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September 4, 2009
Exclusive: ‘Be Careful What You Shoot At, Ryan!’
"Hey, Ryan, be careful what you shoot at. Most things in here don’t react too well to bullets.” So warned Captain Ramius, commander of a Soviet submarine produced to carry out a first strike nuclear attack against the United States, in the Tom Clancy hit thriller The Hunt for Red October. While flying bullets around the nuclear reactor of a Soviet “boomer” makes for a great movie, rockets and missiles flying in and around the Middle East is a danger we should begin to face without illusion. We have all heard of the proverbial bull in the china closet – the Persian Gulf is very much the “energy china shop” where ballistic missiles should not be welcome.
The destruction of only two petroleum targets in that region, for example, would cripple the world’s economy. Eighty-two percent of Iran’s oil goes through one pumping station on the coast of the Persian Gulf, while upwards of 80 percent of Saudi Arabian oil is processed in Abqaiq, a complex located some 60 miles from the Ras Tanura terminal on the Persian Gulf. There some 7 million barrels of oil a day is shipped to the rest of the world, some 8 percent of all oil consumed worldwide daily. The crippling of either complex with a missile attack – whether from terrorist groups working on behalf of a state sponsor, or aggressive and reckless action by a terror state sponsor itself, the economic impacts would be devastating. The U.S. already spends some $1 trillion annually for oil, up from $200 billion in 2000. Our oil imports at the current cost would reach $700 billion. Imagine if such costs suddenly doubled.
However, the vulnerability of such terminals or ports is not limited to the world of oil. The former U.S. Chief of Naval Operations said some years ago that a terrorist attack with a missile on a major seaport could cause a chain reaction economic panic. He noted the closure of some 8-14 of the world’s top ports would instantaneously cause a world-wide recession closely followed by a depression if the ports were closed for any period of time. Remember the closure of the port of Long Beach, California? Each day of closure lost the U.S. up to a billion dollars. On 9/11, in New York City, two airplanes, used as guided missiles, caused $85 billion in direct property damage in lower Manhattan alone to say nothing of the financial costs to the nation as a whole as time went on.
This may give us a little better picture as to how much we should invest in missile defense protections for the European mainland, the Persian Gulf region and the eastern United States. A key issue may be decided over the next few months as the United States with the cooperation of NATO seeks to finalize agreements with the Czech Republic and Poland. The construction of both a radar and interceptor missile complex is to defend against Middle East missile threats, primarily associated with Iran’s five current ballistic missile development programs.
A layered and integrated missile defense system could significantly improve the flexibility the U.S. President and our European and Gulf state allies would have in responding to Iranian threats, terrorist activities and attempted coercion. Missile defenses can defuse a crisis as missiles in flight could be shot down while diplomacy continues or while discrete military activity is taken to destroy the launchers and associated missiles of the attacking nation. Missile defense deployments can also devalue ballistic missile investments and in this way work in a manner consistent with counter proliferation goals.
Not only can missile defense be a diplomatic tool, it also adds to deterrence and extended deterrence, and in so doing may help avoid a cascade of new nuclear weapons deployments in the Persian Gulf and Middle East. It is not a coincidence that while missile defenses in the United States and its allies have to grown to some 1,000+ interceptors, we have seen nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia decline some 80 percent, to reach levels not seen since the latter part of the Eisenhower administration. So there is no contradiction between the pursuit of lower levels of nuclear weapons and enhanced levels of missile defense deployments. The two can in fact go hand in hand. And we are slated to have built 1000+ interceptors of which 30 – yes only 30 – are to protect the mainland United States from long range ballistic missile threats.
A number of attractive options are available including land, sea and mobile systems. Rear Admiral Brad Hicks, the Program Director of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense, has noted the protection offered by either a two or five ship deployment of Aegis cruiser carrying standard missiles. These would support and compliment a fixed European site in Poland, for example, should we decide to finally proceed with that. This would lead to enhanced protection of the entire European theater from Iran and other possible Middle Eastern ballistic missile threats. These ships might be deployed “in stride”, meaning as part of regular deployments. In addition, Gulf State protection should be in the cards as well including the purchase of missile defense systems by our allies as is the case of the United Arab Emirates. A layered defense of Aegis ships, ground based interceptors in Europe as well as THAAD could lead to the establishment of the kind of defense repeatedly described by NATO as necessary and important for the defense of the alliance and its friends.
Ships or other mobile systems might also be sent to the region in response to a crisis. The advantage of the fixed system in Poland is that it remains operational 24/7 which means it can deal with a terrorist attack that occurs without warning, as well as deliberate attacks. It is also critical to cementing the relationship between our new eastern European members of NATO and the overall alliance and the United States, which would add to the protection against Russian hegemony. On the other hand, a fixed system does entail significant additional negotiations to secure agreement from a host nation. One possible addition to the mix that might be considered would be to deploy a land-mobile interceptor. It could be flown to the theater aboard Air Force airlifters such as the C-17 whenever there is a crisis.
Whatever configuration we use will entail some $5-13 billion in future 5-6 year costs in research and development and deployment costs, which would include the deployment of an initial capability. These calculations are admittedly rough because much depends upon the extent to which the 80 Aegis ship fleet will be completely outfitted with a missile defense capability, whether we build a Poland based system of interceptors only, and whether KEI is also deployed as part of a layered, mobile and integrated missile defense system.
But these numbers should be understood in the context of the extraordinary cost of being without any missile defenses in Europe and the Middle East capable of dealing with Iranian missile threats. NATO as a whole as well as individual nations have come to understand this as the alliance has moved to consider the threat, agree on the technical feasibility of missile defenses, prefer an architecture fully integrated with NATO, and move toward defending both key facilities and as well as population centers. A NATO naked to missile attacks might very well encourage continued and escalatory reckless Iranian behavior culminating in the very economic disaster we are striving to avoid.
Some have questioned the usefulness of missile defense. Thomas P.M. Barnett, author of The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the 20th Century, says: “Why would Iran bomb Berlin?” Wrong question. “What would Iran do with ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads?” Right question.
And the right answer? Iran will pursue coercion, blackmail and terror to gets its way and use such a military capability as top-cover to conduct unconventional and terror war against us. Its terror activities have been severely damaged in Iraq through a combination of smart U.S. and Iraqi tactics, but in Iraq as well as Lebanon, Afghanistan, and against Israel, Iran continues its brazen attacks.
Although eight countries stretching from Iran to Morocco were partly or fully state sponsors of terror in 2001, and this number has now been reduced to five, there is no guarantee such trends will continue or that Iran can be talked out of its ballistic missiles, nuclear weapons or its sponsorship of terrorism. There have been some 16 regime changes in the Middle East since 1979 – little cause for comfort that new threats might not emerge.
It would thus appear prudent to “keep our powder dry.” In four separate speeches to the National Defense University Foundation and National Defense Industrial Association sponsored Congressional seminars on Nuclear Deterrence, Missile Defense, Nuclear Terrorism, Defense Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, Senator Jon Kyl, Senator Jeff Sessions, Dr. Uzi Rubin and LTG Kevin Campbell, spoke about the clear and present dangers represented by Iran.
Three used the term “sprint”, to describe the efforts of Iran to develop nuclear weapons and deploy next-generation ballistic missiles. A fuller explanation is in order. First, Iran has now advanced beyond Scud technology to solid fuel rocketry and the deployment of more than one stage. This means that it is simply a matter of time and engineering when Iran obtains the capability to place a weapon anywhere on earth with a missile. This is a very critical development and must be understood in the context of the debate within the United States and the intelligence community over ballistic missile threats to the United States.
In 2001, at a conference sponsored by the NDUF, missile defense critic Joe Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment ridiculed threat assessments at the time. He claimed the only reason one should be worried about missiles, (which he described as largely Scuds with ranges from 300-700 kilometers), is if you thought Philadelphia would bomb New York.
But three years before that, the director of the National Intelligence Estimate on ballistic missile threats, Robert Walpole of the CIA, warned North Korea had an advanced missile capability that enabled it to reach the western portion of the United States with a payload of hundreds of kilos. At the time, Pyongyang had launched a rocket that included a second and third stage. While the last stage didn’t work, the “staging” capability was a major breakthrough. As the 1998 Rumsfeld Commission warned, the technology developed by one rogue state, such as North Korea, could easily be transferred or sold to another nation, such as Iran. That in fact appears to be what has now happened.
More ominously, a second development has occurred with respect to Iran's nuclear program. It has now been discovered that Iran has been illicitly purchasing equipment and supplies and materials that are only good for one thing: the building of a nuclear bomb. I have described this as a “Sprint to Armageddon.” The mating of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile technology by the Iranian mullahs is precisely the kind of threat for which missile defense deployments are required. And this is especially important in light of one of its senior military leader’s calls on its suicide bombers and ballistic missiles to be used to attack America and her interests.
Former President Ronald Reagan understood this. The Hoover Institution released last year the unclassified summaries of the discussions between the late President and First Secretary Gorbachev at Reykjavik. The latter was pushing for an end to missile defense work. After all he argued why would we need missile defenses if both the US and the Soviet Union were willing to give up such weapons?
Ronald Reagan replied: “The two of us will not be here forever. Perhaps in the future there might be those who want to cheat or there might be madmen such as Hitler who would want to have such a weapon.” He later wrote in his autobiography of this new thinking: he was simply telling Gorbachev that missile defense was an “insurance policy against lunatics who managed to get their hands on a nuclear missile.” The alternative, he warned in March 1988 on the fifth anniversary of his announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative, “People who put their trust in MAD [mutual assured destruction] must trust it to work 100 percent forever – no slip-ups, no madmen, no unmanageable crises. No mistakes – forever.”
[Editor’s note: These remarks have been updated and edited and were first delivered at the Lexington Institute's Missile Defense Conference held in the Rayburn Building, House of Representatives, June 23, 2008]
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Peter Huessy is President of GeoStrategic Analysis, a defense consulting company in Potomac, Maryland.
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