Missile defense plan needs revision

In an impressive speech on Thursday, Dr. Theodore Postol, an MIT professor with a list of awards and honors and long history prestigious positions, completely shot down the proposed Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) system. He proved to me, through declassified photos and simple physics, that the present system is permanently faulted and will never be a workable defense system.

In a world of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, it should be noted that Purdue is basically ground zero for a nuclear assault. If it were a full-scale nuclear attack from a major world power such as Russia or China, the many factories nearby are prime targets for a nuclear blast. And if some fanatic nation wants to teach us decadent capitalists a lesson, Chicago is full of wonderful things (people, Irish pubs, the Cubs) to decimate. Basically, if a nuclear attack happened, there’s a good chance that Purdue would be summarily eradicated, but we would be blissfully spared the more sinister horror of nuclear winter.

The immediate threat of nuclear disaster from major world powers has definitely subsided over the last 10 years with the end of the Cold War, friendly foreign policies, and the assurance that terrorist countries such as Libya could not afford an appropriate delivery system (missiles, stealth bombers). Now, however, the terrorist, or rogue, countries can afford such delivery systems and have made it evident that they are developing them. "The intelligence community continues to project that as we progress through the next 15 years, our country most likely will face ICBM threats from North Korea, probably from Iran and possibly from Iraq," said John McLaughlin, deputy director of the CIA.

Therefore, a national initiative for a missile defense system is absolutely necessary.

One of the chief criticisms of an anti-ballistic missile system is that it will ignite another arms race with world powers such as China and Russia. The scale of defense that we would be implementing would only be able to ward off a limited attack of a small number of incoming missiles (the sort of attack that a small nation could execute). In a nuclear war with Russia, there would be hundreds of missiles showering down on the U.S, rendering the proposed system irrelevant, which negates the argument that Russia will have to build more bombs to compensate our defenses.

Another related criticism relates to the treaty between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The treaty bans anti-ballistic missile development and has been in place for 30 years. This treaty is old and not applicable to the post-Cold War atmosphere. Still, Russia is screaming at us not to trash it when its intent is obsolete.

One of the most important criticisms of an anti-ballistic missile system is that it may not actually work. In the present form that has been tested recently in Alaska, this is dishearteningly true. The present form of this defense system will never be able to stop a nuclear attack.

The method that is currently undergoing testing involves the use of a rocket with a "kill vehicle" that can, theoretically, discern a nuclear warhead from a cluster of decoys and slam into it with enough force to vaporize it while it is in the upper levels of the atmosphere.

Postol showed that an incoming warhead would be accompanied by numerous decoys that mimic the heat, size, shape, brightness, motion and any other observable characteristic of the actual warhead. This makes it impossible for the kill vehicle to effectively identify the warhead no matter how advanced the technology, or how fast the computers.

There have been some recent tests where a warhead was discerned from a decoy, but only when the decoy was a different shape and twice the size of the warhead. In addition, the missile was given the profile of the movements of the decoy so it could easily discern the two. This test was heralded as a success. The Pentagon has scheduled another test with almost exactly the same conditions, likely only to get another success under their belt and gain public approval.

This particular missile defense system should be scrapped altogether. I have no doubt that there is another feasible alternative, whether it be a network of space and ground-based lasers, a missile with a detonating kill vehicle that would destroy the warhead and all the decoys, or a fleet of X-Wing fighters. The money that would be spent on further tests of this system should be spent on research for an alternative method. We should absolutely pursue a defense system, just not the one that we have now.

Otherwise, we can simply take comfort in the assurance that if a radical nut-ball state lobbed a nuke at us, it is likely that we would calmly unleash the fury of our nuclear potential and turn their pitiful little country into quartz.

John Wakefield is a senior in the School of Liberal Arts. He can be reached at opinions@purdueexponent.org.

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