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Weekly Analysis
GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE UPDATE

National Missile Defenses: Fighting the Last War
24 January 2000
SUMMARY
Last week, the Pentagon’s Ballistic Missile Defense
Organization launched a missile from California into the Pacific
in an attempt to shoot it down and prove that a limited national
missile defense is possible. But the ongoing debate over such a
defense is at least a decade behind emerging strategic and
battlefield realities. The new strategic threat will not come from
rogue regimes fielding one or two weapons but instead from
coalitions built around true nuclear powers such as Russia and
China – whose forces could easily overwhelm such a defense.
And the debate is distracting the U.S. military from forging a
space strategy that protects satellites, the keys to U.S.
conventional military power.
ANALYSIS
Last week, the United States launched a missile from
Vandenberg Air Force Base in California toward Kwajalein Atoll,
several thousand miles away in the Pacific. A few minutes later,
an interceptor missile was launched from the island. Its mission
was to destroy the incoming intercontinental ballistic missile
(ICBM) in a test of a new anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system.
The interceptor missed. The test failed.
The responses were predictable. Opponents of an ABM system
claimed that the failure proved the inherent unreliability of a
missile defense system. Whatever the virtues of an ABM
system, the claim that this test proved its non-viability is absurd.
Early tests of any system are expected to fail. That’s why they
are called tests. You only have to think about the failures of
missiles early in the space program to realize that. This failure
tells us nothing. Which is not to say that an ABM system of this
sort is a good idea. It just means that this failure should not
influence anyone’s opinion, one way or another.
Let’s consider how we got to this position. In 1972, the United
States and Soviet Union signed an agreement banning the
creation of an ABM system. The treaty was meaningless; no
one really knew how to build such a system. The Soviets
deployed some hardware around Moscow, but calling it an
anti-missile system would have been charitable. The 1972
treaty, therefore, was a classic in diplomatic irrelevance,
banning what was effectively impossible.
By the 1980s, missile defense capabilities appeared to have
evolved to the point that a serious defense was possible.
Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or Star
Wars, was a project intended to reconsider the question of
whether an effective defense against missiles was possible
under new technology. Opponents of SDI argued (a) that it
would not work and (b) that it would de-stabilize the balance
achieved by Mutual Assured Destruction, the doctrine that
deterrence rested on assurance that an attack by one side
would result in an annihilating attack by the other side. Now, If
(a) were true, then (b) would not be. Nonetheless, the same
people who criticized SDI for being ineffective were frequently
the ones arguing that it was destabilizing.
The defenders of SDI managed to get as tangled in logic as the
opponents. The primary criticism of a missile-based ABM
system was that it was like hitting a bullet with a bullet. A
secondary criticism was that the interception would likely take
place inside the atmosphere, with results as nasty as if they
weren’t intercepted. Finally, since each ground-based
interceptor would have a very limited range, the number of
interceptors needed to protect the United States from incoming
missiles was mind-boggling. All of these were good arguments.
SDI therefore focused on a new class of weapons. These
weapons were to be based in space rather than on earth, so
that they could intercept launches as they left the atmosphere
or in mid-flight, rather than on the last seconds of their
trajectory. More important, these weapons would consist of
laser beams, particle beams, X-rays and other speed-of-light
weapons. These speed-of-light weapons would take care of the
problem of hitting a bullet with a bullet. A missile moving at
seven miles per second was virtually standing still.
Space-based, speed-of- light weapons would be able to handle
any missile.
That was probably true, yet the SDI initiate failed to generate
an effective missile defense. In the 1980s, no one knew how to
build weapons able to generate sufficient energy to fry an ICBM
thousands of miles away. The generation, storage and release
of huge amounts of energy was theoretically possible, but no
one knew how to do it with sufficient speed so that thousands
of missiles could be dealt with between the time they left the
atmosphere and the time they reentered. Ideas like using giant
mirrors to focus the light of the sun were floated, but the fact
was that this was a great idea with a single defect. No one
knew how to build it. Other ideas, like Brilliant Pebbles, in which
thousands of little rockets with sensors would be deployed,
were floated. But by now, the time for exotic technologies has
passed.
SDI hit its technological stonewall, serendipitously, it spawned a
range of technologies that generated a revolution at the
operational level of warfare.
The old idea of a ground-based missile defense system
resurfaced. This resurrection coincided with a transformation in
geopolitical realities. A ground-based system would be impotent
in the face of a Soviet attack. But by the time the idea of
ground-based system was reborn, the Soviets were on their
last legs. As important, during Desert Storm, the single most
feared weapon in the Iraqi arsenal was the Scud missile, a
fairly primitive, relatively short-range missile – that killed more
American soldiers than any other single system when it hit
Saudi Arabia.
Attention turned to two missions. Defending a theater of
operations against incoming missiles was one. The other was
defending the United States against ICBMs launched one or two
at a time by lesser powers like Iraq, Iran, Libya or Syria. With
the collapse of the Soviet Union, the primary objection to
ground-based missile defense systems evaporated. The United
States no longer had to defend against 5,000 incoming
warheads. It only had to defend against a handful. The
developing technologies could also be used to defend against
shorter-range systems within a theater, like the Persian Gulf or
the Balkans.
Enter the current series of tests. Consider that the primary
argument for the current system is that it will defend against
“rogue” states that might launch a missile attack against the
United States. The list is short of nations with motive to attack
the United States and with the potential ability to build both
atomic weapons and ICBMs: Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea and
Syria.
It is far from clear that any of these nations have nuclear
technology that can be married to an effective ICBM. More
important, contrary to popular myth, none of these nations is
ruled by lunatics. Quite the contrary, when we look at the
leadership of Iraq, Libya or North Korea we see people who
are in the business of surviving. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
took a calculated risk with a big potential payoff in 1990. The
gamble failed, but it wasn’t a reckless act, just a bad bet. He
didn’t know the United States would intervene. He left himself
room for retreat, hung on and survived. He may be a brute, but
he is not a moron. Saddam knows that if he launches two or
three ICBMs at the United States, his country would be turned
into radioactive glass, and he would be playing a leading role in
a Geiger counter.
The primary motive for these nations to build nuclear-capable
missiles would be the same as that of the great powers:
deterrence. The United States would certainly think twice
before bombing an Iraq with several survivable, nuclear-tipped
ICBMs. But as with all deterrence, the value is lost at the
moment of launch. Moreover, if the United States genuinely
believed that someone was planning to launch an ICBM at the
United States, U.S. satellite intelligence would pick up the
construction of the site months or even years before it was
intact. The low-cost response would be to destroy the launch
site, the missile factory and the nuclear facility with preemptive,
preferably conventional, air strikes. If necessary, the State
Department could claim that it had discovered a secret plan for
genocide. That would be the low-cost missile defense, both
more effective and immediately available.
There is a much more serious problem. We are now in the year
2000. The assumption that the primary threat facing the United
States comes from a handful of rogue countries is simply no
longer true. Russia and China are both major nuclear powers
whose relations with the United States are rapidly deteriorating.
We do not expect a nuclear exchange, but we do not think that
the only challenges facing the United States come from a
handful of isolated countries.
The strategic environment changes daily. The real issue facing
the United States is its ability to maintain a presence in Eurasia
in the face of Russian and Chinese animosity. In the future,
interventions against countries like Serbia will likely occur in the
context of their receiving backing, political and material, from
other great powers. It is no longer reasonable to expect that –
as has been the case in Haiti, Iraq, Panama, Serbia, Somalia
and others – the defenders will be strategically isolated.
This means two things. First, Western interventions will become
much less frequent, as risks rise. Therefore, the concept of the
isolated, rogue state is going to be replaced by coalitions
grouped around great powers. The probability of one or two
missiles launched by a rogue power decreases from its already
low probability. One of the consequences of coalitions is that
the great power at the center not only supports the lesser
power, but also imposes discipline. Serbia, allied with Russia in
two years, will be more difficult to attack but more predictable
in its response.
Second, the ongoing debate over national missile defense
consistently draws focus away from the real battlefield
necessity: space strategy’s role in supporting conventional
forces. U.S. conventional forces have become dependent on
space-based systems for communications and intelligence, as
illustrated by the 1999 NATO conflict with Yugoslavia. The Joint
Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) dropped by B-2 bombers
depended on guidance from U.S. Global Position System
satellites (GPS). Targeters relied on reconnaissance satellites
for target selection. Orders inside the theater, as well as
between the theater and Washington and Brussels, depended
upon satellites. Even weather forecasting was managed by
satellites.
Any serious opponent of the United States knows that it cannot
win a conventional war while these satellite systems function.
An opponent also knows that if that satellite system is
destroyed, the United States will be left deaf, dumb and
disoriented. Destroying just a handful of the 24 GPS satellites
currently in orbit could leave infantry patrols lost and munitions
undeliverable.
The fundamental issue in missile defense is not defending U.S.
cities against ICBMs launched by North Korea. The launch sites
can be destroyed in a week, and there is nothing North Korea
could do about it. That is a side issue. The central issue is
defending U.S. satellites against enemy missile, laser and other
attacks. The problem with the current program is that it is
fighting yesterday’s war. It is focused on random missile
attacks on the United States from isolated powers. The real
issue is going to be fighting conventional wars at the lowest
possible cost. That means that U.S. space-based systems are
indispensable.
Obviously, we have no idea what defensive capabilities have
been added to U.S. satellites. We assume that critical
reconnaissance satellites can maneuver to avoid anti-satellite
systems and are hardened against ground-based laser
systems. One would assume that serious thought and
investment has gone into both the defense of satellites and
redundancy in the event of attrition. At the same time, no one
knows what surprises a clever enemy can devise to get around
defenses. Such surprises can be catastrophic to units as far
down the chain as the infantry squad on patrol.
Defending American cities against rogue states seems the
wrong mission at the wrong time. Preemptive strikes and the
promise of nuclear annihilation is a sufficient defense. The new
mission is sustaining and operating forces in the back yards of
enemies with sufficient sophistication and capabilities to pose a
real threat. These forces will strike at U.S. satellites in order to
massively reduce the capabilities of conventional forces.
Defending U.S. space-based assets is critical for U.S.
geopolitical interests.
Ample reports exist of Chinese, Russian and other nations
developing ground-based lasers designed to destroy satellites.
Undoubtedly, anyone thinking about conflict with the United
States is spending a great deal of time contemplating the
vulnerabilities of U.S. communications, navigation and
intelligence satellites. They undoubtedly are forming their battle
plans. These plans have to include space-based attacks on
U.S. systems. That means that there has to be space-based
defenses for satellite systems. A purely defensive posture on
the most valuable and scarce military resources cannot work.
Anti-satellite systems can only be countered actively.
Which brings us back to SDI. The revolution in sensor
technology had a great deal to do with SDI. Now, SDI may be
re-applicable to its original mission. SDI failed because
speed-of-light technologies were not available to complement
its sensor technologies. Over the coming decade, speed of light
may well come into its own. Certainly it will be used as an
anti-satellite system. It can be used to defend satellites. By
extension, it may now be applicable to a working anti-missile
system.
In the 1980s, SDI was premature and was focused on an
unlikely threat. Now, the threat against U.S. satellites is far from
unlikely and is potentially crippling. As important, many of the
technologies being contemplated in the early 1980s are not as
farfetched a generation later. From energy weapons to Brilliant
Pebbles, concepts that could not be operationalized in 1985
may be possible by 2005. Within this context, an effective
space-based anti-ICBM system might well be feasible. The
failed test over the Pacific gives us an opportunity to reconsider
what is possible and necessary in the next generation.
Decisions made in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union
and Desert Storm need to be rethought under any
circumstances.
The real issue is not defense against rogue nations, but a
general reconsideration of U.S. space strategy in an age of
increasingly great power tension and the likelihood of ongoing
conventional operations far from the United States. The dollars
spent on defending against the threats of the 1990s might be
better spent in preparation for the wars of 2010 and 2020. If
planners simply think through how U.S. capabilities would be
affected if space-based systems suddenly were destroyed, the
importance of a practical space control strategy would become
apparent.