Senator Feinstein Welcomes Decision by the Pentagon
to Drop its Request to Waiver Testing
of Missile Defense System

March 19, 2003

Washington D.C. - U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D - Calif.) today welcomed the announcement by the Department of Defense that it was dropping an earlier request to exempt the missile defense system from being fully tested before deployment.

"I was pleased to see that the Pentagon has now clarified that it will not be seeking a waiver for missile defense," Senator Feinstein said.

The announcement was made yesterday by Undersecretary of Defense, Edward Aldridge, before a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "It was not our intent to waive operational testing," Aldridge said.

On February 21, in a letter to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Senator Feinstein expressed her deep concern and surprise that the Department of Defense was in fact seeking such a waiver.

"I believe that any deployed missile defense system must meet the same requirements and standards that we set for all other fully operational weapons systems," Senator Feinstein said. "Indeed, given the potential cost of failure of missile defense, I believe that, if anything, it should be required to meet more stringent test standards than normally required. Given the test problems that missile defense has faced since its inception - ranging from data-link malfunctions to exoatmospheric kill vehicle (EKV) system failures - I believe that the Department of Defense should strive to increase testing, including realistic challenges of the system's ability to work under real world conditions and ensure that the current system failures are corrected before deployment.

"Given the threats faced by the United States, I am not necessarily opposed to the development and deployment of missile defense under all circumstances....[Yet] I simply do not understand how we can go forward with the deployment of a missile defense system which may or may not work...."

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