MDA Shoots Down an ICBM Target

Jeffrey Lewis 0:02

Cool it, guys. You're getting your budget, we know. You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk Podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Scott LaFoy 0:23

And I am Scott LaFoy, imagery analyst and fill-in-in co-host this week because Aaron got a little busy at work.

Jeffrey 0:30

Yeah, I think we're just promoting you to third co-host. That makes it easier for all of us. I'll accept that. Congratulations. It means you've got to learn to talk about the weather.

Scott 0:41

Oh, it's beautiful in D.C. It's warm. It's sunny.

Jeffrey 0:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we're going to take a break from Jim Comey and go back to the missile defense test because there's other testimony that we care about.

Scott 0:56

Yeah, Vice Admiral Syring of the, is that how you pronounce his last name? I've always just assumed it was Syring. Syring? That's a good name for a missile defense person. Vice Admiral Syring gave testimony about the ground-based interceptors. Yeah, that's right.

Jeffrey 1:12

The Missile Defense Agency conducted a flight test of the ground-based midcourse system, FTG-15, following FTG-6B, a numbering system that we'll talk about later, on May 30th, and it was a success. They knocked down the target, which is, you know, good. Yeah, a first, as a matter of fact, for an ICBM target. Right. So this has led to, I think, a lot of cheering.

And while generally I was pretty happy that they did this, I think that some of the commentary is starting to go from well-earned congratulations into over-claiming. So I thought we would talk a little bit about the details of the test and then talk about what we think it showed and what we think it did not show. Which is not to say it failed to show, but just not there yet.

Right. So I guess the first thing to say is we should talk about the system that's being tested, because as we have repeatedly mentioned in podcasts, this term missile defense confuses people because people think all missile defenses are the same.

Scott 2:29

Right.

Jeffrey 2:30

And missile defenses are really, really different, right? So the missile defenses that are carried by ships don't look anything like the system that was tested, which is the ground-based mid-course system, which is a giant missile that if you looked at it, you would think it was an ICBM. I mean, it's huge.

Scott 2:47

Because it sort of is.

Jeffrey 2:49

Yeah, because it sort of is. And it sits in a ground-based silo. We have silos in Alaska and at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. And it intercepts ICBM class targets in mid-course. So that's the period when they are transiting space. And so... If you're listening along at home and you're not a big missile defense nerd like Scott is... Scott, you're so delighted that you get to participate in the Missile Defense Podcast, right?

Scott 3:21

Somehow I've missed every time y'all talk about it. I don't know how it works.

Jeffrey 3:26

So if you're not Scott... There are real challenges with intercepting the missile when it's boosting, right, when it's going up. To a first approximation, we have no such systems. We have researched such systems, and the answer is always, oh, this is not going to work. And intercepting something in the terminal phase when it's coming back down is hard because it's moving real fast.

Scott 3:49

Yeah, you don't have much time to do that.

Jeffrey 3:51

And so there is this nice period when the missile and warheads are transiting space, the midcourse, where for ICBM class targets in the 1990s, the Clinton administration decided, and I think decided correctly, that they had the best chance of intercepting it. So the... Missile Defense Agency, back when I was starting, was the Ballistic Missile Defense Agency, or BIMDO.

I'm bummed I don't get to call them BIMDO anymore. BIMDO created this system, which has been called many things over the years, National Missile Defense, and is now called the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense.

Scott 4:40

GBMD, which is loaded with GBI's, which are the ground-based interceptors, which refers specifically to the intercepting missile.

Jeffrey 4:49

Yeah, that's right. We have many interceptors that are based on the ground, but the ground-based interceptor is a specific system. So I always hear it as GMD, right? It's the ground-based mid-course defense, and then the GBIs. So the GMD, which is armed with GBIs and outfitted with a bunch of radars like the SBX. It's all clear. Yeah.

Scott 5:11

It's a complex architecture that literally takes up like a solid couple, I don't know, I guess tens of thousands of square kilometers in volume. It covers a huge area.

Jeffrey 5:22

Right, well, and you have the Ronald Reagan Missile Defense Test Site.

Other voice 5:25

Oh, I forgot they call it that.

Jeffrey 5:26

As far as I can tell, it is like the entire Eastern Pacific. Yeah. Okay, so... The big takeaways that I get are, for the first time, the Missile Defense Agency flew a target that was an ICBM. Right. Which is a little surprising because, you know, we've had the ground-based mid-course system to defend us against ICBMs sitting in Alaska for over a decade now.

But they'd never actually tested it against an ICBM, so they finally got around to doing that.

Scott 6:04

Right, and they've tested it against smaller targets, if I remember correctly, to say the least, mixed results. But this is the first long-range. So in U.S. terminology, an ICBM is anything over 5,500 kilometers in range. Based on the drop zones and the NOTAMs released, Jeffrey, you said a friend of yours figured out the...

Jeffrey 6:29

Estimated range of that? Yeah, Laura Grego at the Union of Concerned Scientists found the Notice to Mariners that had all the drop zones, and so she estimated that the target was an ICBM but sort of just barely right. So it was a 5,800 kilometer range target. By the way, Scott. MDA traditionally has been really squirrely about releasing any information whatsoever about the targets.

Scott 6:58

Right.

Jeffrey 6:59

And then they released a damn picture.

Scott 7:01

Yeah, and Intercept footage released a lot.

Jeffrey 7:05

Well, not just the footage. I mean, the footage is... Yeah, we should talk about the footage. But they released a picture of the target on the pad. Normally, when they release documents like the readout from the previous missile defense test... They totally redact any images of the target missile.

Scott 7:25

Right. These are very sensitive, very specific, detail-oriented intercept tests where the difference between minor shapes and whatnot is fairly important, and countermeasures are kept very secret, even historical countermeasures.

Jeffrey 7:43

Yeah, and we know Admiral, Vice Admiral Syring said that the system had countermeasures, but would not elaborate on them. But I was just stunned to see a picture of the target. Jeff Brumfield actually posted it on Twitter and was like, this says it's a picture of the target. Is it, is it really that? And like all of us initially were like, no, they would never post a picture of it.

And then you start looking at it and you're like, Oh, that's quads. That's, that's not Vandenberg. That's not an interceptor. That's that's yeah. Oh crap. They really released that.

Scott 8:17

If I remember correctly, it does have fairings though, right? Like it's an internally held payload

Jeffrey 8:24

Well, it's got some kind of covering. I mean, it's not a tremendously explicit picture, but it's still a lot more than I had ever seen before.

Scott 8:33

Right. It's basically, this whole test had a lot more coverage than most tests would in general.

Jeffrey 8:38

Yeah. Oh, they're taking a well-deserved victory lap. Oh, yes. They've now taken, like, three laps, and it's time to stop. Cool it, guys. You're getting your budget, we know. But, you know, the other thing is that because they released all this information, they released a video that has an animation of the trajectory. And because of the notice to mariners, you can actually look at the video, you can replicate the intercept geometry, and you can compare it against the notice to mariners, which is kind of a real world check to make sure it's not just a pretty picture.

There's actually a tremendous amount of information about the configuration of the system for this test.

Scott 9:18

Right. Do you want to go into what that configuration of the system is?

Jeffrey 9:22

Yeah. Well, so this is, I think there are several things. I mean, first is we know where the target was launched. We know where the interceptor was launched.

Scott 9:32

That's correct.

Jeffrey 9:32

We know that it was essentially a head-on intercept. There's a little bit of an angle, although not much.

Scott 9:38

Right.

Jeffrey 9:39

We know approximately where that intercept occurred. And we know where all of the radars that participated in the event were based. That's right. And so that's a very explicit description of the arrangement and of the intercept geometry. You know, my favorite thing was they talked about the presence of a forward-based X-band radar.

Scott 10:11

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey 10:12

The AN-TIPI-2 that's on Wake Island.

Scott 10:15

Mm-hmm. Specifically, the listeners may be familiar, the AN-TP2 is the radar associated with THAAD batteries that's embroiled in a little bit of a controversy right now. And the Wake Island one is interesting because the distance between Wake Island and Kwajalein Atoll, where they launched the target dummy vehicle from, is... Well, roughly, not exact, but roughly the same distance between Shariki in Japan, where we have an AN-TP-2 in forward basing mode aimed directly at North Korea.

It's basically the distance between Shariki and North Korea in general.

Jeffrey 10:57

And this is something that Vice Admiral Syring said very explicitly that the configuration of the radars was the same as it would be in a North Korean launch. And so he talked about how you would basically take this configuration of radars and you would just shift it north. So he was being very direct about that. I think it gets him in a little bit of trouble that we'll talk about.

Mm-hmm. But also, I just, I found it funny because, you know, here we are dealing with this problem of fad in Korea, and searing is going on and on and on about, like, you know, like, how great it is to use a forward-based X-band radar for queuing, you know?

Scott 11:42

It's so good at queuing ICBMs and be like, oh, God, no. That's exactly what they're complaining about. It's like, yeah, it's like, you're right, it is, but, you know, like, ah, ah.

Jeffrey 11:55

Now, I end up being not all that sympathetic to the Chinese because there's already one of these things sitting in Japan. And as we'll talk about, not all ICBMs are created the same. And so I still think the Chinese are exaggerating about that. But like, holy cow, way to make the talking point for them.

Scott 12:16

Yeah, just throw that one over. That's an easy one now.

Jeffrey 12:20

But this is where I think things get out of control, because in his testimony, Vice Admiral Syring, who I generally think comes off as a pretty reasonable guy. Yeah. I don't think he often says things that frustrate me or make me howl, which, you know, is in contrast to some of his predecessors. Yeah. You know, I have not always thought that the the the gentlemen and have they all been gentlemen at this point running the the MDA?

I have not always been impressed by their candor and truthfulness. And I've never really had that problem with searing. So, you know, I don't I don't want to make too much of it. But he did say this thing which generated a ton of headlines.

Other voice 13:11

Which I don't think is true. The scenario that we conducted was actually an exact replica of the scenario that this country would face if North Korea were to fire a ballistic missile against the United States. We have TIPI-2 radars in Japan, we have a radar in Alaska, and we have a homeland defense system in Alaska as well.

So what we did was move that scenario south and put a TIPI-2 on Wake Island, a sea-based X-band radar northwest of Hawaii, and shot an interceptor out of Vandenberg, which just 1,000 or 2,000 miles south replicated what the warfighter would face in real time.

Jeffrey 13:52

He says, the scenario we conducted was actually an exact replica of the scenario that this country would face if North Korea were to fire a ballistic missile against the United States.

Scott 14:04

Yeah. I don't think that's true. Yeah, I think that's a little bit of an exaggeration. And then he goes on to say, if I remember correctly, because I think someone kind of calls him on it, and he said that it's more operational than not in its appearance or something.

Jeffrey 14:22

Yeah, I think he says more operationally realistic than not.

Scott 14:24

Yeah, I'll spot him that. You know, more realistic than not.

Jeffrey 14:28

Okay, that's true. But an exact replica, that is not true.

Scott 14:32

Not true. Yeah.

Jeffrey 14:35

I thought we would talk a little bit about why it's not true. But before we do that, I should say, I think... I think the way he gets into trouble... Is it is true that the radars are in the same places.

Scott 15:00

Right. I find it helpful to think of these in terms of offense and defense. The defense probably represents accurately what U.S. architecture would look like in place to receive a North Korean ICBM launch. He specifically talks about how the radar is cued correctly and how the data was handed off correctly. And it sounds to me like that's roughly what we would expect to happen on the defense side in the event of an event like this.

Jeffrey 15:33

Yeah, and I think that still ends up being a little bit of an exaggeration. Oh, really?

Scott 15:39

Well, but within the...

Jeffrey 15:42

Within the constraints that it is a test, and you can't actually fly it from North Korea, so there are going to be some limitations.

Scott 15:55

Yeah, I think it's about as close as it could be, and probably idealized a little, because the sea-based X-band radar was there, which to me makes it an ideal scenario where it could potentially be not exactly where they'd want it in an actual event, but... This roughly mirrors what we would expect a U.S. posture to look like.

Slightly shifted, you know, the latitude's a little different. A lot different.

Jeffrey 16:21

Yeah, so we'll talk about the differences. I think that some of this comes out of his irritation with being asked about the homing beacon. Yeah.

Scott 16:30

Oh, yeah.

Jeffrey 16:31

Which he was he was asked not in the testimony, but in a press conference right after the successful test. And he seemed like he got a little cranky about it in the past when the U.S. did not have the appropriate radar architecture. I guess back then it really was BIMDO. The Missile Defense Agency and its predecessors used to put homing beacons on the targets.

Yeah. Which, you know, in their defense, well, okay, we don't, you know, this is before you have an X-band radar or a C-based X-band radar. So if you don't have the radar architecture, you have to find some other way to collect that data. Yep. And so having the target broadcast that data is understandable. But they kind of obscured that fact.

And so the way it emerged was, you know, they did these intercepts and they took their big victory laps. And then later people were like, you know, it had a homing beacon on it, right? Right.

Scott 17:40

Yeah, and it goes into this greater thing of sort of MDA sort of bloating their own ability because, like, you know, everything they do is incredibly expensive. And so, you know, if you're inside MDA running their budget, you need to be successful. Yeah, I mean, what did this test cost? $244 million? I think that's the number I saw.

And I haven't seen how that's broken down. I don't know if that's just testing infrastructure. Did that cover the paychecks of people who were involved? That's a lot.

Jeffrey 18:13

I don't know.

Scott 18:14

So the...

Jeffrey 18:16

The point is, these tests are really expensive, and so it creates an enormous amount of pressure on MDA, and so MDA wants to get it right, and they don't want to miss. And so you can understand both the desire to... Try to be realistic, but at the same time also put themselves in the best possible position to succeed.

And that makes the credibility of the person running the entity very, very important. And so I think in the past, certainly there have been leaders of MDA who I have respected less than others, and that makes it really hard. I generally think Syring has done a good job, but in this case, he said exact replica.

Scott 18:59

He just not said exact.

Jeffrey 19:01

Right. And so I think he was cranky about, like, yes, it had countermeasures, and no, there was no homing beacon, and instead we had all of the radars in the real places that they would be, and while definitely the... The people in Vandenberg had to know the approximate time of the launch because you had to have a notice to Mariners so you didn't, you know, drop a missile on a boat.

You know, they didn't know the exact time. And so I think what he was trying to say is that given the constraints of the test site, This was as realistic an intercept as they could manage at this time, i.e. More realistic than not, which was a fine thing to say. But then he veered off into exact replica, and we got to talk about this, because this is...

Scott 19:56

Even though it's more realistic than not...

Jeffrey 20:00

I don't know that we're that far on the other side of 50-50. I'm not even sure it's 60% of reality. Ouch. Oh, no. I mean, I think, well, we can talk about, let's talk about why we think it's different. Okay. So the first thing to talk about is the target.

Scott 20:18

Yes.

Jeffrey 20:19

Yes, the target was an ICBM using the canonical definition of an ICBM, which is something that travels more than 5,500 kilometers. Right. Right. But it just barely achieves that, right? It's probably 5,800 kilometers.

Scott 20:34

Right. Based on the NOTAM, like, we presume that the NOTAMs that Dr. Grigo pulled would have taken into account a fail state where it would have hit if it had missed. And so we're taking that kind of as a proxy for the range of the actual missile. Just to sort of break down the methodologies on why we think it's barely an ICBM.

But an ICBM, and so that puts it at, like you said, 5,800 kilometers. But if an ICBM is coming to hit the continental United States, it's going 8,000 kilometers minimum.

Jeffrey 21:11

Well, yeah, I would say nine, right? I mean, because I'm not trying to hit continental United States, I'm trying to hit stuff in the United States. So the way I looked at it was I looked at the map of death. You know, North Korea released that list of targets and they had three in the continental United States, San Diego, where the fleet is based.

And by the way, Duncan Hunter tried to get searing to say that San Diego was the target.

Scott 21:38

Really?

Jeffrey 21:38

And, and, and, and, and like a searing actually says like, I am not going to say San Diego was the target.

Scott 21:45

Cause that's, you know, right. That's Hunter's district.

Jeffrey 21:51

So it's San Diego, Barksdale Air Force Base, and D.C. Those three targets are between 9,000 and 11,000 kilometers away.

Scott 21:59

Right.

Jeffrey 22:00

So that is a much different missile. I mean, yes, they are both technically ICBMs.

Scott 22:06

But ICBM's a big class of missile now. Like we were talking about this off-pod, the term ICBM and the numbers on it made a lot more sense when it's the Soviet Union popping over the ice caps to hit North Dakota, or I guess vice versa. Yeah. But like a modern ICBM, it's expected to have a 10,000 kilometer range.

And even in the Cold War, that's not to say that the Cold War ICBMs were all these short, little stubbly ICBMs. It's just that ICBM cuts off and has a huge variety of systems with a large variety of re-entry speeds and different problems associated with them that may be worth sort of disaggregating a little.

Jeffrey 22:53

Yeah, so the way I think about this is you're going to have a much higher burnout velocity for an 11,000 kilometer range missile than you do for a 5,800 kilometer range missile. And so the closing speeds that you're going to be dealing with, I think, and just the trajectories, they're just not alike. I mean... And so, you know, that phrase exact replica, like, no, it's not an exact replica.

And by the way, if you fired an 11,000 kilometer range missile from Kwajalein right at Vandenberg Air Force Base to get that head-on intercept, if it missed, it would hit Birmingham, Alabama. And do like a million dollars in improvements. Yeah, so like, I get it. You can't fire an 11,000 kilometer range ICBM from... Kwajalein, because it will land in some really unpleasant places.

I mean, it will be unpleasant that it will land in places. I'm only teasing about Alabama being... Oh, boy. You're not going to get any Patreon donations from Alabama next week.

Scott 24:15

Podcast is getting regionally specific now. It could also be a very expensive test missile.

Jeffrey 24:21

To have almost double the range of what we thought it could be, or a little under double the range it could be. That's a very expensive missile. So it's just not the same. And it's going to pose a different kind of challenge. And so that's one thing. The second thing is... Alaska is way closer to North Korea than Vandenberg is to Kwajalein.

Yes. Vandenberg is 8,000 kilometers from Kwajalein, and Alaska is like only 6,000 kilometers from North Korea, or at least Greeley is 6,000 kilometers. And so, you know, if you took this trajectory and moved it, right, it's not North Korea firing at the United States. What it really looks like is if Taiwan were to fire an ICBM at the, you know, at like Kamchatka in Russia, And Greeley were trying to defend that.

Yep. That's what this trajectory looks like. And I think the reason it matters is when you are that close, the missile defense system does not want to get involved in a tail chase where you're trying to catch up with a missile. Yeah. It's not going to work. Yeah. So you've got a much compressed window of time from the time that the sensors pick up the launch In order to run through all of your traps of figuring out what the trajectory is, coming up with a firing solution, and then getting your interceptor underway so it gets where it needs to be in time.

And because you've, you know, compressed that by, you know, what, a quarter? You know, you've gone from 8,000 to 6,000 kilometers. You've Yeah, you've gone from 8,000 to 6,000 kilometers, that's just going to be harder. And it may not be impossible. I don't mean that it's impossible. But again, when word like exact replica is used.

Scott 26:34

Exactly. And it's no. Yeah, we're not saying that the GBI tested may not have the technical capability to intercept both types of missiles. It's that they were being, it may have been a flippant or just sort of an off-the-cuff response, but it was dishonest. To the situation. And so it makes it a little harder to gather data for people like us who don't have access to the classified reports on it.

Jeffrey 26:58

Yeah, and again, I think... It's an answer to a question, and I think probably in his head, Syring had started with the configuration of the radars. Yeah. And he had already said, you know, that there is a level of artificiality that is just simply imposed by testing.

Scott 27:16

I mean... Yeah, which is true. Like... Yeah, you're stuck. Almost everything else he said was fairly realistically measured. So I almost think this was sort of like an off-the-cuff kind of almost mistake of... A turn of phrase that he probably didn't mean to use.

Jeffrey 27:31

Unfortunately, it ends up as the headline. Yep. Yeah. So, you know, I think just the location of the launch and the location of the interceptor is significantly different in ways that alter it. So the last thing is that If North Korea launches at San Diego, Vandenberg's going to have a head-on shot. Right. And if North Korea launches at Barksdale, Greeley's going to have basically a head-on shot.

Scott 28:06

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey 28:07

But if North Korea launches at D.C., then there's going to be a crossing angle.

Scott 28:14

Right.

Jeffrey 28:15

And this test showed a head-on shot. And, you know, I think there is some debate. You know, a head-on shot's going to have a higher closing velocity. Mm-hmm. So you could argue that in some ways, even if the head on aspect of it isn't realistic or isn't accurate, then that makes the closing velocities more accurate or more realistic.

But then on the other hand, you're altering all of the geometry, right? And you're doing away with this tail chase problem.

Scott 28:44

Yeah.

Jeffrey 28:45

And like you could actually searing could persuade me that They learned way more by having the higher closing velocity than they would have by trying to intercept it from an angle.

Scott 28:58

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey 28:59

... But that's an argument that he would need to make, and it's obscured by the fact that he says exact replica, right? Like, I'm prepared to have that discussion, and it's actually not clear to me which parts of the system are most vulnerable and which parts of the system are most stressed. But that's why you have to test it.

Scott 29:16

Which, that's by design that you don't know that. They don't want it. Like, this goes back to them being antsy in previous times about showing off what the... Target vehicle looked like, like, they keep the weaknesses of the system, because if the system is ever required to perform in an operational environment, in which case an ICBM has been fired at the United States, they want the, you know, what parts of the system are stressed should always remain unknown to the adversary. So they're, I have a feeling we're never going to learn that.

Jeffrey 29:51

From what you said off pod, which I am in no position to judge, but seemed very reasonable. They made two statements. Well, sorry, they, they did, they showed video of the intercept and they made a statement that it was representative of the threat that they would expect from North Korea. You should do one of those two things, but not both because you can look at the video that they released and And you can begin to make judgments about what they believe the representative threat posed by North Korea would be.

And in some cases, it's not what you see. It's what you don't see, that there are some things that you would expect to see or some countermeasures that you would expect to see that you don't. Exactly. So you can know that those are not on the list.

Scott 30:36

Exactly. And, you know, I assume I like to think the U.S. government is competent enough that they vetted it for that and that somehow that's accounted for. But yes, that's what it strikes me as is there are an absence of certain countermeasures that could then be added into the actual offensive system.

Jeffrey 30:52

The bottom line is, for example, you don't see a balloon. Correct. So now you know the system has never been tested against that particular countermeasure.

Scott 31:00

At least a balloon that is collectively tied to other balloons around the RV. Like, hypothetically, the threat cloud could have dispersed by then, so there could be a balloon, but what we don't see is a balloon attached to the RV that is also surrounded in a balloon. Unless somehow the imagery they had filtered that or something, which I guess is possible, but it didn't look that way.

Jeffrey 31:28

Right. So your initial impression is that if you were the North Koreans, you would be looking at this video, trying to surface not necessarily what countermeasures were used, but which countermeasures were not used. Right. And then you would be very interested in developing those countermeasures because the system has never been tested against them.

Scott 31:47

Exactly. And then that then leads to like, well, if I'm the United States government, I would just release a fake video every time and then nothing's real anymore and data doesn't matter and I don't understand anything. So I don't, it gets down into the rabbit hole of disinformation really quickly. But that question, at least, is one of the first things I thought of when I saw the imagery.

Jeffrey 32:08

Yeah, and I don't, I don't, Blame them. I mean, in particular, not... Well, it's a problem. I mean, it is a challenge in that when you have countermeasures, you don't want to explain which countermeasures you've tested against.

Scott 32:27

Exactly.

Jeffrey 32:29

But on the other hand, from a public policy perspective, if the system is not effective against realistic Suite of countermeasures, then the system is not effective. And there are really important things that policymakers should know that arise from that. You know, so and just given the way, you know, I mean, I think we imagine like, oh, well, it's classified.

But, you know, like the president knows. But classification imposes all kinds of constraints on information that often that information doesn't reach the person it needs to in the way it needs to.

Scott 33:08

Right. It's very difficult to assess.

Jeffrey 33:12

So, you know, we do, I think, have this problem that there is, I think, a very robust debate about whether the system is accurate against countermeasures or not, or whether the system is effective against countermeasures or not. And MDA has a totally legitimate reason for, like, not answering that question in a straight manner. Right.

Scott 33:32

Right.

Jeffrey 33:35

You know, one thing I would say, though, is a couple years ago, you know, the National Academies put together a panel of missile defense. I don't want to call them advocates. That would be that's unfair. I mean, technical people who were generally supportive of missile defense and they were asked to assess boost phase missile defenses.

Scott 33:54

Oh, yes.

Jeffrey 33:57

And and they looked at the boost phase systems that were under development and concluded that basically none of them were even remotely plausible.

Scott 34:03

Yeah, Boost Phase is something they have a lot of trouble with.

Jeffrey 34:06

Yeah, but then because they had all this time on their hands, they kind of like turned to ground-based mid-course. Mm-hmm. And wrote a report that in the end ended up being very critical of this particular system. Mm-hmm. And arguing that basically the interceptor as configured would never work.

Scott 34:26

Right.

Jeffrey 34:28

And it's worth noting this was a new configuration of the interceptor, and there are a couple of different configurations that exist. But they were very critical of the interceptor. They were very critical of the radar systems. And in particular, they were very critical of something that Vice Admiral Syring admitted, which is in an operationally realistic situation, you're going to salvo fire multiple interceptors against a target.

Which is really inefficient. And the National Academies, which is where this idea of having a third sight on the East Coast came from, wanted to get to what they called shoot, look, shoot, which is you would fire, see if you hit it, and have another sight so that if you miss, you would have another shot at it.

Scott 35:14

Right. Especially because for mid-course interceptions, like mid-course is the longest phase of a missile's flight. And so hypothetically, if you stage things correctly and space them out, you could hypothetically get a miss off if you stage it correctly, which is just expensive and hard.

Jeffrey 35:34

So, you know, one thing that kind of emerges from this is even though the test is successful... The problem with saying it's an exact replica is it's not just that that's not true. It's not true, but it's that there are real architecture questions that either aren't answered by this test because it's not an exact replica, but also can't really be answered in a way that allows for an informed public debate.

Scott 36:13

Right.

Jeffrey 36:14

And and so, you know, it's nice. It's good that they did this. Like, I am happy for them. But a single successful test against an ICBM target doesn't really start to engage, I think, some of the deeper and more persuasive criticisms that have been made by their friends.

Scott 36:35

Yeah, and four years for, like, not new... And this is where I sort of have a little bit of sympathy for MDA. Not a tremendous amount, but, like, everyone else, when you're building weapon systems, you usually get the opportunity to test, you know, subsystems multiple times. And then when you're testing a full integrated system, you can test it against, like, kind of a basic scenario and then slowly build up to a more advanced scenario.

But, man, every one of their intercepts is hundreds of millions of dollars. So, like, They need to test more, but no one could afford that. You need to be able to make sure that your tests matter, but you don't want them to fail because you risk your program being canceled.

Jeffrey 37:18

Yeah.

Scott 37:19

You've got, like, a bit of a catch-22 unless they have someone who's really good at lobbying to say that, no, this fails and we need ICBM defense, thus, you know, increase our budget. But, like... I see them in a bit of a catch-22 that's almost unavoidable based on how they perform their tests.

Jeffrey 37:37

Well, this came up in Syring's testimony because one of the things that the National Academies panel had said was that MDA had this, I think they called it a hobby shop approach, which was pretty damning. That's an interesting word for it. Yes. Well, and the point was that The missile defense program isn't subjected to the same requirements that other defense programs are.

Right. And so that lack of oversight is, While I'm sure some people were delighted to not be overseen, I mean, the reason that we have that oversight is we have this belief that good process leads to better outcomes. And by exempting MDA from that process, you know, you get some of the problems you see. And so the National Academies was very critical about that and had argued, well, They stopped short of arguing, but I think if you read that National Academy's report very clearly, you can see that probably a plurality of the people on it wanted to give the missile defense mission back to the services.

And Syring is asked about this sort of general problem, right? About, like, why the system has so many challenges. And he gives an answer which is very careful, but basically it sort of says, like, well... We don't follow any of the normal rules because that's what previous political leaders have chosen. And you can tell he's kind of like, you know, I'm not the one who created a Politically motivated rush to throw these damn things in the ground before they were ready.

Like I'm just, I'm, I'm trying to make this thing work. And so, you know, like he didn't say it quite so bluntly and I'm, I'm inferring a little bit, but, but I did have a little bit of sympathy of like, yeah, like you, you know, these problems existed long before he got here.

Scott 39:27

And so I, you know, they're literally systemic.

Jeffrey 39:31

Yeah. So like, I don't want to like throw stones at him for trying to take a system, which I, you know, I am generally supportive of. You know, I think that in the 1990s, I thought these systems were kind of a big waste of money because they were way ahead of the threat, and I think we're still a little bit ahead of the threat, but, like, I can now see that threat coming.

So, you know, I'm... I'm... I'm... I am definitely of the mind that the North Koreans are going to test and ICBM.

Scott 40:01

Yeah.

Jeffrey 40:02

And while I would prefer to solve that through other ways I don't really I would feel more comfortable if we had a working system to defend against it. So it's like, come on guys. Like I need you to get this right. I am a little less sympathetic to even if it's a successful system, but I, I, I can see where you're coming from on it.

Scott 40:25

And I can, I get that.

Jeffrey 40:27

Well, I mean, Syring at one point is asked whether he thinks missile defenses are stabilizing, and he gives a politically astute answer that's, you know, like a pile of crap, which is, well, the only thing that's destabilizing are North Korea's actions, which is like, well, yes, it's true that it is their fault, but that doesn't resolve... Yeah, that's not really the answer to the question.

Yeah, it doesn't fix your Russia and China problem that you're, like, now going to have because you want to defend against North Korea.

Scott 40:57

Yeah, like, that's the... I feel like that's the most direct way is, do you think the establishment of a successful ground-based mid-course interception... Like, a successful and somewhat robust... You know, I'm sure they'd leave that phrase vague. National-level missile defense system, does that incentivize the proliferation of MIRV technologies to China in particular? Like... We have MIRVs there now.

Would removing these systems be something we could trade for that or something like that?

Jeffrey 41:27

Yeah, I mean, I think if I were him, what I probably would have said was that that's a really big question, that there is a very specific threat from North Korea, and there is a real value in being able to defend against that. And if there are follow on problems that emerge in terms of stability with China or Russia, then the strategic relationship with China and the strategic relationship with Russia is the place to address those.

Scott 41:53

Yeah, and it's not necessarily his place. He's running MDA. That's not his problem. His job is to do missile. It's not the is missile defense okay agency.

Jeffrey 42:04

It's the missile defense agency. Yeah, I don't actually need him to. Stabilizing, destabilizing, I don't know. I've been told to shoot this missile down, and I'm going to get us in a position to do it.

Scott 42:16

Yeah, I have a job.

Jeffrey 42:18

The one thing I would say, though, and I think it doesn't come up in this testimony and it gets to this issue of operational realism. You know, the last way in which this test is utterly unlike a real intercept, which has nothing to do really with North Korea, is that if we were to salvo fire interceptors at that target, right, in the best case scenario, one of them will hit.

Yeah. The other ones in this scenario would go into the sea. Right. In an operationally realistic test, you would be firing them into Russia.

Scott 43:01

Right, because they do not have a self-destruct mechanism, if I remember correctly.

Jeffrey 43:06

That is correct. And, by the way, something that Syring confirmed.

Scott 43:11

Oh, really? I didn't hear that.

Jeffrey 43:14

He said there are no explosives on them. I have to double check that it was searing.

Scott 43:21

But informally confirms, yeah.

Jeffrey 43:24

There are no explosives on them. So, you know, we hope that the Russians would see the North Korean launch. And that they would see the launch out of Greeley, and that the calculations would be such that the thing they saw launched out of North Korea, they could clearly see was from North Korea and was heading toward the United States, and the thing that was launched out of Alaska was definitely on an intercept trajectory for the other thing they saw, and that, yes, some of those interceptors were going to zoom by and probably were going to land in Russia, which is going to make people real angry, but...

You know, they were like totally cognizant of what's going on. But there is like nothing about the history of Russian early warning that gives me any confidence whatsoever in this. I mean, there was a period in which they missed North Korean missile launches because that radar wasn't there.

Scott 44:16

I hope that the best Russian early warning system would be a phone call from D.C., Well, but that's a problem.

Jeffrey 44:24

I don't think that's possible. I don't think there's enough time. I mean, unless, you know, you're not going to know that there's a launch until there's a launch. Yeah. And then, you know, that's going to be something where they've had to, I mean, I think the best they could hope for is that the system of turning on the, turning on is kind of a, you know, the system is not, I mean, they say it's available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but that's actually not true.

Scott 44:50

Yep.

Jeffrey 44:51

They are available to be available 24-7, 365. But in a real scenario where they really thought there was going to be a launch, you've got to convey, I think, that you need to be ready. Maybe then you would also call the Russians and say, oh, hey, by the way, just so you know. We think, you know, in the next week that, you know, this crisis might turn hot and they might launch an ICBM at us and we're going to try to intercept it.

And that, you know, means you're going to get like you're going to get, you know, four to five beautiful GBI wreckages that, you know, tear apart. You know, Merry Christmas. We hope you'll send them back when you're done analyzing them. Please don't start a nuclear war. But, you know, like I just don't have that kind of confidence in communications, you know, because the whole thing about the Norwegian sounding rocket.

Scott 45:41

Yeah.

Jeffrey 45:42

Was that they had been notified. Yep. But the notification didn't get through. And then there have been cases where they've missed North Korean launches and now they have a radar there. So they should see them. But it's also a new radar.

Scott 45:54

And so, you know, new radars sometimes maybe pick up the moon as a massive thermonuclear attack from the Soviets. Yeah.

Jeffrey 46:02

Yeah. And, you know, the this all assumes that there are no other false alarms. Right. Yeah. That the false alarms happen in isolation, which would normally be the case, just statistically speaking. But like real life is weird. Yeah. And sometimes you have simultaneous political crises.

Scott 46:21

Yeah, exactly. God forbid this would occur during a time when we're not talking to the Russians or something, and there's any sort of friction in communicating with them or something. I can't imagine what that'd be, but I also can't imagine a good scenario where we've got an ICBM incoming, so it's a bit of a thing anyway. Yeah.

Jeffrey 46:43

You know, the... I mean, if this was going to be an exact replica, like, not only do you have to do the intercept in Vandenberg, but you've got to, like, surprise the Russians by launching four missiles at them. Anyway, hey, we've picked on them, but... To their credit, they have finally tested the system that is designed to defend against ICBMs against something that meets the minimum definition of an ICBM, and it worked.

Scott 47:08

Yeah.

Jeffrey 47:08

And congratulations to them. If they had blown the $244 billion, we probably would be really giving them a hard time. Super mad. Yeah. But just take one victory lap. Don't over-claim. It's not an exact replica. It's a very good test, constrained by the realities of the test architecture. You don't have to pretend like you shot down a North Korean missile.

Scott 47:35

We like you for what you are, FTG-15. You be you. And you know what, Jeffrey?

Jeffrey 47:40

That's a happy note. That is a happy note. Hey, Scott, thanks for joining me, and I'm sure you are glad that you finally got to talk about missile defense.

Scott 47:51

Absolutely, and a unique missile defense event. Very exciting.

Jeffrey 47:56

And tell us how we're going over there on the Slack channel that Patreon supporters can access for a mere three simoleons a month.

Scott 48:04

The Slack channel is a lot of fun. It's very hopping, lots of good activity. We actually, a bunch of users, started a book club where every month we select one book from the sort of general relevant field. And discuss it for a week at the end of the month. And this week we've been talking a little bit about William Perry's My Journey at the Nuclear Brink, since we talk about that a lot on the show.

It seemed appropriate that that be our first sort of discussion point. It's been lovely. I just saw Bill on Monday. He should come to the Slack channel.

Jeffrey 48:40

I was up there for a videotaping of a panel on nuclear terrorism for a MOOC, which are what, like massive online course or some other O in there somewhere? No idea.

Scott 48:55

I do not know those words.

Jeffrey 48:57

There's a Stanford online course that the Perry Project is putting together on nuclear terrorism. And I was on a panel with Bill Perry. Ellen Tauscher, and Rachel Bronson, the editor of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, who I was a research assistant for at CSIS nearly 20 years ago.

Scott 49:17

That's an awesome panel.

Jeffrey 49:19

It was great. It was really great. By the way, $244 million? Yep. That would fund 8 million Slack subscriptions.

Scott 49:32

Which actually, incidentally, if you are listening from the Missile Defense Agency, that is actually our military discount rate is $244 million per year. So if you represent a service branch or major agency in any military across the world, give us a call.

Jeffrey 49:49

Hey, Scott, thanks again for joining me. Thanks, Jeffrey. And thank you for listening.