Missile Defense on a Roll

I have written about missile defense before, but there has been a lot of news lately, and all of it good.

In the past month, there have been four successful tests of various missile defense systems. On November 17th, we successfully tested the Aegis SM-3 missile, against a separating warhead, the first time this has been done. A week later, the THAAD program got back on track after a six-year suspension without testing. Then, last week, the Ground-based Mid-course Defense (GMD) system was also successfully tested after some high-profile failures a year ago. Add to that, Israel successfully tested the U.S.-funded Arrow II anti-tactical ballistic missile system against a manuevering warhead. And it's not just the missile systems that are moving forward. The Airborne Laser (ABL) system is a chemical oxygen iodine laser (COIL) placed on a modified Boeing 747, and it has passed all the milestones to prove the COIL's technical capability to shoot down a missile in its boost phase, and is ready to be mated with the aircraft.

These successes are vital in getting missile defense moving forward, and being fully funded. As the Bush Administration has been cutting spending lately to account for the cost of Iraq and Katrina, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has not escaped its share. In particular, efforts to begin the space-based phase of missile defense may be pushed further to the left indefinately, achieving the "mission kill" that opponents of missile defense want. Ultimately, space-based defenses will be necessary to complete the layered defense that is required to produce a system that can be confidently relied upon. This is especially true as other countries try to defeat our current systems with manuevering warheads. Since space-based defenses can defeat incoming missiles before they deploy their warheads, they make that particular counter-measure, and others such as decoys, useless.

In a recent interview with MDA Director Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, the current status and future plans were layed out, along with an explanation of why we need missile defense:

...let’s face it, we are the ultimate in arms control. When all else fails, we have to have something between us and a weapon. When attempts to diplomatically disarm other countries fail, we have to perform.

First of all, you have to recognize that arms control assumes rational actors. Arms control assumes adversaries that can be deterred... What we are finding out today in this world is we have folks that are not like that. We have folks that are willing to sacrifice not only themselves but hundreds of people for a particular cause. If those people get their hands on these types of weapons—and there are hundreds and hundreds of missiles out there; many, many, many that are unaccounted for—they are almost undeterrable.

With its recent success, despite the budget cuts, America will be closer to being safe from missile attack.