Star Wars 25th Anniversary
Twenty-five Years After Reagan’s Star Wars Speech: Where Are We Now?
March 2008
On March 23, 1983, President Ronald Reagan made his famous "Star Wars" speech announcing his plan to develop a missile defense system that would make nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete." His vision of a "shield that could protect us from nuclear missiles just as a roof protects a family from the rain" was both seductive and audacious.
Seductive because it offered an easy answer to the omnipresent threat of a massive Soviet nuclear attack at a time when the Soviets and the United States possessed 35,000 and 25,000 nuclear weapons respectively. It especially appealed to those who believed in the supremacy of U.S. science and technology but did not understand technical issues.
And audacious because it flew in the face of all that the United States had come to understand about missile defenses over the previous decades. The Pentagon had been working on defenses against ballistic missiles since the 1950s—almost as long as it had been working on ballistic missiles. By 1972, both the United States and the Soviet Union had concluded that offense had significant inherent advantages over defense, and that an effective defensive system was not feasible. They also believed that building defenses could lead to an arms race by inducing each country to build more missiles to overwhelm the other's defense. Thus, under the Anti-ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, both nations gave up the possibility of defending against each other's nuclear-armed missiles.
Twenty-five years later, anti-missile technology has come a long way. Guidance and homing have improved so much that all current U.S. missile defense systems use "hit-to-kill" technology intended to destroy the incoming target by ramming into it. Previous defenses against long-range missiles were designed to use nuclear-tipped interceptors to destroy a warhead at a distance.
In recent years, the United States also has built and fielded a significant amount of hardware as part of its Ground-based Missile Defense system, including 24 silo-based interceptors in Alaska and California and a new Sea-based X-band Radar. It has also upgraded the Cobra Dane radar in Alaska and two early-warning radars—in California and Britain—and fielded a Transportable X-band Radar in Japan.
Meanwhile, the rationale has changed—and is less daunting. Defending against potential future North Korean or Iranian long-range missiles is far less demanding than defending against thousands of incoming Soviet missiles.
Regardless, Ronald Reagan's dream of building a viable defense against long-range missiles is still no more than a dream. And by pursuing this dream, the United States has weakened its own security instead of enhancing it.
The Real Legacy of Reagan's Dream
Let's take a clear-eyed look at what 25 years have brought us.
First, the Pentagon has yet to demonstrate that the U.S. Ground-based Missile Defense system is capable of defending against a long-range ballistic missile in a real-world situation. The tests have demonstrated that the "kill vehicle" is able to home in on and collide with an identifiable target, but under highly scripted conditions. A February 2008 Government Accountability Office report concluded that these tests have been "developmental in nature, and do not provide sufficient realism" to assess the system's potential effectiveness.[1]
To permit deployment of the fledgling Ground-based Missile Defense system, the Pentagon exempted it from the normal accounting and testing procedures that apply to all other weapons systems. For example, the system does not comply with the "fly before you buy" law, designed to prevent the military from purchasing weapons that are unsuitable for their real-world mission or do not work as intended. Under this law, a major defense program may not produce more than a small number of weapons—generally for testing purposes—until the Pentagon's director of operational testing and evaluation issues a report stating whether the testing and evaluation was adequate and whether the results show that the weapon system is effective and suitable for combat. That will not be possible until the Pentagon conducts realistic tests, and that may be many years from now, if ever.
To circumvent the rules, the Missile Defense Agency refers to the Ground-based Missile Defense components as "fielded" rather than "deployed," and has claimed that they are "test assets" used as part of the test program.
Second, there is little or no prospect that the United States will develop a defense system that could defend against real-world long-range missiles in the foreseeable future. As a 2000 Union of Concerned Scientists-Massachusetts Institute of Technology technical report, "Countermeasures," concluded, any country with the capability and motivation to build long-range missiles and fire them at the United States also would have the capability and motivation to equip those missiles with effective countermeasures, such as decoys.[2]
Third, as long as the United States and Russia continue to maintain nuclear weapons to deter each other, any U.S. steps to deploy a defense system that Russia believes could intercept a significant number of its survivable long-range missile forces will undermine efforts to reduce nuclear threats. This link between offensive weapons and missile defenses was clearly demonstrated in the 1986 Reykjavik summit meeting, when President Reagan's adherence to missile defense scuttled an opportunity to pursue President Mikhail Gorbachev's offer to negotiate deep cuts in nuclear stockpiles. Ironically, missile defense precluded taking a real step toward achieving Reagan's goal of rendering nuclear weapons obsolete.
U.S. Missile Defenses are an Obstacle to Real Security
Today, the risk of a premeditated Russian or Chinese nuclear attack on the United States is essentially zero. But because Russia continues to maintain more than a thousand nuclear weapons on high alert (as does the United States), ready to be launched within a matter of minutes, there is still a danger of an accidental or unauthorized attack, or of a mistaken launch in response to a false warning. Indeed, such attacks are the only military threats that could destroy the United States as a functioning society.
Russia's incentive to maintain its weapons on alert would be strengthened if it believed the United States was deploying a system that could threaten its ability to retaliate. In fact, when the United States was trying to renegotiate the terms of the ABM treaty in the late 1990s, it argued that Russia need not fear a U.S. defense system as long as it kept its missiles on high alert.
China, meanwhile, has a very small arsenal of roughly 20 long-range missiles that it relies on for deterrence. However, it could decide to offset U.S. defense deployments by increasing its arsenal, which could in turn prompt India and then Pakistan to increase their nuclear arsenals.
On one level, the United States is aware of this linkage. It has stressed that its Ground-based Missile Defense system is intended to protect against potential future threats from developing countries, and has stated that deployments would be "limited" so that Russia and China would not see them as a threat to their nuclear deterrents. However, from Russia's and China's perspective, the issue is whether U.S. actions match its words.
In the coming years, the United States plans to increase the number of interceptors that are capable—at least in principle—of defending against long-range missiles. Congress has allocated funds for 40 Ground-based Missile Defense interceptors, to be deployed in Alaska and California. The United States is negotiating with Poland and the Czech Republic to deploy an additional 10 Ground-based Missile Defense interceptors and one or two radars in Europe near the Russian border. Russia has strongly objected to this plan.
Within five years, the United States also is slated to deploy some 150 interceptor missiles on 18 ships as part of its Aegis missile defense system, which is designed to defend against intermediate-range ballistic missiles. However, the United States plans to produce an upgraded version of the interceptor to allow the Aegis system to defend against long-range missiles as well. Thus, Russia and China may worry that they could soon face some 200 U.S. interceptors designed to destroy long-range missiles.
Compared with China's 20 long-range nuclear-armed missiles, 200 interceptors constitute a relatively large deployment. While Russia has a far larger arsenal, it may assume that most of it would be destroyed by a U.S. first strike. While the scientists in these countries may understand that these interceptors can be defeated by straightforward countermeasures, worst-case analyses by political and military leaders, as well as a desire to have a visible response for both domestic and international audiences, may prompt both China and Russia to build or retain larger nuclear forces than they otherwise would, and may lead Russia to retain its missiles on high alert.
In sum, the real legacy of Reagan's Star Wars speech is that missile defense has become a high-profile, politically symbolic program, rather than a military program that is judged on its merits. The continued political support for a program that still offers no prospect of defending the United States from a real-world missile attack, and that undermines efforts to eliminate the real nuclear threats to the United States, shows that Reagan's vision remains seductive—and dangerously so.[3]
Notes
1. For the GAO report, "Assessment of DOD Efforts to Enhance Missile Defense Capabilities and Oversight," February 26, 2008, go to www.gao.gov/new.items/d08506t.pdf.
2. For "Countermeasures," go to www.ucsusa.org/global_security/missile_defense/countermeasures.html.
3. For more information, see "Technical Realities: An Analysis of the 2004 Deployment of a U.S. National Missile Defense System" (www.ucsusa.org/global_security/missile_defense/
technical-realities-national-missile-defense-deployment-in-2004.html).
