47 UPENDS DECADES OF NUCLEAR DOCTRINE

In an Executive Order signed by the president entitled “Iron Dome for America”, which was clearly written by defence hawks who have no idea what they have done or don’t care, the Secretary of Defence was ordered to produce within ten days, an outline of what can be done, over how long and at what cost to provide, the United States with a national, viable, Iron Dome system like Israels. Only with the added requirement that it should provide a comprehensive ballistic missile defence for the entire country. It also included a by any means necessary element – including the deployment of anti-missile systems in space.

At first you can raise your eyebrows to such an idea because it’s as mad as it gets on the surface. You can defend Israel because it’s the size of a postage stamp, at just 8,019 miles square (20,770kmsq). You could fit all of Israel inside Florida 8.2 times over. It would fit in the United States 464.73 times over. Just so we have an idea of the scale we’re dealing with here.

Now even if you realistically narrow down the defence systems to protecting the ICBM fields, the main airbases, naval bases, the top 50 largest cities, it is still a massive area. It would take a multi-year high cost effort of such proportions it is verging on the unaffordable even for the United States at its best. This isn’t like Ronald Reagan asking for the US to embark on the 1980’s missile shield – that was just a research and development program – which 40 years later has actually proven its worth. Israel was a major part of the R&D program. 47 is asking for a physical and real defence system, not tomorrow but today.

The Russians were instantly dismissive because of its scale. If anyone knows how difficult it is to defend large strategically important targets in a large country they do – Ukraine demonstrates every day how hard that is as its drones rain down on Russian targets as far as 1,000 miles from the front lines.

However it doesn’t mean nobody takes this seriously. In nuclear weapons and arms race terms it has profound consequences.

The very reason the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was signed in 1973, was to allow each side just two complexes. Russia built one around Moscow using the Galosh missile but everyone knew it was useless. The Americans built one in N.Dakota and it lasted 1 day before Congress deactivated it, though they kept the very advanced PARCS radar as part of the early warning system.

Why only two complexes each? Because both sides understood that if they had dozens of such complexes, maybe hundreds, then there was only one way of overcoming them – more ICBM/SLBM with yet more warheads and a spiraling nuclear arms race to field them. Overwhelming the defence was the only way to ensure a retaliatory strike would get through.

George Bush-2 ended the ABM treaty although nobody really understood what the rationale was. The deployment in the coming years of a basic interceptor system was within the limits and the number of missiles deployed made it only viable for countering a potential N.Korean of theoretical Iranian attack.

The new plans are on a whole new level. If you think there’s no urgency around it, the US Senate Budget Committee released a budget blueprint to squeeze through the Senate using the reconciliation process – requiring only a simple majority to pass it. It grants another $150 billion to four main focus areas: maintaining military readiness; growing the Navy and strengthening the shipbuilding industrial base; building an integrated air and missile defense for the United States — an administration priority it has termed the “Iron Dome for America” — and investments in the nuclear enterprise.

Additionally two Republican Senators have introduced legislation to force the construction of a $19.5 billion US Iron Dome, with expenses including $12 billion to expand missile interceptors in Alaska with Next Generation Interceptors, and $1.4 billion for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system (which amounts to about 1 new battery).

All of the above is nothing like as sweeping in its ambitions as the Executive Order seems to imply it should be, but this is just the beginning.

In simple terms it’s a lot easier to overwhelm an air defence or missile defence with multiple warheads. This is why anti-missile programs aimed at strategic weapons of last resort have always been so sensitive a subject. In essence, if the United States is set on building an ever denser and more capable ballistic missile defence then Russia will look to building yet more missiles – and potentially new types of missiles to get around them. So will China. Neither of them will be willing to risk what happened to Iran’s strategic strike against Israel. Yes, that was a much smaller and unique example, but when it comes to arms race rhetoric, that’s never how things are spoken of.

Missile defences at the level required to kill an ICBM MIRV even at best now are around 40-60% chance of success if everything went well and conditions are right. The speeds and distances involved are far greater than Israel faced and the missiles far more complex.

Yet it’s far beyond the simple numerical facts – it’s the complete disincentive to restrain nuclear weapons stockpiles from increasing dramatically again, after so much time and effort went in to cutting them back. The last of the arms reduction treaties runs out in 12 months. There is nothing being discussed, no negotiations to even discuss talking about the possibility, and China remains universally opposed to even contemplating joining in.

These new systems are not going to deter a nuclear attack if we’re already in some unfolding disaster scenario and reached that point. Add to this the potential space weapons component – and I know that sounds fanciful but its way more realistic and viable than it was even twenty years ago, and you’re giving the nuclear powers – including the upcoming ones like India and Pakistan, yet more reason to expand their own arsenals.

If the Chinese for example start playing the defence missile shield game how long before the US is faced with increasing its own nuclear weapons numbers to overcome them? The Sentinel ICBM was originally panned with a single warhead. It could easily deliver three. The Trident-2’s could be upped back up to their full 10 warheads and all of the launch tubes on the submarines fully loaded with missiles, rather than being partially so.

The point is where does it end? China for one can do everything at three times the speed and half the cost, so a race with the US means the US loses the numbers game. And with simplistic politicians in power who only see numbers are we really willing to let the ‘missile gap’ and the ‘bomber gap’ attitudes of the past dominate our conversation as they did so completely in the Cold War?

We are already in a world where weapons spending has reached the highest levels in real terms since 1989. New Nuclear powers have emerged – India and China may have detonated their first nuclear weapons in 1974 and 1964 respectively, but they have come a long way since. India’s ‘Smiling Buddha’ test was said to be peaceful in intent. When Pakistan joined the nuclear club in 1996, that changed everything. With China and India often bickering over border territories, and the growing power of the Chinese military, now its increasing nuclear force? India has responded. Its just built a massive $3.7 billion underground submarine base into a coastal mountainside on the Bay of Bengal, to shield its SSN’s and its growing fleet of Arihant SSBN’s from prying eyes. China motivated India to become a serious contender in the nuclear arms race too.

• America builds more ABM sites.
• N. Korea adds more warheads. China adds more warheads. Russia adds more warheads.
• India adds more warheads because China has.
• Pakistan adds more warheads because India has.
• Israel adds more warheads because Pakistan has.
• America, noticing the increase in Chinese and Russian missile silos builds more ICBM’s with more warheads. Adds more SLBM’s:- and the cycle repeats.

Each and every step every power makes will be examined and used as motivation to expand the attack and defence options of its opponents. They’re all interlinked in a cause and effect reaction cycle. This new American move will upset that further, because like it or not, the actions of one nation do, inevitably, in a small club like those who have nuclear weapons, affect everyone else. It just makes the world even more dangerous and pushes it further towards doing something we’ll all regret.

The Analyst

militaryanalyst.bsky.social