European Missile Defense: The View From The Pentagon

When North Korea launched short- and long-range missiles last summer, we had for the first time the means to defend all 50 states and our allies in Japan and South Korea against a possible ballistic missile attack. For the first time, leaders in Washington had defense options available to them to protect American cities other than preemption, retaliation, or capitulation.[1]

The ballistic missile development and test efforts pursued by North Korea, combined with its nuclear program, generated an urgency earlier this decade to field an integrated, layered missile defense quickly. Mobile-land and sea-based interceptors could handle short- and medium-range threat missiles, but due to a long-range missile’s speed, altitude, and range, the only defense option available in 2002 when President George W. Bush ordered a system deployed was the silo-based midcourse defense element.

Concepts and development work for the ground-based midcourse defense element of the ballistic missile defense system were developed during the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. In other words, it required many years of development and more years of deployment on an intense schedule to field the limited defenses in place today, defenses capable of countering a long-range North Korean ballistic missile attack against our country.

Now, the United States is proposing to deploy long-range missile defenses in Europe to defend against a regime in Iran that is aggressively pursuing ballistic missiles capable of striking European capitals and the United States. Given the evidence of the emerging ballistic missile threat from Iran and given the lead times required to deploy even a basic defense against a limited threat, I would argue that there is no time like the present to prepare for an evolving Iranian threat. Failure to step up today could leave the United States and our allies in an intolerably vulnerable situation tomorrow.

The Threat

The last two major conflicts in southwest Asia involving U.S. armed forces featured several short-range ballistic missile launches by Iraq, demonstrating a growing reliance by our adversaries on standoff strike capabilities. With ballistic missiles and missile technologies widely available on the global market, we expect an acceleration of ballistic missile and nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons proliferation.

North Korea and Iran, in particular, continue investments in ballistic missiles, which are an increasingly attractive means of delivering a conventional or mass destruction payload. These two governments see tremendous value in developing more capable, more lethal missiles, which may be used to blackmail or deter the United States or its allies from defending their interests. Pyongyang and Tehran are striving to acquire longer-range ballistic missiles that will travel far beyond their borders, and they continue to rely on and receive foreign assistance for these development efforts. The U.S. intelligence community estimates that Iran could have a long-range ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States by 2015.

North Korea and Iran flew medium-range missiles in several demonstrations this past year. North Korea demonstrated improvements in targeting accuracy and validated the operational status of its short-range ballistic missile force. The July 2006 launches marked the highest number of missiles ever fired by North Korea in a 24-hour period.[2] In addition, as part of these launches, North Korea attempted to fly the Taepo Dong-2, which is projected to have an intercontinental range. Although North Korea’s long-range demonstration failed shortly after launch, there are signs that Pyongyang has not lost interest in developing a long-range ballistic missile capability. Importantly, Iran is following a similar development and acquisition pattern, using technologies and lessons learned from shorter-range systems to develop longer-range systems.

North Korea has demonstrated its capability to develop a nuclear device. When you combine this with its efforts to develop and operationalize ballistic missiles, it is not unreasonable to assume that North Korea is looking at ways to prepare a nuclear payload for missile delivery. We also need to be concerned about North Korea’s rather significant trade relationship with Iran. Iran is a concern, given Tehran’s growing involvement in nuclear enrichment, which could provide the fissile material for nuclear bombs. We must take this trend toward weapons proliferation seriously.

For many years, the international community and the United States have tried to limit the proliferation of these missiles using arms control measures, both positive and negative incentives, with some success, but the spread of these weapons continues. A major factor in this proliferation is the value countries place on these weapons, precisely because historically there has been no defense against them. Without a defense against these weapons, they will continue to be valuable as a means to coerce or intimidate the United States and our allies and friends around the world.

In addition, our adversaries are looking for ways to make their offensive forces more survivable using dispersal methods, concealment techniques, and deeply buried storage sites and command posts as well as tunnels to protect operational sites. In other words, reliance on preemption to deter an adversary’s use of nuclear ballistic missiles or retaliatory operations to destroy offensive assets after a devastating attack on our cities is increasingly becoming a high-risk approach to ensuring our defense. Although deterrence will always play an important part in U.S. defense strategy, robust counters to enemy ballistic missiles must include effective missile defenses.

Europe and Missile Defense

Today the United States has in place the most complex defensive weapons system ever fielded. Since June 2004, we have constructed new missile field complexes in Alaska and California, emplacing 21 long-range interceptors. We have also delivered 16 Aegis ships capable of providing long-range surveillance and tracking information to the system, with eight of those ships capable of firing sea-based interceptors that can destroy shorter-range missile threats. In addition, we have upgraded early-warning and tracking radars in Alaska, California, and the United Kingdom and deployed two very precise X-band radars, one in Japan and the other on a mobile platform in the Pacific Ocean, which may be used to cue early-warning radars and provide precise tracking data to the missile defense system. The command, control, and battle management infrastructure allows commanders to synchronize missile defense assets widely dispersed across multiple time zones.

We have demonstrated that this system works employing the same basic hit-to-kill technology in our short-, medium-, and long-range defenses. Overall, in our land- and sea-based interceptor test program since 2001, 29 of 37 hit-to-kill midcourse and terminal engagements have been successful, occurring in the lower and upper atmosphere as well as in space. None of the failures resulted from a flaw in the system’s basic design. We have conducted these tests in operationally realistic conditions using soldiers, sailors, and airmen. We are continually upgrading the algorithms and technologies in the system so that it will be capable of handling increasingly sophisticated threats.

The rate of this deployment has been unprecedented, and given the North Korean launch demonstration in July 2006, it was executed just in time. Now we must turn to a theater on the other side of the world. There is a shared threat perception among the allies that we must do something to counter the emerging Iranian threat. NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer fully recognizes the indivisibility of security among all the NATO allies and has expressed the unity of the alliance with respect to the need for complementary long- and short-range defenses.

The ballistic missile defense system currently deployed to counter the North Korean long-range threat is not technically configured to protect cities in Europe. A number of our European allies have expressed interest in deploying defenses against this threat, and the United States has agreed with Poland and the Czech Republic to begin focused discussions on the deployment of interceptors (a two-stage configuration of our flight-proven, long-range ground-based interceptors) and a precision midcourse discrimination radar.

The European missile defense deployments would protect our European allies within striking range of emerging Iranian intermediate- and long-range ballistic missiles. Those countries more likely to face the shorter-range threats could be covered by shorter-range national or NATO-deployed missile defense systems. These additional regional assets can be tied into and incorporated in the overall system with significant focus on interoperability and data sharing. These deployments are in keeping with our obligation to work with our NATO allies for collective defense to ensure the missile defenses proposed for deployment in Poland and the Czech Republic will be complementary with national and NATO systems. It is important to stress that all European nations that would be threatened by longer-range Iranian ballistic missiles would be covered by the European site initiative.

Finally, I want to emphasize that the proposed deployments would not alter the strategic balance of power in the region. U.S. interceptors in Europe cannot catch Russian ICBMs because of the engagement distances and greater speeds of the Russian missiles. The proposed European ground-based interceptors would have no capability to defend the United States from Russian launches. They would be in a hopeless “tail chase” in spite of recent claims to the contrary, which do not account for actual interceptor speeds, tracking times, and several other critical factors. In addition, the proposed European interceptor site, with its 10 ground-based interceptors, would be no match for Russia’s strategic offensive missile force, which consists of hundreds of missiles and thousands of warheads.

Critics of the European site initiative need to stop this Cold War thinking and take steps to address the emerging threat to our country and allies in Europe. Now is the time to act in concert with our allied partners to develop and deploy long-range European missile defenses. By standing together, we can affect true arms control in the best sense of the word.

Lt. Gen. Henry A. Obering is director of the United States Missile Defense Agency.

ENDNOTES

1. In fact, two weeks before the North Korea launches, two former Department of Defense officials from the Clinton administration recommended a preemptive strike against the North Korean launch site. See Ashton Carter and William Perry, “If Necessary, Strike and Destroy,” The Washington Post, June 22, 2006, p. A29.

2. Gen. Burwell B. Bell, Statement before the House Armed Services Committee, March 2007. General Bell is the commander of U.S. Forces Korea.