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APPENDIX J
Controlling Instabilities Caused by Rogue Governments
Glenn A.
Kent, Rand
THE EMERGING THREAT
We are now faced with the emerging threat of rogue nations
capable of employing weapons of mass destruction (biological,
chemical, or even nuclear). The more likely delivery systems
include cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and containers
delivered by persons or land vehicles.
IMPLICATIONS OF THIS THREAT
The capability of a rogue nation to attack (or even threaten to
attack) nearby neighbors with weapons equipped with nuclear,
biological, or chemical warheads will surely create serious
instabilities. A rogue government may come to believe that it can
deter the United States from responding to its aggression by
threatening retaliation against nearby neighbors or U.S. forces
with weapons of mass destruction. And, thus, the rogue government
may not be deterred from embarking upon the aggression in the first
place.
Even a rogue nation, in going through the complex dynamics
described above, must take into account that if the scenario plays
out, it, as well, may be deterred from actually carrying out the
threat of retaliating. If the leaders of a rogue nation indeed
engaged in a retaliatory attack(s), they would face the threat that
the United States might destroy their country—and could do so
even with the use of conventional weapons. Also, the rogue leader
will always have in mind that the United States possesses the
capability to employ nuclear weapons anywhere and anytime.
However, the United States must take seriously that the scenario
plays out and the rogue nation is not deterred from carrying out
its threat and retaliates because the United States has responded
to its aggression. Thus, the United States should (must) have the
capability to limit damage if deterrence fails. Also, the
capability of the United States to actually defeat or neutralize an
enemy retaliatory attack will weigh heavily on the decision of
whether the United States can build a coalition and respond in the
first place.
A DEFENSE IN DEPTH
Surely the United States will make every effort to prevent the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Also, if preventing
proliferation fails, as is likely to some degree, then the United
States can take actions to deny an enemy
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continued possession by counterforce operations against both the
weapons themselves and the means of delivery. Note that these
counterforce operations, although preemptive to launch of the enemy
missiles, are not necessarily preemptive in a more strategic sense.
The rogue may already be in violation of some treaty or sanction
simply by the possession of such weapons.
If counterforce operations against possession fail (as surely
they will to some degree), then the next barrier is to deter their
use. The next barrier is to attack the missiles (cruise or
ballistic) if, and after, they have been launched. The last barrier
is in ''passive defense."
So, we see that active defenses play an important role in the
complex dynamics of who is deterring whom:
• They play a role in limiting damage if the rogue nation
employs weapons of mass destruction in retaliation because the
United States responded by large-scale military actions.
• Active defenses also play a role in the decision process
by the rogue government as to whether or not to launch a
retaliatory attack in retaliation to the U.S. response.
• Thus, they play a role in the decision as to whether or
not the United States is deterred from responding.
• Thus, they play a role in whether the rogue nation is
deterred from aggression in the first place.
The remainder of this paper focuses on one aspect of active
defenses: namely, intercepting ballistic missiles after launch.
AN APPROACH TO INTERCEPTING BALLISTIC
MISSILES AFTER LAUNCH
One of the likely threats is a ballistic missile equipped with
small canisters loaded with biological or chemical agents. There is
also the possibility of missiles equipped with nuclear warheads and
midcourse decoys. Further, these canisters and decoys can be
dispensed once the enemy missile gains the right velocity toward
the target. It is clearly not feasible to provide enough
interceptors at each target we intend to defend to engage all the
canisters and decoys in the inventory of the rogue nation. This
argues for operational concepts that enable the United States to
engage the enemy missile itself prior to the event of dispensing
the submunitions or decoys. In effect, putting a "cap" over the
territory of the rogue nation means no ballistic missiles can exit
the territory. The "cap" ensures that the agents will fall on enemy
territory and not on the territory we seek to defend.
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Intercepting missiles before "fractionation" means that time is
critical. And since time is compressed, we need a very short time
loop from sensor to assessor/controller to shooter. We need a short
time between the time a sensor observes the launch and the time a
"bullet" arrives at the booster or the postboost vehicle. For one
thing, this means we need fast interceptors.
For defenses that use "hit-to-kill" vehicles (and other types of
warheads), the "footprint"1 of the
defense battery depends critically on the rated velocity of the
interceptor, the interceptor being the vehicle that gets the
"terminal engagement vehicle" in the basket of the target. The
footprint of an interceptor rated at 6 km/s is about twice that of
an interceptor rated at 3 km/s. If the engagement time (time begins
when sensors provide enough information for a controller to order
the launch of an interceptor and ends just before the submunitions
are dispensed) is 100 s, a 3 km/s interceptor is said to have a
footprint of 300 km; similarly, a 6 km/s interceptor has a
footprint of twice that, or 600 km. On the other hand, if the
engagement time is only 50 s, then a 12 km/s interceptor is
required to maintain a footprint of 600 km.
The interceptors could be deployed on an unmanned aerial
vehicle. In this case, a footprint of 300 km would be effective,
assuming, of course, that the vehicle can operate (dwell) over the
areas where we are invoking a "cap."
The "interceptor" could be a laser beam deployed on some
aircraft at high altitude. In this case, the speed of the bullets
is quite impressive. However, the "footprint" may be constrained
because the lethality decreases with range.
The interceptors could be deployed on ships. Employing
interceptors on ships has the following attributes:
• Ships are high on access. Since "footprints" are
constrained, having access to the right areas will be critical, and
combat naval ships provide an effective means of gaining this
access.
• For example, take the case of covering Iraq and Iran.
Interceptors could be based on ships in the upper reaches of the
Persian Gulf and the eastern reaches of the Mediterranean Sea. A
simple survey on a globe reveals that a footprint of something like
1,000 km is required to cover Iran and Iraq from these sites. If
sites for interceptors were also available in either the Caspian
Sea or Pakistan, then a "footprint" of around 750 km would suffice.
Also, the more remote areas of Iran could be covered by one (or
both) of the other means discussed earlier-for example,
interceptors with "hit-to-kill" vehicles on stealthy unmanned
aerial vehicles deployed at high altitudes over designated
areas.
1 The metric of "footprint" is range
(kilometers). The launch point of an enemy missile is said to be
within the "footprint" of our interceptor if the interceptor can
reach the missile before the missile dispenses the
submunitions.
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• For the case of covering North Korea, access to the right
areas is straightforward with ship-based defense units.
• Ships can remain on station. Ships provide a platform
that lends itself to being on station. So do land-based batteries
(but such batteries depend on gaining rights from some foreign
government).
• Ships can employ large interceptors. Ships allow for
employing large interceptors, and large interceptors may be
required to gain the velocities needed to gain the footprints
required. The footprints "required," in turn, depend on which
nation is being "capped" and on where our interceptors can be
deployed.
• Ships are mobile. The defense battery can be positioned
according to the direction of the national leaders.
• The one drawback is that interceptors off ships must
traverse Earth's atmosphere and this poses a constraint on how fast
the interceptor can go initially, until free of the atmosphere.
SUGGESTED ACTIONS
All of the above suggests that the U.S. Navy should undertake a
serious effort toward formulating and defining operational concepts
to place a "cap" over designated areas—a cap in the sense that
no ballistic missiles can exit the area. Problems in defining a
viable overall concept exist at four levels:
• At the system level—The concept of a
superfast interceptor will be front and center. Trajectory shaping
to arrive at the target in the shortest time possible will be
critical. In fact, the overall concept for providing an effective
"cap" over Iran and Iraq may indeed fail because of the limits on
how fast interceptors can go.
• At the tactical level—The operational
concept must define how to accomplish "dynamic engagement control."
This involves the interaction of sensors, assessors, controllers,
and shooters to make the time loops for engaging the target as
short as possible, so that we have "iron" on target prior to
dispensing.
• At the operational level—At this
level, some "joint integrator" must address how these defense
batteries on ships operate in concert with other types of defense
batteries to achieve the overall operational objective—no
enemy ballistic missiles can exit a designated area. For example,
for certain countries, like Iraq and Iran, the footprints of
the
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ship-based batteries may be much less than desired, and we must
employ other concepts to cover the more remote areas of that
country.
• At the strategic level—At this level,
we must address how to go about getting the needed political
mandate for placing a "cap" over some designated area—the
mandate coming from international organizations like NATO or the
United Nations.
Also, we must address the question of maintaining the intent of
the Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty of 1972 in the presence of
these theater missile defenses; the intent of the treaty, stated
broadly, is to provide effective measures to limit the capability
to defend the territory of each country—the United States and
now Russia. Reconciling these two objectives will be tractable if
we keep in mind that we are striving to maintain the intent of the
ABM Treaty of 1972-—this being quite distinct from maintaining
the language and approach inherent in the present treaty.
Specifically, we limit the capability of defense units to defend
the territory of the United States by where the ships (defense
units) are deployed-not by how fast the interceptors can
travel.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
ballistic missiles
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