US Nuclear Countermeasures Are Inefficient

A new research paper says that existing nuclear deterrent measures at work in the United States are a danger to national security, and qualifies them as pure fantasy. The document shows that the new strategy, set in place this year, needs immediate revision.

The paper appears in the SAGE publication Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (BAS), and deals with the effects of the new nuclear strategy that the country adopted in April 2010.

At this point, missile defense systems are the only things in the US that authorities in Washington DC rely on to protect the nation in the unlikely event of all-out nuclear war.

These assets, which include the Ground-Based Missile Defense (GMD) and Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) systems, have never been tested in live conditions, and their effectiveness is doubtful at best, the research shows.

In real-world combat conditions, these systems may fall, with potentially devastating consequences, the BAS article goes on to say.

The US now relies heavily on GMD, assuming that the rockets are capable of protecting against potential nuclear threats from rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea. These systems are deployed along the coastlines.

One of the things the authors of the new paper are concerned about is that Iran is already developing countermeasures to the American nuclear countermeasures, and that the Middle-Eastern nation is successful in its researches.

The work was authored by expert analysts George Lewis and Theodore Postol and entitled How US strategic antimissile defense could be made to work, Science Blog reports. 

The authors believe that the GMD system should be dropped as the main defense measure against long-range nuclear ballistic missiles, and replaced with more versatile defense platforms.

The goal is not to protect US soil exclusively, but also preventing Northern and Western Europe, or Northern Russia from being hit. Stealth drones could easily do this, the experts say, and more effectively too.

These robotic aircraft would carry specialized fast interceptor, that would be capable of proficiently striking nuclear missiles while still in flight. This would eliminate the risk of failure, which increases if the missiles get the chance to deploy countermeasures.

An added benefit to this approach would be that relationships with the Russian Federation will not be affected. Existing and future arms-reduction treaties will also remain unaffected.

Under the New START treaty signed earlier this year by US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, the countries will reduce their stockpiles to 1,550 ready-to-use, long-range nuclear weapons.

“The situation is urgent, as Iran is already demonstrating countermeasures in flight tests that would render both the GMD and SM-3 long-range missile defense systems ineffective,” Lewis explains.

“If we, as a nation, refuse to confront the fact that our chosen defense system is not reliable, and if we fail to build a robust and reliable alternative system using existing technology, we will have only ourselves to blame if the continental United States suffers a catastrophe as a result of the successful delivery of a nuclear weapon by long-range ballistic missile,” the experts conclude.