The planned missile defense site in Poland would offer an opportunity for an early shot at an Iranian missile. The problem, as suggested by the National Academies, is that Iran might be able to "loft" a missile too high for yet-to-be-developed interceptors to have a shot.
Now, the intelligence community agrees that the Iranians do not currently have such an ICBM -- or any ICBM actually. (Steven Hildreth, at the Congressional Research Service, has just prepared a very detailed report on Iran's ballistic missiles, which is generating headlines largely for concluding that this judgment appears sound.) As it turns out, it would take one heck of an Iranian ICBM to fly over the top of a missile defense interceptor site in Poland, with enough gas left in the tank to rain nuclear destruction on Martha's Vineyard. The National Academies assumed a solid-fueled missile with a range of 12,500 kilometers, which is more capable than anything the Chinese have. Only Russia has such a missile, which in part explains why the Obama administration chose this particular architecture in Europe. The National Academies is probably correct to worry about the possibility, but at this stage a 12,500-km range solid-fueled Iranian ICBM seems far enough away that a third site could still be considered at a later date.
Given the challenges associated with countermeasures and the far off prospect of an Iranian super-ICBM, I am inclined to think we could hold off on the East Coast site for now, while making many of the programmatic changes suggested by the National Academies panel, as well as entertaining one other modest notion.
There is an implicit question that arises from the National Academies panel: Should the United States abolish the Missile Defense Agency, returning missile defense programs to the services? In my lifetime, the entity has been called the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, and the Missile Defense Agency. Of the many things MDA has been called, highly competent is not one of them. This is an organization that has recently seen its chief executive resign over accusations that he bullied staff; previously, he had to send a memo to his employees asking them to spend less time surfing for porn. (I am waiting for the outraged letter from long-time MDA spokesman Rick Lehner to my editor Peter Scoblic. I can practically write it for him. It will look like this. Or this. Or this. I think he has a template titled OutragedLetter.docx)
Part of the problem with MDA and its predecessors has been a de facto, then de jure, exemption from the normal rules of testing and procurement. In its history, MDA has transferred only a small number of systems to the services. In general, missile defense systems have been driven by missile defense enthusiasts, not the services.
What would happen if missile defense programs were returned to the services, and expected to compete against other priorities on basic grounds like "cost-effectiveness"?
For one thing, the systems would probably be tested more frequently and under more realistic conditions. One of the strangest aspects of the debate about operational testing is that MDA, by and large, does not want to test interceptors as they might other systems. One of the strangest features in this debate was the suggestion in 2005 that MDA should reduce the number flight tests of the ground-based midcourse system because it kept missing and that was hurting the credibility of the system. (I am not making this up! Integrated Flight Tests hate our freedoms.)
In addition to more frequent and realistic testing, I also suspect the services would be much more sensitive to concepts of operations and other practical military concerns. The Navy, for example, is hardly enthusiastic about the European deployment of SM-3. The Navy is firmly against single-purpose ships, which means that missile defense interceptors compete for room with other systems on Aegis-class destroyers. Each SM-3 interceptor to knock down an Iranian missile represents a launch tube that can't be used to clean the Supreme Leader's clock. We need some defense against theater missiles, but the proper basis for deciding how much is normal programs analysis and evaluation, not happy memories of Ronald Reagan on horseback.
Some people may worry that, if missile defense programs were subject to the same cost-effectiveness criteria as any other military procurement systems, very few of the current programs would survive. This ought to be the point! Reasonable defense planning is about making tradeoffs to maximize security.
SUBJECTS:
