The Missile Defense Agency’s Ballistic Missile Defense System Webpage.

The Ballistic Missile Defense System

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InstaMarch

7 min readDec 7, 2017

We hear a lot right now about North Korea. In our recent article “What is the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty?” we explored Russian concerns around our arms agreements. Some of these asked questions about if it is legal under the INF treaty to use drones. We also talked about a Polish Missile Defense base that the Russians vehemently opposed. Eventually President Obama cancelled President Bush’s plan, but the Missile Defense System got moved offshore to the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System.

The Aegis Combat System Website by Lockheed Martin

Ballistic Missile Defense?

Countries invest in ballistic missiles because they are a means to project power in regional and strategic contexts, and a capability to launch an attack from a distance.

The United States Department of Defense, Missile Defense Agency website.

Last week we mentioned that The OED defines a ballistic missile as such:

n. a missile which is powered (as a rocket) and guided only in the initial phase of its flight, thereafter falling freely towards its target, typically following a high, arching trajectory.

Ballistic missiles allow nations to hold over one another the threat of causing serious havoc. In the case of a nuclear power, the price becomes very high. So far, when two nations both have nuclear capability, they seem to leave each other alone. This was the case with The United States and The Soviet Union.

The Official Threat:

Iran’s ballistic missiles are capable of striking targets throughout the region, ranging as far as southeastern Europe. Iran is likely to continue developing more sophisticated missiles, with improved accuracy, range and lethality.

The United States Department of Defense, Missile Defense Agency Threat Page gives Iran and North Korea as our justification for a Missile Defense System:

North Korea has expanded the size and sophistication of its ballistic missile forces — from close-range ballistic missiles to ICBMs — and has conducted an unprecedented level of nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches since 2016, including its fourth and fifth nuclear tests, as well as its short-range, medium-range, intermediate-range, long-range, and submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) launches. In February 2016, Pyongyang launched a TD-2 SLV from a west coast testing facility. The technology involved in a satellite launch would be applicable to North Korea’s other long-range missile programs. In addition to the Taepo Dong 2 SLV/ICBM, North Korea is developing and has paraded the two road-mobile ICBMs which, if successfully developed, would likely be capable of reaching much of the continental United States.
Over the past year, North Korea conducted an aggressive testing campaign, launching at least seven Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs), with a range greater than 3,000 kilometers. North Korea tested a new SLBM capability in 2015 and again in 2016. In February 2017 North Korea publicized the launch of a new solid-propellant missile that appeared to be a land-based variant of its SLBM. The missile was launched from a canister carried on a previously unseen tracked launcher.

The Official Solution:

Through its capabilities for defending critical nodes, military assets, and seats of government, missile defense enhances existing non-proliferation activities. Missile defenses can provide a permanent presence in a region and discourage adversaries from believing they can use ballistic missiles to coerce or intimidate the U.S. or its allies.

Missile Defense Breakdown:

Detect a missile launch:

2. Pass information to NATA Headquarters Allied Air Command:

3. NATO relays information to sensors and fire control commanders across Europe:

4. The interceptor is fired from an optimal location:

5. The missile is destroyed:

Is there still a problem?

“Attempts by some countries, as well as military and political alliances, to disturb the current balance in the arms control field, seem highly dangerous,” he said.
“Their determination to gain military advantage and use force for achieving momentary political tasks significantly undermines strategic stability,” the top diplomat said.
“One of the key issues in this regard concerns attempts by the US and its allies in Europe, the Asia-Pacific region and other regions to create a global missile defense system and bring its elements closer to the borders of Russia and China,” Lavrov stressed.

Sergey Lavrov quoted by TASS

“Russia and the alliance member states pose no threat to each other,” Lavrov said.
During the Lisbon talks, the North-Atlantic alliance formally invited Moscow to cooperate on the creation of the European missile defense system. Russia welcomed the idea, but only on condition that the sides would work on the project jointly and transparently. At that time, President Dmitry Medvedev put forward the idea of the so-called “sectoral” defense system. The general idea was that Europe would be divided into sectors and each side — Russia and the Western partners — would defend their sector of responsibility. Moscow also warned that if no compromise was found on missile defense within Europe and the US went ahead with constructing a shield on their own, Russia would have no choice but to respond with military measures.
For Russia, it is a nonnegotiable condition that the western partners sign a legally binding document to demonstrate that the planned missile defense shield would not pose a threat to the country’s strategic forces. However, NATO has so far refrained from judicially fixing the principle, suggesting Moscow should take them at their word instead. During a recent Russia-NATO summit in Sochi, the alliance’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen once again declined Moscow’s proposal, calling a legally binding agreement on the mutual non-use of force “unnecessary”.

Lavrov: missile defense the only irritant in Russian-US relations.

Clearly Russia is not happy about this.

According to United States Diplomat E. Wayne Merry:

When a Russian president is sworn into office, the ceremony includes the transfer of the briefcase containing the nuclear weapons authorization codes. This is shown on national television, as the codes are today the tangible orb and scepter of derzhavnost, the greatness of the Russian state.

and:

Anything like BMD which contains the potential — or even the perception of the potential — to compromise the integrity or stature of the Russian nuclear arsenal is seen by policymakers in Moscow as a danger not only to the country’s security but to its historic identity as a great state.

This is not only a security issue, but it also may question Russia’s status as a great power:

Ultimately, for Russia the issue is not Iran, nor NATO, nor the US, nor specific systems. American progress toward balancing ballistic missiles with credible defenses erodes the status quo essential to Moscow’s assertion of great power status. Far from seeing nuclear weapons as a necessary evil of the modern world, Russia’s elites perceive them as the bedrock of its state power and global identity for the foreseeable future. That is the starting point for any U.S. dialogue, let alone negotiation, with Russia on BMD.

Does it work?

from the Los Angeles Times Missile Defense Failings

The report notes that in “heavily scripted” flight tests that are “set up for success,” GMD interceptors have often failed to hit mock enemy warheads. In the seven most recent tests, interceptors destroyed their targets just three times, the report says — a finding consistent with conclusions of the Pentagon’s operational test and evaluation office.

Are there any articles challenging the Los Angeles Times on this matter? Was a 40 billion dollar system that may in the future work, worth breaking an International Treaty with an Ally?

Additional Research:

We did not have time to put every link we found within, but here most of the articles that did not make it in.

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