United States Must Maintain Leadership In Space, Or Cede Primacy To Other Nations With Rival Ambitions, Report Says; Missile Defense Should Rise $2 Billion Yearly, To $12 Billion
The concept of mutual assured destruction that successfully protected the United States from nuclear destruction by the old Soviet Union won’t work to shield America from rapidly rising threats posed by rogue nations and terrorist groups, a major new report states.
“An unprecedented number of international actors have now acquired — or are seeking to acquire — ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction,” according to the 237- page report described in a Capitol Hill forum by Baker Spring, research fellow with the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank. The report was published for the Independent Working Group, in which Spring is a member, by the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, of Cambridge, Mass., and Washington, D.C.
In the report, steadily increasing missile capabilities of Iran, North Korea, China, Russia, Pakistan and Syria, and their nuclear weapons capabilities, are described in detail.
The report asserts that the United States, if it is to retain its leadership in military and other spheres, must maintain its preeminence in space, including a space-based missile defense.
Retaining that premier position in space is “not an option, but rather a necessity, for if not the United States, some other nation, or nations, will aspire to this role, as several others already do,” the report states.
“For the United States, space is a crucially important twenty-first century geopolitical setting that includes a global missile defense.”
Spring told an American Foreign Policy Council forum that the United States requires a robust sea-based missile defense system to protect both East and West Coast areas, which would include an upgrade of the Standard Missile-3 interceptor mounted in vertical launch system tubes aboard Navy ships, able to hit longer-range enemy missiles, even in their boost phase just after launch.
Currently, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has cast U.S. boost phase programs into doubt, refusing to fund any further planes for the Airborne Laser missile defense program, with questions abounding as to the fate of the Kinetic Energy Interceptor, the other boost-phase program.
Responding to a question from Space & Missile Defense Report, Spring made clear that he doesn’t agree with curbing or killing those boost phase programs. Rather, his suggestion for a sea-based boost phase program, and for a space-based system, would be an addition.
Under proposals of the report, missile defense spending might rise from about $10 billion annually to $12 billion, he said.
The United States requires “a truly global missile defense capability that addresses the current and emerging threats” of ever-more nations wielding long-range missiles and weapons of catastrophic destructive powers, according to the report, which is published in updated form annually. It first was written in 2006.
The report recommends completing the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system now in Alaska and California, guarding against missiles from North Korea, and its variant, the proposed European Missile Defense system to protect against missiles from Iran (or Pakistan).
Beyond that, however, the report calls for expanding the sea-based Aegis weapon control system and Standard Missile interceptors on ships, and also creating a space-based missile defense system.
To read the report titled “Missile Defense, the Space Relationship, & the Twenty-First Century” in full, please go to http://www.ifpa.org/publications/IWGReport.htm on the Web.