US Pentagon Says No Decision Has Been Made on Two-War Strategy

The US Defense Department has yet to decide whether to keep or discard the idea that military forces should be able to fight two major wars on far-flung battlefields almost at the same time, a senior official said Thursday.

The two-war strategy is a central issue but that Pentagon planners have not decided whether to discard the approach or what the replacement might be if it is discarded, said the official, who asked not be identified.

It's easy to point out defects in such a strategy but more difficult to come up with an alternative, the official noted.

The official said the two-war plan doesn't take into account such smaller operations such as the U.S. involvement in the Balkans and other missions around the world.

The idea that America's forces should be able to conduct two major operations at the same time has been one of the guiding principles behind Pentagon budgets and the size of the military since former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney's time in office.

However, the Pentagon now is struggling with a major strategy review on how to widen its view of the world's threats and shape a military that will be able to respond.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has asked the planners to work at a fast pace, ordering them to come up with strategies and budget plans by the end of July. Their work will help forge the Pentagon's broader budget plans for fiscal 2003.

Patience on Missile Defense System

The U.S. missile defense plan was technologically feasible despite several test failures, a top Pentagon official said in Congress Thursday.

Ronald Kadish, director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization of the Defense Department, urged patience ahead of next month's crucial fourth test of the multibillion dollar missile defense project.

"I cannot emphasize enough the importance of controlling our expectations and persevering through the hard times as we develop and field a system as complex as missile defense," Kadish told a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing.

Two of the previous three U.S. missile defense tests have failed to prove the system would work. The most recent one was on July 8 last year when an attempt to intercept and destroy a dummy warhead in space failed because the weapon did not separate from the second stage of its liftoff rocket.

"We are not awaiting some technological breakthrough in order to proceed with missile defense development," Kadish said. "The feasibility of missile defense and the availability of technologies to do this mission should not be in question."

Arms control experts said that the U.S. missile defense plan, opposed by the international community, will not only spark a new arms race, but also threaten world peace and security, and stimulate nuclear proliferation.






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