United States Faces Daunting Cruise Missiles Proliferation, So Cutting Costs Of Cruise Missile Defense Systems Is Imperative: Analyst

Would Laser Missile Defense Systems Be Far Cheaper Solution Than Interceptors?

The United States should have a centralized organization such as the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) develop a low-cost defense against cruise missiles, rather than leaving the work to individual armed forces, an analyst said.

Inventing a system to annihilate incoming cruise missiles would best be done by a centralized unit, the way that MDA is developing a defense against ballistic missiles, according to Dennis Gormley, a senior fellow with the Monterey Institute think tank Center for Nonproliferation Studies, and also a University of Pittsburgh faculty member.

To mount a competent defense against these threats, Gormley said, individual armed services must share radar data. "And unless you get a centralized authority telling the services that they’ve got to establish common sets of norms and frameworks for dealing with this problem, you’ll get an individual service approach," he said.

Instead, "you need to do essentially what we’ve done in the ballistic missile defense area: take the [missile defense development funds away from individual services, and] create a centralized [entity], if not the Missile Defense Agency, some other specialized authority that gets the money and then parcels it out, consistent with a joint approach."

The United States faces a vast and rapidly growing threat from metastasizing cruise missiles appearing in the hands of rogue states and terrorists, which must impel U.S. armed forces to slash costs of cruise missile defense systems, he said.

Some "60 percent of the cost [of a missile interceptor] is in the sensor warhead," Gormley said. He spoke at Monterey Center offices in Washington, D.C., after publication of his new book, "Missile Contagion: Cruise Missile Proliferation and the Threat to International Security" (Praeger Security International, Westport, Conn.).

"You’ve got to [reduce] the cost of sensors" in interceptors, he said.

Gormley noted that the arithmetic in the current cruise missile threat equation doesn’t favor developed nations such as the United States.

While a rogue nation or terrorist group may obtain cruise missiles cheaply and "fill the air" with them, or even rig old aircraft as cruise missiles, it can cost a developed nation such as the United States $3 million to $5 million for an interceptor to take out one of those incoming threats.

He was asked by Space & Missile Defense Report whether it would be far cheaper to take out enemy cruise missiles with lasers, which are nothing more than highly concentrated beams of light.

"Conceptually, that has much merit," he said.

However, Gormley said that not everyone is convinced that lasers will work as ballistic missile defense systems, though, he added, "That is a potential solution."

The acid test of whether such a system can provide an effective missile defense will be answered next year.

That is when the Airborne Laser (ABL) will shoot down a target ballistic missile in a test.

The ABL is mounted on a highly modified 747-400 jumbo jet contributed by prime contractor The Boeing Co. [BA]. The laser comes from Northrop Grumman Corp. [NOC], while the beam control/fire control system comes from Lockheed Martin Corp. [LMT].

A major issue in countering the cruise missiles threat, Gormley added, is detection, especially if the enemy weapon is a supersonic and/or stealthy threat rapidly closing in on U.S. forces.

"The big issue is detection," and then producing a solution that orchestrates various ballistic missile defense interceptors to kill the intruder, he said.

Some say that the United States, by developing a multi-layered ballistic missile defense system, thereby helped to foster rogue nations acquiring cruise missile systems, he said.

The advent of rapid cruise missile proliferation among dangerous nations has caused even peaceful nations to consider obtaining missile defense systems, he said.

For bad guys, the appeal of cruise missiles is that they "put you on the technological and political map," especially because these weapons can be highly accurate, and carry warheads of mass destruction, Gormely said.

Especially in Asia, the acquisition of cruise missile systems, and countermoves against them, have accelerated in recent years, he noted.

And even the U.S. armed forces are concerned about supersonic cruise missiles, which require an extremely rapid U.S. response, in fractions of seconds, to knock them down before they reach their targets. A stealthy cruise missile, effectively, shrinks the battle space so it becomes "really, really difficult to defend against" it, he said.

Of course, the United States has some missiles of its own, and Gormley noted that the Tactical Tomahawk has close to a 99 percent effectiveness, thanks to endlessly combing through data each time a Tomahawk has been used and discovering ways to improve it. (It is produced by Raytheon Co. [RTN].)