Golden Dome Ballistic Missile Defense Won’t Obsolete Mutually Assured Destruction

The Israeli Iron Dome missile defence system (L) intercepts rockets (R) fired by the Hamas movement towards southern Israel from Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip as seen in the sky above the Gaza Strip overnight on May 14, 2021. Anas Baba/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

We are a long way away from developing an impenetrable “Golden Dome” ballistic missile defense capable, with 100 percent certainty, of protecting the whole of the United States from even one intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). And one of the major reasons for this is that our testing regimes for weapon systems are inadequate and do not predict real-world effectiveness.

In a recent article, retired U.S. Navy Captain Kevin Eyer revealed just how unrealistic the ballistic missile defense testing has been for our Aegis Combat System-equipped Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and Ticonderoga-class cruisers. As he describes it, ships that will be used in testing undergo extraordinary preparation. In the case of his ship, special air conditioning was installed to ensure that the electronics stayed cool. And for months prior to that, Ph.D.-level scientists worked on his ship’s systems, the USS Shiloh, to ensure that they were as near perfection as possible. And while this test of his Ticonderoga-class cruiser actually involved hitting a real missile launched from a balloon, the extraordinary support, preparation, and staging was far from what would be available in an actual deployment.

Even further removed from the real world was a more recent test involving simulated standard missiles taking out a simulated ballistic missile. Overall, Eyer is not impressed with the connection between the testing and real-world effectiveness, noting: “These much-vaunted tests are misleading, at best, and illusory at worst. They create the impression that these systems are fully ready for crew use in real-world situations, and to this date, we simply do not know that to be true.”

Setting up tests with levels of support and material preparation that will not be available to other ships during their normal deployment has become standard operating procedure for vendors and their future employees (i.e., senior retired military and other defense department official who get cushy jobs in the industry upon retiring).

And this lack of realistic testing extends to all the layers of land-based ballistic missiles defense. Even with exceptional support and optimal conditions, testing has yielded mediocre results that in no way takes into account measures that sophisticated nuclear powers can implement or deploy to make it much more difficult to shoot down their missiles. And unless major reforms are implemented, one can expect this type of testing to extend to the space-based ballistic missile defense systems that many are saying will be necessary.

But those space-based systems, which have yet to be developed, present a whole host of technical and diplomatic issues that have yet to be solved.

As things stand, the United States has not developed any kind of reliable/high-confidence ballistic missile defense capabilities. That this has implications for President Trump’s Golden Dome goals is an understatement.

But ballistic missile defense testing inadequacy is just part of pattern of testing regimes that have consistently delivered weapons systems that don’t come close to fulfilling their real-world promised performance. Case in point: the Marine Corps was so desperate to keep the F-35 program alive that back in June of 2015 they conducted their own “operational testing.” This involved embarking a whole slew of support personnel on board a Marine Amphibious Assault ship, including Lockheed Martin technical personnel, and then conducting exercises with levels of support that no regularly deployed F-35B will have during any normal deployment.

Suffice it to say, without the massive support, including being able to swap in spare F-35Bs when the original test F-35B broke, the F-35B would not have been able to complete the testing. Yet, after this totally rigged test, the Marine Corps declared that the F-35B was operational and ready for duty, despite the fact the official government agency that conducts the actual testing, the Department of Testing and Evaluation (DOT&E), found the Marine Corp testing to be, in so many words, a scam.

But that was 2015. Unfortunately over the last few years, in the opinion of watchdog groups and analysts such as the Project on Government Oversight, the Stimson Center, and myself, the DOT&E seems to have lost much of its independence from defense contractors, the military, and Congress. My belief is that this loss of independence resulted in the DOT&E clearing the F-35 for full-rate production, even as it tried to hide its crippling reliability issues and operational issues by making confidential reporting that was previously available to the public and public watchdog groups.

Another very famous/infamous example of test results having little to do with real-world effectiveness is the Sparrow missiles and the F-4 Phantoms we deployed in Vietnam, that together were supposed to achieve a 90 percent kill rate, as “verified” by extensive testing. Indeed, based on the testing, it was decided our fighters no longer needed guns. Consequently, the F-4 Phantom was initially fielded without a gun. But when the Navy and Marine Phantoms entered actual combat, their kill rate, with their brand-new Sparrow beyond visual range missiles (BVR), turned out to be under 90 percent. And the few kills they achieved with their Sparrow “BVR” missiles typically occurred within visual, dogfighting ranges (WVR). These systems’ ineffectiveness put the gunless F-4s at an acute disadvantage and resulted in F-4s getting shot down by Soviet MIG-17 and MIG-21 with guns and short-range, heat-seeking WVR missiles. Consequently, both the Navy and the Marine Corps were forced to add gun pods to their Phantoms.

Time and time again, relying on vendor-influenced/vendor quality testing has proven to be a mistake that has cost lives and equipment, with U.S. taxpayers paying countless hundreds of billions of dollars for overbudget, unreliable, underperforming weapon systems.

However, we reach a whole new level of consequence by relying on such testing when it comes to ballistic missile defense, as even one ICBM getting through can mean the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives. And having reviewed the results of many of these tests, I, along with other analysts, are not confident we can bring down even a single ICBM launched by a rogue country like North Korea. We also have zero confidence that for the foreseeable future we can build a ballistic missile defense system that could protect the whole country from a nuclear strike from a peer nuclear power that can launch hundreds of missiles, each of which can carry up to 16 multiple independently targetable city-destroying warheads.

What does this mean for the Golden Dome initiative that is being promoted? It means that while it is still a good idea, it should be presented as working towards far more limited goals. These goals include having ballistic missile defense capabilities that could protect us from a few missiles launched by rogue nuclear powers. And of course, any missile defense that creates uncertainty in the mind of a major nuclear power of what a first strike can achieve has value.

But to get to a missile defense that can achieve these much more limited realistic goals, we need far more rigorous testing and evaluations of that testing conducted by those who are truly objective. And we need to get past the mindset that can get count on launching just a few interceptors per incoming ICBM, to a mindset that has us launching many, many interceptors at each incoming ICBM to ensure that we achieve a real-world 99.9 percent plus chance of successfully intercepting the city killing missile.

We are a long way and many hundreds of billions of dollars away from having a system than can handle even a limited nuclear missile attack. But if a Golden Dome is developed and deployed that can with nearly 100 percent certainty shoot down a few missiles launched by a minor nuclear power like North Korea, then it is a goal worth pursuing.

Sadly, given that there are many ways that an ICBM can be made harder to shoot down, other than having a system like the proposed Golden Dome capable of dealing with a few missiles launched by a rogue nuclear power headed up by a madman, we are going to have to continue depending on the doctrine of mutually assured destruction for the foreseeable future.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.