Missile Defense-A waste of effort

I was surprised to see that one of the successful results of President Obama's trip to Portugal was that NATO would support the construction of a missile shield over Europe. Since Ronald Reagan initiated the Strategic Defense Initiative during his presidency, the United States has spent well over $100 billion on attempts to create a successful missile defense program and has not had a great deal of success.


Emblem of the Strategic Defense Initiative

The ideas for defense against enemy ballistic missiles have been quite varied. Some have included modifying already existing antiaircraft systems-such as the Patriot missile launcher-to target and destroy incoming missiles. These systems were tested in the Gulf War against Iraqi Scud missiles with reports of some success. Unfortunately, this success was considered post-war to be the interception of only a few of the 40 Scuds launched by Iraq during the war. That isn't a great ratio if you're relying on this system to stop the destruction of a major city.


Patriot missile system in action

Another problem with these systems is that they have had issues with friendly fire, on several occasions they have shot down friendly aircraft that were misidentified as enemy missiles.


Oops

Another route that has been pursued is to have ships equipped with the AEGIS missile tracking system shoot down missiles before they are able to land. They have been involved in successful tests, but only against one or two missiles at the most. Again, if more than one or two missiles are launched, this system doesn't strike me as being likely to see much success.


AEGIS cruiser

Another approach that has been proposed is to have a system of satellites in orbit that can destroy enemy missiles with laser type systems. This was never seriously pursued, mostly just put out there as an idea. However, this is the main view that many had of missile defense around the time it was proposed, hence why the concept was derided as being "Star Wars."



Artist's rendition

Anyway, from the ideas that have been posed, ground and sea based systems seem to be the most successful. Unfortunately, their success rate is unlikely to be very high if more than a handful of missiles are launched at the same time. One massive problem to the concept of a missile shield is that Russia is estimated to have more than 3,000 strategic nuclear weapons along with an unknown number of tactical nukes. An additional problem is that at least a significant portion of these are designed to be delivered by bombers or by submarines, two methods that missile defense shields are not designed to defend against. Even if a system was able to achieve a 90% success rate of missile defense, that still leaves a few hundred nuclear weapons available, sufficient to destroy most of the United States and Europe.

On the other hand, the main goal of the proposed missile defense system in Europe is to stop an Iranian ballistic missile from being able to hit a major target. These systems are likely to have a much better chance of halting an attack like that. Personally I think the much greater deterrent is the fact that Iran would be turned into glass if they launched a nuclear weapon at all. I don't think any country in the world is insane enough to make a nuclear attack with the full knowledge that they would be utterly destroyed by the counter-attack. All that the missile defense system in Europe will accomplish is to antagonize Russia.


And you don't want to antagonize Russia

The potential benefits of a missile defense shield are not worth the price, which includes both money and foreign relations. The system has not been proven to have a great deal of success so relying on it does not make any sense. The possibility of widespread nuclear death has been around for decades and it has been successfully stopped through the use of a secret, high tech weapon.



Let's keep using it.