Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle

As word spreads that Iran is developing a missile with an intended range of 6,000 miles – theoretically far enough to reach “The Great Satan” (a/k/a the United States) – military logicians are focused on knocking such nasty birds out of the sky. A “mysterious” explosion blew up an Iranian missile in development back in November, and folks are thinking that it may have been “the one.” The new system could, if ever implemented, hit the U.S. eastern seaboard, and if Iran’s nuclear enrichment program continues, and assuming that Tehran is able to create the smaller nuclear warheads that such rocketry would be designed to carry, the threat is obvious. Currently, according to a United Nations report, Iran only has two relatively reliable shorter-range missiles: the Shahab-3 missile has a demonstrated range of 900 kilometers, while the Sejil-1 has a 2,000-kilometer reach.

OK, they’re not exactly on the fast track, unless some they get some advanced help. The Department of Defense is not particularly panicked: “‘With sufficient foreign assistance, Iran may technically be capable of flight-testing an intercontinental ballistic missile by 2015.’ Which sounds scary. But it’s actually a less gloomy estimate than the last Pentagon report on the subject, which came out two years ago.” Wired.com, July 12^th. Whether that missile could reach the United States… well… who knows? But clearly, Iran is trying.

So with Iran seemingly hell-bent on developing such long range capacity (even if it is years off), and North Korea constantly testing (so far without success) its own long-range rockets and missiles, exactly what is the American response? Where are those Star Wars lasers that folks have been talking about for years? “All current missile defense systems, from the Patriot to the EKV [Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle], work by shooting down the incoming missile with another missile, a task famously compared to ‘hitting a bullet with a bullet.’ The problem is that it's a lot harder to hit a hurtling projectile than, say, a warship, an airbase, or a city, so the interceptor has to be a lot more accurate and maneuverable than the incoming missile it's trying to shoot down - which makes it more expensive.

“A recent report by the influential Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments calculated America's various missile defense systems cost anywhere from $3.3 million to $15 million a shot - and it typically takes two shots to be sure of a hit, so double that figure - compared to $1 to $3 million for a souped-up Scud. Even at these rates, the US can probably afford to buy more defensive missiles than impoverished North Korea can buy offensive missiles, but China or even Iran can simply buy more missiles than we can ever hope to counter. That's what CSBA’s experts call a ‘cost imposition’ dynamic, and we’re the side the costs are being imposed on.” Defense.aol.com, July 11.

Our military runs our missile defense system from bases in California and Alaska, although anti-missile facilities are deployed in many places, whether as fixed or mobile platforms. The thought of being flooded with so many missiles that we could not actually afford to stock the defensive projectiles – the cost of their offensive missiles being a fraction of the cost of each defensive strike – that we surely do need to figure out how to use beam technology, where concentrations of power zap the enemy out of the sky, preferably up above the atmosphere – hence the “exoatmospheric” label. A battle of the budgets? Building, powering and deploying such a powerful system would be damned expensive, but once it is up and running, the cost of a laser shot is pocket change compared to the cost of each anti-missile that must be deployed under current systems.

The current Raytheon-built EKV (it’s been Raytheon’s specialty since 1998), pictured above, is launched from a rocket, releasing a guided warhead that impacts the offending incoming missile with a velocity of 15 thousand miles per hour. Bam! In early July, Raytheon was accorded a $636 million contract – payable over seven years – to design and build the next generation of EKVs, linking them to Boeing, the main defense contractor charged with our ground-based missile defense system. The new effort will allow multiple guided warheads to launch off of a single rocket, but given the battle of the budgets noted above, we cannot be far from attempting to create that beam-driven technology that President Ronald Reagan once believed would be the ultimate defense shield for the United States. Indeed, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments seems to think we should be moving in that direction out of longer-term economic necessity. Weeeeeeeeee!

I’m Peter Dekom, and isn’t the world a wonderful, warm and fuzzy place?