Defense strategy for the post-Saddam era by O'Hanlon

Author:O'Hanlon [O'Hanlon]
Language: rus
Format: epub
Tags: AvE4EvA
ISBN: 0815764677
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Published: 2005-04-17T20:00:00+00:00

1985 1990 1995 2000 2005

Source: Missile Defense Agency, “Historical Funding for MDA FY85–05” (www.acq.osd.mil/mda/mdalink/ pdf/histfunds.pdf [November 5, 2004]).

a. Historical funding levels are for the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO), the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO), and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). SDIO was the predecessor to the MDA. In 2004, PAC-3 procurement and RDT&E was moved from the Missile Defense Agency budget to the Army budget. Army-related missile defense funding is not included in the graph.

Despite the demise of the U.S.-Russian Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the absence of any proposals to restore it or develop something similar, strategic missile defense remains a hugely controversial subject. The controversy is due to the imperfect state of the technology involved as well as the high budget cost—and potential further diplomatic cost—of deploying it.

The Pentagon is deploying several interceptors that—although they were still experiencing problems in testing through 2004—should become capable of shooting down long-range warheads from a country such as North Korea. The first was installed in July 2004.10 By the end of 2005, a total of twenty interceptors will be stationed on land, in Alaska and California, with ten more at sea. Radar to detect incoming missiles and track their warheads will be located on land and at sea and a number of existing sensors will be improved (as done with a half-dozen destroyers by equipping them with Aegis radar).11 According to plans, more interceptors would be added over time at various sites in the United States and at sea, including a shorter-range land-based interceptor known as THAAD and quite possibly multiple-warhead defensive missiles to improve the original midcourse system, based in Alaska and California. Sea-based interceptors would be built, an airborne platform using a laser would add more defensive firepower, and at some point land-based interceptors designed to shoot down an enemy rocket in its boost phase could be developed as well and deployed overseas near possible launch points. Ultimately, depending on the evolution of the potential threat as well as allied views on the matter, an additional site might be built in eastern Europe.12

No space-based weapons would be included in the architecture, given current threats and available technologies.13 But sensor networks would eventually be improved to include two new satellite constellations for detecting missile launches and tracking warheads. Eventually, space-based weapons platforms might be considered.14

As critics point out, the missile defense programs now being deployed are far from mature. In the Alaska–California system, a large, three-stage defensive rocket would ascend just above the atmosphere before releasing a small homing vehicle that would maneuver itself into the path of an incoming reentry vehicle that could carry a nuclear or biological weapon. The resulting high-speed collision would destroy the weapon. While “hit to kill” technology has shown some promise and produced some actual destructive intercepts on the test range, especially with a shorter-range system, a number of tests of the Alaska–California system have failed. And even those that have succeeded have involved surrogate components, like a slower defensive rocket, not the actual three-stage version intended for deployment.

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