Limiting National Missile Defence
Tom Sauer 
It is a race against time. The current missile defence program in the US is comparable with the Manhattan project. With more than US$ 8 billion yearly spent on research and development, missile defence is the biggest single weapons project of the Pentagon. The next deadline coincides, not by chance, with the presidential elections in autumn 2004. President Bush Jr. plans to deploy six ground-based strategic missile interceptors at Fort Greeley in Alaska and four at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in September 2004.
To what extent this first National Missile Defense (NMD) base will be able to effectively neutralise long-range missiles in flight remains an open question. First, the start of operational testing of NMD systems requires 20 successful developmental tests. Extrapolating from recent tests, operational testing – let alone deployment – will start in 2008 at the earliest. Second, the highly capable space-based sensors that were originally planned will not be available at that time. In short, by the end of 2004, no credible NMD architecture will be in place. The abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and the small-scale deployment are mainly symbolic events meant to convince the American electorate that President Bush is doing everything to protect the US after 11/09.
While the Bush administration is now freed both of the limits of the ABM Treaty and the opponents of NMD – including the Democrats who, as a result of the terrorist attacks, apparently feel they are not in a position to criticise the President – the hard questions have not been resolved. Will it be technologically feasible to build a credible NMD system able to protect the territory of the US against attacks with long-range missiles loaded with weapons of mass destruction? What about the financial costs? Are these efforts cost-effective in comparison with other, maybe more likely, threats? And last but not least, what will be the reaction of the rest of the world? Or does this not matter once the US can protect itself under a shield – or at least believes it can protect itself against the dangers "out there"? While the answers to these questions are rather complex, the Bush administration acts as if the answer is obvious: the US is determined to develop and to deploy NMD as soon as possible.
For those who still believe in arms control, it is time to start thinking strategically and tactically to limit the future deployment of missile defence. If the arms control community has no alternative to offer to the next non-Republican president, the speed of the missile defence program will be basically determined by midlevel defence bureaucrats in Washington DC, managers and scientists on the payroll of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, TRW, and Raytheon, and conservative members of Congress.
This article is therefore a first attempt at trying to point out why and how missile defence deployment should be limited.
Why Should NMD Be Limited?
While many experts outside the US government do not believe that it is possible to build a credible missile defence system that is cost-effective [1], it is hard to believe that nothing substantial will come out of this crash program, say in ten years time, especially if one looks at the amount of money poured into it.
Assuming that NMD will work, or at least to a sufficient degree in the eyes of the US government, the major question becomes how the rest of the world will react. While the US will not care much about the reaction of most states because of a feeling of invulnerability, the reaction of Russia and China will still matter a lot. Will the reaction of Russia and China remain muted after the US actually starts deploying NMD? The biggest factor affecting the answer to this question is the size of the shield, as the latter will determine the remaining deterring effect of the Russian and Chinese nuclear arsenal vis-à-vis the US. In the theoretical case that a large-scale NMD is 100% missile-proof, the nuclear deterrents of Russia and China would become worthless. The combination of an extensive missile defence system and a unilateralist US foreign policy may provoke feelings of inferiority and jealousy towards the US in many parts of the world, even more intense than those that already exist today. Philip Stevens in the Financial Times accurately predicted in April 2000: "The Pax Americana has many enemies... America's very power makes it the target for rogue states and terrorists". [2] Will NMD be the next Maginot line against this dangerous mix of anti-American forces?
Mutatis mutandis, if NMD remained very limited, but sufficient to neutralise a couple of long-range ballistic missiles from rogue states, the nuclear arsenals of China and certainly Russia would keep their deterrent value.
Advocates of NMD claim that Russia and China should not worry about NMD as it is only meant to protect the US from ballistic missile attacks from rogue states. They also argue that the Cold War is over and that relations with China and especially Russia are much better than during the Cold War. While this is true, neither the end of the Cold War nor the terrorist attacks have changed the structure of the international political system. Tensions and possible conflicts among the major state actors are more or less inherent, at least in the worldview of most strategists who call themselves realists, a label that is not unfamiliar to NMD advocates. The relationship between, for instance, the US on the one hand and China and even Russia on the other is still not comparable to that between the US and the UK or (even) France. While these relations may become similar in the future, this is far from certain. The odds are that even if they do evolve in that direction, there will be sharp setbacks. Examples of recent tensions between the United States and China, for instance, are the sending of American aircraft carriers to Taiwan in 1996, the nuclear spy scandal and the Cox report in 1998, the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, and the US-Chinese plane incident in April 2001. An indication of the remaining sensitivity of NMD was the Chinese reaction in February 2003 to the Australian Strategic Defence Review that was in favour of contributing to US NMD. China said that it would "undermine the global strategic balance and lead to a new run of the arms race." [3]
In addition, if the Cold War is really over, why did the nuclear policies of the US and Russia not fundamentally change? Why do the US and Russia still possess more than 20,000 nuclear weapons in total? Why is each of them still planning to keep more than 2,000 strategic nuclear weapons deployed (and many of them on high alert) and thousands more in reserve in 2013? Why are they still planning to keep a triad of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and nuclear bombers for at least another decade? Why are both still refusing to declare a no-first-use doctrine? By the way, these questions are seldom asked by the (American) media. It is therefore not surprising that the American public is not informed and that, for instance, more than two-thirds of the Americans falsely believe that an American missile defence system against longrange ballistic missiles already exists. [4]
There also remains the possibility that relations among regional powers deteriorate and a new Cold (or less Cold) War will arise between the US on the one hand and Russia or China on the other, or between the US and Russia on the one hand and China on the other. The latter is even regarded as a likely scenario.
To a large extent, perceptions inside Russia and China about the US will determine future relations. There is no indication that Russian and Chinese analysts nowadays consider their relationship with the US as mature enough to discard their reservations over missile defence. As long as NMD remains basically in a stage of development, the reactions can be expected to remain muted. Once a credible US NMD system is actually deployed, the reactions of Russia and China might change rapidly.
A second dubious argument that is made by proponents of NMD is that Russia should not worry because the US will share its missile defence technology with its allies, including Russia. Three remarks have to be made in this regard. First, sharing technology will lead to the exportation of missile technology and could, therefore, be seen as a stimulus for missile proliferation as defensive technology may also be used for offensive purposes. It is therefore not by chance that this was prohibited by Article 9 of the ABM Treaty, and still is by the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) guidelines.
A second problem is that if the United States starts sharing its technology, other states may do so too. States like Russia, and certainly China, may not only export defensive technology or counter-NMD technology that can easily circumvent mid-course NMD systems, but may also help states like Iran or North Korea acquire offensive missiles and weapons of mass destruction, even more than they are already doing now. This would be extremely dangerous and might also mean the end of the existing non-proliferation regime.
The biggest obstacle to the idea of sharing technology with Russia however is its political feasibility. It is difficult to see such a level of co-operation as a feasible option given the nature of the current relationship between the United States and Russia. As Harald Müller puts it: "It would require the US to share and transfer cutting-edge technology with countries its military elite still regards as rivals and potential enemies... Over the last few years, the American inclination to transfer sensitive technologies has diminished rather than grown, even within the Western alliance." [5] The US Department of Defense (DoD) has never been in favour of this option. [6] Even National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, a Russia specialist, has serious doubts: "Moscow should understand that any possibilities for sharing technology or information in these areas would depend heavily on its record – problematic to date – on the proliferation of ballistic-missile and other technologies related to weapons of mass destruction. It would be foolish in the extreme to share defences with Moscow if it either leaks or deliberately transfers weapons technologies to the very states against which America is defending." [7] In this regard, it is interesting to observe that the American criticism with regard to Russian support of building an Iranian nuclear reactor continued even after 11/09 and after the signing of the Moscow Treaty in May 2002. If sharing technology with Russia is considered unlikely, it is even more so with China.
This analysis therefore points to the need to limit NMD because the latter will not be regarded as threatening to Russia and China.
Expandability
The combination of a large number of interceptors and a full-scale sensor system can easily neutralise the current and future Chinese arsenal and even the deployed Russian nuclear weapons arsenal in the future. This is especially true if one takes into account the quantity and quality of the US nuclear and modern conventional weapons arsenal, and the quality of command and control systems (including early-warning satellites) of the US, something strategists cannot ignore.
In addition, it is not sufficient for Russia and China that the US deploys only a limited NMD architecture. The system should also be designed in such a way that it cannot be expanded easily to an extensive NMD system at a later time, the so-called break-out. It should always remain limited. Jack Mendelsohn explains the underlying fear: "What Russian officials are most concerned about is the creation by the US of an NMD infrastructure of upgraded or newly deployed ground-based radars and space-based sensors. This effectively hemispheric sensor system would, in Russian eyes, provide the US with a 'base' for a territorial defence from which it could 'break-out'." [8]
A major variable affecting this break-out option is the existence of highly capable upper-tier Theatre Missile Defence (TMD). At first sight, TMD and NMD seem to be two completely different concepts. At least for the US, NMD aims to neutralise attacks with long-range missile – having a range of more than 3,500 km and a speed of at least 5 km/s – against the whole US territory. TMD in contrast is supposed to protect relatively small areas, e.g. troops deployed abroad, as part of a force protection package against the most likely ballistic missile threats, namely short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. A further distinction should be made between lower-tier (like Patriots) and upper-tier TMD. The US is currently developing two major upper-tier TMD systems: Theatre High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) and Navy Theatre Wide (NTW). The Bush Jr. administration renamed the latter first as the Navy's Midcourse system and later as the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defence system. [9] THAAD is a mobile, land-based US Army system meant to destroy medium-range missiles in their terminal phase at a height of between 40-150 km, using hit-to-kill interceptors with a maximum speed of 2.6 km/s. The hundreds of planned THAAD interceptors, however, will not be deployed before 2010.
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 Interceptor Test from Aegis cruiser in Dec. 2003 |
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The NTW interceptors, having a speed of 4.5 km/s and scheduled to be stationed on tens of Aegis cruisers or destroyers equipped with radars, in contrast, would be able to intercept medium-range (and eventually long-range) missiles in all phases, although ideally at heights between 80-100 km. Its first successful intercept flight test occurred in January 2002.
It is crucial to understand that under certain conditions upper-tier TMD systems (like THAAD and NTW) could be capable of neutralising long-range ballistic missiles as well. This is the case when upper-tier TMD systems use powerful external sensors, for instance those envisaged for NMD and in particular the constellation of Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS)-low satellites [10] and/or a series of X-band radars inside and outside the US. [11] The projected role of the SBIRS-low satellites, the successor of the "Brilliant Eyes" Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) program in the eighties, is to be capable of tracking offensive missiles during all phases, guiding interceptors, and helping with discrimination between decoys and warheads using infrared and visible light. Contrary to early-warning radars, which have a 5-10 m resolution, X-band radars have a resolution of 10-15 cm, useful for discrimination between warheads and decoys. Both SBIRS-low satellites and X-band radars are being developed. Once these systems are in place, it would be relatively easy to plug upper-tier TMD systems into this dense NMD sensor network without detection by Russia or China.
Even Henry Cooper, one of the SDI's founding fathers, admitted: "If positioned off the US coast with sufficiently long-range interceptors and adequate sensor support, sea-based defences could defend the entire US against a limited number of missiles launched from anywhere on earth, including China or the former Soviet Union." [12] Five NTW ships off the US coast would be sufficient to defend the entire country. [13] It is not by chance that there was no agreement between Russia and the United States concerning upper-tier TMD systems in Helsinki in September 1997. [14]
Two Options for Limiting NMD
There are in principle two ways to limit missile defence capabilities: limiting the size of the sensor architecture or restricting the number of interceptors. The first option – limiting the size of the sensor architecture – would be ideal, as it is much more difficult and therefore more time-consuming to build additional radars or satellites than to build additional interceptors. The time necessary to build additional sensor stations would provide enough warning for Russia and China to react. It is therefore not surprising that this idea has been revived from the former ABM Treaty. However, the planned sensor architecture is crucial for a credible (limited) mid-course NMD system because of its ability to distinguish decoys from real warheads. It is therefore highly unlikely that the US will refrain from building such an extensive sensor network.
Technological and/or financial difficulties may however hamper the development and deployment of SBIRS-low satellites and X-band radars. According to a General Accounting Office (GAO) report of May 2003, the SBIRS program envisages a lot of technological difficulties. [15] Because of these difficulties, the Bush administration is having a second look at X-band radars, a program that has been somewhat neglected in the past.
The second and therefore only viable option for limiting NMD is to limit the number of interceptors, more precisely the terminal and mid-course NMD interceptors as well as upper-tier TMD interceptors through arms control agreements. Because it is so easy to plug upper-tier TMD into NMD, upper-tier TMD systems (especially NTW) should be outlawed.In addition, there is a general consensus outside the US that space-based interceptors should also be banned. China, for instance, has blocked further negotiations on a fissile material cut-off in the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva until negotiations with regard to space-based weapons (prevention of an arms race in outer space, PAROS) are initiated. This may in turn have a very negative influence on the 2005 Review Conference of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as the signing of the so-called Cut-Off Treaty was a key objective agreed at the 2000 NPT Conference.
The interceptor limits agreed in the 1974 Vladivostok version of the ABM Treaty and certainly those foreseen in the original ABM Treaty – 100 and 200 interceptors, respectively – are adequate to handle the threat of an attack by a couple of rudimentary long-range ballistic missiles from rogues states, [16] a threat that has not yet materialised. This number of interceptors should not be perceived as threatening by Russia or China, assuming that China upgrades its number of nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles from 20-30 to 100-200, as expected by the US National Intelligence Estimate of August 2000. The latter may also stimulate India to deploy more nuclear weapons. In Asia, a new arms race may evolve.
In contrast, a restriction on the number of boost-phase interceptors, which are fired immediately after the attacking missile is launched, is less necessary. Boost-phase interceptors are not threatening to Russian and Chinese land-based intercontinental missiles as they are stationed in the centre of their countries. Boost-phase missile defence systems need to be close to their rogue states targets and therefore do not have the capacity to neutralise the Russian and Chinese land-based missiles. Ideally, of course, their number would be limited as well.
The Bush Administration
Despite the fact that the Bush administration on different occasions has said that it aims to build a limited NMD system to be used against rogue states and not against Russia and/or China, [17] there are indications that the US is building a more extensive NMD system. First, President Bush never declared that he is willing to limit the development of NMD. He wants to leave all the options open and to choose the best technology in the end. The danger with this approach however is that if many systems work, the US will not be willing to make a choice and an extensive system will be built.
Second, the Bush administration could have amended rather than abrogated, the ABM Treaty. A limited NMD system could have been allowed while maintaining the basic idea behind the treaty, namely strategic stability. The Bush administration in contrast never really wanted to amend the ABMTreaty, which is another indication that it does not want to limit NMD.
Third, even after the US announced its withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, Russia insisted on limiting NMD. In the beginning of 2002, both Russian Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev and Deputy Chief of Staff Col.Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky asked the US to set restrictions on NMD, [18] something which was ignored by the US. When the US announced the first deployment schedule in December 2002, Sergeyev warned that this will create "a new destabilising phase." [19]
Fourth, the Bush administration explicitly states it wants to build a layered system including land-, air,- sea-, and space-based TMD and NMD systems that engage the offensive missiles in their boost, midcourse, and terminal phases. It does not talk about deployment limits. According to Lindsay and O'Hanlon, the final number of deployed interceptors may be up to 1,000-2,000. [20] If the latter is the case, China and Russia will be obliged to build new offensive and/or defensive weapons systems, and a new arms race may be the result.
Arms control advocates can only hope for a new American President who is willing and able to use his leadership skills to limit NMD for strategic stability reasons.
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