Ballistic Missiles: Threat and Response

by Richard Garwin and Brigadier General Simon P. Worden (Ret.)
May 12, 1999

Dr. Garwin: This Committee knows well the characteristics of the threat facing the United States, which were reviewed in part by the Rumsfeld Commission in 1998. As one of the nine members of that Commission, I concurred in the unanimous report published July 15, 1998, which assessed the ballistic missile threat to the United States.

In brief, we considered both nuclear weapons and biological weapon payloads as strategic threats. We noted the thousands of warheads still available and deliverable by long-range missile from Russia; the 10 to 20 ICBMs available to China, armed with nuclear weapons; and the possibility that any of three additional nations with which the United States is not on friendly terms? North Korea, Iran, or Iraq ? could within five years of a decision to do so have an ICBM that could strike some of the 50 United States. This judgment was based on the assumption of a concerted program, well funded and given priority, with due attention to denial and deception, as it has been increasingly practiced by countries that wish to hide the scope of their activities from U.S. intelligence.

Of course, other nations have much greater capabilities than these three; for instance, Britain or France could deliver hundreds of nuclear warheads against the United States, but we have no fear that they would do so. With its space launch vehicle, India could also deliver a nuclear weapon, and Israel has apparently quite a few nuclear or thermonuclear weapons, but they are also not classed as threats to the United States.

The Rumsfeld Commission further noted that short-range ballistic missiles based on ships and armed with nuclear or biological payloads would constitute a threat more readily available than ICBMs to North Korea, Iran, or Iraq; and that ship-launched cruise missiles available commercially would add to that threat. The Rumsfeld Commission did not consider as a group the vulnerability of the U.S. to BW attack from ships off shore, from cars or trucks disseminating BW, from unmanned helicopter crop dusters, or from smuggled nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons detonated in a U.S. harbor while still in a shipping container on a cargo ship; but these capabilities are more easily acquired and more reliable than are ICBMS.

In January 1999, Secretary of Defense William Cohen announced that a decision to deploy a National Missile Defense would be considered in summer of the year 2000, based on the existence of the threat and the technological readiness of an NMD system to counter it. He modified the Administration's "3 + 3" program which had promised that within three years (by the year 2000) an NMD would be developed capable of deployment within the following three years (2003), so that deployment would now take place in 2005 in case of a favorable decision in summer, 2000.

The "3 + 3" program had intended that development would continue in the case that deployment was not authorized, so that year by year what could be deployed within three years of a decision to do so would be increasingly capable. A decision to deploy would need to freeze the technology in order to build a system within three (or five years).

National Missile Defense

Rather than recount my view of the history of the NMD program, let me just give a judgment on the program as it is now defined. It is contemplated that to counter a relatively few warheads, 75 ground-based interceptors (GBI) would be built, and some 20 deployed. The system specifications require extremely high confidence so that not a single warhead penetrates U.S. soil. In my opinion, no system thus far proposed could achieve such confidence, even against cooperating warheads.

Nevertheless, the problem with the NMD system is not simply that it could not fulfill its stated requirement, but that it would have essentially no capability against a long-range missile system deployed by North Korea, Iraq, or Iran to strike the United States with biological weapons or with nuclear weapons.

I make this judgment on the basis of a substantial knowledge of the NMD system as it is proposed, of previous efforts to develop a system of missile defense of the nation (and of Theater Missile Defense), and of a close look over the decades at countermeasures that are feasible to defeat missile defenses.

The problem is a simple one. Begin, for instance, with North Korea. If North Korea wished to maximize its capability to cause death or damage in the United States by the launch of a first-generation ICBM, it would not use a so-called unitary payload of BW, which would perhaps deliver tens or hundreds of kilograms of anthrax or other infectious or even contagious microbe on some city. The result would be a very narrow plume carried by the breeze, which would kill most of the people in its path, but would leave those outside the plume untouched, except in the case of extremely contagious germs such as smallpox.

Rather, a country could make much better use of a limited payload capacity by packaging the BW agent in the form of individual bomblets that would weigh a kilogram or so, and that would be released by the missile just as soon as it had reached its full velocity on ascent. That is, just after boost phase. The bomblets would fall separately through the arc of the trajectory to their target, and would reenter the atmosphere without incident, having been provided with a thin ablative reentry shield. After the heat of reentry, the shield could be shed, as was the case with the reentry of the film buckets of the first U.S. strategic reconnaissance system? CORONA, and the bomblets would fall to Earth, where a thoroughly tested device would expel the BW agent. This could be a mild explosive burster charge or some other mechanism. Given this approach to increased military effectiveness, the planned National Missile Defense system has no possibility of making an intercept so early in the trajectory.

If the adversary has a nuclear weapon that can be delivered by ICBM, it can evidently not break it up into 1-kg bomblets. A first-generation nuclear weapon would probably have a yield of 10 to 20 kilotons (like those U.S. nuclear weapons that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945). So the NMD system would have a chance to observe the flight? first the DSP satellites would see the booster flame (as in the case of BW as well); then the upgraded early warning radars would see the warhead in mid-course, together with whatever simple countermeasures might have been used (and the spent final-stage fuel tank); and X-band radars would perhaps help to discriminate the real warhead from decoys or junk. A sufficient number of ground-based interceptors would be launched to obtain (in principle) the desired damage expectancy by their hit-to-kill intercept against the incoming nuclear warhead. If the interceptors were based at Grand Forks, ND, there would in general not be time to observe the success of an intercept before launching a second GBI. If the interceptors were based in Alaska, a launch from North Korea would provide some time for such shoot-look-shoot. To my mind, there is no significant difference between the protection of the country offered by interceptors based in Alaska compared with those based in North Dakota. Protection would be negligible in either case. The reason is that a simple countermeasure would defeat the system as planned.

Depending on the preferences of the adversary, this countermeasure could take the form of a large enclosing balloon around the reentry vehicle that contains the nuclear warhead. Immediately after achieving full velocity, the warhead would separate from the final stage of the missile, and a simple gas generator containing a few grams of material (like that in every airbag in modern automobiles) would gently inflate a metallized plastic balloon that had been crumpled down onto the warhead by a simple vacuum cleaner exhausting most of the air. Or inflation could be done simply by compressed gas. A warhead that might be five feet long could be enclosed in a balloon 30 feet in diameter, so that it would be perfectly well visible to the radars and to the hit-to-kill homing vehicle of the ground-based interceptor. But the homing vehicle which would strike the balloon (if all goes according to plan) would have very little probability of striking the warhead contained within. A thin aluminum coat on the plastic is opaque to radar and also to infrared invisible light, which are the means by which the homing kill vehicle (HKV) is expected to strike its target.

Depending upon the characteristics of an isolated target, such intercept might take place in principle with an accuracy of one foot or less, providing high probability of kill (if the equipment and software is reliable? which it is not yet). But with the aimpoint hidden, the chance of striking the warhead would be tiny, considering its small size compared with the enclosing balloon.

One might imagine that the collision of the warhead with the balloon would generate sufficient gas from the very high velocity impact of the thin balloon on the interceptor as it is going by, to blow away most of the remainder of the balloon and thus to expose the warhead, bare, to the other interceptors that may follow. This is a possibility, and the United States would no doubt wish to test this prospect (following the best analysis we can do), but unfortunately for the effectiveness of the defense, this approach is readily defeated by the offense, without testing in space. The offense could have several such balloons shrunk down one over the other, and independently expanded when the outermost balloon is blown away.

It is not necessary to define the countermeasures that an adversary nation might use, but

only to understand those that might work. They could choose among several others.

Another simple countermeasure that might have greater appeal to some, would be to use not a large balloon but a small one, not much bigger than the warhead itself. Then additional small balloons would serve as decoys, if the HKV could not tell them apart by means of its multi-spectral sensor. More than 30 years ago, the Strategic Military Panel of the President's Science Advisory Committee, of which I was a member, observed that an adversary would no doubt use "anti-simulation" rather than rely strictly on a decoy's simulating the characteristics of the warhead.

Thus, if the warhead were to be coasting bare through space, perhaps spinning in a stable fashion, decoys in order to be credible would need to be pretty much the same size and have the same spin. However, with anti-simulation, the idea is that the warhead would be modified or clothed, so as to make it easier to simulate. The warhead would simulate a cheap decoy, rather than the decoys being required to simulate an expensive and precise warhead.

An easy way to begin anti-simulation is to put the warhead in a small lumpy balloon. This would take care of the radar simulation quite well. It might be better also to have a warhead that is not spun up, as was the case with warheads of other countries for a long time. Spinning the warhead improves the reentry accuracy, because a displacement of the external reentry vehicle from the center of mass of the warhead otherwise leads to substantial error. But the first-generation ICBMs are so inaccurate that this will not be a significant impairment of their accuracy. In any case, it is entirely possible for a warhead to be spun up just as it begins to reenter and after all possibility of intercept by the NMD system has passed. When to spin is simply a design choice, and if spinup before reentry helps to penetrate an NMD system, it can readily be done.

The warhead itself has substantial mass (perhaps 500-1000 lbs.) and so does not cool appreciably in its passage through space. Thin empty balloons, on the other hand, have no such heat capacity. Nevertheless, it takes less than a pound of lithium battery within such a balloon to supply as much heat radiation to the interior of the balloon as the warhead itself would provide, if the warhead were shrouded in commercially available multi-layer insulation, widely used in refrigerators, transport of liquid nitrogen, and in space applications.

While the NMD

• would have no capability against bomblets carrying BW dispersed on ascent, or against a nuclear weapon in a large enclosing balloon,
• nor could it discriminate a warhead in a small balloon, properly done, from perhaps 10 empty small balloons,
• would neither see nor be able to intercept short-range ballistic missile launched from ships near U.S. shores,
• would neither see nor be able to intercept short-range cruise missiles launched from ships near U.S. shores,
• it is possible to protect the United States against the attack by long-range ballistic missiles.

The beginning of protection lies with deterrence of such attack, and even deterrence of building such a capability. Deterrence against use comes from the certainty of nuclear response to nuclear attack against the United States, and such a response would be overwhelming. Deterrence against building such a capability derives from its lack of utility, since its use is likely to be deterred by the threat of retaliation. Furthermore, a nation deploying an ICBM system to threaten the United States would surely feel vulnerable to preemptive attack, if the United States learned where the missiles were based.

Nevertheless, a limited ICBM capability might be built for political reasons, despite the insecurity that it would pose.

It is possible to intercept the ICBM in boost-phase? while the main rocket engines are still burning, so that the task of a homing interceptor is far simpler than that posed to the ground-based interceptor that must see a cool warhead at great distances in space. But such a system has essentially nothing in common with the National Missile Defense that is proposed. It would use the existing DSP satellites to determine the time and direction for launch of a ground or sea-based interceptor. But the fundamental characteristic of that interceptor is that it should reach ICBM velocity of 7 km/s and should do it in about 100 s rather than the 250 s of a typical ICBM. Under these circumstances, there is a vast area in which the interceptor could be deployed and still make the intercept in boost phase. Specifically, against North Korea, such interceptors could be deployed at a joint U.S.-Russian test range south of Vladivostok (if Russia wished to cooperate with the United States in this regard) or, in principle, from military cargo ships in a vast range of ocean area.

Because such sea-based capabilities might be useful for defense of Japan, for instance, against theater-range missiles launched from North Korea, and because there is already in the September 26, 1997 "Agreement on Confidence-building Measures Related to Systems to Counter Ballistic Missiles Other Than Strategic Ballistic Missiles" (signed but unratified) a provision by which the Parties to the ABM Treaty of 1972 accept the deployment of ballistic missile defenses that do not "pose a realistic threat to the strategic nuclear force of another Party," it is possible that Russia, Belarus, Kazakstan, and Ukraine would agree specifically to a few large interceptors based on ships to carry out boost-phase intercept of missiles launched from North Korea? which is, after all, not a Party to the ABM Treaty.

Conclusion

• We should not deploy the proposed National Missile Defense unless it is proved capable of handling the countermeasures that can realistically be employed by the potential adversary.
• The evaluation of NMD should start from scratch with the use of ground-based or ship-based interceptors that will destroy the offensive missiles in boost phase?before they can release bomblets or separate a warhead that could then provide itself with an enclosing balloon.
• There is no reason to abandon the protection of the ABM Treaty, that constrains Russian defenses and thus allows the United States to deter Russia with modest numbers of nuclear weapons, thus facilitating further great reductions in the only nuclear threat to the survival of the United States.

Col. Worden**: Some call the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty the cornerstone of strategic stability. With the demise of the Soviet Union the validity and utility of the Treaty has come under increasing attack. Others feel the ABM Treaty is the principal obstacle for effective national security. In her 28 April 1999 testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on International Security, Proliferation, and Federal Services, Dr. Jeane Kirkpatrick, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said, "There is no strategic stability. The ABM Treaty has no more been able to stabilize the strategic relations among nations than the Non-Proliferation Treaty has been able to prevent the spread of nuclear technology, or the Missile regime has controlled the number of governments capable of producing long-range ballistic missiles."

The changing geo-political landscape has made the missile defense debate a contentious one. Some argue Theater Missiles (TMs) pose a greater threat, others strategic missiles, still others see terrorists with portable nuclear devices as the greatest threat. Whatever the scenario the ballistic missile threat is accepted as real in all areas and likely growing.

DoD?s current missile defense priorities are to develop capabilities to negate the theater missile threat and the strategic missile threat; some in Congress would reverse that order or treat them as equal priorities. Many members of Congress consider homeland missile defense as a higher moral imperative than theater missile defense. Others in Congress, and the Clinton Administration, put more emphasis on the theater threat primarily for what could be considered practical political, and real world reasons ? theater missiles are a threat to overseas personnel and interests now. It can also be argued that theater missile defense systems are more supportive of the Administration?s engagement and enlargement strategy, yet are ABM Treaty compliant and therefore do not destabilize the strategic balance theoretically effectuated by the ABM Treaty.

We have prepared this summary as an introduction to current U.S. missile defense programs and the effects of the ABM Treaty on our ability to pursue those programs. But the debate can and must be broadened. In past ABM debates ? in the late 1960s and again in the mid 1980s the discussions between protagonists usually centered on technical issues ? typically whether cost-effective countermeasures could be built or the effectiveness of a particular weapon or command and control system. We believe that a replay of these past debates will not reveal anything new.

The Air Force and DoD have long taken an integrated approach to meeting new threats. This is what we are doing here. We start with diplomatic and economic pressure ? often underscored by international agreements such as the current non-proliferation regime ? to prevent a threat from emerging in the first place. This has been effective in slowing down the development of ballistic missile threat, but has certainly not stopped it. In fact, the current explosion in ballistic missile development throughout the world shows that purely paper solutions cannot be enough. The next step in stopping the development and use of ballistic missiles is classical deterrence. We must display and be ready to use a credible and devastating response to any first use of ballistic missiles. We can and are doing this with both responses-in-kind and asymmetric responses. But these too have been insufficient to stop an emerging ballistic missile threat. Thus, we must be ready to actively counter the use of ballistic missiles.

The Air Force has long been the major player in protecting against air threats. We have developed a comprehensive set of sensor, battle-management, command and control, and weapons systems to perform two related functions ? offensive and defensive counter air. Our first job is to seize and maintain air superiority through offensive operations ? preferably against enemy assets before they can be brought to bear. Second, we must be ready to actively protect our own critical assets through defensive capabilities. Unfortunately, most of the debate on missile defense, counter-measures to it and the limitations placed on it by the ABM Treaty have missed the point that effective, active denial of enemy ballistic missiles must begin with offensive operations to find, fix, identify, track and engage these missiles and their production facilities prior to launch. This is the "pre-boost" phase of missile defense.

In this paper we will discuss the current DoD missile defense programs ? and the limitations placed on them by the ABM Treaty ? as well as the enhanced role of offensive counter-aerospace operations in effectively countering ballistic missiles. We might add that the ABM Treaty does not limit these capabilities and that such capabilities will increasingly rely on space-based systems.

Current TBMD Approach

To address the theater ballistic missile challenge the U.S. is developing several systems, some of which can rapidly deploy to contested areas, and all of which, hopefully, will be lethal. Since most of them are purely defensive systems they are inherently very stabilizing and can be deployed and employed to demonstrate U.S. resolve without necessarily having a destabilizing effect. Many critics of U.S. missile defense programs cite the ease of countermeasures to a particular system. To handle these we have developed multiple approaches ? against which no single countermeasure is effective against more than one system ? in what we call the TMD Family of Systems or TMD FoS, which includes:

Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) ? Army Lower Tier, hit-to-kill, Active Defense ground-based air defense system designed to protect the force and critical assets within the theater, by countering, defeating, and/or destroying tactical ballistic missiles, aerodynamic missiles, and aircraft.

Theater High Altitude Area Air Defense (THAAD) ? Army Upper Tier, hit-to-kill, Active Defense ground-based system designed to defeat, destroy or neutralize enemy tactical missiles employed against friendly forces and assets.

Navy Area Defense (NAD) ? Navy Lower Tier, fragmentation warhead, Active Defense, sea-based air defense system, designed to protect the force and critical assets within the theater, by countering, defeating, and/or destroying tactical ballistic missiles, aerodynamic missiles, and aircraft.

Navy Theater Wide (NTW) ? Navy Upper Tier, hit-to-kill, Active Defense, sea-based air defense system, designed to defeat, destroy or neutralize enemy tactical missiles employed against friendly forces and assets.

Airborne Laser (ABL) ? Air Force high-energy, defensive Counterair laser weapon, with a primary theater missile defense (TMD) role of TBM boost-phase intercept.

Attack Operations: Defensive counter air and/or counter battery operations against mobile theater missiles, and their supporting infrastructure.

Interoperability: Interoperability will allow the TMD FoS architecture to function as an integrated capability to maximize performance.

Current NMD Approach

Recently Secretary of Defense Cohen affirmed there is a ballistic missile threat, the threat is growing, and we expect it will soon pose a danger not only to our troops overseas but also to Americans here at home. In March, the Senate passed S. 257 which states it is the policy of the United States to deploy a National Missile Defense (NMD) system as soon as technologically possible. To respond to the NMD challenge the US is developing a limited, "hit-to-kill" capability for the entire 50 states to counter a rogue threat or accidental launch.

The NMD system-of-systems (SoS) architecture approach is similar to the TMD FoS architecture in that it requires several elements from several Services, working interoperably, to maximize effectiveness and minimize vulnerability to countermeasures. The initial SoS configuration will consist of satellite surveillance and cueing; ground based radar for refined track, various communication links, and a single ground based interceptor site with a moderate number of interceptors, and a battle management center. The Air Force believes the future for NMD is in space. At an appropriate time in the future, perhaps when fiscal and national policy environments change, the NMD architecture could evolve to a layered system, which incorporates space-based lasers and other space elements. Such a system could offer many advantages in providing effective, affordable, global protection against a wide range of threats.

Treaty Limits on NMD and TMD

The ABM Treaty explicitly states "Each party undertakes not to deploy ABM systems for a defense of the territory of its country and not to provide a base for such a defense?" Even the limited NMD capability outlined above is in obvious conflict with this explicit obligation, and it is considered destabilizing by many ABM Treaty advocates. The Treaty also bans the development, testing and deployment of sea-based, air based, space based and mobile land-based ABM systems and components. It only permits a single fixed, land based terminal defense system. Much has been said about the ability of countermeasures to defeat terminal defense systems and there is some merit to these observations. As a result the ABM Treaty has the practical effect of prohibiting any meaningful defenses. That is, virtually all ABM concepts are banned outright and the only systems permitted under the Treaty are those that can be defeated.

The ABM Treaty also prohibits giving non-ABM radar, launchers and interceptors ABM capabilities or testing them in an ABM mode. This obligation has been the subject of ambiguity for the entire 27 years of the Treaty. There have been two major attempts to clarify these obligations. The first culminated in a 1978 Agreed Statement and the second culminated in the 1997 Demarcation Agreements. While these agreements did clarify the meaning of testing in an ABM mode, they did not reduce the ambiguity surrounding the question of what constitutes giving non-ABM radar, launchers and interceptors ABM capabilities. Consequently, we have had to rely on internal U.S. government developed methods and procedures for resolving this question. Since the U.S. is a nation that respects the rule of law, and which takes its Treaty obligations seriously, the U.S. government has approached this question conservatively. As a result, a significant buffer zone has developed between allowed capability and capability which could even theoretically be considered ABM capability. This, coupled with the inherent conservatism of system design engineers to not develop systems that some arms control lawyer might consider prohibited, has the practical effect of giving rise to less capable systems than might otherwise be.

The ABM Treaty compliance of systems based on technologies other than radar, launchers and interceptors, such as lasers and other no-longer exotic technologies have to be addressed. Unfortunately, for developers of such systems, there is no agreement on matters as basic as which provisions of the ABM Treaty apply. This state of affairs has an inherent deterring effect on developers, which would otherwise seek to develop systems with the maximum achievable capability However, the ABM Treaty bans such dual capabilities for the systems being developed.

This compels us to explore other solutions to the growing ballistic missile threat, solutions that are both effective yet not destabilizing. Solutions that are applicable to both TMD and NMD, which give our NCA graceful escalation options but also, afford rapid, assured de-escalation paths.Solutions that do not necessarily look to other physical principles such as lasers or particle beam weapons, but take advantage of Air Force core competencies of global mobility, precision strike and operational Space expertise. Solutions that evolve the Air Force?s Offensive and Defensive Counterair capability to the next level.

An Evolving Approach

Perhaps no mission areas have greater influence over foreign policy than TMD and NMD. Consequently, how we deal with the ballistic missile threat will affect all our strategic relationships with Russia and emerging would-be world powers that seek global and/or regional influence through the possession of ballistic missile delivered WMD. The dynamic geo-political stage, and our engaged foreign policy approach, requires theater missile defenses capable of rapid, decisive, and lethal effects. However, they must also contribute deterrent value to our overall crisis response option(s) while promoting stability throughout the spectrum of conflict. This environment also demands a robust homeland defense because policy initiatives on other continents, potentially viewed as violations of sovereignty, may invite simultaneous attacks on the United States, our allies or neutral territories of interest.

One approach worthy of more consideration is to develop capabilities to destroy or neutralize long range ballistic missiles before they are employed, i.e., long range, space enabled attack operations. Long range attack operations, in conjunction with a limited, CONUS based NMD architecture, would provide a flexible, layered mix of offensive and defensive weapons to deal with the ballistic missile threat. Effective attack operations can deter the use of ballistic missiles, and perhaps their development. The existing counter aerospace power of the Air Force in combination with its space control and space lift expertise means the nation possesses an inherent, space enabled attack operations capability.

Global Engagement (GE) is the Air Force?s vision for the 21^st century and when achieved it will bring a formidable military capability to the Administration?s Engagement and Enlargement policy. GE asserts that full spectrum dominance of military operations depends on "speed, global range, stealth, flexibility, precision, lethality, global/theater situational awareness and strategic perspective." From a strictly military perspective, these are all ideal attributes. Unfortunately, the weapons we develop that posses those attributes must be employed within both international and domestic policy constructs that very often impose limits on their employment thereby making them less effective weapons of war. The limits imposed on Active Defense type NMD and TMD systems and by the Administration?s interpretation of the ABM Treaty, are classic examples. The banning of the neutron bomb, designed to kill people not property, is another.

There are several platform, weapon, and sensor concepts that could be used in a counter aerospace role against ballistic missiles, particularly their most vulnerable links - the support infrastructure. Their employment concepts indisputably put them outside the ABM Treaty because they are part of the traditional Air Force counter air/counter aerospace and space control/space lift missions.

On the technical military side, the approach involves striking ballistic missile infrastructure, from orbital, sub-orbital and long-range aerospace standoff platforms, with non-WMD weapons. An advantage of space enabled attack operations (or extremely high altitude bombing) is that effective countermeasures, other than hiding, would be difficult to achieve. On the policy side, the concept affords the NCA graceful escalation and de-escalation options that allow the demonstration of resolve without taking us to the next level faster than our diplomatic capacity to deal with it. There is even an environmental advantage - conventional weapons and kinetic energy rods would not produce any long lasting environmental hazards making their use less abhorrent to the international community.

Platforms: Manned / unmanned, expendable / reusable, rapid transit launch platforms that provide quick, reliable access to space, are essential. A reusable unmanned aerospace plane would allow us to rapidly reconstitute or augment satellite constellations during war or heightened tensions. However, they could also quickly place on orbit a maneuverable platform containing bundles of precision guided conventional or kinetic munitions. This is analogous to long range bombing without the need for large forward-based infrastructure, long range manned aircraft, or dealing with over-flight restrictions ? the comparative cost savings could be considerable. The CONOPS would place this capability on alert. During increased tensions, launch readiness and launch warning notifications could be transmitted, in the clear, as part of diplomatic efforts to resolve the issue peacefully. As tensions increased a proportional number of launches could be executed in a manner that conveys readiness, but not necessarily belligerence.

That same model can apply to placing precision guided, conventional and kinetic counter aerospace weapons into orbit. However, an important aspect that would contribute to stability and graceful escalation would be to do it in the open. That is, announce we are developing and plan to deploy the capability in a fashion similar to our ICBM force, i.e., on alert, not on-orbit. Declare that we will test it over international waters, and that its employment concept will be similar to high altitude precision bombing. This would mitigate some overseas presence needs, which would save money and present a less threatening posture during times of increased tension. Yet, our resolve would still be evident, as CNN would carry the liftoff for all to see. If tensions abate, de-orbiting the weapons over the broad ocean area would be a simple matter. If they do not, we will be in a better position to execute a pre-emptive, conventional strike against a potential belligerent?s warmaking capability, including his WMD facilities.

This capability would be effective against all targets provided intelligence preparation of the battlespace can confidently identify them. Global IPB must be improved to levels necessary to support the employment of such weapons. Some target sets are already easy to identify with high confidence. Other targets such as deeply buried and hardened C2 bunkers, underground storage facilities and mobile ICBMs, are hard to locate, but once found would be vulnerable to kinetic energy weapons de-orbited from space.

A further refinement of this concept would be to deploy these weapons in bundles within a maneuverable, perhaps even recoverable, miniature lifting body. This would give the warfighter more firepower and more control over that firepower and the NCA more control over escalation and de-escalation. In the interest of injecting even more stability into the equation, essential surveillance and targeting elements of this capability could be kept on alert status along with the weapons. Flexible response options could involve launching the surveillance and targeting elements before the weapons. Indeed, the Air Force is working to develop the technology for such approaches in collaboration with NASA?s x-vehicles developments (X-33, X-34, X-37, and X-38).

Weapons: Several conventional weapon options could be used in this application to include: Clusters of small GPS/INS guided bombs; small, powered GPS/INS miniature cruise missiles ? a variant would have a penetrator; bundles of hypervelocity rods made of carbon composite shrouded tungsten ? dropped from orbit, these rods would impact at speeds up to Mach 17. The Air Force has been conducting technology development and test in the Air Force Research Lab?s "Common Aero-Vehicle" or CAV program ? a maneuverable re-entry vehicle which could carry a variety of sensors or weapons back into the atmosphere from a long-range or even ICBM-range launch as well as from an orbital vehicle.

Sensors/Communication: Essential to the effectiveness of these weapons, and the believability of any graceful escalation and de-escalation claims, are the surveillance and targeting sensors, and the command and control capability. Since constant global presence is more easily guaranteed through Space, it is safe to assume the supporting sensor and communication network will be in Space, with some augmentation/redundancy from airborne platforms. Spaceborne systems would provide JSTARS and AWACS like air and ground moving target indicator (MTI) data. Indeed, the Air Force, in conjunction with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is sponsoring the test of two prototype space-based radar ground MTI satellites in the Discover II program. These satellites are slated for launch in 2003-2004. There will also need to be improvements in automatic target identification and battle damage assessment capabilities. Both air and space multi-spectral intelligence capabilities (e.g., SIGINT, IMINT, ELINT, etc.) will have to improve to the point where they support targeting and execution decisions with extremely high degrees of confidence.

This should not be construed as a requirement for a time-critical-targeting capability similar to that needed for mobile Scud hunting, although that would be useful. On the contrary, many Attack Operations experts now consider it far more effective to destroy essential TBM support infrastructure nodes rather than interdict a fleeing Scud Transporter-Erector-Launcher (TEL). An enemy?s fixed long-range missiles would probably be easier targets in terms of finding and preemptively destroying them, but his mobile long-range missiles, if he has any, would be as difficult a target as mobile Scuds.

The key to both TMD and NMD attack operations is Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB), which is a product of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and information management. ISR architectures supporting peacetime monitoring functions are very capable. They must, however, improve their near-real-time and real-time ballistic missile defense attack operations planning and execution information handling processes. Again, this is not so we can attempt to hit fleeing TELS with kinetic rods from orbit. It is so the ISR product truly identifies the most vulnerable ballistic missile nodes, (e.g., ingress/egress choke points, fuel, ammunition and maintenance depots, hidden, fixed or camouflaged launch complexes).

Several other concepts, identified as candidates for additional study by the Laser and Space Optical Systems (LASSAOS) study chaired by Gen. John Piotrowski (USAF, Ret), have potential application to the space enabled ballistic missile attack operations mission. They include camouflage detection and penetration, chemical warfare agent detection / identification, imaging from GEO, theater wind profiling, tunnel and underground structure detection, and lasercom to airborne command post(s). Clearly, advances in these areas would significantly increase national command authority (NCA) and warfighter confidence in their ability to decide when and where to execute an attack operations mission from orbit. Serendipitously, these capabilities could also aid negotiations, possibly revealing compliance with or resistance to diplomatic overtures; or provide opportunities to demonstrate to a belligerent the extent of our knowledge about his capabilities and intentions.

All of these concepts are simple extensions of the Air Force?s traditional counter air role. Their strength or advantage is that they rapidly extend the reach, speed and accuracy with which the NCA and warfighter can take flexible, decisive, yet not destabilizing action when faced with an escalating ballistic missile crisis. This capability when paired with a limited CONUS based hit-to-kill interceptor capability will provide the Nation an effective means to deal with most ballistic missile threats. The exception is the near peer who attacks in force without provocation. For that threat the best deterrence is overwhelming force and a stated policy of responding in kind. To ensure flexible response options, the nation must maintain a credible nuclear retaliatory capability, reasonable national and theater air and missile defenses and overwhelming power projection capabilities.

Summary

As we enter a new missile defense era ? and its associated debates ? it is important to avoid focusing on a single panacea for the ballistic missile threat. The answer does not lie in simple faith in negotiations or in exclusive reliance on effective missile defenses to the exclusion of other capabilities. The ABM Treaty was forged in a different strategic era than today?s. While it retains some value as a cornerstone or modern arms control, it clearly constrains our ability to field affordable, effective defenses.

As we consider how best to defeat the growing threat of ballistic missiles it may also be time to consider the broader range of military tools available to the United States. We submit that increased focus on offensive counter-aerospace tactics ? pin-pointing and destroying key elements in a ballistic missile attack system before they can be brought to bear ? warrants renewed attention. Such capabilities will require increased use of space platforms, sensors and communications ? and may even require space-based weaponry. To be sure, while this approach does not seem to run afoul of most of the ABM Treaty, there may be other agreements and political sensitivities, which will limit its role too. Nonetheless, this important aspect of a comprehensive strategy has too long been ignored.