Re: Anyone Still Laughing at Star Wars?: NBC SSIA
- From: "gumboman" <noemail@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 9 Jul 2006 01:25:07 -0500
"Joe" <obri6133@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1152424057.656384.43830@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
William Longyard wrote:
Anyone Still Laughing at Star Wars?:
Well, history is showing us that the plan is more critical as each year
passes. The Soviet Union is gone. Our security now lies in our ability
to stop the missile (or six) that might be launched by a rogue state.
No, that is not where our security lies.
For a good read on Star Wars......and Reagan's contribution to the fall
of Communism, check out John Lewis Gaddis' new book, The Cold War: A
New History. He's the gold standard when it comes to cold-war
historians, and he has a very interesting take on Reagan. You'd enjoy
it Bill......
Tell me about him.
Star Wars doesn't work and it's not going to work anytime in the near
future. Even if, sometime way out there in time, you manage to get one
missile to hit another, the countermeasures that are available to any enemy
are so easily implemented that any sense of security you may have is a false
sense of contentment.
And yes, I have worked on experiments in this area in the past.
Here is a short explanation of what I am talking about. It's not very
technical but don't hesitate to ask if you have questions. I think this is
from the summer of 2000 but nothing has really changed and it's the first
thing I could find that wasn't filled with technical jargon.
JH
Union of Concerned Scientists
Citizens and Scientists for Environmental Solutions
The National Missile Defense system under
development by the United States would be ineffective against even limited
ballistic missile attacks from emerging missile states. Moreover, its
deployment would increase nuclear dangers from Russia and China, and impede
cooperation by these countries in international efforts to control the
proliferation of long-range ballistic missiles and weapons of mass
destruction.
The United States should reconsider its
options for countering the threats posed by long-range ballistic missiles
and shelve the current NMD plans as unworkable and counterproductive.
The United States plans to decide in fall 2000
whether to begin deploying a limited national missile defense (NMD) system.
This system is intended to defend US territory from limited attacks by tens
of intercontinental-range ballistic missiles armed with nuclear, chemical,
or biological weapons. Such attacks could include a deliberate attack by an
emerging missile state that might acquire such missiles in the future; an
accidental, unauthorized, or erroneous attack by Russia; or an attack by
China.
The NMD system would use ground-based
interceptor missiles to launch "kill vehicles," intended to destroy their
targets by colliding with them in the midcourse of their trajectory, outside
the earth's atmosphere. The system would track warheads using ground-based
radars and satellite-based infrared sensors, and the kill vehicles would use
infrared sensors to home on their targets. The planned system would be
deployed in phases, with the nominal capability of the system increasing in
each phase. If the United States decides this year to begin deployment, the
initial phase is to be completed by 2005 and the full system by as early as
2010.
This report examines in detail whether the
planned NMD system would work against real world missile attacks. It focuses
on the effectiveness of the system against the most commonly cited (and
presumably the least sophisticated) threat: attacks by emerging missile
states.
While the number of attacking missiles would
have a significant impact on the operational effectiveness of the NMD
system, of greater importance would be the "countermeasures" an attacker
took to confuse, overwhelm, or otherwise defeat the defense. The 1999
National Intelligence Estimate on the ballistic missile threat to the United
States -- a document prepared by the US intelligence community -- stated
that countermeasures would be available to emerging missile states. Our
study first considers the types of countermeasures that a real adversary
could use to counter the NMD system, and that the system must therefore
expect to face. We then make a detailed technical assessment of the
operational effectiveness of the planned NMD system against a limited attack
using three specific countermeasures that would be available to any state
able to deploy a long-range ballistic missile.
Our analysis of the effectiveness of the NMD
system assumes it has all of the sensors and interceptors planned for the
full system to be deployed only by 2010 or later. However, countermeasures
could be deployed more rapidly and would be available to potential attackers
before the United States could deploy even the much less capable first phase
of the system.
The contributors to the study are all
physicists or engineers. Our analysis is based on an understanding of basic
physics and technology and uses only information available in the open
literature. This detailed analysis is possible because the United States is
now so close to potential deployment that it has selected the specific
interceptor and sensor technologies that the NMD system would use. We do not
believe that access to classified information would in any significant way
alter our study or its conclusions.
The United States must assume that any
potential attacker would conduct a similar, although far more sophisticated,
analysis.
Overall Findings and Recommendations
(1)
Any country capable of deploying a
long-range missile would also be able to deploy countermeasures that would
defeat the planned NMD system.
Biological or chemical weapons can be divided
into many small warheads called "submunitions." Such submunitions, released
shortly after boost phase, would overwhelm the planned defense. Moreover,
there are no significant technical barriers to their deployment or use.
Because submunitions allow for more effective dispersal of biological and
chemical agents, an attacker would have a strong incentive to use them even
in the absence of missile defenses. The United States should recognize that
any long-range missile attack with biological or chemical agents would
almost certainly be delivered by submunitions, and that the NMD system could
not defend against such an attack.
An attacker using nuclear weapons could also
defeat the planned system. An attacker could overwhelm the system by using
"anti-simulation balloon decoys," that is, by deploying its nuclear weapons
inside balloons and releasing numerous empty balloons along with them. Or an
attacker could cover its nuclear warheads with cooled shrouds, which would
prevent the kill vehicles from detecting and therefore from homing on the
warhead.
Thus, we find that the planned NMD system
would not be effective against the limited long-range missile threats it is
intended to defend against -- whether from Russia, China, or emerging
missile states. We also conclude that deploying the planned NMD system would
result in Russian and Chinese reactions that would decrease US security.
Deployment of the planned NMD system would
offer the United States very little, if any, protection against limited
ballistic missile attacks, while increasing the risks from other more likely
and more dangerous threats to US national security.
(2)
The upcoming deployment decision will be
made on the wrong technical criteria.
The Pentagon will assess the technical
readiness of the system prior to the presidential deployment decision.
However, this assessment will consider only whether the first phase of the
system would be effective against a threat with no credible countermeasures;
it will not consider whether the full system would be effective against a
threat with realistic countermeasures.
The United States cannot reasonably exclude
the issue of countermeasures from a decision to deploy the first phase of
the system. A sound understanding of this issue is needed before a
deployment decision is made -- even about the first phase. If -- as this
study finds -- even the full NMD system would not be effective against an
attacker using countermeasures, and an attacker could deploy such
countermeasures before even the first phase of the NMD system was
operational, it makes no sense to begin deployment.
(3)
A deployment decision should be postponed
until the system has been tested successfully against realistic
countermeasures such as those described in this report.
Tests against realistic countermeasures will
not be conducted before the United States makes its planned deployment
decision. And it appears that such tests are not even planned to take place
before deployment of the initial phase of the system.
The United States should recognize that the
planned defense could not counter missiles armed with submunitions filled
with biological or chemical weapons, and thus would provide no protection
against the threat posed by long-range missiles armed with biological or
chemical weapons. For the threat of missiles armed with nuclear warheads,
the United States should demonstrate -- first by analysis and then in
intercept tests -- that the planned defense would be effective against
realistic countermeasures such as those we examine in this study: a nuclear
warhead deployed with anti-simulation balloon decoys, and a nuclear warhead
covered by a cooled shroud. This should be done before the United States
makes a commitment to deploy even the first phase of the planned NMD system.
Detailed Findings
(1)
The planned NMD system could be defeated by
technically simple countermeasures. Such countermeasures would be available
to any emerging missile state that deploys a long-range ballistic missile.
There are numerous tactics that an attacker
could use to counter the planned NMD system. None of these countermeasures
is new; indeed, most of these ideas are as old as ballistic missiles
themselves.
All countries that have deployed long-range
ballistic missiles (Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States)
have developed, produced, and in some cases deployed, countermeasures for
their missiles. There is no reason to believe that emerging missile states
would behave differently, especially when US missile defense development is
front-page news.
Many highly effective countermeasures require
a lower level of technology than that required to build a long-range
ballistic missile (or nuclear weapon). The United States must anticipate
that any potentially hostile country developing or acquiring ballistic
missiles would have a parallel program to develop or acquire countermeasures
to make those missiles effective in the face of US missile defenses.
Countermeasure programs could be concealed from US intelligence much more
easily than missile programs, and the United States should not assume that a
lack of intelligence evidence is evidence that countermeasure programs do
not exist.
Many countermeasures are based on basic
physical principles and well-understood technologies. As a consequence, a
vast amount of technical information relevant to building and deploying
countermeasures is publicly available. Any country capable of building a
long-range ballistic missile would have the scientific and technical
expertise, including people who have worked on missiles for many years, to
exploit the available technologies. Moreover, a great deal of technical
information about the planned NMD system and its sensors has been published.
A potential attacker could learn from a variety of open sources enough about
the planned NMD system to design countermeasures to defeat it.
To determine whether technically simple
countermeasures would be effective against the planned NMD system, we
examined three potential countermeasures in detail: submunitions with
biological or chemical weapons, nuclear warheads with anti-simulation
balloon decoys, and nuclear warheads with cooled shrouds. We find that any
of these would defeat the planned NMD system. They would either
significantly degrade the effectiveness of the defense or make it fail
completely. Moreover, these countermeasures would defeat the planned NMD
system even if they were anticipated by the United States. And because these
countermeasures use readily available materials and straightforward
technologies, any emerging missile state could readily construct and employ
them.
Submunitions with Biological or Chemical
Weapons. To deliver biological or chemical weapons by long-range ballistic
missile, an attacker could divide the agent for each missile among a hundred
or more small warheads, or submunitions, that would be released shortly
after boost phase. These submunitions would be too numerous for a limited
defense -- such as the planned NMD system -- to even attempt to intercept
all of them.
Our analysis demonstrates that the attacker
could readily keep the reentry heating of the submunitions low enough to
protect the agents from excessive heat. Moreover, because submunitions would
distribute the agent over a large area and disseminate it at low speeds,
they would be a more effective means of delivering biological and chemical
agents by ballistic missile than would a single large warhead. Thus, an
attacker would have a strong incentive to use submunitions, aside from any
concerns about missile defenses.
Nuclear Weapons with Anti-simulation Balloon
Decoys. Anti-simulation is a powerful tactic in which the attacker disguises
the warhead to make it look like a decoy, rather than attempting the more
difficult task of making every decoy closely resemble a specific warhead.
To use this tactic, the attacker could place a
nuclear warhead in a lightweight balloon made of aluminized mylar and
release it along with a large number of similar, but empty balloons. The
balloon containing the warhead could be made indistinguishable from the
empty ones to all the defense sensors -- including the ground-based radars,
the satellite-based infrared sensors, and the sensors on the kill vehicle.
The defense would therefore need to shoot at all the balloons to prevent the
warhead from getting through, but the attacker could deploy so many balloons
that the defense would run out of interceptors.
Nuclear Weapons with Cooled Shrouds. The
attacker could cover a nuclear warhead with a shroud cooled to a low
temperature by liquid nitrogen. The cooled shroud would reduce the infrared
radiation emitted by the warhead by a factor of at least one million. This
would make it nearly impossible for the kill vehicle's heat-seeking infrared
sensors to detect the warhead at a great enough distance to have time to
maneuver to hit it.
(2)
Many operational and technical factors make
the job of the defense more difficult than that of the attacker.
First, the defense must commit to a specific
technology and architecture before the attacker does. This permits the
attacker to tailor its countermeasures to the specific defense system.
Second, the job of the defense is technically much more complex and
difficult than that of the offense. This is especially true for defenses
using hit-to-kill interceptors, for which there is little margin for error.
Third, the defense must work the first time it is used. Fourth, the
requirements on defense effectiveness are very high for a system intended to
defend against nuclear and biological weapons -- much higher than the
requirements on offense effectiveness.
These inherent offensive advantages would
enable an attacker to compensate for US technical superiority.
(3)
The planned NMD system would not be
effective against an accidental or unauthorized attack from Russia, or an
erroneous launch based on false warning of a US attack.
Russia has indicated it would respond to a US
NMD deployment by deploying countermeasures on its ballistic missiles. As a
result, if an accidental, unauthorized, or erroneous Russian attack should
occur, the missiles launched would have countermeasures that would defeat
the planned NMD system. Moreover, because of the structure of its command
system, an unauthorized Russian attack could easily involve 50 or even 500
warheads, which would overwhelm a limited defense. An erroneous attack would
likely be large and would also overwhelm a limited defense.
(4)
The planned NMD system would not be
effective against a Chinese attack.
China has also indicated it would take steps
to permit it to penetrate the planned NMD system. China would likely respond
by deploying more long-range missiles capable of reaching the United States.
More significantly, as the 1999 National Intelligence Estimate notes, China
has developed numerous countermeasures. The United States must therefore
expect that any Chinese ballistic missile attack -- whether using existing
or new missiles -- would be accompanied by effective countermeasures.
(5)
Long-range missiles would be neither the
only nor the optimum means of delivery for an emerging missile state
attacking the United States with nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons.
Other delivery options available to emerging
missile states would be less expensive, more reliable, and more accurate
than long-range missiles. Moreover, these means could be covertly developed
and employed, so that the United States might be unable to identify the
attacker and retaliate. These alternative methods of delivery include cruise
missiles or short-range ballistic missiles launched from ships off the US
coast, nuclear weapons detonated in a US port while still in a shipping
container in a cargo ship, and cars or trucks disseminating chemical or
biological agents as they are driven through a city.
(6)
Available evidence strongly suggests that
the Pentagon has greatly underestimated the ability and motivation of
emerging missile states to deploy effective countermeasures.
There are strong indications that the
Pentagon's Systems Threat Assessment Requirement (STAR) Document and
Operational Requirements Document, which describe the type of threat the NMD
system must defend against, underestimate the effectiveness of the
countermeasures that an emerging missile state could deploy and thus
inaccurately describe the actual threat. If the threat assessment and
requirements documents do not accurately reflect the real-world threat, then
an NMD system designed and built to meet these less demanding requirements
will fail in the real world.
(7)
The planned testing program for the NMD
system is inadequate to assess the operational effectiveness of the system.
A judgement that the planned NMD system can
work against realistic countermeasures must be based on sound analysis of
the performance of the planned system against feasible countermeasures
designed to defeat it. Should such an analysis indicate that the NMD system
may be able to deal with such countermeasures, a rigorous testing program
that incorporates realistic countermeasures should be created to assess the
operational effectiveness of the planned NMD system. The United States
should demonstrate that the system could overcome such countermeasures
before a deployment decision is made.
Because it may be difficult or impossible to
obtain direct information about the countermeasure programs of other states,
the United States must rely on other means -- particularly on "red team"
programs that develop countermeasures using technology available to emerging
missile states -- to assess the countermeasure capabilities of potential
attackers. However, existing red team programs are under the financial
control and authority of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization and thus
face a fundamental conflict of interest.
To permit a meaningful assessment of the
operational effectiveness of the NMD system, the NMD testing program should
be restructured. The testing program must
a.. ensure that the baseline threat is
realistically defined by having the STAR document reviewed by an independent
panel of qualified experts
b.. conduct tests against the most effective
countermeasures that an emerging missile state could reasonably be expected
to build
c.. use an independent red team to design
and build these countermeasures, and employ them in tests without the
defense having advance knowledge of the countermeasure characteristics
d.. conduct enough tests against
countermeasures to determine the effectiveness of the system with high
confidence
e.. provide for objective assessment of the
design and results of the testing program by an independent standing review
committee
(8)
Past US missile defense tests against
missiles using "countermeasures" did not demonstrate that defenses could
defeat such countermeasures.
The United States has conducted several
missile defense flight tests of exoatmospheric hit-to-kill interceptors that
included decoys or other countermeasures and that have been described as
demonstrating that the defense could defeat the countermeasures. However, in
every case in which the defense was able to distinguish the mock warhead
from the decoys, it was only because it knew in advance what the
distinguishing characteristics of the different objects would be. These
tests reveal nothing about whether the defense could distinguish the warhead
in a real attack, in which an attacker could disguise the warhead and deploy
decoys that did not have distinguishing characteristics.
(9)
NMD deployment would result in large
security costs to the United States.
By deploying an ineffective NMD system, the
United States would stimulate responses that would produce a net decrease in
its national security.
a.. Deployment would make it far more
difficult to reduce the greatest threat to the security of the United
States: an accidental, unauthorized, or erroneous attack from Russia.
Current US and Russian nuclear weapons
deployment and operational policies, which remain largely unchanged since
the end of the cold war, carry a risk of accidental, unauthorized, or
erroneous attack on the United States. Today, such an attack poses the
gravest threat to the United States: it would likely result in the deaths of
millions of Americans. Even a deliberate nuclear attack by an emerging
missile state would result in far fewer deaths and injuries.
If the United States deploys its planned NMD
system, Russia is likely to increase its reliance on a launch-on-warning
strategy, thereby heightening the risk of accidental, unauthorized, or
erroneous attack. As Russia has made clear, a US NMD deployment would also
limit deep reductions in Russian nuclear weapons, thereby insuring that this
threat to US security continues into the future. Deployment would also limit
US-Russian cooperation on reducing the dangers posed by Russian nuclear
weapons and the risk of theft of Russian nuclear materials.
b.. US deployment will affect both the pace
and scale of China's missile modernization program, and is likely to lead
China to build up both faster and to higher levels than it otherwise would.
c.. The adverse implications of NMD
deployment by the US would extend beyond the direct responses by Russia and
China.
The deployment of the NMD system could
seriously impair efforts to control the proliferation of long-range
ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction, and thus ultimately
increase the threat to the United States from these weapons. Controlling
proliferation of these weapons requires the cooperation of Russia and China,
which, as the 1999 National Intelligence Estimate stated, will be influenced
by their perceptions of US ballistic missile defenses. Moreover, as long as
the United States and Russia rely on nuclear deterrence, NMD deployment
would place a floor on US-Russian nuclear arms reductions, and thereby put
at risk the survival of the broader arms control and non-proliferation
regimes. Statements by key US allies reflect their concerns that NMD
deployment would decrease international security as well as complicate
relations within NATO.
(10)
Deterrence will continue to be the ultimate
line of defense against attacks on the United States by missiles armed with
weapons of mass destruction.
The United States, in concert with other
countries, can reduce the missile threat through a combination of export
controls and various cooperative measures. If a hostile emerging missile
state acquires intercontinental-range missiles, the United States can deter
their use through the threat of overwhelming retaliation. If such a state
makes an explicit and credible threat to launch a missile attack against the
United States, it may be possible to destroy its missiles before they are
launched, in accord with the right of self-defense.
The only practical and effective way to
address the Russian and Chinese missile threat to the United States is
through cooperation, and the deployment of the planned NMD system may limit
such cooperation.
.
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