OPINION:
Of all the branches of military technology, missile defense is the one that draws the most objections from critics. Weighty arguments such as cost, affordability, priority and impact on global stability are worthy of analysis and serious debates. Yet the most fiery and at the same time most bizarre criticism emanates from a number of self-appointed “technical experts” for whom missile defense seems to be an emotional red flag and whose arguments are rooted in gut feelings, incomplete information and faulty science.
Their line of reasoning goes like this. First, missile defense is not needed at all because there is no real threat, and that in turn is because the adversaries are too dumb to produce workable missiles. Second, even assuming such threats exist, the missile-defense systems developed and deployed by the United States are so incompetent that they won’t defend against those threats. Third, even assuming that the U.S. pulls its act together and deploys competent missile defenses, the same dumb adversaries who could not make a decent missile would easily overcome them with “cheap and simple” countermeasures. In this triple-whammy logic, missile defense is nothing but a giant conspiracy to defraud the U.S. taxpayer concocted by greedy defense conglomerates, which in turn are abetted by servile government officials.
The latest in this genre of fantasyland criticism was floated this month in a paper by George N. Lewis and Theodore A. Postol in Arms Control Today, titled “A Flawed and Dangerous U.S. Missile Defense Plan.” This paper purports to prove that the Standard Missile 3 (SM 3) interceptor destined to be the lynchpin of the U.S. administration plan for the defense of Europe against short- and medium-range missiles could not hit more than 10 percent to 20 percent of the warheads of target missiles in live interception tests. It further “demonstrates” the way in which adversaries “easily” could have confused the SM3 homing sensor by “explosively” cutting the threat missile into large pieces, thus saturating its field of view with a jigsaw puzzle of objects, only one of which would be the real warhead. Finally, they buttress their case by citing the Jan. 31 FT-06 test of the ground-based midcourse ballistic-missile defense (GMD) system in which “chuffing” (i.e., ejection of small bits of propellant) from the target’s rocket motor caused a difficulty in finding the warhead among the inadvertent decoys created by the swarm of propellant bits.
Even before the strong rebuttal of that paper by the Missile Defense Agency, it was clear to any genuine expert in missile defense that the case made by Mr. Lewis and Mr. Postol was insubstantial and based on ignorance of the facts of life in missile defense. Not every pointy end of a target missile is a “warhead,” and not every interception test aims to hit this “warhead.” To save costs, the overall size of some target rockets is smaller than actual hostile warheads. In such cases, any hit achieved on any part of the target missile - front, center or rear end - scores as a success. A simple drawing to scale of a real Shahab 3 warhead on a couple of the images presented as “proof” by Mr. Lewis and Mr. Postol would immediately demonstrate this point.
The “jigsaw puzzle” claim is even more bizarre. Threat missiles could indeed be cut explosively into pieces after the boost phase, but that process would be quite violent. How the pieces would keep sailing in a perfect formation during the long minutes of the midcourse phase of the trajectory and remain tightly bunched in the field of view of the homing sensor remains a mystery. Inevitably, the violence of the cutting would fling them apart. Even a slow drift of 1 meter per second could separate them by miles.
Finally, Mr. Lewis and Mr. Postol downplay the fact that in the FT-06 test, the “kill vehicle” did lock on the target missile in spite of the “chuffing” and was on course to hit it when a technical malfunction in its on-board systems aborted the test. Far from proving the case of “cheap and simple” countermeasures, FT-06 was a shining demonstration of the resilience of the new breed of missile-defense systems against countermeasure, inadvertent or otherwise.
This is not to say countermeasures are not feasible. They are and will remain a real hazard for any military system, be it missile defense, air defense, tank defense or ship defense. There is nothing special in missile defense that makes it more sensitive to countermeasures than any other tool of war, from bow and arrow (interlinked shields) to RPG (reactive armor). The “Wizard War” between weapons and countermeasures is age-old and will continue indefinitely; the winner will be the side that keeps one step ahead of its adversary. In the minds of the “countermeasure culture” proponents, it is the U.S. that is always the loser. It is left for the talent of genuine experts in the U.S. defense industries to prove them wrong.
Uzi Rubin is president of Rubincon Defense Consulting Ltd., TelAviv. He was the founder and first director of the Israel Missile Defense Organization, in charge of developing and deploying the Arrow Missile Defense System.
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