February 3, 2010 :: Department of Defense :: Analysis
Part 1 of 3:
(Part 2; Part 3)
The Pentagon released its 2010 Ballistic Missile Defense Review Report on Monday. After initiating a shift in missile defense policy by abandoning the ground-based interceptor plan in eastern Europe last year, the Obama administration left unclear the future of its missile defense policy. The transition to a "phased-adaptive" approach in Europe was articulated, to be sure, but there was still much fleshing out to be done. We now have the first comprehensive statement about the future of missile defense policy under the Obama administration. Part 1 of missilethreat's synopsis will treat the change in policy from the Bush administration, the Defense Department's view of the ballistic missile threat to the United States and its allies (both regional and intercontinental), and the underlying grand strategic assumptions of the document. Part 2 will discuss the BMD technological architecture in place and under development in the near- and mid-term to address homeland and regional threats. Part 3 will discuss the new bureaucratic or organizational structure for deployment and development and America's strategic BMD partners.
The theme running throughout the report—and one that perhaps marks most clearly this administration's departure from the approach of the Bush administration—is a distinction between uncertain long-range threats and certain regional threats. While Gates' defense department recognizes the long-range threat of ICBMs from Iran or North Korea, from a budgetary perspective its dominating concern is regional threats in a global environment characterized by the rapidly increasing proliferation of short-, medium-, and intermediate-range missiles.
Our Proliferating World
Both ballistic missile quality and quantity are on the rise worldwide. The impact of this fact on homeland security is uncertain because, as the report points out, neither North Korea nor Iran have yet produced "an ICBM-class warhead." While the report will later detail America's ground-based defenses against the possibility of such a threat emerging, it offers in its introduction the rather tepid statement that, "Working with the international community, the United States will continue to seek to stem these threats, through diplomacy and other means." Diplomacy has yet, it seems, to bear much fruit, and it remains unclear what "other means" this administration is willing to undertake.
The report makes very clear that Iran and North Korea are considered to be the only likely threats to the U.S. homeland. The two world powers currently capable of launching such an attack are China and Russia, but such aggression "is very unlikely and not the focus of U.S. BMD."
"Regional" threats are a different matter. North Korea, Iran, and Syria are all considered credible short-, medium-, and intermediate-range ballistic missile threats. North Korea's testing schedule of such missiles has been very active in recent years, and the report confirms that "North Korea has developed an advanced solid-propellant short-range ballistic missile," and that "a mobile IRBM is also under development." Iran, with the support of China, North Korea, and Russia, has been very active as well. The Sahab-3 (a medium-range ballistic missile), first tested in 2004, is believed to have a range of 2,000 km; more alarmingly, Iran has developed and flight-tested a more sophisticated solid-fueled missile with the same range. Finally, Syria possesses a not inconsiderable number of SCUDs and SS-21 short-range ballistic missiles, "and may have chemical warheads available for a portion of its SCUD missiles," presenting a serious mobile threat that puts almost all of Israel and parts of Iraq, Jordan, and Turkey within range.
The "trends" identified with this proliferation are troubling as well. Gone are the days of lesser powers developing primarily short-range ballistic missiles: "globally, the Intelligence Community continues to see a progression in development from short- to medium- and in some cases intermediate-range missiles." Additionally, we should expect the pace of such proliferation to accelerate, as the blossoming global "open market" in "technologies, materials, and expertise" continues to grow.
The Defense department's proposed response to such threats is two-fold: first, to focus on intelligence, by increasing America's capability and by working closely with the intelligence networks of our allies; and second, to focus on making missile defenses adaptable to a changing world.
(As one example of our changing world of easy proliferation, we have this Russian company offering cruise missiles that are outfitted in a ship-container launch system.)
Strategy and Policy
The homeland defense policy priority will now be to "defend the homeland from limited ballistic missile attack." As such, priority will be placed on "fly before you buy" technologies rather than more experimental or less operationally predictable ones. Whereas the old strategy was "to rapidly put capabilities in place to address emerging threats while those systems were still in development." In following the President's order to only move "forward with missile defenses that are affordable, proven, and responsive to the threat," Defense will shift "away from defenses planned to rely on currently immature technology, away from technologies that require unrealistic concepts of operations in order to be effective, and away from technologies intended to defeat adversarial missile threats that do not exist and are not expected to evolve in the near to midterm." Given the restricted size of the BMD slice of the budget, these are no doubt prudent shifts; however, the likely result will be that the U.S. will stay one step ahead of its adversaries rather than undertaking the effort to get two or three steps out in front.
From a doctrinal or ideological standpoint at least, the most interesting section of the whole report may come under the subhead of "Missile Defense: Deterrence, Extended Deterrence, and Assurance Goals." The administration takes an admirable step away from the old Ted Kennedy caricature of missile defense (he famously mocked it as "Star Wars") by making the argument for regional BMD capabilities as strong deterrents, inducements to non proliferation, and engines of peace.
Missile defenses are an essential element of the U.S. commitment to strengthen regional deterrence architectures against states acquiring nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction in contravention of international norms and in defiance of the international community. They also support U.S. and allied capacities for mutual defense in the face of coercion and aggression by these defiant states. In these ways, missile defenses strengthen U.S. goals of deterrence, extended deterrence, and assurance. In so doing, they contribute to international peace and stability and reinforce the global nonproliferation regime [emphasis added].
However, at the end of the same paragraph the report returns to the subject of homeland defense and offers some old Cold War strategic thinking. "While the GMD system would be employed to defend the United States against limited missile launches from any source, it does not have the capacity to cope with large scale Russian or Chinese missile attacks, and is not intended to affect the strategic balance with those countries." if nothing else, this is at least a shadow of the old Mutually Assured Destruction mentality of Cold War 'realism.' We are not in open war (cold or otherwise) with China or Russia, to be sure, but we are nonetheless restraining the longer-range ground-based missile defense system based in California and Alaska from its full potential in order to service notions of strategic balance in lieu of more assured defensive superiority.
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