Saturday, May 23, 2009
Standard Missile-3 (photo: Missile Defense Agency)
“What’s the point?” was essentially the conclusion reached by a joint American-Russian team of scientists who reviewed U.S. plans to build a missile shield in Eastern Europe. According to the Bush administration, which advocated for the missile defense system, Iran is too close to developing nuclear weapons for the West not to establish countermeasures against such an attack. But experts from the EastWest Institute, an independent think tank, claimed in their report that there are multiple reasons why the U.S. should not base interceptor missiles and radar systems in Poland and the Czech Republic.
First, it would take Iran up to three years just to build a nuclear bomb, and five years to craft a warhead that could fit on one of its shorter range missiles, which can’t reach European soil. To attack even southern Europe, Iran might need as many as eight years to build an appropriate missile. And that’s assuming the technology Iran is using even holds up, given the fact that its missile program is based on hardware sold by North Korea, whose missiles were 1950s-era weapons that originated in Russia.
Finally, the missile shield as currently designed cannot shoot down an Iranian attack, if it does happen, in large part because of simple decoys the Iranians could employ to confuse the interceptors, a problem that has plagued other anti-ballistic missile systems.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
U.S.-Russian Team Deems Missile Shield in Europe Ineffective (by Joby Warrick and R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post)
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