Ballistic Missile Threat Research Articles

INTERCEPTOR MISSILE GUIDANCE - A MATURE SCIENCE OR A NEW CHALLENGE?

Interceptor missiles designed against aircraft had substantial advantage in speed and maneuverability. Simple guidance concepts and technological progress yielded satisfactory performance, making a mental effort to develop new concepts unnecessary. The Gulf War revealed the threat of tactical ballistic missiles. Missile defense systems, using conventional guidance, demonstrated hit-to-kill accuracy against non-maneuvering targets. Similar performance against future maneuvering targets needs innovative guidance and estimation concepts. This goal can be achieved only if estimation errors against maneuvering targets are minimized. The paper compares the homing performance achieved by using different estimators and raises new ideas for improved estimator design.

Missile defence and the transatlantic security relationship

This article examines the re-emergence of ballistic missile defence (BMD) as a contentious issue in US-European security relations since 1999. It begins by outlining three phases in the recent evolution of US missile defence policy from 1995 to mid-2001. The article then examines five key factors that have dominated European views and concerns in relation to BMD: a divergence between European and American assessments of the emerging ballistic missile threat; concern over the implications for nuclear arms control stemming from Russian and Chinese opposition to BMD; the impact of missile defence on deterrence and the Atlantic alliance; scepticism about the technological feasibility of BMD; and the potential opportunity costs associated with resource allocation to missile defence. It is shown that European anxieties have been exacerbated by a perception of a growing unilateralism in American security policy in recent years. The article proceeds by arguing that the US-European debate over BMD looks set to evolve in one of two directions. The more likely and most desirable scenario would involve the US reaching an understanding with its European allies on the way forward. The less desirable scenario would involve key European countries, such as France and Germany, deciding ultimately to withhold their political support for BMD, which would have the potential of causing significant rifts in both transatlantic and intra-European security relations. In both cases, it is argued that the BMD debate will be defined by the interaction of several key variables. These include the extent to which the Bush administration engages in meaningful consultations with the Europeans; the administration's ability or otherwise to reach an agreement with Russia on the way ahead; the architecture options of a future allied or global BMD system; the related issues of technological feasibility and financial cost; and the evolving missile threat.

Non-Conventional Solutions for Non-Conventional Dilemmas?

This study surveys Israel's doctrine of multi-layered defense against the threat of ballistic missiles. It describes the nation's unique combination of deterrence, passive defense, active defense, and offensive tactics against this threat and analyzes the technical, tactical, and political arguments for and against each layer of defense. The analysis concludes that deterrence is likely to be Israel's most effective strategy to forestall this threat in the future. Nevertheless, it also argues that although other methods might be technically less efficient, domestic and external political considerations may justify them and render them a sound strategy.

Non-conventional solutions for non-conventional dilemmas?

This study surveys Israel's doctrine of multi-layered defense against the threat of ballistic missiles. It describes the nation's unique combination of deterrence, passive defense, active defense, and offensive tactics against this threat and analyzes the technical, tactical, and political arguments for and against each layer of defense. The analysis concludes that deterrence is likely to be Israel's most effective strategy to forestall this threat in the future. Nevertheless, it also argues that although other methods might be technically less efficient, domestic and external political considerations may justify them and render them a sound strategy.

Assessing the assessment: The 1999 national intelligence estimate of the ballistic missile threat

In summer 2000, the Clinton administration is scheduled to decide whether to authorize deployment by the United States of a limited national missile defense (NMD) system. This date arose from a “3+3” policy announced in the midst of the 1996 election campaign: under it, the administration would conduct research and development on missile defenses until 2000, then decide whether to proceed to a deployment that would become operational in 2003 (the date of initial operational capability has since been revised to 2005). The administration said it would base its decision on the threat, the maturity of the technology, the program’s impact on US-Russian nuclear arms reductions, and the projected cost.

British technical intelligence and the Soviet intermediate range ballistic missile threat, 1952–60

This article looks at the shifting intricacies of British assessments of the Soviet IRBM threat to the United Kingdom during the 1950s. Based on JIC, Cabinet and Air Ministry records of the period, as well as political memoirs, it looks at the assessments in parallel with the development of the British Blue Streak nuclear ballistic missile programme. This land‐based weapon was eventually cancelled in April 1960 on strategic not cost grounds, too early in this author's opinion.

Learning to love the bomb: The command and control of British nuclear forces, 1953–1964

The command and control of nuclear forces has emerged as an important concern in strategic studies. Yet the study of British command and control has been sparse. This article provides the first archive‐based outline of the development of command and control of British nuclear forces in the period 1945–64. It examines the British response to the emerging Soviet ballistic missile threat: by appointing a designated deputy Prime Minister with the authority to launch Britain's nuclear forces; by establishing an alternate government headquarters outside London for authorising nuclear retaliation; and by delegating nuclear authority to the military. This article documents for the first time how nuclear release authority was delegated to Bomber Command, in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack and the destruction of Britain's political leadership.

Old rivalries, new arsenals: should the US worry?

Could small country develop the capability to hit the United States with long-range unconventional weapon during the first decades of the next century? Most certainly one could. But whether such state would be inclined to try is an entirely different matter. risk is real. Congress learned in 1998, according to The Report of Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, that the United States has entered a new nonproliferation environment in which there is far greater availability of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction. main points of the report are discussed and table is given showing the ballistic missile types held by lesser powers.

Hedging against the cruise-missile threat

Diverse sources of cruise-missile proliferation already exist. And, unlike the incremental way in which the ballistic-missile threat has unfolded, land-attack cruise missiles with stealth capabilities could emerge rapidly and at the same time as cruder, first-generation cruise missiles. Indeed, compared with the predictable features of planning against the Cold War's monolithic adversary, the emerging cruise-missile threat may well represent the prototype of twenty-first-century defence-planning challenges - multiple acquisition paths, uncertain development cycles and opaque monitoring environments. To avoid being caught unprepared for a future regional contingency, defence planners need to develop far better hedging strategies against this threat than they did against that of ballistic missiles in the 1980s. A critical near-term challenge is deciding upon an appropriate mix of defence investments and improved arms-control policies.

Is there an emerging third world ballistic missile threat to Europe?

Is there an emerging third world ballistic missile threat to Europe?

The Increasing Threat of Ballistic Missiles

THE speech of Senator Jackson (Dem., Wash.) which is reprinted below is a most outspoken and eloquent expression of alarm felt over the Soviet progress in the development of missiles by those concerned with American military planning. The report of a committee, headed by Dr. Killian, president of M.I.T. (not released in full, but referred to in the press on December 10 by Hanson Baldwin) seems to have stirred Washington into acute realization of the necessity of speeding up American progress in this field. On February 1, Defense Secretary Wilson let it be known that he is going to appoint a civilian head to coordinate and spur the missile developments, at present split between a number of independent groups under the several branches of the military. The budget for next fiscal year, presented to Congress, provides $1,276,000,000 for missile development.At this writing, no action has followed Secretary Wilsons announcement, and the alarm call has been carried on to the public by Senator Symington in a “Meet the Press” television interview on February 5, and by Senator Jackson in his Senate speech on February 1.The American scientists, and the Bulletin in particular, have never underestimated (especially in the field of ballistics) the competence of Russian scientists.1 This competence, combined with the never slackening Soviet effort to increase its military power, makes it certain that without a most intensive and sustained effort on our side, the Soviet Union will pass the U.S. in military rocketry as well as in other new weapon developments. Since any demonstration of Soviet superiority in modern weapon technology would be psychologically detrimental to American influence in the world, we hope that an economy-bent administration (and a smug and comfort-seeking public) will not allow this to happen. However, it would be almost equally smug to believe—as many seem to believe—that keeping abreast or ahead of the Soviet Union in the race for every type of new weapon can provide objective security to U.S. and its world-wide politico-military alliance system. The main danger of medium-range ballistic missiles, such as the Soviet Union is said to have successfully tested now (range, about 1,500 miles) is the jeopardy into which such missiles, equipped with atomic warheads, will place American and allied bases in Asia, Africa, and Europe. One does not immediately see how this threat could be significantly alleviated by our own possession of missiles of this type, since the Soviet Union does not depend on similar outposts close to our country.The situation is not symmetrical because the Soviet Unions military power depends entirely on a geographically contiguous and politically integrated land mass, while we are concerned with the protection of a number of geographically widely separated and politically independent areas. To prevent the medium-range Soviet ballistic missile from tilting dangerously the balance of power in the world what matters is American capacity to sustain the threat of atomic destruction—on which the peace of the world is so precariously based now—over the heads of the Soviet rulers, if needs be even without the overseas bases threatened by the medium-range missiles. In other words, the objectively important countermeasure to the Soviet development of medium-range missiles seems to lie not so much in matching this particular Soviet advance as in the production of an adequate number of long-range bombers (and, ultimately, in the development of the true transoceanic missile). Hesitant approach to these last developments could become truly decisive in the arms race.