A Real Ballistic Missile Defense

As you probably already know, the Missile Defense Agency’s Integrated Flight Test (IFT)-13C failed today.

I’ve got a post on the subject, Performance Anxiety: Missile Defense Booster Fails to Rise to the Occassion, over on DefenseTech.org.

That post notes that flight tests cost around $100 million (this one may have been less since they didn’t burn the booster) and, just yesterday, Boeing received a new $928 million contract for further BMDS “enhancements.”

For readers of the Arms Control Wonk, I wanted to share an op-ed that I wrote about a year ago dwelling a slightly different use for that money. I called it:

A REAL BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE, OR
How I’d Spend $8 Billion To Deal With Ballistic Missile Threats, or
You Can’t Fire A Ballistic Missile If A Navy SEAL Is Beating You With Your Own Severed Limbs.

Jeffrey Lewis, c. 2003

Having watched with the second Gulf War unfold with all the shock and awe that Don Rumsfeld promised, I have found myself becoming a vocal proponent of missile defense. Not the $8 billion dollar a year monstrosity the Administration is sticking (mostly) in the frost bitten Alaskan wilderness, mind you, but the real missile defense. The missile defense we actually used against missiles in Iraq. You don’t know what I mean? You aren’t alone.

While everyone fawned over the shoot-down of nine short-range missiles (mostly by older PAC-2 systems), no one seemed to be asking why Iraq never even fired any of two-dozen Scud missiles remaining from the arsenal that so bedeviled the same PAC-2 systems during the first Gulf War. At least no one but Defense News, which the revealed the answer in mid-May: General Tommy Franks admitted that US and allied special operations forces “flooded” into Western Iraq to prevent Scud launches. And on that score, Special Operations Forces had a perfect record. Not a single Scud was launched. None. Zero. Zip. Nada. Army Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal told a Pentagon news conference that it was “probably the most effective and the widest use of special operations forces in recent history.”

Left: All the missile defense you could ever want.

Prior to the war, the Allies projected an air of complete confidence in the missile defense systems that had been deployed following the abysmal failure of the Patriot anti-missile system during the first Gulf War. The United States deployed PAC-3 Missiles to supplement Israel’s highly regarded Arrow system. The head of the Israel’s Air Defense Forces event told the Associated Press, “I’m sure we are better prepared today. In 1991, we had almost nothing. Now we have a very active, robust defense.”

What he didn’t mention, and what Defense News revealed, was that the Israeli government was limp-dick terrified about the prospect of Scud missile launches and begged to add Israeli special forces to the allied teams that, in retrospect, didn’t appear to need any help. Israel had an active, robust missile defense, alright—the guys they call “snake-eaters”.

If neither we, nor our allies, believe that missile defenses will provide protection, shouldn’t we be spending the money somewhere else? Even with the Administration’s record $1.5 billion increase in funding for special operations forces in the FY04 request, the $4.5 billion budget for SOCOM is far less than the $7.7 billion for the Missile Defense Agency. One of the principle rationales for missile defense, articulated in the final repot of the Rumsfeld Commission on ballistic missile threats, is the inability of the intelligence community “to provide timely and accurate estimates of ballistic missile threats to the U.S.” The Rumsfeld Commission recommended strengthening “the community’s capabilities in this area”. I can think of some guys who might be able to help out.

There is a general trend in missile defense programs to add layers to the front-end of the system to cope with the complexities of intercepting a ballistic missile. General Ronald Kadish, Missile Defense Agency Director, likes to explain that adding a boost phase layer complicates adversary use of counter-measures and provides defense against all ranges of missiles against targets anywhere in the world. Some of his colleagues in the Air Force have also begun talking about using UCAVs to conduct “pre-boost” intercepts before the missiles can be launched.

Right: This is much harder for an interceptor.

But can’t we, as defense-wonks like to say, “think outside of the box”? It seems to me that there isn’t a better pre-boost phase defense than our Special Operations Forces. While the Missile Defense Agency reports endless cost over-runs and follows failed flight tests with test runs so dry they’d make a decent martini, the soldiers of Special Operations Command are out there stacking up Scuds like cordwood. You don’t have to rig the testing program to get these (literally) bomb dropping motherfuckers in the game.

We like to talk about deterring the use of ballistic missiles—particularly deterring mid-level commanders who might choose to desert rather than fire warheads with chemical, biological or nuclear payloads. And while some of these guys may worry about airstrikes, I guarantee you there isn’t one commander in the world who wouldn’t shit his pants at the thought of the Delta Force dropping by to say hello. If Saddam knew what was coming, the entire Iraqi army would have been outfitted in brown pants.

Here’s a simple test: Let’s say two guys offer to take your girlfriend out to dinner while you are out of town—one is a pasty, Ron Kadish look-alike who commanded a Patriot Battery in Jaffa, while the other was collecting ears from Republican Guard soldiers in some unpronounceable hell-hole in Western Iraq. Which one are YOU going be worried about? Me too.

So, hat’s off to the snake-eaters. I’d love to see what you could do with Ron Kadish’s $8 billion.