But, as O'Hanlon should know, far from leaving to Bush a legacy of Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles, Clinton actually killed many of the promising UCAV programs begun by the Bush-Quayle administration in the aftermath of the Gulf War. Why? Clinton was afraid he might violate the ABM treaty.
Take, for example, the "boost phase intercept" UCAV. We were co-developing one with the Israelis for their use.
During the Gulf War, Saddam launched about 90 Scud ballistic missiles – half of them at Israel. Some Iraqi Scuds were mobile and others had to be launched from fixed sites. Throughout the Gulf War, we had fighter-bombers in the air over Iraq and almost all the Scud launches – which were at night – were actually seen by the fighter-bomber pilots. Nevertheless, they never found the Iraqi mobile launchers – either before or after the launch.
But, we were able to detect within seconds – via sensors in our early-warning satellites – the launch of every one of those Iraqi Scuds. Within a minute or two after that, the Patriot anti-aircraft missile batteries we had hastily rushed to Israel and to Saudi Arabia were notified by NORAD that an Iraqi Scud was heading their way. Because the Scud warhead remains attached to the missile, it comes down relatively slowly, and our Patriot batteries were able to intercept virtually all of them. However, they would not have been able to intercept a much faster warhead from a "theater" ballistic missile.
When Clinton became president, there were ongoing programs to develop a class of small hypervelocity "Kinetic Kill Vehicles." These sea-launched, space launched and ground-launched KKVs were to be capable of intercepting theater ballistic missile warheads in their terminal death-dive.
In particular, there was the PAC-3 – Patriot with advanced capabilities – hypervelocity interceptor. It is 10 inches in diameter, 17 feet long, weighs only 700 pounds and has an effective range, when fired from the ground, of 12 miles straight up. After the Gulf War, we instituted with Israel a cooperative program to develop a PAC-3 like theater terminal ABM defense – called Arrow – which has recently been termed operational.
We also instituted a cooperative UCAV Boost-Phase Intercept development program. The BPI concept was to have something like the Global Hawk, armed with something like the PAC-3. The UCAV would loiter near a suspected ballistic missile launch site, and when a missile launch was detected, the KKV would be fired at it. For short-range Scud-like ballistic missiles, the boost phase lasts for one to two minutes. For ICBMs, the boost phase can last up to five minutes. During the boost phase, the slowly ascending ballistic missile is practically a sitting duck, its rocket engines exhibiting an intense, high-temperature infrared signature.
Eventually, the Israelis decided against a high-flying, Hawk-like boost-phase interceptor because they don't have early warning satellites or a NORAD. So, the Israelis decided, instead, to develop something more like the Predators – much smaller UAVs armed with Hellfire air-to-ground anti-tank missiles – we have rushed into service in Afghanistan. The Israeli Predator-like UCAV wouldn't wait for the ballistic missile to be launched. Every time it found a ballistic missile on the ground – either fixed or mobile – it would just kill it, right then and there.
Meanwhile, Clinton wouldn't let us develop any kind of boost-phase intercept capability. You can see why. Suppose, for example, that the North Koreans developed missiles capable of delivering a nuke on Seattle. Suppose Clinton had Predator-like and Hawk-like UCAVs patrolling over North Korea. Suppose our early-warning satellites told him that the North Koreans had just launched a ballistic missile. Well, if the ballistic missile was headed toward Japan, then the ABM treaty would allow Clinton to go ahead and destroy it. But, if the missile was heading toward Seattle, Clinton – because of the ABM treaty – would just have to let it go.
It seems like every time we turn over a rock, we find more Clinton legacy, but doing his best to keep you folks in Seattle alive was not a part of it.
