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U.S. Plans: Cruise Missile Defenses Deserve Consideration, Expert Says The United States should seriously consider deploying a system to defend the continental United States from a sea-launched cruise missile attack — potentially one conducted by terrorists using WMD-armed missiles — said Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, in the spring issue of the National Interest (see GSN, March 12). “Cruise missiles are small and inexpensive enough that it may not be beyond the means of terrorists to acquire them,” O’Hanlon said. “Reconfiguring a standard cruise missile to carry a primitive nuclear warhead, likely to weigh half a ton or more, is probably beyond the abilities of terrorists, but outfitting a cruise missile with a dispensing mechanism for distributing chemical or biological agents or radiological materials may be feasible.” Therefore, “a defense against ship-launched cruise missile is desirable and achievable, but difficult and expensive,” O’Hanlon said. The cost of a U.S. cruise missile defense system would represent a “modest investment” when compared with the costs of a U.S. ballistic missile defense system, O’Hanlon said. Radars and Interceptors The first stage of a U.S. cruise missile defense system would use U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships to intercept suspicious foreign ships sailing close enough to U.S. coasts to conduct an attack, according to O’Hanlon. A ship that is secretly equipped to launch an attack, however, could possibly evade U.S. patrols, so physical defenses are also needed, O’Hanlon said. The next stage would consist of radar stations and missile interceptor bases, said O’Hanlon. Ground-level radars would have difficulty detecting incoming cruise missiles at the low altitudes at which they fly, so airborne radars would be needed. Such systems, installed on aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles or balloon aerostats several thousand feet above the ground, could detect incoming missiles at farther ranges than ground stations, and fewer radars would be necessary to cover the entire U.S. coastline, according to O’Hanlon. Radar systems could cost up to $10 billion, assuming 100 radars at $100 million each, O’Hanlon said. Those costs could be reduced to less than $4 billion through the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, such as the Global Hawk, he added. Operating costs for radar systems could range between $300 million and $1 billion, depending on the type of aircraft and radar used, O’Hanlon said. To shoot down cruise missiles, the United States would need to deploy 1,000 interceptors dispersed among 100 coastal bases. O’Hanlon estimated the cost of that deployment to fall between $5 billion and $10 billion. A total U.S. cruise missile defense system could cost up to $20 billion to deploy, O’Hanlon said, and an equal amount to operate the system over a 20-year timeframe (Michael O’Hanlon, National Interest, Spring 2002).
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