National Missile Defense

The Pentagon's ground-based, mid-course missile defense system (GMD), formerly called by the more descriptive name National Missile Defense, is being developed and deployed to intercept one or a very few warheads launched by inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBM) against the United States. The administration is requesting $10.4 billion for missile defense, the largest single program in the fiscal year 2007 Pentagon budget. These annual costs could rise to $19 billion in a few years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. A large proportion of the missile defense budget is allocated to the GMD system.

The Pentagon's ground-based, mid-course missile defense system (GMD), formerly called by the more descriptive name National Missile Defense, is being developed and deployed to intercept one or a very few warheads launched by inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBM) against the United States. The administration is requesting $10.4 billion for missile defense, the largest single program in the fiscal year 2007 Pentagon budget. These annual costs could rise to $19 billion in a few years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. A large proportion of the missile defense budget is allocated to the GMD system.

History of program

The United States first began development of missile defenses in the 1950's. In 1952, the U.S. activated the first of three hundred Nike missile sites at Fort Meade, MD, to defend major cities and industrial areas against a Soviet air attack. Then the U.S. tried the Nike-Zeus and the Nike-X systems. During the 1970's, the U.S. actually deployed 100 interceptors at Grand Forks, North Dakota, but dismantled the system soon after declaring it operational.

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan launched the Strategic Defense Initiative with the goal of making nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete." In the 1990's the Republicans pressed the Clinton Administration to deploy a National Missile Defense.

The common thread on these early attempts and more recently: despite claims of new technologies and better defenses, none of them has worked.

Problems with the system

Despite the many tens of billions of dollars spent on missile defense and the flagrantly inaccurate claims by proponents of missile defense systems, after 50 years missile defense remains an experimental system that has provided the United States with very few tangible results. Moreover, despite Pentagon claims that solving missile defense problems is merely an "engineering" problem, defending against missile attacks of any range remains a complex and extremely challenging problem that the expenditure of well over $100 billion has not solved.

A series of recent reports from the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Research Service, and even from the Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General and the Pentagon's own Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, point out that the GMD system suffers from a number of critical deficiencies. These reports make it clear that the system has no proven operational capability; and currently there are no plans for operational tests -- tests in actual combat conditions conducted by soldiers -- of the system. Moreover, key elements of the system are years away from being fielded and, at this time, there is no prospect of the system's being able to deal successfully with countermeasures that any state capable of developing an inter-continental missile could easily employ.