Missiles no defense
Wolfgang K.H. Panofsky
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/09/26/EDGBSAO8J.DTL
The United States has proposed to establish bases in Poland and the Czech Republic to add to Washington's mid-course intercept Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) system. In response, Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened to withdraw from the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty and is brandishing his augmented missile force. Yet the Bush administration maintains that the proposed bases constitute no threat to Russia.
Politically, the Polish and Czech deployments are a provocation in projecting the establishment of U.S. bases even closer to the Russian homeland. But both sides in this depressing confrontation seem to ignore the technical-scientific realities.
The United States' claims for the proposed missile defense expansion to Europe are summarized in several government documents issued in June. These documents contain extraordinary statements, such as "Missile defense is our ultimate insurance policy if these other elements of our strategy (diplomacy, export controls, and so forth) fail." In fact, on technical grounds, no responsible U.S. president should even take the existence of a ballistic missile defense into account in contemplating a response to perceived nuclear threats.
Indeed, nuclear weapons threats remain after the end of the Cold War. The Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) posture of the United States and the Soviet Union which threatened detonation of thousands of nuclear weapons has been replaced by the danger of possible accidental or unauthorized nuclear weapons delivery, by nuclear weapons threats from small "rogue" countries, and by terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons. The risk of proliferation of nuclear weapons has been kept in check by the nonproliferation regime enshrined by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Under that discriminatory treaty, non-nuclear weapons states are enjoined from acquiring nuclear weapons either indigenously or by transfer from nuclear weapons states. At the same time, they are given the "inalienable right" to the peaceful fruits of nuclear energy, and the nuclear weapons states are committed to work in good faith toward the eventual prohibition of nuclear weapons.
Past administrations have pursued ballistic missile defense at varying levels of effort. The slogan, "How can we leave this country undefended from nuclear weapons attack?" has politically focused on protection against ballistic missiles. Yet among the methods available today for hostile delivery of nuclear weapons onto United States soil, ballistic missiles should be at the bottom of the list. No terrorist could conceivably acquire ballistic missiles. "Rogue" states, even if they had acquired missiles of sufficient range to reach the United States, could not possibly employ them because a ballistic missile has its return address written on its trajectory; such a launch would risk annihilation of the country and its leadership through retaliation by the United States.
Who are today's "rogues?" North Korea's nuclear developments are being addressed diplomatically after an unfortunate lapse following President Clinton's negotiated "Agreed Framework" agreement. Iran is pursuing uranium enrichment claiming its "inalienable right" under the Nonproliferation Treaty to develop its own indigenous fuel cycle for nuclear energy. Iran has no long range missile capable of hitting the United States. How this will evolve over the next decades cannot be predicted, but designating Iran as the primary threat demanding the expansion of the ABM into Europe lacks any technical justification. Any ballistic missile launched from Iran against the United States would be suicidal. But means of delivery of nuclear weapons, by trucks, aircraft, commercial shipping and similar clandestine means are considerably more likely than by ballistic missiles. Experts differ in predicting the likelihood that a clandestine nuclear weapon in an American city will detonate during this decade. A former secretary of defense has estimated the likelihood as fifty-fifty.
The technical performance of the American ABM system is dubious. None of the few tests has been realistic operational exercises. Moreover, a very substantial fraction of these tests have resulted in failures, not because of fundamental design flaws but because of insufficient quality control needed by complex systems. The items which failed in these tests had functioned previously. The test missile trajectories were known beforehand, and the target missiles did not employ any decoys or other means of deceptive tactics to defeat the ABM system. Technically such decoys are considerably easier to produce than the missile itself; therefore, any nation capable of ballistic missile delivery against the United States could also employ countermeasures adequate to render the United States ABM system useless.
Considering the above, the defense of this nation against nuclear weapons is woefully unbalanced. We are spending roughly $10 billion annually on ballistic missile defense totaling about $150 billion. Yet nothing stemming from this effort enhances the real security of this country. Relative to ballistic missile defense, the effort to improve the security of the vast foreign stockpiles of nuclear weapons and critical nuclear weapons usable material has been less by about a factor of 10. But that effort is the principal lever to prevent clandestine delivery of nuclear weapons against this country. Needless to say, improved intelligence will have to remain the primary tool in providing information on any such hostile plans, but the record is not encouraging that this effort alone will result in successful prevention.
The above shows that the scientific-technical realities and the political actions by the United States and Russia are divergent. What is the reason for this failure? Is it insufficient scientific-technical advice reaching the highest levels of governments? Is it deliberate disregard of such advice by national leaders? Is it simply the inherent conservatism of governments in their inability to change past erroneous decisions? We do not know. One overriding fact remains clear: scientific-technical realities cannot be overruled by political decisions without resulting in grave risks to the nation.
The late Wolfgang K.H. Panofsky studied missile defense on behalf of many presidents as a member of the Strategic Military Panel of the President's Science Advisory Committee.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/09/26/EDGBSAO8J.DTL