Medium-range Ballistic Missiles Research Articles

Editor's Note

Editor's Note

West Germany and NATO's Nuclear Force Posture in the Early 1960s (Part 1)

Abstract In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the member-states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) debated whether a counterforce capability of hundreds of mobile medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) under joint command in Europe was needed to reinforce U.S. extended nuclear deterrence. The conventional wisdom about this issue, echoing the official U.S. government position, has long been that deterrence was robust even without a joint missile force. According to this argument, U.S. policymakers tried to reassure NATO allies, particularly the West Germans, that sharing control of strategic nuclear weapons was unnecessary and unwise. The analysis presented here shows that the problem was not so straightforward. Many officials in NATO countries, particularly in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), viewed the MRBM debate not so much as a problem of nuclear weapons control but as a question of extended deterrence credibility and strategic stability, posing an all-or-nothing challenge to NATO.

The Strategic Obstacles Preventing Israel's Attack on Iran's Nuclear Reactors

The study analyzes the reasons that prevent "Israel" from launching a comprehensive military strike against the nuclear sites and other vital sites of a military nature in Iran, in light of the escalation of the indirect military confrontation between them in many conflicts in the Middle East. The study summarizes the "Israeli" risks to implementing "preventive war" on the Iranian scene in four obstacles, which are: the operational, the legal, the military, and the armed non-state actors. The study concluded that: despite the blockade imposed on Iran, especially with regard to the import of advanced military equipment, Iran was able to build a relative deterrent force consisting of three pillars, which rest on its ability to (1) threaten navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, (2) undertake terrorist attacks on multiple continents, and (3) conduct long-range strikes, primarily by missiles (or with rockets owned by proxies deployed in many countries of the Middle East, and its ability to target "Israel" with short and medium-range ballistic missiles. The Iranian deterrent force, or what has come to be called the Iran’s deterrence triad, was the real obstacle to Israel from launching a preventive war against Iran.

North Korean strategic culture: survival and security

Abstract During last year North Korea has made almost daily headline. Topics such as the strongest nuclear test, tests of missiles from medium range ballistic missiles (MRBM) to intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), readiness to retaliate to any possible U.S. attack, appeared frequently. In addition, the reaction of U.S. president D. Trump about American readiness to solve the issue, sending armada or reacting with fire and fury, were also covered by media all around the world. With these developments a possibility of nuclear war was discussed for the first time since the end of Cold War. This article aims to look closer to the reasons of North Korean behaviour, not only in last few years but within the contest of the concept of strategic culture. This concept has been used to explain behaviour of powers mainly, but the article aims to prove it is a viable tool to explain the motives and perceptions of any state in international system. The article aspires to conclude that the North Korean foreign and security policy is necessary to perceive in more complex picture. The current situation in North Korea is a result of combination of several factors that are determining and that have formed its perception of international relations

The ‘Incredible Wrongness’ of Nikita Khrushchev: The CIA and the Cuban Missile Crisis

AbstractThe role of the CIA in the Cuban Missile Crisis was of crucial importance to events and decisions. This article explores and evaluates the activities of the CIA in the crisis. It examines how intelligence‐gathering and analysis were conducted and how assessments and information were provided to decision‐makers. The study of the crisis illuminates many aspects of intelligence. On some of these there remain debates. The significance of CIA covert action against Cuba prior to October 1962, for example, is explored. Another important focus is the mistaken assessment of the US intelligence community that the Soviets were not going to deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba. The nature and significance of this conclusion is considered, along with the views of the Director of Central Intelligence, John McCone, who contrary to his analysts, believed Khrushchev would deploy nuclear missiles. The view that the CIA played a successful part in monitoring the Soviet military build‐up after the discovery of medium‐range ballistic missiles is analysed. The lack of success in identifying Soviet tactical nuclear weapons is also considered. The article draws upon an extensive corpus of scholarship on the crisis, as well as declassified material and reflections of former officials. Research into the crisis extends to Soviet and other decision‐makers and thus helps facilitate a more genuinely international intelligence history of the Cold War. The article proffers a reflective and nuanced assessment that underlines the achievements as well as the shortcomings of the CIA at this most crucial moment in the Cold War.

China’s Development of a More Secure Nuclear Second-Strike Capability: Implications for Chinese Behavior and U.S. Extended Deterrence

China’s Development of a More Secure Nuclear Second-Strike Capability:Implications for Chinese Behavior and U.S. Extended Deterrence Benjamin Schreer (bio) The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is in the midst of improving its nuclear arsenal, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Since the details of this nuclear modernization process remain clouded in secrecy, estimates of the numbers of China’s nuclear warheads vary significantly. Pessimists believe that Beijing could possess well over 1,000 warheads, most of which are assumed to be hidden in a complex system of underground tunnels.1 In contrast, this essay agrees with conservative assessments that the total size of China’s nuclear arsenal is approximately 250 warheads, delivered by land-based ballistic missiles, aircraft, and an emerging ballistic submarine fleet. The U.S. intelligence community expects that the number of these nuclear warheads capable of threatening the U.S. homeland will more than double to over 100 by the mid-2020s.2 China is on a long-term path of replacing its old liquid-fuel, moveable DF-3A intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBM) with solid-fuel, road-mobile DF-21 medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBM). The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy’s Jin-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) was also expected to conduct its first patrol by the end of 2014 while armed with the JL-2 submarine-launched ballistic missile. The PLA Navy is estimated to have three Jin-class boats, which could increase to four to five SSBNs by 2020. China is also reportedly developing a next-generation SSBN, called the Type 096. It is therefore gradually making progress toward a credible sea-based nuclear deterrent.3 [End Page 14] Therefore, as one scholar wrote in the pages of this journal, “after decades of reliance on a small and potentially strategic deterrent, China is finally achieving the ‘lean and effective’ nuclear force” that its leaders believe to be essential to protect the nation’s security interests.4 The PRC’s incremental development of this more secure second-strike nuclear capability began more than two decades ago. The rapid advances in U.S. conventional precision-strike capabilities observed in military operations during the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s was a key driver behind those efforts. However, while Beijing’s reasons for wanting to enhance mutual nuclear vulnerability with the United States are clear, the implications for China’s strategic behavior, U.S.-Sino crisis stability, and Asian security in general are less certain. Optimists argue that China’s development of a more secure second-strike capability that enhances mutual vulnerability will strengthen U.S.-Sino crisis stability. One proponent of this view is Robert Ross, who argues that such a capability would minimize the risk of the United States launching a disarming first strike, while leaving intact Washington’s ability to respond with its dominant conventional forces to any attempt by Beijing to alter the regional status quo.5 Yet given the changing strategic context underlying the U.S.-Sino relationship, there are reasons to caution against such a positive reading. The Changing Strategic Context and U.S.-China Strategic Stability China’s nuclear modernization occurs in the midst of Asia-Pacific power shifts. Beijing is increasingly willing to contest U.S. leadership in the region, which has long been based on the United States’ unrivaled military power. To do so, China is not only modernizing its nuclear forces but also significantly upgrading its conventional capabilities. By investing in anti-access/area-denial capabilities, China is raising the costs for a third-party intervention (for example, by the United States) in a dispute in its “near seas”—that is, the Yellow Sea, the Philippine Sea, and the South China Sea. The goal of this strategy seems to be to displace the United States as the dominant power in the western Pacific.6 [End Page 15] In this context, the assumption that the United States’ conventional superiority will guarantee U.S.-Sino strategic stability in contemporary Asia could be problematic. To be sure, in absolute terms U.S. conventional forces will still outweigh China’s by a wide margin for years to come. However, as China is...

Политика безопасности США: сдвиг в сторону Китая

The article focuses on the main aspects of the US rebalancing towards Asia Pacific which was declared by President Obama in November 2011. The examination of numerous US official and non-official documents shows that practically all US activities in this direction are connected with rapid economic and military growth of China. The United States are mostly concerned about Chinese attempts to transfer its economic strength into political influence and military strength which expand fare beyond the present frontiers. A number of examples of Chinese “unacceptable behavior” are given, such as: aggressive way of resolving its maritime disputes with neighbors; rejection of multilateral approach to such problems; China’s “cyber-activities” in the field of large scale cyber-espionage; military modernization aimed to limit the US free access to the region; the development of advanced short- and medium-range conventional ballistic missiles, land-attack and anti-ship cruise missiles, counter-space weapons and military cyberspace capabilities. The article also analyses the main implementation stages of this new American policy, and the role of the US Congress in formulating it. The positions of different US Agencies are also under consideration, including the position of the US Treasury, State Department and Defense Department. The author comes to a conclusion that a number of serious limitations and difficulties exist on the way of the US security interests promotion into the region. As for the position of Russian Federation, it is suggested that Russia can become one of important participants in resolution of security problems in the region. At the same time possible benefits may be gained if Russia managed to preserve the “equal distance” from the main players in the region – China and the US. But if the situation demands to make a clear choice, Russia will most probably take the Chinese side, regarding the present state of the US-Russian relations.

How the United States Lost the Naval War of 2015

Years of strategic missteps in oceans policy, naval strategy and a force structure in decline set the stage for U.S. defeat at sea in 2015. After decades of double-digit budget increases, the People's Liberation Army (Navy) was operating some of the most impressive systems in the world, including a medium-range ballistic missile that could hit a moving aircraft carrier and a super-quiet diesel electric submarine that was stealthier than U.S. nuclear submarines. Coupling this new asymmetric naval force to visionary maritime strategy and oceans policy, China ensured that all elements of national power promoted its goal of dominating the East China Sea. The United States, in contrast, had a declining naval force structured around 10 aircraft carriers spread thinly throughout the globe. With a maritime strategy focused on lower-order partnerships, and a national oceans policy that devalued strategic interests in freedom of navigation, the stage was set for defeat at sea. This article recounts how China destroyed the USS George Washington in the East China Sea in 2015. The political fallout from the disaster ended 75 years of U.S. dominance in the Pacific Ocean and cemented China's position as the Asian hegemon.

Pakistan Reshuffles Weapons Program

Pakistan became the world’s seventh declared nuclear power in a showdown with India in 1998. Now, Pakistan has moved its nuclear weapons program out of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) and into the new National Defense Complex (NDC). The move separates the country’s unclassified and clandestine nuclear programs.At the same time, the government reassigned two top figures from the bomb program. Pervez Musharraf, the general who took over Pakistan in a bloodless coup two years ago, appointed Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, and Ishfaq Ahmed, chairman of the PAEC, as his special science and technology advisers. The positions have the rank of a cabinet minister.Khan is frequently described as a national hero and is widely regarded as being an irreplaceable leader of Pakistan’s weapons program. He has headed the country’s premier uranium enrichment facility, the Khan Research Laboratories (KRL), since the 1970s, and has said he doesn’t want to leave. “Dr. Khan was very unhappy and complained publicly of being mistreated,” according to Pervez Hoodbhoy, a high-energy physicist at Quaid-I-Azam University in Islamabad. Hoodbhoy says he believes that the new appointments for Khan and Ahmed are compensation for being forced out of the nuclear bomb program. In an effort to dispel such rumors, General Musharraf gave a speech praising Khan shortly after the appointments were announced.Replacing Khan and Ahmed are two scientists who are relatively unknown outside of Pakistan. Javed Mirza, an experimental nuclear physicist who served as Khan’s deputy, is the new head of the KRL. And Pervez Butt, a nuclear engineer, has taken over as chairman of the PAEC, which now conducts only civilian research. The NDC, the new center for military research, is headed by Samar Mubarakmand, a nuclear scientist from PAEC who helped develop Pakistan’s medium-range ballistic missiles. He reports not to General Musharraf, but to the National Security Council, which oversees Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. Mubarakmand insists publicly that no domestic or international interference in the program will be tolerated.Some analysts argue that the changes reflect a signal by Pakistan that it is willing to put its nuclear material under international safeguards and move closer to signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Pakistan has been under intense pressure from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to reduce its military program. However, Uzair Haque, a representative of the government-run Pakistan Institute for Air Defense Studies, disputes this interpretation. “At first, the political opposition in Pakistan was under the impression that this was the beginning of a rollback of Pakistan’s nuclear program,” he says. “This is not the case.” Abdul Qadeer Khan (second from right) and other scientists from the Khan Research Laboratories stand in front of Ras Koh Hills nuclear test site moments after Pakistan’s 1998 nuclear tests.PAKISTAN INSTITUTE FOR AIR DEFENSE STUDIESPPT|High resolution© 2001 American Institute of Physics.

An Integrated DGPS/INS Navigation System for a Ballistic Missile: Design and Flight Test Results

This paper presents the design and flight test results of a tightly coupled, differential GPS/INS navigation system for precise tracking of medium-range ballistic missiles on test ranges. It describes a 27-state extended Kalman filter that blends data from a space-stabilized inertial platform with DGPS pseudorange and pseudo-range-rate measurements to produce real-time estimates of navigation and sensor errors. Navigation system performance results from simulation are presented, and the estimated degradation of reentry navigation accuracy due to the loss of DGPS updates over the course of the trajectory are detailed. System performance was validated with a 130 km flight test on a ballistic missile with a Pershing II reentry vehicle; results of this flight test are presented.

First-Strike Stability in a Multipolar World

First-strike stability in a multipolar world measures the incentives of all major nuclear weapon countries, in all possible coalitions, to refrain from preemptive attack. The analysis integrates the interactions of offensive weapon arsenals, vulnerable offensive weapons within these arsenals, defensive weapons, and value targets reflecting the national assets at stake. In the previously-dominant bipolar paradigm, when the United States and the Soviet Union possessed almost all of the strategic nuclear weapons in the world, first-strike stability was an important criterion for assessing defensive deployments of the two sides, without consideration of any other countries. In the emerging multipolar world, however, the United States and Russia are dramatically reducing their offensive forces, and the offensive arsenals of Britain, France, and China are becoming relatively more important. Also, proliferation of medium-range ballistic missiles to other countries capable of attacking Russia, Britain, France, and China; but not necessarily the United States (due to range limitations), greatly complicates the overall situation. The main thrust of this paper is to investigate the first-strike stability implications of the deployment of strategic defenses by the United States and Russia. The principal finding is that in a multipolar world first-strike stability increases with the deployment of small to medium sized strategic defenses whereas in a bipolar world it usually decreases. Although the incentives for the United States and Russia to preempt increase, the incentives of the other countries decrease, with the combined effect over all coalitions of decreasing the incentive to preempt.

Computer modeling of infrared head-on emission from missile noses

A computer model that takes into account the effect of aerodynamic and solar heating, sky irradiation, and radiative cooling on infrared emission from missile noses is presented. The heat transfer equation was solved with numerical techniques both in the steady-state (constant speed and altitude flight of cruise missiles) and in the nonstationary regime (quickly variable speed and altitude of short to medium range ballistic missiles) to give the temperature distribution on the skin surface. The corresponding head-on absolute infrared emission in the 3 to 5 pm and 8 to 12 jim spectral bands was computed as a function of time of flight and missile altitude. Results show a strong dependence of temperature and radiant intensity distributions on thermal and geometrical properties of the skin material, on the character of the aerodynamic flow (laminar or turbulent boundary layer), and on the physical characteristics of the atmosphere. By varying these parameters into reasonable ranges, infrared emissions spanning over more than an order of magnitude were obtained. The comparison with data corresponding to a skin uniformly kept at the boundary layer effective temperature showed that huge overestimates of the infrared emission can be found when the target is flying at high speed and high altitude. By computing the ratio of the in-band total radiant intensity in the 3 to 5 p.m and 8 to 12 p.m spectral regions, the relative merits of these regions for the detection of a given target are given as a function of missile altitude.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization

The Ministerial Council of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) held its eleventh annual ministerial review at NATO headquarters in Paris from December 16 to 18, 1960. The main topic of discussion at the meeting was the announcement by United States Secretary of State Christian Herter of what he reportedly termed a new concept for the operation of medium-range ballistic missiles. The United States plan included: 1) a proposal that NATO discuss a multilateral system for the political control of the weapons; 2) an offer to place five ballistic missile submarines armed with 80 Polaris missiles under the command of the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR), by the end of 1963; and 3) a suggestion that the other members of the alliance contribute approximately 100 more medium-range ballistic missiles by purchasing them in the United States. The press reported that Lord Home, Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, welcomed the United States proposal and said that NATO should examine the possibility of a medium-range ballistic missile force under multilateral control, a suggestion in which M. Couve de Murville, the French Foreign Minister, concurred. The West German Defense Minister, Franz Joseph Strauss, told the Ministers, the press announced, that concrete decisions on the United States proposal should be taken in the near future, and that plans for NATO control of the Polaris missile force should be pushed through by military and political authorities early in the spring of 1961. The Council of Ministers decided to pass on to its Permanent Comand other related materials, according to the press.

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.