The Prospects for a National Missile Defense :: Research Papers

The Prospects for a National Missile Defense Imagine this scenario: approximately fifteen intercontinental ballistic missiles are unintentionally launched from Russia. The missiles are equipped with several nuclear warheads, and their final target is the United States. The United States already possesses an early-warning system and thus detects the missiles more than twenty minutes before they land. However, even though they can detect the missiles, the United States has no means of defending itself from them. If even one of the warheads lands inside the United States, the consequences will be devastating. Hundreds of thousands will perish, millions more will suffer life-altering injuries and diseases, and the targeted city will lie in ruins. The prospect of a ballistic missile attack has been a fear in the United States since the 1950s, and that concern has been renewed with the end of the Cold War. Currently nations have limited means of protecting themselves. Both Russia and the United States have the bounded capability to d efend against short-range missiles, but neither can protect their territory from intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). As a result of a growing concern in the United States, Congress has pushed for a national missile defense system. The purpose of a national missile defense system is to destroy a ballistic missile launched on the US before it can ever reach it. If an operational national missile defense system were implemented, the United States would theoretically be able to thwart any ballistic missile attack on any of its fifty states. Two questions must be answered, however, before the United States begins the implementation of a national missile defense system. First, how feasible and reliable is the technology of the system? Second, assuming that the defense system would be operational and could protect the United States against a ballistic missile attack, what implications would such a system hold for international security? That is, would it serve as a stabilizing or destabilizing factor? This paper will serve to show that the technology for NMD is feasible when its technical components are looked at individually, and it is only a matter of years before a national missile defense system could be minimally operational. However, if countermeasures are taken against an NMD system, it will never be completely successful in a ballistic missile attack. Finally, regardless of its feasibility an NMD system would destabilize international security and could possibly even reinitiate another arms race, and for this reason, alternatives should be considered.