May 11, 1999
- ... AND MORE
DEFENSE SECRETS LOST
-
- "Our Navy must have at its core the world's
best
- submarine force,'' said Sen. Joseph Lieberman
- last December. ''The weapons that will dominate
- battlespaces of the future are those that are lethal,
- stealthy, mobile and flexible ... [and] the
- submarine fits this description best.''
-
- Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat and one of
- the Senate's most respected national-defense
- experts, couldn't have put it better.
-
- At present, the Navy's ballistic-missile submarine
- force makes up fully 54 percent of America's
- nuclear deterrent (while employing just 1.5
- percent of the country's uniformed naval
- personnel). Once submerged and on patrol,
- Trident-class submarines are undetectable by
- potential enemies - and thus invulnerable to
- counter-attack.
-
- Now comes word that the Clinton administration
- has allowed critical information concerning
- top-secret submarine-detection radars to go over
- the transom. It apparently landed in the People's
- Republic of China, where it joins purloined data
- that likely will permit the Chinese to rapidly advance
- their nuclear-weapons acquisition program.
-
- Giving up the weapons secrets was bad enough.
- The loss of information that might permit Beijing
- more easily to locate deployed nuclear submarines
- conceivably changes the global power balance.
- Not right away, for sure, and maybe not ever. It's
- not all that clear how well the radar technology at
- issue works - or even that it works at all.
-
- Basically, it's meant to chart the passage of
- submerged submarines by measuring the slight
- upward displacement of water that they produce.
- But the former Soviet Union thought enough of its
- potential to invest enormous sums in research,
- particularly in satellite-based systems. And the
- U.S. apparently has deployed anti-sub radars
- aboard aircraft.
-
- Now, the information is in Chinese hands -
- whence it passed on Bill Clinton's watch.
- The White House has many questions to answer -
- as honorable Democrats like Joe Lieberman
- clearly know.
-
- It's time somebody started asking them.