I happened to hear congressman Trent Franks this morning on C-Span talking up the missile defense site Bush wants to build in Poland. He offered the example of our ability to shoot down an Iranian missile headed towards the US had 90% probability of effectiveness and admitted that there exists no system that would be effective in destroying a strike from Russian missiles which is really still the only country in world from which we have any likelihood at all of such a thing occurring. What about our current ABMS?
Isn’t the threat of mutual assured destruction still the only really effective deterrent to the use of atomic weapons and isn’t it crazy to spend however many billions of dollars to build something as useless as this to defend against alleged rogue states that are not likely to possess the capability to launch such a strike and have no reason to do so?
I would love to know how he got that figure. We haven’t even achieved nearly that level of success in the testing of the system…and those tests have a number of ways in which they are simplified over what the system would likely face in the real world (e.g., in the real world, the rogue state presumably won’t tell us when they are planning to launch the missile and what it will look like and whether it will have any decoys deployed and what they will look like). In fact, “rigged” is probably not too strong a world to use for the tests. (And, to those who say we have to walk before we can run, I agree. But then don’t claim that we are ready to run a marathon when at the moment we are pressed just to go as far as across the street.)
I agree. Furthermore, even if they do develop the missile technology, this would be the dumbest way for them to try to nuke the U.S. (or another allied nation). Much better would be to sneak it into the country (or into a harbor or something) and then detonate it. That would be more likely to work and also could conceivably make it possible to hide who is responsible.
The other basic problem is that in this missile defense game, the offense has a tremendous advantage in terms of being able to produce effective countermeasures using relative low level technology and for little cost that the defense then has to use considerable technology and cost in order to overcome.(By the way, I think that these considerations apply to missile defense for a large area against ICBMs. There is more hope for defenses of very limited areas against shorter range missiles.)
The purpose of building ABM systems isn’t to defend against missiles. It’s to put billions of dollars into the pockets of defense corporations. The good news is that, by that standard, missile defense has been a major success. It’s not so good if you judge it by the standard of being able to defend against missiles.
I can think of a scenario, but I make no claims on it’s likelihood. shrug
Iran developes nuclear weapon technology. (It already posseses a 3000km ballistic missile, in the Ghadr-110, and is working on a missile to launch satellites that has a 5000km range.)
A smallish bomb is secretly given to Hizbollah, who vaporise Tel Aviv. Somehow, evidence of the bomb transfer is uncovered (say, a few months after the event).
The U.N. declares the Iranian goverment to be war criminals, and will be forcibly removed/replaced by troops wearing pretty blue helmets. These troops are drawn primarily from the NATO members.
Iran threatens to use nukes on an undisclosed NATO country if Iran is invaded.
Note: Berlin is roughly 3500km away, London is 4400 km away, Warsaw is 3000 km away from Tehran.
mlees: Well, your scenario falls under a broader umbrella often used to justify the system, namely that it gives the U.S. President “freedom of action” in responding to threats without being blackmailed by a nuclear attack. However, this scares me even more. What if our President is an idiot like G.W. who seems like he might actually believe the inflated estimates of the system’s effectiveness and bases his decisions of what to do on that?!?
I think that all that discussion is kinda baseless - I doubt the system will be ever built as planned. Looks like negotiations stalled again. Poles wants to get support ($s for modernization of army and couple of Patriot missiles) arguing that installations will make them more of a target, but Americans doesn’t want to pay. So, I guess, they will be haggling for some more time, and then, after elections, whole idea gets the axe.
jshore succinctly summarized my issues with the state of strategic anti-ballistic missile defense systems, particularly the claim of 90% effectiveness against a target of unknown capability and signature, and the relative ease with which countermeasures can be developed to increase penetration capability through a missile defense system, making the cost of an interceptor based system prohibitive to achieve an acceptable degree of reliability. There is also the issue that these systems address yesterday’s threats; Russia, China, Iran, and other nations have and are developing low observable supersonic cruise missiles against which a ballistic missile defense system would be ineffective. These vehicles don’t have the same range as an ICBM, but at ranges of >2000km they’re well into intermediate range ballistic missile territory, and are small enough to be launched via aircraft or container ship. This isn’t to say that missile defense isn’t worth pursuing on at least a limited basis for limited protection, but one needs to be rational about the capability and evolution of threats. One also needs to consider the potentially destabilizing and proliferating effect ABM can have on an established arms race. On a strategic level the result is not generally favorable to capability versus cost between the defender and attacker.
A note about (mutually) Assured Destruction: This is a specific category of game theory scenarios which posit a strategic balance between to two knowingly like-armed and willful parties behaving with rational self-interest. It is questionable that Assured Destruction is even applicable to real world scenarios which fit those criteria; there is no equilibrium when it comes to three or more parties with different levels of retaliatory capability, willingness to respond, and political interests. AD is a game with no positive sum, only a metastable truce or various levels of annihilation. In a more general sense, a fear of retaliation may keep a smaller power in check of a large one, but the same issue plays the other way; would we oppose some move by Iran if the result was the destruction of New York, even if we could guarantee equal or greater retaliatory damage? There is, again, no winning in such a scenario, only bragging rights to be able to say, “You should have seen the other guy!” And dealing with a party that is irrational, or rational on a basis that does not accord with your values or perception may result in a game skewed toward obliteration even if the result is favorable to no one. Or, as Khrushchev wrote to Kennedy in a private note during the Cuban Missile Crisis:If you did this as the first step towards the unleashing of war, well then, it is evident that nothing else is left to us but to accept this challenge of yours. If, however, you have not lost your self-control and sensibly conceive what this might lead to, then, Mr. President, we and you ought not now to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war, because the more the two of us pull, the tighter that knot will be tied. And a moment may come when that knot will be tied so tight that even he who tied it will not have the strength to untie it, and then it will be necessary to cut that knot, and what that would mean is not for me to explain to you, because you yourself understand perfectly of what terrible forces our countries dispose.
Why is it that the same people who still pin their hopes on commercial fusion power, who claim that if we just throw enough money on it we can achieve energy independence, and in general who believe in all kinds of programs to tackle huge, nearly unsolvable problems, will throw up their hands at the notion of missile defense and claim it can’t be done, so there is no point trying?
The fact is, missile defense is an engineering problem with known parameters. It’s a much simpler problem than nuclear fusion, or converting the world to solar power, or any number of other projects many opponents of missile defense advocate.
Missile defense makes a lot of sense from a strategic standpoint. For one thing, it blunts the ability of rogue states to use blackmail. If Iran has a missile and they threaten to level Washington unless we give them concession X, if they know there’s absolutely no way the missile can be stopped they also know there’s no way the U.S. could refuse the offer. But if they’re not sure, and the U.S. comes back and says, “Launch that missile and we’ll shoot it down. Then we’ll obliterate you,” that puts a lot of pressure back on them. And just knowing that that’s the likely response provides a deterrent against the threat being issued in the first place.
And if a rogue nation DOES launch a nuke at Washinton, or Warsaw, or London, how much would you be willing to pay for even a 10% chance of stopping that missile? How many trillions of dollars of damage would result from New York or Los Angeles being hit with a nuclear missile?
As for the Eastern European allies, they have the double threat of having Islamic terror on the one hand, and an aggressive Russia on the other. Having any kind of credible defense is extremely valuable.
Missile defense isn’t a panacea. Arguing that it should be scrapped because it can’t protect against every threat (like bombs being smuggled in to the country) is like arguing against hunter-killer submarines because the Russkies can just launch their missiles from the ground - then arguing against ground defenses because the Russians could just launch from subs.
You need all kinds of weapons and defensive systems to build a robust military. Missile defense is just one part of the chain. And missile defense itself is not a single system or a single missile. It’s a layered defense. You have boost-phase intercept, say from missile cruisers in the Gulf. Then you have intercept in the descent phase or in flight, with more advanced anti-missile systems. Then you have point defenses for hardened targets, such as the Vulcan Phalanx that protects ships from missiles. Put all these systems together, and you can create a lot of uncertainty in the mind of your enemy. And for a decision as dangerous as choosing to launch a missile at another country, even a little uncertainty can be a pretty strong deterrent.
1 : Because the laws of nature are a passive enemy, in your example of fusion power. Not an intelligent one which will find a way around whatever we do.
2 : Because as the old saying goes, in the battle between warhead and armor, warhead always wins. In other words, judging from history it won’t work.
3 : Because in many cases, such large programs don’t have to succeed completely, or even mostly, to be useful.
4 : Because we don’t believe that most of the people who are pushing for a missile defense shield are actually trying to do anything but line their pockets.
Reducing carbon emissions through treaty is not working against passiv mother nature, but against other nations with their own interests, and against the laws of the market.
Passing regulations to control society is akin to trying to manipulate an ecosystem by controlling the quantities of various animals and plants. There are myriad interactions and consequences that cannot be foreseeen. That does not stop some from advocating top-down government.
It is not at all clear that engineering countermeasures to missile defense is cheaper and easier than adjusting the defense. In any event, couldn’t you use the same logic to argue against any defensive system? If I lock my doors, a burglar can come through the window. If I put armor on a tank, the enemy will build bigger anti-tank missiles. Does that make every attempt to defend yourself pointless? Or does it just mean that you have a…what’s the word again… oh yeah - arms race?
In any event, while you could make a claim that Russia or China might be able to come up with sophisticated countermeasures, I think it’s a stretch to say that Iran or North Korea can, considering that they’re having a hell of a time just getting their crude missiles to work at all.
And yet, this doesn’t seem to be an argument for not putting armor on things, does it? And for that matter, a missile defense is not ‘armor’. It’s more akin to a sniper taking out enemy gun positions.
Neither do missile defense programs. In fact, they don’t have to succeed at all, so long as you can convince the enemy that they might. The cold war ended without a shot being fired between major combatants. We have no way of knowing which systems would have worked effectively and which wouldn’t have. That didn’t stop them from being a deterrent.
And in any event, even if a system is 10% effective, if the result of a nuclear missile hit is the death of 10 million people, then the ‘expected value’ of your missile defense is a million lives. I’d say that’s worth a few bucks. But it’s worth even more if it reduces the chance of a missile attack in the first place by even a few percentage points.
That’s your own bias showing. The companies involved in missile defense are the same companies that have made highly effective weapons systems like the Aegis cruiser, the F-22, the F-117, the M1A1 Abrams, and all the other weapons that have proven to be far better than anything anyone else in the world is capable of fielding effectively. Some of those systems came under the same criticism during their development that is being leveled at anti-missile systems today.
Yeah, but it’s one thing to argue that we shouldn’t even do basic R&D on missile defense/fusion power/whatever. I know some people do argue that with respect to missile defense–that it’s inherently impossible or destabilizing or whatever and we shouldn’t even try–but that position is not what many of us who are critical of this stuff are arguing.
The current administration seems to be almost taking the position that “Hey, we don’t need to build more fission plants, or figure out how to make coal cleaner, or invest in windpower–we’ll just build fusion plants!” If the Pentagon wants to mess around with launching things at Kwajalein and seeing if they can figure out how to shoot them down, I don’t necessarily have a problem with that. But pretending this stuff is anything like ready to deploy against actual threats from Iran or North Korea is kind of crazy.
That’s good, because what’s actually destabilizing is to allow your enemies to build weapons that you have absolutely no defense against. Now foreign policy becomes a non-stop game of brinksmanship.
It does? I haven’t heard this administration say much about fusion at all. It seems to me that the position of this administration is that the future will consist of a variety of energy sources including oil, coal, nuclear fission, ethanol (Bush is a big proponent of cellulosic ethanol, while Congress prefers to throw money at their big agri-business sponsors and back idiotic corn-based ethanol, while slapping tariffs and quotas on imported sugar and sugar-based ethanol), wind, and solar. Bush actually has a reasonably good notion of what the future energy infrastructure will look like, aside from the fact that he thinks these fixes will come quickly.
Not at all. As I said in the last message, a completely ineffective weapons system can have value if you can convince your enemies that it’s working, or even partially working. But some of it definitely is ready to deploy. Israel’s Arrow missile is deployed, and it has been highly effective in tests against SCUD-type missiles. The U.S. has conducted multiple operational tests which have been successful, including a shoot-down of a missile with a ‘production’ interceptor - and it even included three decoy ballons the missile had to discriminate against.
No one is claiming the system is 100% effective, or even that it will ever be. The deployments that have currently happened are small, of limited effectiveness, but even so they help to complicate the planning of the enemy and force them into more expensive R&D. It was really a response to North Korea’s test of a missile capable of hitting Alaska, and it sent the message that they better not think about nuclear blackmail, because the U.S. was prepared to answer.
So… everyone understands that the system is still in its early infancy, that operational deployment is limited and will be for a time, but clearly the system CAN be built, and CAN be effective. It’s not going to replace the rest of the military - it’s just one more weapons system in the mix.