Missile defense soldiers deploy
System command settles at Peterson

The Army activated the 90-soldier Ground-based Midcourse Defense Brigade, which includes National Guard and active-duty soldiers. The full-time soldiers will serve as command and control for the $22 billion system.

The missiles that make up the defense system fire "kill vehicles" that collide with enemy missiles at altitudes of 100 miles to 250 miles above the Earth. Early-warning and long-range radar from the Air Force and Navy will help with detection. The nation plans by next fall to have up to 10 defense missiles on alert: six at Fort Greeley, Alaska, and four at Vandenburg Air Force Base in California.

"What happens in Colorado, this is the command and control hub, working with Northern Command and Strategic Command in Omaha. This is the central nerve center for the midcourse defense system," said Lt. Gen. Joseph Cosumano Jr., commander of the Army Space & Missile Defense Command.

If an enemy launched a missile, NORAD - North American Aerospace Defense Command - would notify the brigade soldiers, who will work at computer terminals inside Cheyenne Mountain, at Northern Command at Peterson, and in other buildings in Colorado Springs. Those soldiers, in turn, would notify operators in Alaska and California.

"It's almost the same kind of system now that we have with our offensive missiles that carry nuclear weapons," said Rick Lehner, spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency.

NORAD sends "the orders to the people who man the offensive missiles, based upon the president's direction, to retaliate. It's the same principle, but (the brigade must) provide the information to the interceptors in the field as to where the incoming missiles are."

A 40-page General Accounting Office report released last month warns that only two of 10 technologies in the defense system are ready. The GAO says the government will have to spend a lot more money if the system is going to be operational by this time next year.

The United States has been working to develop missile defense since the early 1980s and a ground-based system since the mid-1990s.

Five of eight tests of the new system were successful between October 1999 and December 2002. The last test failed because the "kill vehicle" and its booster rocket didn't separate. Engineers believe they have corrected the problem, Lehner said.

"It will work," Lehner said. "There's no doubt about that, it will work. We know from the successful intercepts we have that it can be done. It's more a matter of engineering now than it is of science. It's a matter of refining everything and making it work together. ..."

Col. Gary Baumann, commander of the brigade, said the number of countries with ballistic missiles has increased threefold from the nine that possessed them in 1972.

Bill Sulzman, a Colorado Springs peace activist who opposes the military in space, said a number of scientific critiques say the system doesn't work, yet the money keeps coming.

"They are able, as with any military appropriation, to finally get their money in Washington even though questions are raised. No one is standing up and saying: 'Shut off the faucet."'