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ABM AS A USELESS ENGINEERING EXERCISE

RIA Novosti

MOSCOW (RIA Novosti political commentator Andrei Kislyakov) - Lieutenant General Henry Obering, director of the US Missile Defense Agency, will hardly get acclaim from his president, as a planned launch of an antimissile failed. But Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov was congratulated by President Vladimir Putin in November last year, when he reported on the successful trials of the Russian analogue of the US NMD system.

The launches of American interceptor missiles were not successful last year. The first, over the last two years, launch held on December 15 as part of flight tests was a complete fiasco. The launch on February 13 this year, the first of a series of five trial launches planned for this year, was abortive, probably because of malfunctions in the ground system.

This brings us to a simple question: Why do we need this expensive business? Of course, the triumph of research-technical and engineering thought in any sphere of human endeavor confirms the infinite nature of cognition, which is commendable. But what are the practical applications?

The US stated more than once that its National Missile Defense system, subsequently renamed Ballistic Missile Defense, is designed to combat terrorist aspirations to launch a missile strike at the territory of the US or its allies. But, according to experts in the US, Europe and Asia, nobody - apart from Britain, France, Russia and China - will be able to really threaten the US in the next 15 years.

Washington no longer views Russia and China as potential threats. Or does it? In this case, it will be even more difficult to answer the question about the practicality of the BMD system for the US.

A Russian BMD expert, Lieutenant General Anatoly Sokolov, said the following about the US plans for BMD trials in 2005, "The system can intercept 1-2 ballistic missiles but cannot protect the US from a massive strike."

You can argue the point only if you have no concept of the possibilities of the Russian ground-based nuclear forces as the main part of the nuclear triad. The RS-20 (SS-18 Satan in NATO classification), which will remain on combat duty until 2014, is the main destructive element of the Russian ground-based nuclear forces. Only a detailed analysis of the BMD capabilities and discussions of the failed START-2 treaty show that Russia did not have to fear the US withdrawal from the 1972 ABM Treaty because it had this missile.

Satan is a MIRVed missile that can evade any ballistic missile system. It has 16 platforms, one of them with decoy targets. During the midcourse and entry stages of the trajectory, the warheads fly in a cloud of false targets and hence cannot be identified by radars. The warheads themselves are nearly invulnerable, because they can be destroyed only by a direct hit of a very powerful antimissile with characteristics that cannot be created within modern ABM programs.

The much touted laser systems are impotent too, as Satan's warheads are covered by a thick armor made with Uranium 238, which has an exceptional density. Lasers, at least those that will be created within the next two decades, cannot burn through such armor. And the electromagnetic impulse cannot harm it either, because the missile's electronic guidance system is duplicated by pneumatic instruments.

"We are not just creating and testing nuclear missiles. I am sure that the new missile systems will be supplied to the army in a few years," President Vladimir Putin said at the November 2004 conference with the leading staff of the armed forces. "Moreover, the other countries do not have and will not have such designs in the coming years."

Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov repeated the idea at the Munich Security Conference. He addressed the participants on February 13, the fateful day for the designers of the US BMD system.

So, the terrorist nuclear threat is not a reality so far, and a massive nuclear strike by the current nuclear powers cannot be intercepted. Why then is the US not abandoning its BMD plans instead of planning to add ten interceptor missiles to the six already deployed in Alaska this year?

The answer lies in space. The BMD system does not stipulate the orbiting of weapons, President George Bush told Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin when they discussed the possibility of Canada joining the American BMD plans. But the trouble is that to implement its BMD designs that can create an effective missile defense system, the US must orbit weapons in space. The latter will have unpredictable and even catastrophic political and military-strategic consequences.

This brings us back to space based lasers, which hypothetically can hit a wide range of targets, primarily ICBMs, anywhere in the world during take-off, while the missile is at the boost phase (Boost Phase Intercept).

The US is working on creating a global strategic network of lasers under the Space Based Laser (SBL) program. An SBL platform should achieve missile interception by focusing and maintaining a high-powered laser on a target until it achieves catastrophic destruction.

But an anti-system can be created to counter the SBL, which is the rule of the arms race. And the price of this exercise in the sleight of hand and mind could prove too high. It may even kill its creator.