When Ronald Reagan unveiled his vision for the Strategic Defense Initiative, often referred to in the press as the “Star Wars Program,” the primary threat to national security came from the Soviet Union, and the technology for creating an effective anti-missile shield was decades away.
While the technology has continued to develop, America is no longer threatened by a rival military superpower with thousands of land- and sea-based warheads. Instead, the system is intended to counter the threat from rogue nations and their terrorist allies possessing dozens of warheads, at most.1
For the past two decades or more, the idea of a national missile defense system has remained quite popular. For instance, a national poll published in 2005 showed that 79 percent of registered voters were in favor of it. And significantly, these findings cut across party lines, with 70 percent of Democrats, 70 percent of Independents, and 91 percent of Republicans supporting the concept.2, 3 Those findings are particularly impressive in that they fly in the face of decades of strident opposition and criticism, often from highly credentialed experts in the relevant technologies.
Are these experts right, or is the public right? Is the United States making a brilliant and necessary strategic move, or is it throwing away billions of dollars on a fantasy? To answer that question, let’s first take a look a how we got to where we are.
Most people can only track the origins of the national missile defense system back to Ronald Reagan’s Presidency. However, the U.S. Army actually began planning for a missile defense system as far back as 1945. However, the technology of the 1940s wasn’t up to the task.
Then in the late 1950s, with the Cold War heating up and nuclear attack a real threat, the U.S. began work on its first missile defense system, called Nike-Zeus. Its on-board radar and computer were the most advanced at the time, allowing it to track a target and intercept it.
The Nike-Zeus system, however, had severe drawbacks. Chief among them was that it could deal with only one target at a time. In addition, it could easily be confused by decoys. The project was eventually cancelled, and the Nike X project, which employed small nuclear bombs, began.
By the mid-‘60s, the Soviet Union had deployed its own missile defense system, known as Galosh. In 1969, the Senate voted to deploy a version of the missile defense system known as Safeguard. But, before Safeguard was ready, the U.S. and the Soviet Union signed the ABM Treaty in 1972. That agreement allowed only two sites in each nation, with just 100 interceptors at each site. A revised treaty reduced the maximum to one site in 1974.
That one U.S. missile defense site was located at Grand Forks, North Dakota. It began operating on October 1, 1975, but Congress closed it the following day. Early the next year, Congress sealed the fate of the entire Safeguard program, which ceased operations in 1978.
All of that history preceded President Reagan’s announcement in early 1983 of his Strategic Defense Initiative, a new system that would take advantage of nearly four decades of technological development. The strategic value of the SDI turned out to lie not in its ability to actually destroy Soviet missiles, but in raising the economic and technological stakes the USSR had to commit to stay in the arms race.
The USSR’s slow-moving and inefficient communist economy could not fund such a program without hurting its already deplorable standard of living. The internal tensions of increased military spending and social unrest eventually contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact in the years 1989 to 1991.
Meanwhile, in 1989, as part of SDI, the first President Bush introduced a new space-based interceptor known as Brilliant Pebbles. He went on that same year to sign the START I treaty with Moscow, cutting nuclear arsenals to 6,000 warheads for each nation.
Then, in 1991, the U.S. led a coalition against Iraq in the Persian Gulf War. U.S. Patriot missiles, a tactical missile defense technology, intercepted Iraqi Scud missiles with ambiguous results. This, once again, showed the potential value, as well as the technical limitations of missile defense.
However, with the defeat of Iraq and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Clinton administration was eager to start collecting the peace dividend. As a result, SDI was scaled back and received only limited research funding.
Nevertheless, as the end of the 20th century neared, it was becoming clear that, even without the Soviet Union, there were still real threats out there, as the advance of technology put missiles into the hands of increasingly unpredictable states.
Responding to the new dynamic, the National Missile Defense Act was finally passed in 1999, theoretically clearing the way for development and deployment, but President Clinton balked the following year, deferring to Russian and Chinese opposition, and the program once again stalled.
That changed when the new President Bush took office, in January 2001. One of his first acts was to announce that he would deploy what he called “a real and robust missile defense system.” Despite opposition from many nations, Bush won over a significant coalition of nations, including Spain, Italy, and the United Kingdom, to stand behind his move.
That same year, the first part of the system, known as IFT-6, was achieving intercepts and kills. One of the reasons for the quick ramp-up was that the technology had been maturing for half a century, while generations of engineers had benefited from deep institutional learning.
Now, five years later, the system, while not perfect, is vastly better and more sophisticated than anything built in the past. The effort is being led by Lockheed Martin and involves scientists and engineers across the globe.
The basic idea behind the defense is an integrated three-tiered system, as outlined in a status report issued by The George C. Marshall Institute.4 The guiding principle behind this system is that the earlier you destroy the threat, the better.
So the three tiers are aimed first at killing the missile as it launches. Then, if that so-called boost-phase system misses, the second tier of the system is designed to destroy it en route. And, if that so-called mid-course defense doesn’t destroy the missile and its warheads, a third tier will use multiple “reentry-phase defensive weapons” to intercept it as it approaches the target area.
The heart of the first-tier or boost phase defense is a revolutionary airborne laser system based on an oxygen-iodine laser invented by Phillips Labs in 1977. The destructive beam of light is invisible to the human eye, yet it delivers megawatts of power to the target, effectively vaporizing it.
This laser will be mounted inside of a highly-modified Boeing 747-400F freighter, which will patrol the skies at altitudes of 40,000 feet or more, scanning for missiles. For example, to monitor Iranian missiles, the 747 might circle over Iraq or Afghanistan.
The airborne laser, known as the ABL, can automatically find, track, and kill missiles without the intervention of the four crew members. When a threat is detected, a tracking laser locks onto the target, while the computers calculate course, speed, and direction. At that point, the weapons-class laser, mounted on a turret under the nose, fires a three- to five-second burst of destructive energy.
The second tier of defense is a ground-based mid-course system. It uses interceptor missiles to kill warheads in their cruise phase. The missile ? known as a boost vehicle ? is a three-stage solid fuel rocket with its top stage being an exo-atmospheric kill vehicle.
The booster uses a wide range of sensors and radar to track and lock onto the target. It then releases the 155-pound kill vehicle, which continues tracking the warheads through its own on-board sensors. It carries no explosives. The kill vehicle actually rams into the target at 15,000 miles an hour in a technique known as “hit-to-kill,” which has been proven successful in numerous tests.
The first of these mid-course interceptors was lowered into its silo July 22, 2004, at Fort Greely, Alaska.5 Today, there are eight deployed there, with two at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, according to documents obtained from the U.S. Missile Defense Agency.
While this ground-based component of the mid-course defense has gotten most of the attention from critics, that’s not all we’re counting on to do the mid-course defense job. It’s backed up by a mobile system on the sea, called The Aegis Weapon System. It performs the same functions as the ground-based system. And, it can also launch a follow-up vehicle to perform post-intercept “kill assessments.”
For precise tracking of the targets, the Aegis system is backed up by the new SBX radar station, which is 280 feet tall and weighs 5,000 tons. It’s actually a semi-submersible oil production platform, topped with X-band radar, which can move anywhere a ship could travel in the ocean. The first one was delivered to Hawaii on January 10, 2006.
Finally, if a missile manages to get past tier one and tier two of the system, the third tier, known as the Terminal Defense Segment, kicks in. This consists of four elements:
The first is known as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System, and consists of truck-mounted, radar-guided missiles, which can be airlifted to any location in the world.
The second, known as Arrow, is a ground-based system already deployed in Israel for defense of its borders, as well as of U.S. troops in the region.
The third element is the third generation of the familiar Patriot missile, now deployed in Iraq.
The fourth element is the Medium Extended Air Defense System, or MEADS. This system is being developed with a coalition of European nations to provide a mobile missile defense capability. Using the Patriot-3 as a platform, it employs 360-degree radar to counter ballistic missiles, aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, and cruise missiles.
Ideally, the third phase will never need to be used to destroy ballistic missiles, because the first two phases will make it unnecessary. However, having all three layers makes this a very robust and highly redundant system that reinforces the viability of the entire program.
Looking forward, we offer the five following forecasts:
First, as elements of the National Missile Defense system are deployed and prove themselves, public criticism of the program will gradually be pushed into the fringe. There is already widespread public support for missile defense, largely because the public recognizes that the number of countries having ballistic missiles has tripled since the ABM Treaty was signed in 1972.
Second, as the full array of missile defense technologies is deployed, their combined effectiveness will improve exponentially. In addition to the elements of the system already mentioned, a vast electronic infrastructure is being created to reduce the decision cycle-time in the event of a missile attack and coordinate all the elements involved in an integrated response. The centerpiece of this new system is the Command and Control, Battle Management, and Communications system being developed on a 15-year time line by the Missile Defense Agency National Team, which was formed in 2002. This forms the “nervous system” that will sense threats and respond to them.
Third, by 2012, the MEADS technology will begin to accompany U.S. troops wherever they are deployed in the world. This means that under battlefield conditions, those troops will be protected from missiles, drones, aircraft, and other flying threats, greatly reducing casualties.
Fourth, because missile defense technology is so difficult to develop and deploy, it represents a nearly insurmountable war-time advantage for the U.S. While offensive missile technology has been relatively easy to disseminate throughout the world, the technology behind missile defense is far beyond the capabilities of nations like North Korea or Iran. It is, in effect, equivalent to having a state-of-the-art space program. As a result, no nation that might conceivably present a missile threat to the U.S. and its allies could build its own missile defense system. With that in mind, those countries that are friendly to the U.S. will be brought into the coalition and protected, making the missiles of hostile nations useful only against other nations hostile to the U.S. In short, on a 15-to-30-year time line, allied nations will exist under the protective umbrella of a global missile defense system.
Fifth, any missile defense system’s primary value will not come from actually destroying enemy missiles, but from tilting the strategic rules of the geo-political game in our favor. Specifically, it makes it less certain that launching a pre-emptive attack against the United States or its allies will succeed. Ballistic missiles are a technology that can easily be tracked back to their country of origin, making retaliation clear-cut. Even the most devoted Jihadist who eagerly awaits his own martyrdom is likely to hesitate if it’s unlikely that his attack will succeed and it is a certainty that millions of his colleagues will die in a retaliatory strike that his nation cannot possibly thwart.
References List : 1. For more information about the history, current status and future of the U.S. missile defense system, visit the Missile Defense Agency website at www.acq.osd.mil/mda/mdaling/html/mdalink.html 2. To access the national poll results on the issue of missile defense, visit the AmericanPublic.us website at www.missiledefenseadvocacy.org/index/news/press-releases/041205.html 3. To access the national poll results on the issue of missile defense, visit the AmericanPublic.us website at www.missiledefenseadvocacy.org/pdf/MDAANationalPoll-TOPLINEFINAL.pdf 4. To access the report “Review & Assessment of the Airborne Laser (ABL) Missile Defense System,” visit The George C. Marshall Institute website at www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/393.pdf 5. For more missile defense news, visit the U.S. Missile Defense Agency website at www.mda.mil/mdalink/html/news.html
