RUTHFULLY YOURS

“Missile defense needs to be part of the United States’ strategy” against North Korean nuclear threats, conceded even a February 11 New York Times editorial in an incoherent anti-missile defense rant.  Yet the Times still derided vital missile defense efforts like Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD), a continuation of the leftist Gray Lady’s longstanding dangerous folly of opposition to protecting America’s homeland from nuclear attack.

The Times probably would have preferred that President Donald Trump had kept his initial Fiscal Year 2018 budget request with the missile defense spending levels of his predecessor, Barack Obama.  However, growing North Korean nuclear threats prompted Trump and legislators to add $368 million to missile defense, reflecting a growing missile defense commitment noted on March 7 before Congress by undersecretary of defense John C. Rood.  The Alaska- and California-based GMD is central to these missile defense efforts.  As the Center for Security and International Studies (CSIS) notes, GMD “is currently the only U.S. missile defense system devoted to defending the U.S. homeland from long-range ballistic missile attacks.”

Nonetheless, the Times simply repeated decades-old sophistries about missile defense’s futility, something that “will never provide a foolproof, comprehensive shield against a nuclear adversary.”  “After more than 30 years of research and more than $200 billion, the nation’s ballistic missile defense program remains riddled with flaws, even as the threat from North Korean missiles escalates,” the Times wrote.  The Times cited a 2016 Pentagon report that supposedly “faulted” missile defenses (it actually describes GMD’s “limited capability to defend the U.S. Homeland”).

Correspondingly, military leaders like United States Air Force (USAF) general Lori J. Robinson, the United States Northern Command commander, refute the Times.  During February 15 Senate testimony, Robinson responded to the Times editorial, saying, “I have one hundred percent confident [sic] in my ability to defend the United States.”  Recent missile defense budget increases allow America strategically to “continue to outpace everybody and it gives me more and more confidence, continued confidence, in our ability to defend the United States.”

Consistent criticism from the Times and others of GMD’s past missile intercept testing failures ignores the analysis of retired USAF lieutenant general Dan Leaf, former Air Force Space Command vice commander.  He documents how America’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA) “has an impressive record of testing, correcting failures and improving the system.”  The Hudson Institute’s Rebecca Heinrichs agrees while noting that repeated testing failures, a common occurrence in any weapons development, have not deterred North Korea from developing nuclear-armed missiles.

“Five out of eight tests of operationally configured Ground Based Interceptors, or GBIs, have resulted in successful intercepts,” Heinrichs has observed in GMD’s record.  Two testing failures involved a new Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV), the GBI’s payload that destroys a missile in space and keeps debris far from targets, unlike America’s other non-GMD missile defenses.  Subsequent improvements to the kill vehicle made a third test successful, reflecting how individual missile tests have unique, evolving characteristics.

An April 2017 CSIS report details how GMD’s present flaws are not technologically insurmountable.  “None of the test failures, however, indicated a fundamental flaw with the basic long-range concept or hit-to-kill technology,” but resulted from things “as simple as an error in a line of software code.”  “Significantly more can be done to improve on the capacity, capability, and reliability of today’s homeland missile defenses,” the report concludes, such as with a forthcoming Redesigned Kill Vehicle (RKV).

Yet the report warns that deficient political commitment represented by the Times can foil GMD effectiveness, as homeland missile defense spending in 2017 dollars declined from a 2002 high of $4.5 billion to $2 billion by 2016.  “In the Obama years, some extraordinary damage was done” to missile defense programs, concurred former senator John Kyle, a staunch missile defense advocate.  “Despite much progress, GMD remains in a form that might be described as an advanced prototype, still owing much to a basic design and technologies from the 1990s,” the CSIS accordingly noted.

The Times’ general opposition to missile defenses additionally ignores that American defenses do not rely solely on GMD (or any other system, like the sea-based Aegis with its own testing mishaps) as a “foolproof, comprehensive shield.”  Rather, Trump’s new National Security Strategy announced in December 2017 the goal that a “layered missile defense system will defend our homeland against missile attacks” in partnership with countries like Japan and South Korea.  Thus, national security experts like Angelo Codevilla recommend implementation of long-desired American proposals to develop space-based sensor systems and airborne lasers that can destroy missiles in their vulnerable boost phase right after launch.

Reflecting prevalent Times’ criticism of any military modernization, the Times also asserts that effective missile defense might not even be desirable.  In this bizarre analysis, a false security induced by missile defense might encourage reckless policies.  Trump “would make a serious error if faith in missile defense led him to take military action against North Korea,” warns the Times.

Kyle counters that the stability offered by missile defenses provides a “lot more flexibility to do whatever you’re going to do – whether it’s with more sanctions or whatever,” like the various North Korean policies advocated by the Times.  Conversely, the Heritage Foundation’s Michaela Dodge analyzes the dangers of an America unprotected by missile defenses.  Then a North Korean missile crisis could force the United States to attempt a risky preemption, retreat humiliatingly under threat, or absorb a devastating nuclear attack.

Codevilla particularly examines how America’s vulnerability affects an alliance with South Korea.  “China’s main operational goal in Northeast Asia is to wean South Korea away from the U.S.  It’s doing this by saying, ‘Look, the Americans can’t protect you'” given North Korean nuclear threats.  “But if the Americans had a new missile defense – it would be a game changer.”

International political commentator David P. Goldman decisively refutes the Times’ position on North Korea’s darkening missile shadow.  Currently, the United States is “without reliable missile defense, allowing a spoiler with a minor inventory the opportunity to blackmail the world’s most powerful country.”  Yet the United States clearly commands the technological resources that could “simply make Pyongyang’s investment in nuclear-weapons technology irrelevant and obsolete.”  The Times’ continued caviling against such sensible missile defense steps is the height of irresponsibility.