The Real Missile Threat: Cruise not Ballistic

Even before the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush took office it was clear that a considerable portion of their national security agenda would emphasize the missile threat, and consequently the need for a missile defense system.  But lost in all the political debate has been a key question: what kind of missile?

Ever since President Ronald Reagan unveiled his Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983, the assumption has always been that the United States will be threatened by ballistic missiles.  But that threat is overstated.  When it comes to likely dangers, it should be remembered that bad things could come in small packages; namely cruise missiles.

The latest evidence is a recent RAND study that warns that the U.S. Army should invest more money in developing better defenses against cruise missiles, which will pose a greater threat than ballistic missiles.

In a report prepared for the commander of the Army Air Defense Artillery Center at Fort Bliss, Texas, RAND researchers said: “One conclusion we draw from our analysis is that the threat of cruise missile attack, and the need to defend against it, is present in all futures and scenarios.”

It is not hard to figure out the threat such missiles pose.  Because the military's air defense systems are not good at recognizing such threats, simple and unsophisticated cruise missiles pose a unique challenge.

They are an obvious system for conducting precision strikes.  They can fly at low altitudes to stay below radar and, in some cases, hide behind terrain features.  Cruise missiles are smaller and therefore much less visible to radar than aircraft or ballistic missiles.  For example, due to the Earth’s curvature, a ground-based radar can detect a low flying cruise missile that is about 20 miles away.  In comparison, an aircraft flying at 10,000 feet can be detected when it is about 150 miles away.

Compared with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles are expected to be much more accurate (by a factor of at least 10), less costly (by at least half) and, because of their aerodynamic stability, substantially more effective in delivering chemical or biological payloads (conservatively, enlarging the lethal area for biological attacks by at least 10 times).

It is worth noting that the Germans developed V-1 cruise missiles as a backup to the V-2 ballistic missile program during World War II.  They developed the V-1 cruise missile in one-tenth the time that it took to develop the ballistic missile at one-hundredth of the total program cost, with each missile costing about one-tenth of a V-2 ballistic missile’s costs. 

 Accordingly, the Germans used seven times as many V-1s as V-2s.  Targeting London, V-1s caused twice as many casualties as V-2s in spite of their high vulnerability to the RAF, which shut down three-quarters of them because of the predictable flight path of the crude V-1 cruise missiles.

Currently, more than 80,000 cruise missiles comprised of 75 different systems are deployed in at least 81 countries.  Roughly 90 percent of the existing missiles are short-range systems, having a range of about 100 km. or less.  That is not as reassuring as it used to be, as even a ship-launched 100 km. missile, fired from outside U.S. territorial waters, could still reach the homeland.

As for the future, 42 new systems are reported to be in development.  And 9 to 10 nations will soon be deploying land-attack cruise missiles with ranges spanning 100 to 1,000 km.

It is unclear how rapidly cruise missiles will spread from state to sub-state actors, i.e., terrorist groups.  To date, no terrorist group has used a cruise missile.  But after Sept. 11 it is certainly conceivable that they may obtain one from a state sponsor, or even build one on their own.  As the relevant technology is widely available, it is possible that short or even long-range missiles could spread to new actors.  Much of what goes into a cruise missile or an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), i.e., GPS guidance, digital flight management systems and composite materials – are dual-use or completely civilian.

Newer missiles are incorporating stealth features to make them even less visible to radar and infrared detectors.  Multiple missiles could attack instantaneously from different directions, and can fly circuitous routes to get to different targets.

At a recent congressional hearing, Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs' Subcommittee on International Security, Proliferation and Federal Services, said the United States must act quickly to prevent unfriendly nations and terrorist groups from acquiring land-attack cruise missiles and UAVs.

He urged the Bush administration to appeal to the other 32 members of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), which regulates missile exports, to stick to the treaty's guidelines and to lead an international debate about limiting the proliferation of UAVs.

Akaka's hearing followed a letter sent on June 5 by the leaders of the House International Relations and Senate Foreign Relations committees to Secretary of State Colin Powell, urging him to restrict exports of Predator and Global Hawk unmanned aircraft to Australia, New Zealand, Japan and NATO countries.

Akaka expressed concern that the administration has asked the maker of the RQ-1 Predator – General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. of San Diego – to build a version of the UAV for export to non-NATO members.  Company officials declined to comment.  Predator is a small, medium-range UAV used primarily for observation, but some have been armed with Hellfire missiles and used in combat in Afghanistan.

While no system is impenetrable, defense is possible.  In an article in the Spring 2002 issue of The National Interest, Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution advocated a system of radar, perhaps held up by aerostat balloons, together with the existing network of U.S.-based fighter aircraft and a new series of surface-to-air missile sites, which could provide at least some coverage to all of the nation’s borders.  That network might not provide leak-proof defense in all cases, but it could stop most small attacks with high confidence and deny any attacker certainty that his cruise missiles would reach U.S. territory once fired.

Other measures that could be taken include the U.S. government moving to strengthen the MTCR, an existing voluntary multilateral arrangement, by urging members to: create a uniform set of ground rules for determining the range and payload of cruise missiles and UAVs that might be used to deliver nuclear, biological or chemical payloads; broaden current parameters governing controls on jet engines; and re-examining its own export policies regarding cruise missile and UAV related technologies.  The United States recently tried to waive UAV/missile restrictions under MTCR for UAV exports and for the Israeli Arrow missile defense program.

Sources

Army Air and Missile Defense: Future Challenges, http://www.rand.org/publications/DB/DB335/

“Cruise Control: A Case for Missile Defense,” The National Interest http://www.nationalinterest.org/issues/67/OHanlon.html

 Assessing the Cruise Missile Puzzle: How great a defense challenge,  Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, http://www.ifpa.org/pubs/cruisemis_bott.htm

Cruise Missile Defense: Progress Made but Significant Challenges Remain, U.S. General Accounting Office, March 1999, NSIAD-99-68, http://www.gao.gov

David Tanks, Assessing the Cruise Missile Puzzle: How great a defense challenge, Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, October 2000, p. 3.

 

By David Isenberg Independent Consultant sento@earthlink.net

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