Missile Threat: Does It Add Up?

Wade Boese

By March, the annual process of federal government officials marching up to Congress to justify their budget requests is in full swing. Missile defense officials took their turn in early March but did so in a way that raised questions about the data behind one of their key justifications.

Testifying March 9 before the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, Missile Defense Agency (MDA) Director Lieutenant General Henry Obering told lawmakers that “last year there were nearly 80 foreign ballistic missile launches.” But Obering did not give specifics on which countries conducted those launches.

In follow-up interviews, an MDA spokesperson declined to elaborate, saying that such figures would have to be released by the intelligence community, while the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency have not responded to Arms Control Today inquiries. An informal analysis appears to indicate that these launches only involved a handful by countries against which missile defenses are currently configured; none of these countries conducted a long-range ballistic missile launch.

According to Bush administration and Pentagon officials, current strategic missile interceptors are intended to stop a ballistic missile attack from North Korea or the Middle East, particularly Iran. Despite the implication by the July 1998 so-called Rumsfeld Commission that both countries could have ICBMs within five years (see ACT, June/July 1998), neither has yet to flight-test even an intermediate-range ballistic missile successfully.

Reviewing media reports and government statements for 2005, Arms Control Today found evidence of a single North Korean ballistic missile launch involving a short-range missile and no Iranian ballistic missile launches. However, Tehran did conduct a ground test of a solid-fuel rocket motor for the first time last spring.

The findings on Iran matched those of Yiftah Shapir, a former Israeli air force officer, who now works at Israel’s Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, which publishes The Middle East Military Balance. Shapir also told Arms Control Today March 22 that Syria conducted three short-range ballistic missile launches last year.

Russia and China are the only countries that actually possess flight-tested missiles that can strike the continental United States , but the Pentagon says its missile defense interceptors in Alaska and California are not directed against either country.