BMD Confusion
By The head of the Missile Defense Agency, General Trey Obering, has previously justified the massive expense and foreign policy jeopardy of placing land-based anti-missile facilities in Eastern Europe on the basis that ship-based defense using the tried-and-tested AEGIS system would be prohibatively expensive – 40 ships and cost $17 billion to stand-up (and another $600 million per year to operate.). But that simply isn’t the case.
Over at Arms Control Wonk, they’ve done some excellent work on this, which should be a news story even the tame mainstream media should see as worthy of taking up.
First Jeffrey Lewis pointed out that Obering had briefed a European think tank that only four AEGIS ships would be needed if a land-based radar could give mid-course corrections. Now, it appears that his subordinate, Rear Admiral Alan B. Hicks, Program Director for Aegis, told another think tank in the U.S. back in 2007 that only two AEGIS ships would be needed if the plans included the upgraded SM-3 Block IIA interceptor due in service in 2016. Simple math says that would cost less than a billion to set up and run up around $30 million in annual operating costs – without antagonising the Russians. By contrast, the ground-based interceptor plan the Bush administration are pushing is estimated to have aquisition costs in the region of $21.6 billion and cost another half billion a year to operate.
It’s also worth noting that the new Type 45 “D” class destroyers of the Royal Navy will probably have ballistic missile defense capability in the future, and that the French are working along similar lines. Of course, we have a series of seemingly contradictory claims from officers with different priorities, and it’s not 100% how their parameters for assessing the necessary might differ. Then again, for those of us who believe that strategic ballistic missile defense (as opposed to tactical) is as pointless as all get out anyway…
As noted, see Jeffrey and Andy at Arms Control Wonk.