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US Missile Defense
Based Security Strategy is by The Union of Concerned Scientists, June 23, 2003 The extraordinary US gov't emphasis on missile defense represents misplaced priorities. To achieve real security, The United States needs Russian and Chinese cooperation on a range of non-proliferation and security issues. Getting that cooperation will be easier if the United States does not proceed with a missile defense program that Russia and China find potentially threatening. And China appears likely to build up its long-range nuclear arsenal in response to deployment of US missile defenses. The United States is currently attempting to develop several components of a missile defense system designed to protect US territory from attack by long-range (strategic) ballistic missiles. Under the Bush administration, missile defenses have received $7 billion to $8 billion annually, and the FY04 budget request is $9 billion. In December 2002, the Bush administration announced that it would deploy the first phase of a rudimentary missile defense system by the time of the 2004 presidential elections-even though the system is in very early stages of testing. This extraordinary emphasis on missile defense represents misplaced priorities. The administration's top priority should instead be combating the threat of terrorism. Rather than focusing on missile defense, the United States can and should do more to combat terrorism diplomatically, economically, and militarily. US security-and that of the rest of the world-will require increased levels of international cooperation. As part of this effort, a top priority should be increasing its programs to keep nuclear warheads and materials out of the hands of terrorists. The Bush administration, however, is giving this problem a fraction of the attention and funding being given to missile defense. The missile defense system being rushed into deployment is not relevant to the war on terrorism. The system the Bush administration plans to deploy by 2004 will have essentially no defense capability. The technology needed for an effective missile defense system still doesn't exist. All the systems being developed are in early stages of research and development, and will have undergone only rudimentary testing by the time they will be fielded in 2004-6. Operational testing will not have begun and test conditions will remain far from realistic. None of the X-band radars that are central to the system will be built by 2004. And even if the technology worked perfectly, the systems being deployed are vulnerable to countermeasures that are easier to build than the long-range missile on which they would be placed. The UCS-MIT report Countermeasures was instrumental in calling attention to this problem and contributed to President Clinton's 2000 decision not to deploy the system the Bush administration is now fielding. The United States needs Russian and Chinese cooperation on a range of non-proliferation and security issues. Getting that cooperation will be easier if the United States does not proceed with a missile defense program that Russia and China find potentially threatening. And China appears likely to build up its long-range nuclear arsenal in response to deployment of US missile defenses. UCS is working to keep the country from making a costly mistake. We've prepared technical analyses of the testing program to illustrate what it does-and does not-show about the capabilities of the systems being developed. We've presented testimony before Congress, and are working to increase congressional understanding and oversight of the program. We're making sure the press and the public understand the issue. We've talked to scientists in other countries to understand their concerns about this program, and helped other governments understand what the system can and can't do. www.ucsusa.org/global_security/missile_defense/index.cfm?pageID=29 Why Missile Defense Won't Work
It worked-at least that's what we were told. But shortly after the experiment flew, three courageous people-a former employee of defense contractor TRW turned whistle-blower, a TRW retiree and a U.S. Department of Defense investigator-brought new evidence to light (see "Postol vs. the Pentagon"). Their information, coupled with my own investigation and repeated calls for a full accounting from U.S. representatives Howard Berman and Edward Markey, pointed to a different story-one of failure, a finding seemingly confirmed this February by a draft of a Government Accounting Office follow-on study, as reported by the journal Science. I believe that the top management of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency (previously known as the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization) and its contractors have misrepresented or distorted the results derived from the experiment and rigged the follow-on test program that continues to this day. These deliberate actions have hidden the system's critical vulnerabilities from the White House, Congress and the American citizens whom the missile defense program was supposed to protect. www.technologyreview.com/articles/postol0402.asp Going
Postol: Ted Postol is challenging the government's claims about a proposed a missile defense system. He's a prickly character, but he has a track record that's hard to beat. By
Gary Taubes This steady stream of indignation and accusation has led Postol's colleagues to describe him as not so much interested in building coalitions or playing politics as he is in pursuing the truth with a single-minded, laserlike focus. They also suggest that his passion and his capacity for outrage constitute his best and worst qualities. His volatility leads him into conflicts that detract from his main point, which happens to be one of extraordinary importance. Postol is asserting that the U.S. government is on the verge of deploying a $60 billion missile defense system that cannot possibly work-a move that would make the world a considerably less secure place to live. But Postol's passion is also what motivates him to risk career and reputation every time he decides that the U.S. Defense Department-or all too often, MIT, his own institution-is pushing dubious technology on the American public. More than anything, it's that passion that drives his research, which has repeatedly proven to be dead on when it comes to assessing the failings of antiballistic-missile defense systems. So it is that most of his fellow specialists in defense technology believe that if Postol says the missile defense program has critical flaws, it probably does-and the nation should take notice. Postol's technical analysis of missile defense is "the best work that anybody has done outside the bowels of the Pentagon," says former assistant secretary of defense Philip Coyle, the director of defense operational test and evaluation during the Clinton administration. Coyle makes what may be the salient point about Postol's role: when Postol is not publicly charging someone in the government-industrial complex of fraud or malfeasance or stupidity regarding missile defense, public discussion on the technology seems to grind to a halt. "When Ted is not in the news every month," says Coyle, "nothing happens." The notion of a missile defense shield has been controversial since its earliest incarnation 40 years ago, when both the United States and the Soviet Union were actively developing such systems. Unlike Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative of the 1980s, which sought to protect the country from a massive attack from the Soviet Union, current goals are more modest-and more achievable. The idea behind "national missile defense," as it's now called, is to guard the United States against any stray missiles that might be launched accidentally by the Russians or former Soviet states, or with intended malice by terrorist groups or a rogue nation such as North Korea. The centerpiece of those defenses would be a system of missiles-known in the lingo as "exoatmospheric kill vehicles," or just "kill vehicles"-that would track down incoming warheads while they are still in the upper atmosphere and destroy them on impact. Ted Postol happens to be one of many experts who have grave doubts that such a feat of technological virtuosity-often described as hitting a bullet with a bullet-is possible, or at least sufficiently probable to bet our national security and tens of billions of dollars on. "If you're going to build weapons," he likes to say, "they ought to work." And the kill vehicles, by his assessment, most likely will not work. This adds a moral dimension to his outrage: if the government insists on deploying a dysfunctional missile defense system and believing-or at least pretending to believe-that it works, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people could get killed. Anyone who knows better and doesn't actively work to expose the truth is culpable, Postol believes. As he recently wrote in a characteristically irate letter to President Vest, failure to speak out under these circumstances is morally equivalent to the decision of a structural engineer who knows otherwise to "[tell] the occupants of the burning World Trade Towers, 'Don't worry, the buildings won't collapse'." (To continue reading this article you must be a premium subscriber.) www.technologyreview.com/articles/taubes10402.asp From the World
Policy Institute website: Summary of Findings Finding 1 - Playing politics with defense: Given the serious technical, cost, and arms control problems plaguing the Clinton administration's proposed National Missile Defense (NMD) system, the most convincing explanation for the undue haste with which this issue is being decided is that both the Clinton administration and its conservative adversaries in Congress and the Bush campaign are playing politics with the missile defense issue. Finding 2 - The NMD Two-Step - Republicans Lead, Clinton Follows: In its ongoing effort to "triangulate" by coopting Republican issues, President Clinton has slowly but surely met conservative missile defense boosters more than half way on the NMD issue, to the point where his administration has little room to maneuver in putting the program on hold in pursuit of a new round of nuclear arms reductions with Russia. In the mean time, Republicans in Congress and on the Bush campaign have stepped up their calls for an elaborate, multi-tiered NMD system akin to Ronald Reagan's ill-fated Star Wars scheme of the 1980s. Finding 3 - NMD Is Unaffordable: With cost projections for NMD ranging from a Congressional Budget Office estimate of $60 billion for the Clinton administration's "limited" two site system to as much as $240 billion for a "robust," multi-tiered approach, missile defense is fast outpacing the willingness of the public or large parts of the national security establishment to pay for it, particularly compared to what these vast sums could do to address other pressing national needs. Finding 4 - NMD Is Lucrative: The nation's Big 3 weapons contractors, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon, are looking to missile defense as a medium-to-long term source of revenues and profits to help them recover from recent management and technical problems that have slashed their stock prices in half and reduced their profit margins. In FY1998-99, the four largest missile defense contractors (the Big 3 plus TRW) have shared over $2.2 billion in Pentagon research and development funding for research projects. These four firms completely dominate the missile defense program at this point, accounting for 60% of total missile defense contracts issued by the Pentagon in FY1998-99. Finding 5 - The Political Pace of the NMD Program Is Being Pushed by An Alliance of Conservative True Believers and Right-Wing Foundations Centered Around Frank Gaffney's Center for Security Policy: Every major milestone in the NMD program, from its inclusion in Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey's "Contract With America" in 1994 to the Rumsfeld Commission's extreme "worst case" assessment of the "rogue state" missile threat in 1998 to the passage of pro-NMD legislation in both houses of Congress in the spring of 1999, has been propelled forward by a highly disciplined and effective coalition of conservative organizations. This pro-NMD network includes the Heritage Foundation and Empower America, and neo-Reaganite Republicans like Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), all of whom are represented on the Board of Advisors of the Center for Security Policy, which serves as the de facto nerve center of the missile defense lobby. Finding
6 - The Four Largest Missile Defense Contractors Are Making a Major
Political Investment in the Promotion of an NMD System: Since Republicans
took control of the House in 1995, weapons industry PAC contributions
have favored Republican congressional candidates by a margin of 2 to
1. In this election cycle alone, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and
TRW have given over $2 million to the 25 most hard-core NMD boosters
in the Senate who signed a recent letter from Jesse Helms to President
Clinton threatening to kill any U.S.-Russian arms agreement that puts
ANY limits on the scope of future NMD deployments. These companies also
spent $34 million on lobbying during 1997-98, and they have helped finance
a series of pro-NMD breakfasts on Capitol Hill in conjunction with the
National Defense University Foundation and the National Security Industrial
Association (the weapons industry's largest trade association). From
Star Wars to National Missile Defense See
website for further detail Published
on Thursday, May 11, 2000 in the Boston Globe The United States is on the verge of deploying a national missile defense system intended to shoot down long-range missiles. The Clinton administration is scheduled to decide this fall whether to give the green light to a system that is expected to cost more than $60 billion, sour relations with Russia and China, and block deep cuts in nuclear arsenals. But the real scandal is that the defense being developed won't work - and few in Washington seem to know or care. The chief difficulty in trying to develop missile defenses is not getting vast systems of complex hardware to work as intended - although that is a daunting task. The key problem is that the defense has to work against an enemy who is trying to foil the system. what's worse, the attacker can do so with technology much simpler than the technology needed for the defense system. This inherent asymmetry means the attacker has the advantage despite the technological edge the United States has over a potential attacker such as North Korea. We recently completed, along with nine other scientists, a yearlong study that examined in detail what countermeasures an emerging missile state could take to defeat the missile defense system the United States is planning. That study shows that effective countermeasures require technology much less sophisticated than is needed to build a long-range missile in the first place - technology that would be available to the potential attacker. This kind of analysis is possible since the United States has already selected the interceptor and sensor technologies its defense system would use. We assessed the full missile defense system the United States is planning - not just the first phase planned for 2005 - and assumed only that it is constrained by the laws of physics. We examined three countermeasures in detail, each of which would defeat the planned US defense. A country that decided to deliver biological weapons by ballistic missile could divide the lethal agent into 100 or more small bombs, known as ''bomblets,'' as a way of dispersing the agent over the target. This would also overwhelm the defense, which couldn't shoot at so many warheads. The Rumsfeld panel, a high-level commission convened by Congress in 1998 to assess the ballistic missile threat to the United States, noted that potential attackers could build such bomblets. We show this in detail. An attacker launching missiles with nuclear weapons would have other options. It could disguise the warhead by enclosing it in an aluminum-coated Mylar balloon and releasing it with a large number of empty balloons. None of the missile defense sensors could tell which balloon held the warhead, and again the defense could not shoot at all of them. Alternately, we showed that the warhead could be enclosed in a thin shroud cooled with liquid nitrogen - a common laboratory material - so it would be invisible to the heat-seeking interceptors the defense will use. These are only three of many possible countermeasures. And none of these ideas is new; most are as old as ballistic missiles themselves. How is it possible that this problem is being ignored? The Pentagon, saying it must walk before it can run, has divided the missile defense problem into two parts: getting the system to work against missiles without realistic countermeasures and then hoping to get it to work against missiles with countermeasures. Few doubt the first step could eventually be done, but such ''walking'' would be useless against an actual attack by North Korea or any other country. The second step - getting the defense to work against countermeasures - is the one that matters. And our study showed in detail that the planned defense won't be able to do this. Unfortunately, the debate in Washington revolves around only the first step. The Pentagon plans to determine the ''technological readiness'' of the system this summer after three tests that lack realistic countermeasures. And President Clinton's decision whether to deploy will be based on that assessment. The deployment decision is simply being made on the wrong criteria. This situation is similar to a group of people deciding to build a bridge to the moon. Instead of assessing the feasibility of the full project before moving forward, they decide to start building the onramps, since that's the part they know how to do. The reality is that any country that is capable of building a long-range missile and has the motivation to launch it against the United States would also have the capability and motivation to build effective countermeasures to the planned defense. To assume otherwise is to base defense planning on wishful thinking. David Wright is a researcher at the Union of Concerned Scientists and the MIT Security Program. Theodore Postol is professor of science, technology, and national security at MIT. Both are physicists. © Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company. www.commondreams.org/views/051100-101.htm U.S. Sea-Based Missile Defense Fails Test by Jim Wolf, June 18, 2003 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An interceptor missile fired from a U.S. Navy cruiser on Wednesday missed its target, a mock warhead, over the Pacific Ocean, the military said. "We did not have an intercept," said Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency. The failed test, the first miss in four attempts to shoot down an incoming short-range missile using the sea-based Aegis weapons system, was a setback for the Pentagon's largest weapons development program. Five out of eight tests of a companion ground-based missile interceptor have successfully hit their targets in what critics have called unrealistically controlled conditions. Preliminary indications are that the interceptor, a Raytheon Co. -built Standard Missile 3, deployed its "kill vehicle," or warhead, but failed to hit its target, Lehner said, adding it was too early to say what went wrong. "We're still fairly early in this development program for this very advanced technology," he told Reuters. "And we'll press forward with our test program. We're confident that this sea-based interceptor will provide a very reliable defense." The Pentagon had billed the test as the latest in a series featuring "more complex, stressing and operationally realistic ballistic missile engagement scenarios." In December, President Bush ordered activation by Sept. 30, 2004, of anti-missile capabilities that could guard against a strike from North Korea , which the CIA says probably already has one or two nuclear weapons. The initial deployment involves six land-based missile interceptors in Alaska and four in California. Up to 20 smaller interceptors were to be added in 2005 on three Navy cruisers equipped with the Lockheed Martin Corp.-built Aegis combat system, the Missile Defense Agency has said. The sea-based interceptors are designed to knock out short to intermediate-range missiles closer to their launch pads. The Defense Department estimates it will need $50 billion for missile defense research and development over the next six years and more later to defend against missiles capable of delivering nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Wednesday's test involved an interceptor fired from the cruiser Lake Erie at a dummy warhead launched from Kauai, Hawaii. The main goal was to assess the guidance systems of the interceptor's warhead, Lehner said. U.S.
General Accounting Office Faults Rush to Deploy Missile Defense "The project could be a windfall for defense contractors like Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co., Northrop Grumman Corp. and Raytheon Co. . " Wed
Jun 4, 2003 "The president's directive to begin fielding an initial defensive capability in 2004 places the Pentagon in danger of getting off track early and introducing more risk into the missile defense effort over the long term," the General Accounting Office said. The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency was putting together the first phase of the project with "immature technology and limited testing," added the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress. "While doing so may help MDA meet the president's deadline, it also increases the potential that some elements may not work as intended." In response, the anti-missile agency said it was highly confident it would field an "effective, reliable defense against long-range ballistic missiles aimed at any of our 50 states by the fall of 2004." The agency agreed with the GAO's recommendations aimed at giving decision makers more timely data on the program's cost and funding needs, said Rick Lehner, a spokesman. A total of up to 10 ground-based missile interceptors are scheduled to go on alert in October next year at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The initial system is meant to thwart incoming warheads from North Korea , which U.S. intelligence says may already have nuclear weapons. The Defense Department estimates it will need $50 billion for missile defense research and development over the next six years and more after that to defend against missiles capable of delivering nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. The project could be a windfall for defense contractors like Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co., Northrop Grumman Corp. and Raytheon Co. . So far, tests of the system have used a surrogate booster and a prototype "kill vehicle," and have been executed under "non-stressing" conditions, GAO said. "As a result, testing to date has provided only limited data for determining whether the system will work as intended in 2004," In addition, the radar to be used in 2004 to detect ballistic missiles will not actively participate in integrated flight tests at least through September 2007, the GAO said. The
World's Ballistic Missile Arsenals This table represents the Carnegie Non-Proliferation Project's best assessment of the world's ballistic missile arsenals. www.ceip.org/files/projects/npp/resources/ballisticmissilechart.htm Technological
Challenges in National Missile Defense Center for Defense
Information The National Missile Defense (NMD) program is what the Pentagon calls a "system of systems." In NMD, necessary functions are distributed to different sites over vast distances linked by high speed data communications. The NMD Systems
1) The initial launch detection and tracking system that consists of the satellites of the Defense Support Program (DSP). The satellites are scheduled to be replaced starting in 2006 or 2007 by the Spaced Based InfraRed System-High (SBIRS-High) constellation of five (plus one in reserve) geosynchronous satellites. NMD Engagement 2) Five ground-based early warning radars (including one each in the UK and Greenland) that receive the initial tracking data from DSP or SBIRS-High through the system's command and control network. These ultra-high frequency radars project the flight "envelope" of the hostile missile's trajectory. The five existing radars are to be upgraded to enhance their tracking capability, which in turn will improve the data available to plot intercept points. 3) Four but possibly as many as nine (including one each in the UK, Greenland, and South Korea) X-band (high frequency, short wavelength) radars whose function is to discriminate between incoming real warheads and decoys. The first of these for the NMD system is to be built on Shemya Island in the western Aleutian Islands of Alaska. 4) Interceptor booster, a modified three stage commercial "off-the-shelf" very fast rocket which carries the exoatmospheric kill vehicle (EKV) to close proximity of the planned intercept point. While in flight the EKV receives updated information on the changing location of the incoming missile and warheads/decoys and passes this information to the booster until separation. 5) Exoatmospheric kill vehicle, whose on-board computer processes updates on the location of the hostile missile after the EKV has separated from the booster. The EKV has a combined optical and infrared (multiple waveband) sensor on board through which it acquires, tracks, and discriminates its target. Using small thrusters, the EKV, which weighs 130 pounds and is 51 inches long, performs terminal maneuvers enabling it to strike the target and destroy it by kinetic energy. The combined closing speed of the target and the interceptor is some 15,000 miles per hour. 6) The Battle Management, Command, Control, and Communications (BMC3) network, the heart of NMD. It links the separate elements, receiving data; analyzing parameters such as speed, trajectory, and impact point of hostile warheads; calculates the optimum intercept point; cues and fires the interceptor; provides updated information to the booster and EKV; and assesses success and failure of the intercept and, if the latter, repeats the process with one or more additional interceptors. A critical sub-element of BMC3 is the In-Flight Interceptor Communications System (IFICS) through which information is sent to the interceptor as it flies toward the target. Five locations have been designated for six to twelve equipment sets, but more may be required. A seventh element, a constellation of 24 low orbit SBIRS satellites that will improve launch detection and warhead-decoy discrimination, is to be added later. But in 1999 the Air Force canceled a $832 million contract to test models of SBIRS-Low because of software and sensor problems. The service now plans that the first 6 of the 24 satellites lofted into space in 2006 or 2007 will be "experimental." (See Enclosure 1, "Notional Deployment Architectures" for the proposed locations of the components of each currently planned stage of NMD development.) .... Technology is indeed proving to be a brake of sorts, and this even though the Pentagon changed from two to one the number of successful intercepts needed to recommend to the President that he approve deployment. ..... Even with a nuclear warhead, the discrimination task is formidable.....At 2-4.5 miles (3-6 kilometers) separation distance, the EKV has under a half second to maneuver before impact. .... General Kadish did acknowledge that the NMD program is on a high risk schedule as it has compressed the normal DoD acquisition cycle from the usual 15 or more years to 8 (1997-2005).... Conclusions
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