Cost Concerns Fueled U.S. Missile Pivot

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration's scrapping of long-range missile interceptors in Europe wasn't just about security and diplomacy, according to people close to the process: It also came down to money.

"A ground-based interceptor is generally about a $70 million-per-missile asset going after a $10-$15 million [Iranian] missile," a senior administration official told arms-control analysts Thursday at a briefing explaining the rationale, according to a recording heard by The Wall Street Journal. "The trade is not a good one economically. It's not a good one from a military strategy position."

On Sept. 10, senior administration officials presented the case for substituting medium-range missile interceptors at a cabinet meeting at the White House. The presentation was the culmination of studies launched in 2006 by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, then serving in the same job in the Bush administration, to look at the efficacy of two separate missile-defense tracks. The "upper-tier" track included powerful rockets in Alaska and California as well as the small battery of interceptors in Poland.

The "lower tier" included ship-based Aegis missile defenses; the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense system, whose first operational deployment in Israel is set for the coming weeks; and more established Patriot missiles.

Gates has said he began to have a change of heart about his embrace of the European system as intelligence made it clearer Iran was struggling with its ICBM program. Tehran, however, was becoming an innovator in short and medium-range missile technologies, officials believed.

Pentagon officials said Marine Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff whose previous job was heading the military command responsible for missile and space weapons, became increasingly influential in these debates: He argued that focusing on Iranian long-range missiles was leading the Pentagon to build ever-more expensive defensive systems to counter an increasingly elusive threat.

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