...The Bush administration has taken important first steps toward national missile defense. It withdrew from the ABM Treaty in 2002 and has made tremendous progress in deploying missile defenses, two things Reagan did not do. Current programs deserve much praise, but nevertheless fall short of the threat-based defense SDI in important ways pursued by Reagan.
Reagan envisioned a defense that was strategic, oriented to stopping the most an enemy could threaten. SDI emphasized interceptors in low Earth orbit. Space-based interceptors formed the primary front line of a defense, intended to be supplemented by sea- and land-based interceptors.
By the early 1990s, SDI had advanced to the level of the major defense acquisition program, a constellation of small, space-based interceptors. The Brilliant Pebbles concept promised a cost-effective way to destroy missiles in their ascent or boost phase, when they are most visible and vulnerable.
As the Missile Defense Agency's historian has documented, the program was cut for political reasons just as it was nearing the deployment phase. Its technologies were, however, successfully space-tested by the Clementine and Astrid programs in 1994.
Some hesitation about space defenses comes from the idea that space is a weapons-free preserve. But the high ground of space is merely an extension of strategic geography, and has long been "weaponized."
Armies project power on land, navies on the high seas, aircraft in the atmosphere. Satellites and missiles do so above the atmosphere. Satellites that surveil the enemy or send GPS coordinates to a warfighter are no less weapons because they do not go "boom." If a satellite in orbit helps direct a laser-guided bomb to a target in Afghanistan, in exactly what sense is space not weaponized?
All ballistic missiles travel through space, and it makes sense to intercept them from and in space. Putting interceptors closer to the paths of these missiles shortens the distance they must travel and widens the window of reaction time.
Orbited interceptors are already accelerated to 8 kilometers per second, and do not require a massive booster rocket. Any surface-based system, by contrast, retains the physical challenge of needing to be accelerated at a moment's notice. In missile interception, seconds matter. Basing in space buys time.
Orbital basing also increases the ability to destroy missiles in their boost phase. Unless they are close to the launch site, ground-based interceptors cannot reach missiles in their boost phase if launched inland. Orbits know no political boundaries, so orbiting interceptors could reach missiles in boost phase even if launched deep inside Iran, Russia or China.
...One may defend the modesty of the current approach on the ground that it is imprudent to irritate our strategic competitors in a time of war. But let us have no confusion about the degree to which some missiles retain a free ride to the American homeland.
Let us admit we intend to remain vulnerable to even accidental and unauthorized missiles coming from Russia or China. The path of deliberate minimalism is deterred from boldly pursuing the most effective missile defense systems. Such self-deterrence did not characterize Reagan or SDI.
As Secretary of State Rice remarked in February, "It is true that the United States once had a Strategic Defense Initiative, a program that was intended to deal with the question of the Russian strategic nuclear threat. This is not that program. This is not the son of that program. This is not the grandson of that program."
This is true. Twenty five years later, the S has been dropped from SDI. ...
