MOAA members can vote for the finalist whose essay they enjoyed most. Visit
www.moaa.org/essaycontest before midnight (Eastern time) Nov. 30 to vote. Prizes are $1,000 for first place, $500 for second place, and $250 for third place. Look for the results in the Rapid Fire department of the January 2014 issue of Military Officer.
AccelerateDevelopment of Missile Defense Shield: System Needed to Deter Threat From Rogue States
We live in a world that only science fiction writers dreamed about until recently. The potential destruction that evil forces can unleash on us is almost unlimited. And we are powerless to defend ourselves against some of it.
According to the Congressional Research Service, 21 countries are suspected of having ballistic missiles, including China, India, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Pakistan, and Russia. In the wrong hands, these missiles are capable of unleashing unimaginable horror on the U.S. It is not unthinkable that some wealthy terrorist organization might acquire some of these missiles, by stealing them, buying them, or get them from a sponsoring nation.
Imagine having two or three missiles, with nuclear, chemical, or biological warheads aimed at U.S. cities. Think about pathogens such as smallpox, pneumonic plague, botulism, and hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola. Worse yet, think about a nuclear detonation in Los Angeles, Chicago, or New York City.
There is another aspect to the threat that we don’t hear about much, and that is an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack. EMP attacks can be generated when a nuclear weapon is detonated a few dozen kilometers above the earth’s surface. The explosion of even a small nuclear warhead would produce a set of electromagnetic pulses that interact with the earth’s atmosphere and the earth’s magnetic field.
These electromagnetic pulses propagate from the burst point of the nuclear weapon to the line of sight on the earth’s horizon, potentially covering a huge geographic region at the speed of light.
For example, a nuclear weapon detonated at an altitude of 400 kilometers over the central U.S. could cover, with its primary electromagnetic pulse, the entire U.S and parts of Canada and Mexico.
Speaking about EMP attacks, Newt Gringrich, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, said: “Those who claim there is little to fear from Iran or North Korea, because ‘at best’ they will have only one or two nuclear weapons, ignore the catastrophic level of threat we face from just ‘a couple’ of nuclear weapons.” He has consistently warned of this possibility.
Imagine an environment in which nothing electrical works. Imagine a world without computers, energy, transportation, banking, food production, or emergency services. Imagine a world facing chaos, without electrical power. An EMP attack could literally send us back to the Stone Age.
Unfortunately, we are somewhat impotent against such an attack, and the potential consequences are almost too horrific to imagine. The last terrorist attack took about 3,000 of our people; the next could take 4 or 5 million. This is not a hypothetical hazard; it’s a very real possibility.
Can we avoid such a catastrophe? Maybe, but it could be a very tight race between our ability to develop and field a comprehensive ballistic missile defense system and the terrorists ability to get missiles to launch on us.
The Department of Defense has been working to develop such a system for over 30 years, but because of budgetary and political constraints, progress has been slow. Nevertheless, according to Lt. Gen. Henry A. Obering III, USAF, who was director, Missile Defense Agency, until his retirement in 2009, “We are gaining widespread international support and cooperation … to close the gaps and improve our capability to keep pace with growing threats.”
Yet the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency has serious challenges to field a comprehensive ballistic missile defense system that would assure our safety, and those challenges are not going to lessen with time.
The bottom line is this: Although in 2006 we fielded an initial layered integrated ballistic missile defense system that provides protection against short- and intermediate-range missiles, we are still vulnerable to long-range missile attacks. We’ve wasted years of research and development time arguing about whether or not missile defense is practical, doable, affordable, and permitted under international treaties.
Missiles are potentially the terrorist’s ultimate weapon. Iran’s pursuit of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles poses a grave threat to us and our allies, particularly Israel. Our very survival may be at stake because, while we’ve made progress, we are still not fully protected against a missile attack.
64 MILITARY OFFICER NOVEMBER 2013
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