Intercepting the Truth:

Prospects for nuclear-tipped missile defense interceptors

by Michael Roston

Within a week of the public announcement that the Department of Defense’s Science Board was researching the integration of nuclear-tipped kill vehicles into America’s national missile defense, the Missile Defense Agency came under scrutiny before Congress. When asked in April by Senator Ted Stevens, if this missile defense technology would be considered, Lt. General Robert Kadish declared with certainty that his agency had no nuclear-tipped interceptors involved in plans to construct America’s missile shield.

Should we feel confident with the General’s assurances?

One must not forget that America has deployed a nuclear warhead-based missile defense system in the past. From the end of World War Two until the mid-1970s, military planners experimented with a variety of nuclear warhead-based interception systems to defend the United States from the Soviet Union. Initial plans to deploy these defenses all over the country were rejected because of local political concerns with having so many nuclear weapons nearby so many population centers. The final system to be deployed was Sentinel, which protected the nuclear missile silos of the Midwest. Realizing that the system could not guarantee protection, and was more likely to cause harm to Americans by showering radiation on cities and damaging key satellite systems in space and radar systems on the ground, the Defense Department dismantled Sentinel in 1976.

A new feeling of Defense Department Invincibility

Given the Pentagon’s realization a quarter of a century ago that a nuclear-tipped system had many drawbacks, it is peculiar that General Kadish admitted before Congress that “people do think about those types of things” within the MDA. The only explanation could be a new feeling of Defense Department invincibility, and a hope that scientific research can overcome the damage that nuclear explosions in space would cause to American satellites. For years, a branch of the Pentagon, the Defense Special Weapons Agency, has been researching methods of hardening US satellites against radiation increases in the atmosphere. Another body within the Pentagon, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, has calculated that enhancing the radiation durability of new satellite systems will create an acceptable 3% cost increase, shielding American space resources from the effects of nuclear explosions in space caused by the detonation of nuclear-tipped ballistic missile defenses. If American technological resources appear invulnerable to these dangers, the logic goes, why not move forward with the development of this technology?

Radioactive Results

But still we must scrutinize the radioactive results of these systems, as Senator Stevens and other members of Congress are bravely attempting to do. Nuclear-tipped missile defenses intercept incoming weapons in their terminal phase, meaning that an interception of this nature is most likely to occur directly over the American homeland. And while our satellites may be hardened

against increased radioactivity, our human beings are not. Protecting Americans from nuclear radiation by showering them with nuclear radiation does not seem to be the best solution to the problem of preventing ballistic missile attacks on American soil.

Eroding the Firewall between Nuclear and Conventional Weapons

Worse than that, consideration of nuclear-tipped interceptors seems like another step in Bush administration plans to erode the firewall between nuclear and conventional weapons. With Defense thinkers now actively engaged in expanding the number of scenarios that would call for the deployment of nuclear weapons, the use of nuclear-tipped missile defenses represents another effort to put a chink in that armor. In this role, nuclear bombs are being developed to appear more and more usable as military resources. Once we have developed appropriate defensive roles for nuclear weapons, it will be much easier make the leap to developing new offensive roles for the bomb. In an era in which we are supposed to be moving away from the threat of nuclear extermination, nuclear-tipped interceptors make a terrifying statement to the world.

Frying the World’s Satellites

It is also worth noting that while we may be able to defend American satellite systems, the same Pentagon research report that spoke of hardening our satellites noted that it would be difficult to persuade other states to take the same steps. If we were to detonate a nuclear-tipped interceptor in space, we are still quite likely to fry the satellites of our allies and other countries. Billions of people around the world rely upon satellite systems for commercial exchanges as well as climate monitoring activities that are critical to the early detection and prevention of disease and famine. Destroying them would be irresponsible. While some defense thinkers might suggest that we have an obligation to defend the American homeland no matter what, doing it at the cost of destroying the satellite systems of other states sends the message that Americans are more important than the other peoples of the world. When we realize that our efforts to ensure national security make this statement, it is time to head back to the drawing board and find a new solution to preventing a missile attack on American territory.

Ban Nukes in Space

An effort in the House of Representatives to ban the use of missile defense research monies for nuclear-tipped interceptor development was defeated, but it is not too late to derail the contemplation of these systems.

Republican and Democrat members of the Senate continue to work toward preventing reckless research and development of missile defense technologies, and their forthright actions must be reinforced by concerted citizen action. While Pentagon thinkers may find this solution to be acceptable, the American people rejected it 25 years ago, and we must step forward and makes our voices heard again.

Michael Roston is an Analyst for the Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council in Washington, DC. The contents of this article represent his personal beliefs, and do not form the advocacy of his employers. Michael can be contacted at mroston@ransac.org.