A Shield for Central Europe & Alternatives

Deputy Defense Secretary William Lind told Congress yesterday that the United States plans to integrate Russian radar installations into a missile shield that would cover most of Central Europe. Currently, there is a radar installation in the Czech Republic and ground based interceptors in Poland. When the missile defense shield was announced in 2007, there was the predictable firestorm of controversy, with analysts pointing out (correctly, in my view) that the shield was provoking to Russia.

While this new approach is certainly refreshing from the Bush doctrine of wanting the missile shield in Europe no matter what Russia thought, is it really the best option for dealing with the supposed threat from Iran or North Korea?

Theodore Postol, who is a professor of science, technology, and international security at MIT, wrote an op-ed a couple of months ago that outlines a good approach for this issue. If there really has to be a missile shield in Central Europe, it might as well be one that makes sense strategically and technologically. Postol's idea is for a boost phase defense with UAVs. He says,

...it would take advantage of the fact that long-range missiles built by Iran
or North Korea would be large and cumbersome, have long powered flight times
and could take off only from well-known launching sites.

The defense would have fast-accelerating interceptors that could home in on
and destroy the large, slow and fragile ICBMs. The interceptors would weigh
about a ton and could achieve a top speed of five kilometers per second in tens
of seconds. They would be carried by stealthy unmanned airborne vehicles that
look like B-2 bombers, but are smaller and carry much smaller, though still
substantial, payloads. Such vehicles already exist.

Only two of these armed drones, controlled by remote teams of operators,
would be needed to patrol within several hundred kilometers of a launching site.
At these ranges, it would be possible to shoot down an ICBM, with its nuclear
warhead, so that the debris falls on the territory of the country that launched
it. Only five drones would be needed to maintain a continuous patrol for
extended periods. But the system would have to operate only when satellites and
reconnaissance aircraft indicate that an ICBM is being prepared at the launching
site.

There have been proposals for boost phase defense, primarily from the Boeing YAL-1, which was slashed in Gates' FY2010 budget, but this one seems logical and comparable to the threat. Deterrence should be enough to take care of these rogue states, but in some wild scenario, perhaps a power struggle or massive internal conflict, and the nukes get launched, then a UAV with boost phase capabilities makes sense. The fact that this technology already exists makes it appealing, as hundreds of millions of Pentagon dollars don't need to be funneled into the program; minor tweaks could make the system operational and deployable. What makes this system additionally appealing is that it poses no threat to Russia or China. This way the US gets what it wants, it can tell the public that it is dealing with potential threats, while not threatening Russia or China, whose cooperation we need on a host of issues.