"The Idea of Hitting a Bullet with a Bullet" -you can call it "Star Wars" and/or a HAARP sub-project. "Strategic targeting." The initial objectives failed for a period of time- striking space vehicles. http://www.rand.org/publications/RB/RB47/index.html <I tried http://www.defenselink.mil/cgi-bin/dlprint -for "Ballistic Missile Defense Information" (DoD) to check the status of the program, but couldn't open not even a single file). Please, caution is highly advised. It's a public webpage> The Minuteman National Missile Defense Option Defense analysts, military strategists, and policymakers today are generally more concerned about a nuclear missile strike against the United States from a rogue state than they are about any such attack from the former Soviet Union. Russia, too, has good reason for being concerned about such an attack against its homeland, because most potential rogue states are located on or near its borders. Some components of a system that might provide limited defense against a ballistic missile attack have already been developed, and work is proceeding on developing the remaining components. A national missile defense system that uses a modified Minuteman missile as its interceptor could be deployed sooner than any other currently proposed option, should the need arise. In March 1996, the U.S. Air Force asked RAND's Project AIR FORCE to evaluate the performance capabilities, cost, and arms control treaty implications of completing the development and deployment of the Minuteman option. System Performance The Minuteman National Missile Defense (NMD) option consists of the following major components: satellites with infrared sensors for providing initial detection of a threat missile launch; early warning radars for providing coarse tracking information to enable commitment of interceptors; X-band radars located in the Western Pacific, on the East and West coasts, and at Grand Forks, North Dakota, for providing precision tracking and target discrimination information; and interceptor missiles, based at Grand Forks, that consist of three Minuteman booster stages and a fourth stage that includes a kinetic kill vehicle (KKV) for intercepting incoming missiles before they reach the atmosphere. This NMD option, which includes 20 Minuteman interceptors, is designed to defend all 50 states against an attack of up to four missiles, each armed with a single nuclear warhead. System performance is governed by the ability to detect, track, discriminate, intercept, and destroy the threat missile. From the specifications of the components of the NMD option (which were an input to the RAND analysis) and a performance analysis, RAND concluded that the system appears capable of engaging four rogue-nation reentry vehicles (RVs) and destroying them with high probability if all of the individual subsystems perform as advertised. The RAND analysis focused on the ability of the Minuteman option to (1) intercept the threat missiles, (2) discriminate between the RVs and other objects, and (3) home on and kill the RV. The modified Minuteman missile has sufficient kinematic performance to fly out from Grand Forks and intercept the threat missiles before they reenter the atmosphere. There also appears to be sufficient time for the X-band radars to discriminate the RVs from simple penetration aids and debris if the discrimination algorithms prove to be effective enough. Up to now, successful demonstrations of realistic hit-to-kill vehicles have proved elusive. The Minuteman KKV appears to be designed with adequate performance to home on and kill RVs of a certain size and temperature, but available information about the KKV's specifications is not sufficiently detailed to conclude that it has adequate performance against all rogue-nation RVs. Moreover, KKV performance remains a major uncertainty for any antiballistic missile system. In further analyses, RAND found that the Minuteman system has additional capabilities. The rogue-nation threat assumes that the threat missile has a minimum-energy trajectory and that the RV is spin stabilized. It appears that the Minuteman NMD option also provides some defense against moderately depressed reentry angles (which compresses the engagement timeline) and tumbling RVs (which lengthens the discrimination time needed). The research team recommended two improvements to the system: Add an electronic scanning capability to the X-band radars located on the East and West coasts. Consider a supplement to the defense coverage of Hawaii (and perhaps Alaska) with locally based theater missile defense systems or Minuteman NMD interceptors based at Vandenberg Air Force Base (both of which are in conflict with the 1972 "Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems," i.e., the ABM Treaty). The researchers concluded their analyses of performance factors with the caveat that there are basic uncertainties with regard to the performance of any NMD option. Some of the components of the technology are too immature to assess accurately, and there are threat uncertainties and "real world" performance concerns that may never be resolved with much specificity and confidence. Development and Deployment Costs The technology for the Minuteman NMD option can be integrated relatively quickly and inexpensively if the United States wishes to move in this direction. Development and initial deployment of the option is estimated to take between four and six years. RAND's analysis indicates a development and deployment cost of between $3.3 and $3.9 billion. RAND's cost analyses focused on two issues: (1) Are current estimates of the costs complete (i.e., are the overall program costs structured correctly, and is the full spectrum of development and production phase activities required for an initial NMD capability accounted for)? (2) After adjustment for completeness, is the estimate reasonable (i.e., does it take into account the potential for cost growth in various Minuteman NMD components, as well as programmatic changes and slippage in schedules)? Initial Air Force estimates showed a total cost of $2.4 billion. RAND's adjustments for completeness suggest that an additional $0.5 billion will be needed, primarily for overall system integration. RAND's analysis of the reasonableness of the adjusted $2.9 billion suggests that another $0.4 billion will be needed for a number of reasons (e.g., the added technical complexity and schedule risk of developing the interceptor modules, as well as the added complexity of developing new interceptor software for target discrimination, data fusion, and aimpoint control functions), bringing the cost to $3.3 billion. Because many of the components of the Minuteman NMD option are already in the field, the proposed acquisition program has not included the more developmental phases common in entirely new programs (e.g., concept exploration, program definition, and risk reduction). However, the difficulty of the NMD mission and the stringent criterion for mission success suggest that it is important that these activities be included to avoid excessive development risks. These activities range from documenting and approving the system's operational concept, firing doctrines, and threat scenarios to the further development of vehicle discrimination capability, sensor fusion options, and interceptor endgame effectiveness. These additions might result in up to $0.6 billion in additional costs, thus bringing the total cost to the $3.3 to $3.9 billion noted above.[1] Arms Control Treaty Implications A number of arms control treaty issues are associated with the deployment of the Minuteman NMD option. Many appear manageable if handled properly, but two are potential "showstoppers": (1) the deployment of a nationwide ABM defense system and (2) the deployment of X-band radars outside of the Grand Forks site. Both of these issues involve the ABM Treaty. Of course, in the final analysis, it is up to the U.S. government, which will conduct a thorough compliance review, to decide whether or not the Minuteman NMD option is consistent with the ABM Treaty. With regard to territorial defense, Article I of the ABM treaty is germane. However, there is a view that Article I does not impose an independent obligation on the parties to the treaty. Another view is that, while Article I may impose an independent obligation, there are differences about what the word "defend" in Article I means. Does it prohibit a territorial defense, no matter how thin, or does it prohibit a territorial defense only when it is so thick that it could destabilize the strategic nuclear balance between the parties to the treaty? How these questions are answered affects not only the Minuteman NMD options but all candidate NMD options. The second principal arms control issue involves the siting of the X-band radars. X-band radars located outside of the Grand Forks site could be treaty compliant if they were adjuncts or early warning radars. Adjuncts are not mentioned in the ABM Treaty, but as negotiations evolved, both sides agreed that devices that improved the performance of an ABM system but were not critical to its operation would be allowed as adjuncts. However, the X-band radars are essential to the Minuteman NMD option's ability to provide full territorial defense, so the adjunct argument may not be persuasive. The United States has said in a compliance report on Soviet early warning radars that it would not consider the handover of precise tracking data to be prohibited by the ABM Treaty. However, at sites where early warning radars already exist, the case will be difficult to make that the X-band radars serve primarily a legitimate early warning function, since what they provide is precision tracking and discrimination capability. An additional issue is that the X-band radars located outside of the Grand Forks site probably need to be distinguishable from the X-band radar located at the site. To satisfy that need and to give them a limited early warning capability, we suggest adding a limited-field-of-view electronic scanning feature to X-band radars located on the West and East coasts. The ABM Treaty was negotiated over 20 years ago. Since then, the relationship between nation states has changed dramatically, and the potential for minor players to inflict severe damage upon their more powerful and more rational neighbors has increased. That suggests that it may well be time for the United States and Russia to reinterpret or renegotiate the conditions of the ABM Treaty in such a way as to provide better protection for both against rogue states. Threat Missile Trajectories RAND analyzed the performance potential of the Minuteman missile defense system against six potential scenarios: China launching against Hawaii and Los Angeles; North Korea against Hawaii and Alaska; and Libya against Washington, D.C., and Miami. Flight times vary from about 23 minutes for the North Korean threat against Alaska to 35 minutes for the Chinese threat against Los Angeles. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] The Air Force continues to believe that it has sufficiently accounted for both risk and system integration in its baseline estimate of $2.4 billion. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RAND research briefs summarize research that has been more fully documented elsewhere. This research brief describes work done for RAND's Project AIR FORCE; it is documented in An Assessment of the Air Force's Minuteman NMD Option, by Charles T. Kelley, Glenn C. Buchan, Melvin Eisman, Joel Kvitky, Rich Mesic, Michael D. Miller, and David Vaughan, DB-188-AF, November 1996. This is a government publication not available to the general public. RAND is a nonprofit institution that helps improve public policy through research and analysis; its publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of its research sponsors. RB-47 (1997) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright © 1997 RAND All rights reserved. Permission is given to duplicate this on-line document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Copies may not be duplicated for commercial purposes. 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