Limiting Missile Defenses
As long as the nuclear weapon states rely on the threat of nuclear retaliation to deter nuclear attacks, deploying significant numbers of anti-missile systems intended to intercept long-range missiles will complicate achieving deep reductions in nuclear arsenals. At the same time, our analyses show that the U.S. Ground-Based Missile Defense (GMD) program offers no prospect of defending the United States from a real-world missile attack.
The United States should immediately stop fielding any additional interceptors against long-range missiles. It should undertake a fundamental review of this missile defense program, including its potential impact on strategic relations and efforts to control nuclear weapons, the technical feasibility of an effective defense against realistic attacks, and the priority of missile defenses against long-range missiles compared with other security needs.
The GMD system is in an early stage of testing and has no demonstrated capability under realistic attack scenarios. Congress should require rigorous, operationally realistic testing of the system, under real-world conditions and against countermeasures that an attacker armed with a long-range missile would be able to develop. It should establish an independent "red team" to design and oversee future tests. Until the Defense Department conducts such tests, there is no justification for deployment of this system.
Congress should once again make the missile defense program subject to the usual "fly before you buy" laws that govern other major military programs, but from which the missile defense was exempted under the Bush administration.
The United States should also pursue diplomatic efforts to address the risk of missile proliferation.
Among other things, the United States should:
- Cancel the proposed missile defense system in Europe.
- Sharply reduce the budget for developing missile defenses against long-range missiles, and prohibit the use of funds for construction or deployment until rigorous real-world testing requirements have been met.
- Prevent the development and deployment of space-based missile defenses.
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