An Antimissile Defense? You See It Only in Movies

Fifteen years ago, the spectacular special effects of the movie “Star Wars” helped put the Strategic Defense Initiative, President Ronald Reagan’s plan to build a defense against nuclear attack, in the forefront of U.S. politics. Those laser blasts on the screen looked so real that many viewers, Reagan apparently among them, presumed laser weapons exist--which they do not. Now the excellent special effects of the movie “Independence Day” seem to have helped renew missile defense as an issue in the presidential campaign. Viewers leave that movie with the impression that space combat is already possible.

It’s not.

The closest thing the United States possesses to a weapon that could be used against nuclear missiles--an antimissile called Thaad--has failed in every test. “Smart” bombs launched under ideal conditions still lack the sort of accuracy a strategic missile interceptor would require under extremely difficult conditions. Even in the laboratory, lasers have yet to achieve the power needed to destroy an incoming warhead. No one has come close to testing any system that could track warheads falling at tremendous speed from space and aim a laser at them over hundreds or thousands of miles.

Nonetheless, space defenses are again in play as a political issue.

GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole, a fan of “Independence Day” and also a sudden staunch advocate of a missile defense, recently called President Bill Clinton’s lack of interest in this “one of

the most negligent, shortsighted, irresponsible and potentially catastrophic policies in history.” Dole now proposes a crash program to field a few ground-based antimissile missiles by the year 2003. The Clinton administration has funded research into antinuclear systems, but fiercely resisted pressure to schedule deployment. This winter, Clinton vetoed a defense-budget bill because it contained language favoring the 2003 field date for a limited defense. On Sept. 7, Clinton said he would sign the fiscal 1997 defense authorization bill, which includes $3.7 billion for antimissile research--a hefty sum--but he agreed to sign only after the bill was amended to delete a GOP-backed call for the 2003 deployment.

Many Americans express surprise when informed that the United States has no defense whatsoever against intercontinental nuclear missiles (ICBMs) whose warheads would fall from space. If such a missile were fired at America today, there would be nothing the military could do. Dole says the limited defense he favors could protect the country from a small-scale missile attack by Iraq or North Korea; later, a complex defense, which would include futuristic air- and space-borne systems, would be built for defense against all-out attack by Russia or China. Clinton’s defense secretary, William Perry, has said such a shield is unnecessary, because all-out attack is not in the cards, and Pentagon experts “do not see the threat of a missile attack on the United States” from small nations being possible for at least 15 years.

Any strategic defense system would be costly. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the Dole plan would cost up to $60 billion. Any system would also entail either violation or renegotiation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in effect between the United States and the former Soviet bloc.

Republicans have long been eager to tear up the ABM treaty, which they view as a restraint on U.S. technological advantage (and a barricade to billions in funding for favored aerospace contractors). Democrats want to preserve the document, for it represents the first time during the Cold War that the United States and Russia agreed to avoid an entire class of military expenditures. But why shouldn’t the ABM treaty be revised, if the Russians are agreeable? Any defense against missiles carrying atomic warheads would be in the public interest. The problem is, there is no reason to believe such defenses are possible.

Tens of billions spent during the 1980s by the Reagan administration on SDI resulted in no practical anti-ICBM--not even the notorious X-ray laser, which itself required detonating nuclear explosions to oppose nuclear warheads. Since then, research hasn’t gotten much closer.

Last July, the Theater High Altitude Area Defense rocket, or Thaad, designed to protect Army units from battlefield missiles but also the closest thing to an anti-ICBM in the U.S. inventory, failed to intercept a mock target during a test. Thaad has failed in all three of its tests so far. It’s Thaad--a rocket that would use advanced guidance devices to steer toward an incoming warhead--that the Dole bill proposes fielding by 2003.

Experiments with antimissile lasers are continuing, but none are close to practicality. Researchers at TRW recently successfully fired a chemically powered laser, code-named COIL, that has some potential against incoming missiles. But COIL’s energy output is given by TRW as only “several hundred kilowatts”--in the range of 5,000 light bulbs. That’s more umph than lasers used to have, but several times more power would be needed to destroy a nuclear warhead.

Even assuming more powerful lasers are developed, how to detect incoming warheads and aim weapons toward them is pretty much an unknown. The Air Force has a converted 767 jetliner, called the Airborne Surveillance Testbed, now flying around with a fancy infrared telescope, conducting measurements on how to aim at incoming nuclear warheads. Initial results suggest the infrared telescope would work on clear days, but some other form of aiming would be required if warheads were falling through clouds. Any actual test in which a laser is aimed at a real falling warhead is years off.

Early this year, a joint U.S.-Israeli experiment used a ground-based laser to destroy two small artillery rockets in low-altitude flight. This does demonstrate the principle that someday a laser system might bring down Armageddon missiles. But the rockets destroyed were of World War II vintage, moving relatively slowly near the ground. An antimissile system for nuclear protection would have to destroy warheads flying extremely fast and coming from space.

Technology simply isn’t good enough yet. Consider the Patriot rockets used in the Gulf War. Patriots are a sort of junior antimissile missile and were trained against Iraq’s 1950s-technology Scud missiles, which do not fly as high or as fast as ICBMs. The Patriot system is now believed to have scored only a few hits in dozens of firings.

Consider that of the 27 cruise missiles launched in the first wave of the recent attach on Iraq, so many missed targets that a second wave was required. Cruise missiles are technologically imposing, yet in the Iraq barrage they faced perhaps 1% the challenge an ICBM interceptor would face. The missiles were fired against stationary targets whose location had been elaborately mapped in advance. ICBM interceptors would be fired against targets moving thousands of miles an hour in unpredictable locations.

Current Pentagon data show that cruise missiles--probably the most accurate long-distance weapons in the U.S. quiver--land within 60 feet of their targets 90% of the time. (The pop-news notion that smart bombs used in the Gulf War went down smokestacks of buildings and performed other feats of fantastic precision is complete hokum. The General Accounting Office has found that only a few struck dead-eye on their targets, calling the performance of Gulf War smart bombs “overstated.”)

A more accurate long-range weapon now being developed, a conventional bomb called the GAM and which would be carried by a B-2 stealth bomber, is estimated to be able to land within 20 feet of its target. Such accuracy might be good enough for an anti-ICBM detonation, but also might have no applicability to nuclear defense.

Both Republicans and Democrats need to bust their mental blocks on the subject of antimissile systems. Republicans need to admit that the technology simply isn’t ready yet, and no amount of bluster will make it so. Absurdity in the name of bluster was reached last spring, when 41 Republicans from Congress filed suit against the Clinton administration in federal court, demanding antimissile deployment. Sorry, but not even a federal judge can order lasers to work.

Democrats need to admit that a system that could protect the country at least against rogue governments that might acquire a few long-range missiles, and perhaps someday against larger threats, would be a judicious investment. Many, many billions are spent on Pentagon programs that could mean much less to the average person’s life than stopping a nuclear warhead.

Reagan may have been confused about the distinction between special effects and operational missile defenses, but he once said something that may prove profound. He declared that if the United States could perfect an anti-ICBM technology, we might simply give it to the Russians in order to make the world a safer place for everybody. Possible now? Not even close. Constructive goal? Absolutely. Making the world a safer place ought to be the objective of Republicans and Democrats alike. Both sides should drop their posturing and cooperate, in hopes of someday achieving that rarest kind of defense spending--the kind that makes destruction less likely.