Missile defense proves its strength in the skies over Israel and Ukraine

Skeptics have fired shots at the very idea of ​​missile defense for decades, starting in the 1980s when President Ronald Reagan proposed his Strategic Defense Initiative, dubbed “Star Wars” by critics. They dismissed the idea of ​​a space-based missile-killing laser as a pipe dream.

After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, after-action assessments concluded that the vaunted US Patriot missile did not work as advertised, and never successfully intercepted any of the highly inaccurate Iraqi Scud missiles, including one that struck a US military barracks in Saudi Arabia, which killed 28 American soldiers. troops and injured nearly 100 others.

Since then, American rocket scientists have spent more than three decades and hundreds of billions of dollars perfecting the technology to knock incoming missiles out of the sky. It is once a task compared to the difficulty of hitting a bullet with a bullet.

The Patriot system, initially designed to shoot down aircraft, was redesigned after the Gulf War to use a hit-to-kill warhead.

“Patriot hit about zero during Desert Storm. This new rocket might shoot .300, but it won’t beat a thousand,” said John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists in 1994.

Over the years, the concept of missile defense has been refined and reimagined as a multi-layered shield with different systems for destroying different types of missiles at different altitudes, trajectories and speeds.

One concept that was tested and rejected would have mounted a high-powered laser on a Boeing 747 airframe to zap missiles in the boost phase.

After years of unimpressive testing, pessimism about the prospects for a viable system began to calcify into cynicism in some scientific circles.

‘What they did is they came up with an elaborate set of arguments, all of which on the surface look like serious analysis, but are in fact nonsense. It’s nonsense,” said Ted Postol, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 2000. “The technology is completely inadequate for solving the problem they claim to be solving.”

Even when interceptors hit dummy warheads in tests, critics argued that the tests were too easy or that in the real world, mylar balloons or other decoys would confuse targeting radars and easily thwart defenses.

One of the harshest critics was then-chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joe Biden. The Delaware Democrat argued in a September 10, 2001, speech to the National Press Club during President George W. Bush’s first year in office that missile defense was too expensive and too porous — and also that it would risk a new arms race by undermining the now established defunct anti-ballistic missile treaty.

“Are we willing to end four decades of arms control agreements to go it alone, a kind of bully country?” Biden said, arguing that deterrence alone was a sufficient defense against enemy missile attacks.

“Name me a time in the last 500 years when the leader of a nation state has said, ‘I know I’m going to face virtual annihilation if I take the next action, but I’m going to go ahead, and I’m going to do it. anyway,” biden said, according to a WashingtonPost account, which described his speech as a “spirited attack on President Bush’s plans for national missile defense.”

But the Pentagon pressed ahead, pouring billions into developing systems designed to counter a range of threats, including surface- and ship-based missiles for the exo-atmospheric interception of long-range ballistic missiles, THAAD, or the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System. short, medium and intermediate range ballistic missiles, and the Patriot as the last line of defense against cruise missiles, drones and aircraft.

As the technology matured, confidence grew that missile defense could be a game-changer under actual combat conditions.

When the new, state-of-the-art Patriot missile batteries arrived in Ukraine last year, they quickly became standout performers of the Ukrainian air defense, shooting down everything in sight, including a Russian Kinzhal hypersonic missile.

Then came the evening of April 13 and early morning of April 14, when Iran unleashed some 170 drones, 120 ballistic missiles and 30 cruise missiles in a massive attack that spectacularly defeated Israel with the help of a military coalition that included ships and included aircraft. from the United States, Great Britain, France and Jordan.

The combined forces were able to shoot down 99% of incoming projectiles, preventing loss of life or significant damage to infrastructure.

It was “a historic turning point for missile defense,” Riki Ellison, president and founder of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, said at a forum a few days after the attack.

“Just a flawless, perfect game. It is a perfect missile defense architecture that has been implemented. … It all came together and no one died,” Ellison said. “It’s amazing. It was a massive attack by Iran, with the intent to kill, with the intent to destroy infrastructure, and nothing happened.”

Experts assembled by Ellison for a post-mission analysis claimed that the unprecedented success of the coordinated effort effectively refuted decades of specious arguments that portrayed missile defense as a fool’s errand.

“Critics said missile defenses could easily be overwhelmed. … It is very easy, they said, for the attacker to simply launch more missiles,” noted John Rood, former assistant secretary of defense for policy in the Trump administration.

“What we saw is the Iranians using the playbook that Russia used to great effect in Ukraine, launching waves of slow-moving drones that saturate the air defense picture,” Rood said. “The Israelis, helped by the United States and our allies, really showed that the opposite was true: that with the right kind of planning, with the right kind of defense, you can be effective.”

Among the U.S. systems that passed the real-world test with flying colors were the SPY-1D radars on two U.S. guided-missile destroyers, the USS Arleigh Burke And USS Carneywhich guided SM-3 “standard” interceptor missiles to destroy Iranian missiles above the upper atmosphere.

It was the first time the naval system was used in combat.

“Critics have been saying for years that missile defense is not cost-effective. After all, offensive missiles are cheaper to produce than defensive missiles,” Rood continued. “Some have even exaggerated to say that 99% effectiveness would simply not be enough in missile defense. The leaks would simply be too serious. Well, what we saw in Israel is exactly the opposite. About 99% of the effectiveness claimed by the IDF was effective enough, and the few leaks did not cause a destabilizing situation.”

In many ways, that was the greatest success of the virtually impenetrable missile shield – it allowed Israel to respond with a calibrated attack using stand-off missiles, demonstrating to Iran that its missile defenses could be easily penetrated and therefore its nuclear site at Natanz was vulnerable. while at the same time limiting the damage so that Iran can save face by not responding further.

A dangerous tit-for-tat cycle was avoided.

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“Missile defense is stabilizing. They do not destabilize. They offer opportunities to de-escalate. They offer options to not be provocative. They offer options instead of priority,” Rood argued. “Of course, arms control and diplomacy have been tried hard by this administration and previous administrations with Iran, but they have failed to deter and prevent these types of attacks. And it only highlights the deep flaws of this dangerous approach that has been advocated by missile defense critics for decades.”

Effective missile defense allowed time for rational decision-making, Ellison said. “There is time, there is a pause, there is no emotional response. That stabilized this and prevented a war,” he said. “It’s something phenomenal and we should celebrate that.”