It's the military industrial complex, stupid or
Maybe it isn't ALL about oil.
WMDs, Democracy, Gassed his own people, Rape Rooms, Freedom
are all red herrings.
It's the Bases, Stupid
Missile Defense Might Need Iraq, Afghanistan Bases
By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — A U.S. national missile defense system may someday require interceptor bases in Iraq and Afghanistan to defend against long-range Iranian ballistic missiles, according to a congressional study published this summer.
The Congressional Budget Office study “Alternatives for Boost-Phase
Missile Defense” in July concluded that several factors — including limits to the maximum speed of U.S. interceptor missiles, Iran’s size, and the time needed to make decisions — could create the need to base missile interceptors just east and west of Iran for a comprehensive land-based, boost-phase defense.
“If two launch sites were needed, they could be located in Iraq to the east and Afghanistan to the west,” it says.
Securing permission for foreign basing could therefore be essential for providing an effective boost-phase defense against Iran, the study says.
“Surface-based BPI [boost-phase intercept] systems would need to be deployed to sites in countries adjacent to the threat country being covered, which would require permission from the host nations. … In the case of missile defense, being denied basing access could complicate BPI efforts to the point of rendering them infeasible,” it says.
If the United States were to develop extremely fast missile interceptors that could travel eight to 10 kilometers per second, then Iranian missiles could be shot down from bases in just two countries: Iraq and Afghanistan, the study says.
To defend against Iranian missiles using the slower interceptor technology under development, however, could require adding missile defense sites in Turkmenistan and in the waters of the Persian Gulf or the Gulf of Oman, according to the study.
U.S. access to basing in Turkmenistan or Azerbaijan is “less assured” than the other sites, the report says.
“The CBO report comes to the same conclusion as the American Physical Society report a year earlier. And in both cases, what they point out is that for boost-phase missile defense to work, you the defender have got to be very close and very fast,” said Philip Coyle of the Center for Defense Information (see GSN, July 15).
“And so it doesn’t work if the country that you’re worried about is very large and Iran is big enough so that you can’t cover all of Iran from one place. You sort of have to surround it.”
No Deployment Plans Indicated
The Bush administration is pursuing multiple, different technological approaches for defending the U.S. homeland against ICBMs: boost-phase defenses, which strike enemy missiles soon after they launch; midcourse defenses, which attack enemy warheads in space; and terminal defenses, which attack them as warheads near their targets.
The administration plans on deploying some components of a midcourse system this year, and fielding elements of a boost-phase system in the Pacific by next year for future defense against a potential North Korean capability.
Officials have not disclosed any plans for positioning a boost-phase defense against Iran. The CBO study said Iran and North Korea were chosen for its analysis as “representative threats.” Iran was identified, though, by the U.S. intelligence community in a 2001 report as the most likely southwest Asian ICBM threat to emerge, with the potential for developing a capability by 2015.
The Bush administration in a budget document this year indicated plans to develop and demonstrate anti-ICBM boost-phase missile defenses by 2008 and 2009.
Assumptions
The CBO study assessed the costs and technical trade-offs of five options — three ground- and sea-based and two space-based — for boost-phase defenses against theoretical Iranian and North Korean capabilities.
It concluded that costs to develop and operate a surface-based, boost-phase defense for 20 years could range from $16 billion to $37 billion and for space-based, $27 billion to $78 billion.
Those figures, however, included a number of assumptions, according to the Congressional Budget Office. For instance, the office assessed a limited ground-based defense against 30 ICBMs for both countries.
The surface-based options assume buying 112 interceptors and deploying 60 of them, with 52 reserved for tests and spares. The office assumed that such a force would allow for an attempted defense against 30 ICBMs, assigning two interceptors per ICBM.
More interceptors could be required to address the potential that an adversary might expand its ICBM arsenal, or fire decoys to waste U.S. interceptors, the study says.
“The threat country could try to saturate a defensive site by launching more than three ICBMs or some combination of actual ICBMs and decoys intended to draw BPI fire,” it says.
Low effectiveness of the interceptors once developed also could affect the cost, with greater production and deployment needed to increase the probability for success.
In addition, greater numbers of faster interceptors and more bases near Iran could be required to defend against faster solid-fuel missiles, were Iran to develop those.
“If the enemy figures out how to build solid-fueled [missiles] … it’s almost impossible” to defend against them with a ground-based system, Coyle said.
Defense Considerations
The CBO calculations also do not factor for the potential cost of protecting the interceptor bases.
The study says that the bases themselves would need to be defended against short- to medium-range Iranian missiles.
“Short-range ballistic missiles or cruise missiles, as well as attack aircraft, from that country could reach a BPI surface site. Consequently, the site might require its own defenses, such as Patriot missiles for air defense and a ground force for perimeter defense,” it says.
For the purposes of its analysis, the study assumes the sites would be located about 100 kilometers away from the borders of Iran, so that they “would be out of range of artillery or unguided rockets.”
Rascal @MissilesAreUs.com
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