Photograph illustration by Thomas Gaulkin (source photo: Scott Olson/Getty, Kremlin, KCNA)
The defenders of national missile defense live in a magical world. Fantasy is replaced by science, claims are replaced by facts, and manga weapons can replace the real abilities.
But this permanent fantasy has an actual result.
Last week, a pledge of building a “next -generation missile defense shield” to defeat “Foreign Aviation Attack in Hometown (a space -based interceptor” last week has caused a predictable reaction. Russia has accused him of a Trump plan in his new presidential order, “American Iron Dome”.
However, there is no magic shield to protect the United States from nuclear attacks.
An idea that does not die. According to Trump’s plan on Friday, a spokesman of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, “To enhance US nuclear weapons and develop and develop a space -based intercept system, to implement combat in space. We assume the means directly. “
“We consider this as another confirmation in the United States. We focus on changing the space into a armed conflict stage.
Russian reactions may give up Trump’s desire to negotiate nuclear weapons. If so, it repeats strategic defense in nuclear weapons competition in the Cold War. Efforts to build a national defense always cause efforts to overcome them with more missiles and other repulsions, which are famous security.
However, despite all the formal technical and geopolitical evidence of such schemes, “the religion of national missile defense never dies,” said Washington Post’s Columnist Max Boot.
It’s not a coincidence that Trump’s new order has been completely released from the PROJECT 2025 WISH list of Heritage Foundation. In the 1980s, the group defended the original dream of President Ronal Dragan, saying, “It is to put a shield in space where missiles could not be penetrated. Shield that can protect, “he said in high school, as I mentioned in 1986.
“Like a very effective system with the same name in Israel, Trump’s iron dome will provide an inseparable defense that brings peace to Americans,” said Victoria of the Heritage Foundation.・ Cots said. “Approximately 40 years ago, she would satisfy President Reagan’s vision for Reacan Strategy Defense Initiative,” she added.
I am destined to fail. Trump’s presidential ordinance is a mess of false claims and imaginary solutions. It begins with declaring the risk of missile attacks that the United States is the most catastrophic threat. It will surprise most experts about existing risks. The climate crisis, new pandemic, artificial intelligence, and the threat of inconvenienced cyber attacks are all as devastating as nuclear weapons provided by other means. However, the inflation of the threat was always an important part of effort to justify urgent behavior and large -scale investment.
Trump argues that “the threats of next -generation strategic weapons have become more intense and complicated, rather than decreasing for the past 40 years.” Despite being completely nonsense, this claim has hardly been challenged.
It is true that new technologies have enhanced missiles, but missiles threats to the United States have dramatically reduced. The Weapon Management Convention and the collapse of the Soviet Union have greatly reduced the number of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons missiles that threaten the United States.
In 1985, the Soviet Union deployed 2,345 land and submarine -based missiles with more than 9,300 nuclear warheads. That was the threat that Reagan wanted to make his missile shield a “powerless and outdated”.
Thanks to the negotiated agreement, today’s Russia is only 521 missiles carrying 2,236 warheads. China’s land nuclear weapons missiles that can reach the United States have increased from 20 in 1985 to 135 today (carrying 238 warheads), and perhaps one of the 72 -band submarine -based missiles. In short, today’s United States faces the number of enemy missiles, about one -fifth compared to the fourth -quarter of the nuclear warhead (728 to 2,365 missiles, 2,546 to 9,320 warheads). 。 It is still a very dangerous threat, but not a bigger threat.
If weapon control succeeded, missile defense technology failed.
Neither of the Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and the score of the system developed by its successor organization is not approaching Reagan’s promised shield. At that time, national missile defense did not work. They do not work now. They probably won’t work.
A costly delusion. “The administration has been billions to Congress for the past eight years, as a member of the Michigan Democratic Party, who left a survey by the SDI’s large -scale government committee in 1991,” for the past eight years. It has been significantly succeeded by giving it, but it has been significant to produce many things. I spun on the straw.
I was the chief investigator of Conniers of those hearing. I have supervised SDI since the first testimony to Congress in 1984. Later, the authorities promised a mysterious shield. They delivered BOONDOGGLES.
“Money was poured into these exotic weapon projects and later abandoned,” said Connight. “$ 1 billion for free electronic lasers. $ 1 billion for boost monitoring and tracking satellites. $ 72 billion for space -based chemical lasers. $ 700 million in neutral particle beams. 300 million aerial aircraft. 6 million dollars continue.
To conceal these mistakes, Trump accuses you of a deep conspiracy (as you lose the election and do everything with the fatal airplane crash dropping). He claims a Reagan program in a new order that it was “canceled before the goal was realized.” Later, in accordance with Trump’s presidential order, he handcuffed the US population and restricted his efforts to “go ahead of fraudulent threats and accidental or unauthorized missiles.”
Again, this is nonsense. It has been revealed that Reagan and subsequent presidents have reduced the program to get some executable defense, as the space -based laser weapon Edward Terror has told Reagan that Reagan is a fantasy. did. However, after spending more than $ 415 billion for decades, all the United States is a 44 ground interceptor in Alaska and California, and may reach a cooperative target with carefully scripted demonstrations. 。 Congress is currently assigned $ 30 billion per year to missile defense and defeat programs, and mostly operated by SDI successors, a missile defense organization.
It is not an iron dome. Like an iron colander. The main technical issue that remains unresolved and ultimately forced all SDI’s ambitious plans is the same as the same as the effect of more than 60 years of effective ballistic missile defense.
Ability to overwhelm the system with an aggressive missile. Suspected survival of space -based weapons. The actual warhead cannot be distinguished between hundreds or thousands of decoys. The problem of designing combat management, commands, controls, and communication that can function in nuclear wars. And the low trust in the ability that the system is first and perhaps in the time it is used.
These issues have already been detailed in detail in the breaking columns, the report of the parliament, and the independent expert research. This includes two major roles in Star Wars discussions. Ballistic missile defense research.
These and other technical issues must be solved before developing an effective missile defense system. In the long term, new technologies, especially the energy weapons, have some promises. However, in the short term, there is almost no reason for blind technical optimism.
It is a fusion of a limited number of protection of defensive defenses and the possibility of destroying hundreds of long -range ballistic missiles, so it is intentionally confused politicians who are susceptible to the US public. Part of sales effort.
“Israel has an iron dome. Trump promised last year at the Republican Tournament.” Why do you have this in other countries or not? “
It is a president because it is technically impossible to build a system that can protect the United States from ballistic missile attacks. There is no amount of hats territories to change it.
“The iron dome protects a small area from a short -range non -nuclear missile. Laura Grego, a missile defense expert, explains.
“The possibility of comprehensive missile defense in the United States in the foreseeable future,” said James N. Miller, the chief of the Obama administration. “We do not escape the destruction of mutual guarantee with Russia and China.”
The only way to eliminate the threat of nuclear weapons missiles, as has been repeated over the past 60 years, is to negotiate exclusion. Pretending to be a magic shield that can exist, only worsens the problem of national missile defense.
