U.S. Plans I:  Sea-Based Defense Against Boosting Missiles Could Work, Scientist Says

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — A prominent scientist yesterday contended that developing missile defenses against intercontinental missiles that are in the boost phase could be feasible in some cases, challenging some conclusions drawn in a recent high-profile technical study.

In a panel presentation at the U.S. military’s National Defense University yesterday, physicist Richard Garwin of the Council on Foreign Relations said he agreed with the recently published calculations of a report by the American Physical Society, calling the report an “excellent job, technically” (see GSN, Aug. 15).

However, Garwin said he differed on some of its “implications,” in particular that U.S. land- or sea-based interceptors would not have sufficient time to intercept missiles launched from North Korea or Iran.

The APS study concludes that sea- and land-based boost-phase missile defenses currently pursued by the Bush administration for defending the U.S. homeland generally would not be feasible, and space-based defenses might be prohibitively costly.

The report concludes that the three to four minutes needed for an enemy rocket to launch into space would probably provide the United States with insufficient opportunity to destroy it unless U.S. sea- or land-based forces were prepositioned as close as 400 kilometers to the enemy missiles.

That would mean, the report calculates, that U.S. missiles would need to be fired from China or Russia — an unlikely scenario — to defend effectively against North Korean-launched missiles as they headed toward the United States.  In addition, the United States would need to place missiles in Central Asia to intercept an Iranian missile launch, the report says.

To solve the problem, “interceptors would have to be built substantially larger and capable of higher performance than any that have yet been built or deployed,” the report says.

Plus, there also would be a risk the U.S. interceptors could be mistaken for missiles attacking China or Russia, the report says.

Firing Earlier

Garwin challenged those conclusions by arguing that a U.S. ship could fire on a suspected attacking missile soon after its launch, even before knowing precisely where to aim the interceptors.

“Before there is a firing solution, we could cover the uncertainty by firing two interceptors,” he said.

Garwin said it would not be necessary to wait for a solution because there would be no risk that the U.S. interceptors would strike anything but a ballistic missile and, if unsuccessful, they could be destroyed in mid-air to avoid casualties on the ground, he said.

“The question is, what is the downside risk of launching an interceptor in error?  The only thing it can kill is a boost-phase rocket,” he said.

The APS report presumes that an exact firing solution would be needed before launching an interceptor, requiring possibly 45 to 65 seconds after launch, and that more time would be used to make and communicate the decision on whether or not to fire, factoring the possibility that the targeted launch may be for peaceful purposes, such as launching a satellite into space.

Garwin previously has written that countries such as North Korea and Iran would probably give notification prior to a peaceful launch to avoid such an incident.

“At worst, the United States would destroy a satellite launch and pay for it,” he wrote in an Arms Control Today article.

With respect to positioning a defense against an Iranian launch, Garwin further said it might not be too difficult to base U.S. interceptors in Central Asia.

“That’s not so unlikely as it sounded in the past, because Turkmenistan has been for some time an ally of ours [with respect to military activities in] Afghanistan,” he said.

Panel moderator Hans Binnendijk, director of NDU’s Center for Technology and Security Policy, said the APS report tended to “understate” the potential that a sea-based option could be effective against a North Korean liquid-fueled missile launch.

“At least in this one case, which turns out to be the most likely case, the conclusion would be that there is real capability,” he said.

Other Differences

Garwin also disagreed with the judgment that that a missile-defense launch might be mistaken as an attack on Russia or China.

“If we wanted to launch a nuclear missile against Russia or China … it is very unlikely we would take the opportunity to launch it from a ship off North Korea or from someplace in the Caspian Sea,” he said.

Garwin challenged the APS conclusion that it might take 10 years to deploy an effective surface-based boost-phase missile-defense system, saying the technology for faster rockets exists but has not been used for boost-phase and that a defense could be available in five years.

The APS report concludes, “We see no means for deploying an effective boost-phase defense against ICBMs within 10 years.”

Various Disadvantages to Boost-Phase Approach

Garwin’s comments were not universally supportive of the boost-phase approach.

He said deploying interceptors in space, another option considered by the Bush administration, would be inferior to basing them on the Earth’s surface, citing the difficulties of positioning enough multiton interceptors in orbit to ensure that some would always be in place over a target country.

The approach would be “vastly more expensive” than terrestrial-based interceptors, he said.

He also said there was a disadvantage to the boost-phase approach in general: that a successful intercept would not necessarily disable a nuclear warhead or biological weapons bomblets on an enemy missile, raising the possibility that they would land on a populated area.

The APS study called such a munitions “shortfall” on a populated area or other country a “key problem inherent in boost-phase defense.”

Garwin said though that it might still be considered a success, saying the trajectory of the warhead would probably be changed by the intercept, causing it to fall on a less-populated area than on a targeted major city, potentially decreasing the damage by a factor of 100.

“We should do so well with the other military capabilities we deploy,” he said.

Garwin said North Korea or Iran would probably not attack the United States using an intercontinental ballistic missile in the first place.

“That would not be the delivery means of choice,” he said.

More likely scenarios would be a shorter-range attack from a vessel off the U.S. coast or a weapon smuggled in a shipborne container, he said.

The APS study concludes that existing technology intended for sea-based boost-phase defenses could be effectively used against such shorter-range missile threats, where interceptors are positioned within 10 kilometers of a launched threat.

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U.S. Plans II:  Missile Interceptor Booster Test Delayed, Set for Saturday

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency has delayed until tomorrow a planned test of a booster vehicle developed for use in the U.S. Ground-based Midcourse Defense program, according to Defense Daily (see GSN, Aug. 6).

The test of the booster, developed by Orbital Science Corp., had originally been scheduled for today, but was delayed because of software problems, Defense Daily reported.  To reboot the software required recertification from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and the Western Test Range and resulted in the one-day delay, agency spokesman Rick Lehner said yesterday (Kerry Gildea, Defense Daily, Aug. 15).

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U.S. Plans III:  Army to Detail Proposal in October for Patriot, MEADS Program Merger

This fall, the U.S. Army is expected to provide more details on its proposal to merge the Patriot missile interceptor program and the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) program, Aerospace Daily reported today (see GSN, June 9).

Michael Wayne, acting defense undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, has called on the Army to present a detailed plan in October for the merger of the two programs, according to a Pentagon “information paper” released yesterday. 

The proposal is expected to contain information on how to the Army will fund the combined program in the fiscal 2005-2009 future years defense program, according to Aerospace Daily (Marc Selinger, Aerospace Daily, Aug. 15).

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Japan:  Pentagon Forming Team to Help Joint Missile Defenses

The U.S. Defense Department is establishing a support team to help Japan cooperate with the United States on missile defense, Defense Daily reported today (see GSN, Aug. 5).

The joint service team will not negotiate an agreement on international cooperation, but will work to establish the official links needed to develop Japan’s missile defense systems.  A similar support team has been working with British officials for a year, Defense Daily reported.

The team will likely have a large percentage of Navy personnel because Japan is interested in a sea-based missile defense system, according to an industry official.  The unit “will gradually come online,” the official added (Kerry Gildea, Defense Daily, Aug. 11).

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U.S. Plans:  Army Missile Defense Division Will Work With STRATCOM

The U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command will expand its role within the U.S. Strategic Command in October, Aerospace Daily reported today (see GSN, Aug. 7).

SMDC is set to address global missile defense as part of its integration into STRATCOM, according to Lt. Gen. Joseph Cosumano, SMDC commander.

Army officials plan to begin operating with STRATCOM in October and will be fully operational by January, Aerospace Daily reported.

Cosumano said one of his highest priorities is the establishment of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense System at Fort Greely, Alaska.

“We have to be operational at the end of September ’04,” he said.  Cosumano said Army space and missile defense personnel are “providing the ground floor of all that, standup and operations.”

“Colorado National Guard will have the brigade unit that’s stationed here for command and control; the Alaska National Guard will have the unit that’s on the ground at Fort Greely, the actual operators.  All that’s moving very quickly,” he added (Rich Tuttle, Aerospace Daily, Aug. 11).

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