key transformation programs, the future of many highprestige equipment projects may be in doubt, such as the US Navy’s futuristic-looking DD21 destroyer and the FA18EF Super Hornet aircraft. The US Air Force’s fabulously expensive F22 fighter aircraft is likely to survive.

There may also be moves to cut the number of US aircraft carriers, on the ground that the latest long-range anti-ship cruise missiles make them too vulnerable to attack, although this argument is strongly dismissed by the US Navy, which insists that carriers are built to survive attacks.

The Joint Strike Fighter, which is being developed for the US Navy, the US Air Force and for the British Armed Forces, is expected to remain on the A list. One of its platforms will be aircraft carriers, so their presence in the new defense strategy will remain crucial. But there could still be a reduction in the carrier fleet.

The issue of weapons in space has been considered by the review panels because of the perceived threat to America’s networks of satellites, including the Global Positioning Systems (GPS) that guide items as diverse as missiles, yachts and soldiers on the march in unfamiliar terrain. If America is to deploy missile defense systems, they will also be dependent on satellites. The future availability of anti-satellite weapons in the hands of potential enemies has underlined Mr Rumsfeld’s view that space-based weapons will be needed to protect the orbiting satellites. Last week the US Air Force announced that it was setting up two squadrons in anticipation of having to defend American spacecraft.

Copyright 2001 Times Newspapers Ltd.

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