Homeland Missile Defense: A Brief History By Abel Romero
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2017/09/08/homeland_missile_defense_a_brief_history_112262.html
Over the weekend North Korea conducted its six, and most powerful, nuclear test to date. Reports indicate that the impoverished nation is preparing to launch yet another Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), this time potentially on a standard trajectory. A highly provocative move without regard to overflight of neighboring countries airspace. North Korea’s accelerated nuclear and ballistic missile developments have many in Washington showing more bipartisan interest in missile defense playing a significant role in defending the American homeland.
However, over the past three decades, the path toward a truly robust homeland missile defense system has been precarious. Political support over five presidential administrations wavered, while historical funding for the Missile Defense Agency averaged less than 2% of the overall defense budget. As Washington considers its options for addressing a threat which has evolved more rapidly than expected, it should carefully consider lessons learned from decades of less than adequate support for homeland missile defense. The Trump administration must avoid the mistake of his predecessors and fully commit to investment in expanded missile defense capabilities
The Reagan Administration
In the early 1980’s, fear that the Soviet Union had achieved a nuclear first strike capability led the Joint Chiefs of Staff to recommend developing plans for ballistic missile defense capabilities. On March 23, 1983, President Ronald Reagan delivered an address to the nation outlining an ambitious new plan for ballistic missile defense called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). During the speech, President Reagan called for a defensive capability that would render nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete.” In 1984, the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) was established to begin Research and Development (R&D) efforts to create several programs such as Brilliant Pebbles, a non-nuclear, space-based, boost phase anti-missile system. Ultimately, many of the most ambitious SDI technologies were set aside due to political pressure and U.S. obligations to limit testing and development of BMD technology. While the Reagan Administration argued that it could test and develop BMD systems under a “broad interpretation” of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty many in Congress, led by Senator Sam Nunn, argued such an interpretation violated the spirit of the treaty.
The Bush 41 Administration
During the January 29th, 1991, State of the Union Address, President George H.W. Bush citing the success of the Patriot missile defense system during the Gulf War, mandated the “SDI program be refocused on providing protection from limited ballistic missile strikes, whatever their source.” This directive led to the development of Global Protection Against Limited Strikes (GPALS), aimed at stopping small ballistic missile attacks on America and thwarting limited strikes against U.S. troops with the use of theater ballistic missiles. GPALS represented a new Post-Cold War mentality in the United States that focused more on limited theater ballistic missile strikes rather than a large-scale Soviet ICBM strike.
The Clinton Administration
The GPALS concept would ultimately be canceled in 1993 by President Bill Clinton. Rather than taking a global approach to a range of ballistic missile threats, President Clinton’s 1993 Bottom-Up Review concluded that, while the threat from “Third World” countries could not be excluded, the missile threat from Russia and China had diminished. Secretary of Defense Les Aspen ultimately recommended that “a robust theater missile defense effort plus a limited national missile defense technology program is the best and most cost- effective approach” for the overall U.S. ballistic missile defense program.
In the late 1990s, Congress became increasingly concerned with the developing ballistic missile programs of so-called “rogue nations” such as Iran and North Korea. This was despite a 1995 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) stating “No country, other than the major declared nuclear powers, will develop or otherwise acquire a ballistic missile in the next 15 years that could threaten the contiguous 48 states and Canada.” In response, Congress mandated the creation of two separate panels to investigate the threat ballistic missiles posed to the United States.
The first panel, established in 1996 and led by former CIA Director Robert Gates, conducted an independent review of the 1995 NIE and presented its findings to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The Gates Panel, while critical of the ‘95 NIE’s methodology, concluded that “the United States is unlikely to face an indigenously developed and tested intercontinental ballistic missile threat from the Third World before 2010.” The second panel, led by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, issued their final report on the “Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States” to Congress in 1998. The Rumsfeld Panel warned that the efforts of potentially hostile nations to acquire ballistic missiles posed a threat to the U.S., was evolving more rapidly than expected, and the ability of the intelligence community to provide estimates of ballistic missile threats to the U.S. was eroding.
In August of 1998, just months after the Rumsfeld panel submitted its report to Congress, North Korea launched a three- stage Taepodong-1 rocket under the guise of a satellite launch. North Korea’s launch further motivated Congress to address the ballistic missile threat. The following year, Congress passed the National Missile Defense Act of 1999, which declared that it would be “the policy of the United States to deploy as soon as is technologically possible an effective National Missile Defense system capable of defending the territory of the United States against limited ballistic missile attack.”
The Bush 43 Administration
President George W. Bush signaled his intention to pursue missile defense capabilities beyond the ABM Treaty early in his administration. In a speech delivered in May 2001, President Bush called for a new “framework that allows us to build missile defenses to counter the different threats of today’s world.” On December 13, 2001, the United States provided formal notification of its withdrawal from the ABM Treaty. The United States cited a need to defend against threats of “weapons of mass destruction and their delivery means wielded by terrorists and rogue states” pursuing “increasingly longer-range ballistic missiles as instruments of blackmail and coercion against the United States and its friends and allies.”
At the end of 2002, President Bush issued National Security Policy Directive 23, which declared that it would be U.S. policy to “develop and deploy, at the earliest possible date, ballistic missile defenses drawing on the best technologies available.” NSPD 23 called upon the Department of Defense to deploy an initial set of missile defense capabilities beginning in 2004, including “a family of boost-phase and midcourse hit-to-kill interceptors based on sea-, air- and ground-based platforms.” The President’s plans called for the development of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) System, which was designed to protect the U.S. homeland from long-range ICBMs. This development was the greatest departure from previous U.S. missile defense policies, which were limited by stipulations within the ABM Treaty that prohibited the deployment of a nationwide shield.
In July of 2004, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) announced that the first Ground-based Interceptor (GBI) was emplaced at Fort Greely, Alaska. On September 30, 2004, the United States declared Initial Operating Capability of the GMD system. To further enhance homeland missile defense, the Bush administration formally entered negotiations with the governments of Poland and the Czech Republic in 2007 and reached agreements by the summer of 2008 to deploy a missile defense architecture in Europe. The European sites would include up to 10 two-stage GBIs in Poland and an X-Band Radar in the Czech Republic.
Besides homeland defense, the MDA also focused its efforts on developing capabilities to defeat ballistic missiles at their earliest stage of flight, known as the boost phase. Initially, the agency’s primary boost phase program was the Airborne Laser (ABL), a modified Boeing 747 designed to carry Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser (COIL) to defeat ballistic missiles as they were being launched. The program made steady progress throughout the Bush administration, completing its first flight in 2002 and successfully firing all six modules of the megawatt-class COIL in November of 2004. The ABL successfully destroyed a boosting ballistic missile in February of 2010 during the Obama administration.
The Obama Administration
As a candidate seeking the Democratic nomination in 2008, Barack Obama promised to cut investments in missile defense programs. In April of 2009, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced a $1.4 billion reduction to MDA’s budget. This included the cancellation of additional GBIs in Alaska and a second Airborne Laser. In September of 2009, the Obama administration indicated that it no longer intended to move forward with European missile defense plans proposed by President Bush.
In place of the Bush plan, Obama outlined his own vision of a missile shield in Europe, which has proven to be the United States’ most robust foreign deployment of ballistic missile defense to date. The European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA), which originally would have been deployed in four phases, was touted as being built on “capabilities that are proven and cost-effective.” The backbone of EPAA was based on Aegis technology. The first phase called for Aegis ballistic missile defense ships to be permanently deployed to Rota, Spain and a TPY-2 radar to Turkey. Phases two and three called for sequential deployments of the land-based variant of the Aegis ship-based technology, Aegis Ashore, in Poland and Romania. A planned fourth phase, designed to protect against limited ICBM threats, was ultimately canceled.
The Trump Administration
Within hours of the inauguration of Donald Trump, the White House released a statement calling for the development of a “state-of-the-art missile defense system to protect against missile-based attacks from states like Iran and North Korea.” In May 2017, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis announced the commencement of the Ballistic Missile Defense Review. To be completed by the end of the year, the review will determine the policy framework for the nation’s global missile defense system.
President Trump can build on the momentum from this summer’s first ever successful intercept of an ICBM-class target. An ideal first step would be for the president to follow through on his promise to increase missile defense spending by “billions.” Research and development are especially important, yet a neglected component of MDA’s budget as procurement rises. The Ballistic Missile Defense Review might also consider additional enhancements to make the GMD system more robust and reliable. Long debated, a decision to deploy additional interceptors to the East Coast is expected. Such an addition would provide increased inventory and battle space to address intercontinental range threats. The use of outer space will also be an important consideration. In August 2016, MDA Director Jim Syring discussed the agency’s plan for space at length, the director stated: “Given where the threat is going with hypersonics and more ICBMs, and so forth this persistent tracking and discrimination capability from space is a must.”
The North Korean threat will not diminish, and now more than ever it is imperative that the United States develop and improve the capability and capacity of America’s missile shield. The Trump administration must seize the opportunity to surpass his predecessor’s efforts to keep the homeland safe.
Abel Romero is an independent analyst specializing in ballistic missile defense and nuclear security. He previously served as the Director of Government Relations at the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance (MDAA) and at the National Nuclear Security Administration. Romero holds a Master of Science degree in defense and strategic studies from Missouri State University’s Defense and Strategic Studies program in Fairfax, Virginia. He received a bachelor’s degree in political science from McMurry University in Abilene, Texas. Follow him on Twitter @Abel_Romero_.
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