Naysayers and opponents of rapid technology advancement have habitually ignored the greater wisdom of Voltaire, who wrote, “No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.” Scientific dabblers and scribblers like Jules Verne, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke have made an embarrassing habit of nudging science fiction into scientific fact. Verne’s book From the Earth to the Moon was about a manned lunar mission launched from Florida. The fact that he wrote it when Abraham Lincoln was President of the United States is perhaps as remarkable as the fact that just over 100 years later America indeed landed on the Moon, from a spacecraft launched from, you guessed it — Florida. Even obscure works such as John Jacob Astor IV’s A Journey in Other Worlds, published in 1894, forecasted life in the year 2000, with descriptions of global telephone networks, electricity-generating windmills, magnetic railroads, hydrofoils, electric cars and air and space travel.
It has been a quarter century since President Ronald Reagan first proposed a ballistic missile defense for the United States and its allies around the world. The plan called for a defense using ground- and space-based systems. Opponents of the plan varied. Some failed to recognize the prophecy of Voltaire, that a determined civilization would overcome technological hurdles. Others philosophically argued that mere deterrence — or Mutually Assured Destruction — was a better strategy. Apparently, they didn’t yet see through the mask of the terrorist.
Since 1982, when the U.S. missile defense initiative was first unveiled, the scientific base of the United States government-industry partnership, along with an infusion of talent from a global team of allies, has made missile defense a reality. The U.S. has successfully executed 37 missile defense tests since 2001. The incredible precision of “hit-to-kill” interceptors, which strike targets at closing speeds in excess of 15,000 mph, has been repeatedly demonstrated using both land- and sea-based missile defense platforms.
Still, when missile defense was just a blueprint, tangible threats came from traditional cold war foes: the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. A more menacing threat has since morphed by exponential levels — a wide collection of rogue nations and elusive terrorist groups that seem intent on securing the means of nuclear capability.
North Korea was one of the first to launch a domestic program to develop weapons of mass destruction and advanced delivery systems, starting in the 1960s. By 2005, it had developed missiles capable of reaching targets in Japan, South Korea and the northern Mariana Islands and was working on longer-range missiles that could target the western United States. Then, in 2006, North Korea successfully tested a crude nuclear weapon. Meanwhile, in 2004 Iran, with the help of the North Koreans, reportedly test-fired and deployed a new missile which could reach London, Paris, Berlin and southern Russia. Iran continued to develop missiles at an accelerated pace and was the third most active country in flight-testing missiles during 2007 — trailing only Russia and China.
The possibility of terrorists covertly acquiring existing nuclear and missile technologies has greatly intensified. When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, many of the new nations wound up with arsenals that included nuclear warheads — some of which may have disappeared. The former secretary of the Russian Security Council, Alexander Lebed, claimed in 1997 that 100 “suitcase-sized” nuclear weapons were missing.
In the quarter century since missile defense has been transformed from blueprint science to scientific fact, the mission has evolved from a strategic defense of the United States to a layered family of systems capable of defending forces and territories — of the U.S. and its allies and friends — against multiple classes and ranges of ballistic missiles. Much of the earlier research has formed the foundation of a noteworthy base of success which the U.S. Missile Defense Agency and its international partners have since ushered in.
In this issue of Defender, we look at missile defense not from the perspective of early U.S. development, as we have in previous issues. We look at it from the perspective of a deployed, and rapidly expanding international umbrella, replete with fresh new technological advances — to meet an alarming array of new threats to international peace and security.
— The editor