backgrounder
Twenty Years of "Star Wars:" Big Budgets But Little Progress
On March 23, 1983, President Ronald Reagan announced his "Star Wars" program to build a defense of the United States against attacks by nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. After 20 years and some $60 billion, how far has the US national missile defense program come?
The goals of the US missile defense program have been scaled back dramatically over the past 20 years, yet they remain technically infeasible. Despite this, the Bush administration has announced that it will deploy a "limited" national missile defense by September 2004. The fact that the system will not have undergone realistic testing by that time, and will lack its key sensor, means that it will be a defense in name only. The timing of the deployment—just prior to the next presidential election—leaves little doubt that the decision is being driven by politics, not security considerations. And rather than its obsessive focus on national missile defenses, the Bush administration should make its priority addressing more important security concerns that it is now ignoring—such as terrorist acquisition of nuclear weapons.
Missile Defense Goals Have Been Scaled Back Dramatically Since 1983:
1983: The original goal, laid out in Reagan's March 23 speech, is to render nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete" and to protect the US population from a large-scale attack by thousands of Soviet nuclear warheads. Proponents foresaw space-based battlestations, as well as an extensive ground-based system, leading to the "Star Wars" name.
1987: The original mission is dropped as unrealistic and the focus shifts from protecting cities to enhancing deterrence by protecting US nuclear weapons from a disarming first strike.
1991: Under President Bush, a space-based layer of "Brilliant Pebbles" interceptors is added to the plan, but the goal is scaled back to defending the United States against an attack of 200 or fewer warheads.
1997: Under President Clinton, the system is scaled back once again, to defend against only 5 to 20 "simple" warheads launched by a hostile developing country that might acquire long-range ballistic missiles in the future. Future upgrades were planned to defend against more warheads and those with realistic countermeasures.
2000: In July, President Clinton decides not to begin deployment, citing technical problems, including test failures and the vulnerability of the system to countermeasures.
2002: President Bush revives the Clinton system, ignores the technical problems, and announces in December that the United States will deploy the limited missile defense begun under Clinton—but without its main sensor—by September 30, 2004.
The system the Bush administration proposes to deploy will include 10 ground-based interceptors against long-range missiles in Alaska and California by the end of 2004, and up to 20 by the end of 2005—enough to engage 5 warheads. In addition, it plans to field sea-based interceptors intended to defend against short- and medium-range missiles, not long-range missiles.
But the plan to make this limited system effective against even small numbers of warheads is to make it much more expansive, adding boost- and terminal-defense layers to the midcourse layer, and adding sea-based, air-based, and eventually space-based interceptors. The budget has ballooned to $9 billion dollars per year.
Given Its New Limited Goals, Is the Program Now Closer to Success?
Ironically, no. In the real world, defending against 5 warheads may be no more realistic than Reagan’s dream of building an impenetrable shield. The Bush administration's new missile defense policy is an acknowledgement of just this unpleasant reality: now the Pentagon has decided it will no longer wait to deploy something that works, but will deploy first and try to make it work later.
How can this be true after the investment of so much time and money over the past two decades?
The technology still isn't ready:
If the ground-based midcourse system were any other weapon system, there would be no talk of deployment at this early stage of development testing. The tests have been highly orchestrated: the defense is given in advance all the details of the attack, including the position and appearance of the warhead and balloon decoys; each test has been a repeat of the previous ones with identical interceptor and target trajectories and intercept point; and the closing speed of the interceptor and target have been half of what would be expected in a real intercept. These tests in no way take into account realistic countermeasures that an attacker would use to confuse the defense. The defense has not been tested against even something as simple as a tumbling warhead.
While this may be appropriate for early development testing, these tests provide no information relevant to making a deployment decision. In fact, US law prohibits the Pentagon from making a deployment decision about any military system until development testing is complete and more realistic operational tests have been conducted.
Physics and other fundamental facts stand in the way:
The technology has always been the limiting factor, and there are several fundamental facts that make this unlikely to change.
Defending against missiles is inherently much more demanding than launching missiles. The defense must respond to an attack whose key features are unpredictable. It must make decisions and take actions based on its sensor measurements, and do so in a matter of minutes. In contrast, the offense can be passive: it simply has to carry out a set of pre-programmed actions independent of what the defense does.
Missile defense is sometimes compared to the once-impossible tasks of flying or landing on the moon. This comparison is specious. Nature does not change to foil human endeavors, whereas an attacker will shape its attack in response to the defense, whose key features will be known to the attacker.
The laws of physics give the attacker the advantage against any missile defense system that seeks to intercept warheads in their midcourse outside of the atmosphere—such as the system Bush plans to deploy by September 2004. In the vacuum of space, lightweight objects—like mylar balloons—will travel on the same trajectory as heavy objects—like a warhead. This means that an attacker could deploy tens of lightweight decoys to confuse and overwhelm the defense. Any country that could build a nuclear-armed long-range missile could also implement comparatively simple countermeasures to foil the defense. The countermeasure problem remains unsolved despite decades of work.
But perhaps the most relevant fact of physics is that even one nuclear weapon could cause tremendous devastation and hundreds of thousands of deaths. For a defense against nuclear weapons, the requirements for success are much higher than for any other military system.
National Missile Defenses Have Security Costs:
Arguments that any defense is better than none when it comes to nuclear weapons may sound reasonable. But the false sense of security an unworkable defense could engender is far more dangerous than no defense at all. Moreover, the zealous US pursuit of missile defense against long-range missiles is preventing the United States from addressing security threats that are both more immediate and vital.
A false sense of security is dangerous.
US policy-makers are unlikely to understand the technical realities of missile defenses. They may actually believe their own rhetoric—especially as the 2004 system is augmented—and engage in risky behavior they otherwise wouldn't. According to the Bush administration, the explicit purpose of this defense is to ensure US "freedom of action"—to permit the United States to use its conventional forces even if doing so might result in the launch of a nuclear-armed missile against a US city. No President should feel empowered to take such a gamble on the basis of wishful thinking about a defense whose odds of success are small or at best unknown.
The US commitment to missile defenses is preventing the implementation of more important security measures.
The resources and high-level political commitment that are being squandered on this program are desperately needed elsewhere. President Bush claims that his highest priority "is to keep terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction." It certainly should be. There are numerous sources of poorly secured nuclear weapons materials worldwide—with the largest amounts held by Russia. If terrorists were to detonate even a crude nuclear bomb in an American city, the resulting destruction would be far greater than that of the 9/11 attacks. But the administration has done precious little to address this threat—despite the obvious steps to doing so.
No administration can make every program its top priority, and the White House choice to focus on missile defense is foolhardy.
For more information, contact Stephen Young, Senior Analyst, at 202-223-6133, or Lisbeth Gronlund or David Wright, Senior Scientists and Co-Directors of the Global Security Program, at 617-547-5552.
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