Missiles no defense

							Missiles no defense
Wolfgang K.H. Panofsky
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
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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has been replaced by the danger of possible accidental or unauthorized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.
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