Missile Defense

This is an emotive subject. It is clear that some form of defense from IRBM's (Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles) is needed. It is also very apparent that thermonuclear or biological devices can be delivered in much more pedestrian manners, rental trucks being an obvious choice. However, the current fascination with what we call the Nuclear Missile Defense (NMD) program and the political pressure being exerted to keep it in place is out of all proportion to the immediate risk and has no basis in technical competence.

Missile defense is not new. The Safeguard system of the 1960's was the last fully functional ICBM defense system the US operated, but there were others before and after. The old Nike series of missiles, were intended to shoot down bombers but later missiles were tested against Bomarc cruise missiles. More recently PAC-2 Patriot missiles have been employed in SRBM defense, particularly in the Gulf War. The US Navy's Standard SM-2 has fulfilled a similar role in Aegis class ships as the Patriot has done for the Army.

Safeguard was ground breaking though. It consisted of a tiered defensive system based on massive radar's, command and control centers and two distinct types of missile; the Spartan exoatmospheric interceptor and the Sprint endoatmospheric interceptor. There was one minor issue with these missiles that limited their usefulness: they were tipped with nuclear weapons. While the Spartan might explode at extremely high altitude, the Sprint missile was intended to hit targets at quite low altitudes, intentionally as low as 10,000ft. This nuclear dimension was felt to be only applicable in the most dire circumstances. However, the systems perceived usefulness was enough to get the USSR and the USA around a table and hammer out a much more lasting thing: The The ABM Treaty (part of the SALT I treaty signed in 1972) limited the number of interceptors and the number of bases that could be used to launch from. The treaty allowed 2 launch locations (subsequently reduced to 1 site) and a maximum of 100 interceptors, provisions also existed that limited or forbade testing of antecedents of these systems. The prior Outer Space treaty of 1967 forbade the use of space for weapons deployment (putting an end to orbital and fractional orbital nukes).

In this White Sands Missile range image, a Sprint missile is launched.

Being a techie, the stats on the old Safeguard system are quite impressive, the missiles are stunning. To see what I mean visit the hyperlinked site for details on Sprint & Spartan.

BMDO

BMDO is the organization that came out of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) a.k.a. Star Wars. It was named as the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) during the Bush era (1993). It was tasked with defining the technology that could be used to devise missile defense systems. It has facilitated some excellent thinking, Brilliant Pebbles was one of its initiatives. BMDO continues to be the research body that promotes NMD. The other tactical systems, the Theater Missile Defense systems (TMD) are the responsibilities of the individual services.

The Projects

I have lumped the various projects together here, though with due regard to these projects it may be unfair to mention NMD in the same breath as TMD.

NMD

NMD has been a project in the making for many years. It has had many reorganizations, names, builders...

It started life as SDI. It got sleeved down with the end of the Cold War into something more palatable to the tax paying public. It was then reshaped as a result of various elections.

No one dares to get rid of it, who would be the President to say US citizens should go unprotected? Yet no one wants to put the price tag infront of the people and have them vote on it. As the program in its many guises has so far soaked up approximately $60 Billion, there is a certain feeling in the defense community that they don't want to see it stop... stopping it would merely make the spent money seem obscene, better to keep it going and keep the final bill a moving target.

There are several phases to a target missiles flight, these are referred to as:

• Boost
• Mid Course
• Descent

The NMD program is intended to strike at incoming missiles in the mid-course phase of flight. In this phase the missile is travelling swiftly but not at its fastest. It is, however, potentially surrounded by debris from its launch and other items called decoys. This makes the warhead a hard target to discriminate. Many opponents have said this is a show stopper.

NMD is a direct hit weapon. It actually goes up and directly strikes its intended target. There is a small warhead but it mainly consists of unspent rocket fuel. With a closing rate in excess of Mach 15 (10 coming down, 5 going up), a direct hit is more than ample for vaporizing the target. The concept of direct hit is not new, early warheads in the Nike-Hercules programs did much the same. The Rapier, Seawolf and Patriot air defense systems all hit to kill, though all have proximity fuses, just-in-case.

The current iteration of NMD has produced 3 launches. There have been two complete failures and one "Success". The success was when a test missile passed close enough that the target got scared, not destroyed.

Three tests does not a system make!

There are another 17 tests scheduled to take place. These need to be done. Someone needs to prove if these systems can really do what is being asked of them. But it is far too early for the systems to be pushed into production, and deployed. False security is no security.

To make matters worse, the old ABM treaty has limited the opportunities for success. With only one base to be used, there has to be careful selection of the possible loonies that would want to fire at the US. With North Korea still doing a goodly impression of sabre rattling, a West Coast base seems the most suitable launcher location. However, this offends the Chinese. They see it as a slight on them, and their missile force. They can see their small ICBM force being made both militarily and offensively obsolete overnight. The only recourse they have is to make enough missiles as to flood the NMD system - not a hard task. But then countries like India and Pakistan get upset with the thought of a China armed to the teeth sitting next door.

TMD

Theater Missile Defense has some of the same technical issues that NMD has, though few of the global political issues. Again the system attempts to kill the incoming target warhead in the upper atmosphere. However these systems have significantly less range and are intended as mobile protection for Armies and Fleets. There has been some question as to whether they fall under the ABM treaty, but people are being coy about this.

It's in the US political arena that these TMD systems are facing their biggest challenges. The Democrats are a bit iffy about them, and the Republicans think they don't go far enough in their capabilities. This firestorm is leading to budget strangulation, particularly of the Navy Upper Tier systems, but all the systems are facing funding problems and slowdowns.

THAAD

THAAD (Theater High Altitude Air Defense) is intended to shoot down extremely fast airplanes at incredible altitudes... or incoming missiles. The former gets it in to operation the latter is simply a nice side effect of a very good system.

The Army needs THAAD to defend its troops (and those of the airforce) from weapons like the Iraqi SCUD's and the pot pouri of SCUD lookalikes. THAAD will form the upper tier of an air defense system that will use Patriot PAC-3's for lower altitude interceptions.

To date there have been about 11 tests of the system, the jury is still out on the success of these tests. There have been some VERY high profile issues (like the first missiles may have been manufactured with faults due to QC failures). Generally the system testing seems to be progressing well.

Navy Theater Wide Defense System (NTW)

For most of the latter half of the 20th century aircraft carriers have been the mainstay of the US ability in extending conventional force. Nuclear powered and fairly fast, the carrier groups have been effective deterrent forces, and a means to "project force." There has been a perpetual fear of the navy being zapped by a nuclear tipped cruise missile, but this eventuality is being diminished by the use of many forms of radar and anti- missile defense systems.

Unfortunately, with proliferation of SCUD class missiles and nuclear technology comes the fear that someone could lobe a big one into the fleet and take out the whole thing. Currently there is little defense against this. The navy's first line of defense are the Standard SM-1 and SM-2 missiles. These are useful, but probably no more potent than a PAC-2 Patriot... and the fleet does not possess the radar coverage to detect launches in quite the manner the Patriot batteries obtained their information during Desert Storm. This is a big hole.

NTW is intended to provide the Standard missile with a capability improvement, and also provide the sensors to allow the interceptors to be used effectively.

Testing is going slowly. The Navy seems to be in the dog house as far as the Whitehouse is concerned, and efforts to step the program up have failed. This is leading to much later deployment estimates and anxious faces.

BPI: Another Crazy Scheme

NMD and TMD are hard enough. SDI was completely impossible. Now we have the scientists going around thinking that Boost Phase Intercept (BPI) is the Holy Grail of missile defense. This is the concept whereby you detect a launch, point the gun quickly, fire and hit the target while it still has its engine running, hence its still accelerating.

The fact that this missile might be lifting off from a launch pad in central Mongolia or Downtown Brasilia seems to have no impact on the fact that the speeding interceptor or airborne laser needs to be within a few hundred miles of the launch point. I concede that if Mr. Saddam Hussein launched another Scud that we would be in a position to get it, but he is always threatening such. Its much harder if the protagonist has no prior history, but does have fat bank rolls.

Test It

The principle problem at the moment is understanding what we can do with these systems. They are almost completely untested. There has been a lot of pressure to deploy some or all of these systems long before it is known whether they work. This effort will lead no where. The GOA will make sure that the taxpayer is informed of every little issue if these go into service and prove to be unserviceable (U.S. in British Military parlance).

The Costs

While NMD may be expensive, it is hard to concede that failure to stop a nuke would be far more costly. An opportunity to defray costs could come in the form of a pan-european defense system of a similar form. Such a defense system could cover Europe, and the former Soviet republics, and be paid for by the same. This might also provide a means of side stepping the ABM treaty as a mutual defense system, one engineered to include even the Chinese and Japanese, could be made to appear more palatable to the legal eagles on all sides. Of course, this is my own form of pie-in-the-sky, just as impractical as everyone else's.

Some Updates

June 2001. A colossal game of chicken is going on. The US wishes to build an ABM treaty busting system, while the rest of the world mostly gets jittery. The Russians have been offered an Olive branch in the form of being a potential future user of such a treaty busting system. There have even been commentators suggesting that the Chinese could be included as partners. This type of umbrella system would be wonderful, but how we get there is a road full of potholes.

The Bush presidency would like to expand the scale of the defense system, including a space based offensive component (shooting missiles down from outer space can hardly be considered defensive). This multi-layer initiative would continue the existing NMD system development and deployment, but back it up with additional systems that extend the ground based missile defense, add an airborne laser component, and finally put the laser in a satellite package and place it in orbit.

The thinking behind the space based systems might extend to deploying these systems only in times of crisis, particularly if the airforce (spaceforce?) can get cheap and powerful boosters that can be launched at the drop of a hat. Such a booster may be partly what is behind the latest round of ICBM developments; a standard booster for both the Navy sub's and the airforces silo's. If the booster were made in large enough numbers, it might be cheap enough to be used as a laser launch platform, assuming the airforce can package the laser to be small and light enough. Speculation is wonderful.

The Russians are playing an odd game. They are sabre rattling about how nasty the NMD system is and how throwing away the ABM treaty is a bad thing. On the other hand, they seem very open to discussions about inclusion in some larger missile defense system. It looks like the Russians are a bit upset at the thought of only a few missiles being stopped, but if all of an attackers missiles were neutralized then they will play along with whom ever wants to build such a defense system.

The Chinese look to be playing from a much weaker position. They seem to be of the opinion that NMD was aimed at making their limited arsenal of missiles ineffective (which it might well have been) and to take them out of the super power game. They see their only option is to get America away from NMD (giving back what, remains to be seen) or build many more ICBM's. They have the option of one other card, that being to take out Taiwan, while this might retrieve an island they have considered theirs for many years, it would hardly do them much good in the International arena.

The cost of NMD is still unclear. The cost of the multi-layer system is not even been discussed. The reality might be that if we gave Russia and China the expected cost of these systems in unmarked $5's and $20's, they would cease and desist anyway. A back of the cuff estimate might be that NMD has so far cost about 1 billion dollars. A deployed system might cost 10-20 billion with another 10 billion in operational costs over a 20 year life. The multi-layer defense system would be more expensive (duh!). Say 1000 interceptor missiles, 10 airborne lasers, and 20 space based lasers, radar's, early warning satellite systems and the support infrastructure... if we get change from 100 billion dollars we will be really lucky. It may take that much just to develop the weapons.

Early 2002 Updates

January 2002. The Navy has cancelled the Area Wide Project. It simply was not getting where it needed to be in a budget sensitive manner. Now a new project is in the offing, one that will likely favour a hit-to- kill approach to the fleet defense problem. The Pentagon could yet force a navalized Patriot PAC-3's to be fielded.

It would seem that the Chinese are also entering into a program to build up their ICBM missile counts. There seem to be indications that they want a bigger balistic missile fleet, probably to counter any shootdown capability the NMD projects can provide. I can only summize that given the precision weapons threat, as demonstrated by the US in Afghanistan, that Chinese efforts to put more missiles in Submarines will increase.

The latest NMD test seems to have gone off successfully. It was a repeat of the last two tests, one of which failed completely, and the other of which was only a qualified success (radar failure during the intercept). This test is a fairly simple scenario (technically hideously complex, nonetheless) - the most important thing now is the baby steps needed to progress the system to something more complex and suited to real life.