Is the US finally going to build a capable space-based missile shield?

May 5, 2018. Congress and the Pentagon may finally start building a space-based missile shield capable of protecting the US from a Chinese or Russian nuclear attack. The present US  system may not even be adequate to protect the US and its bases against an attack by North Korea, a minor nuclear missile power.

With the release of the Pentagon’s long-delayed Missile Defense Review, we should find out within the next ten days.

The public fight for an advanced technology missile defense has been promoted by emeritus Boston University political scientist and intelligence analyst Angelo Codevilla and CSIS Missile Defense Project senior fellow Thomas Karako and research assistant Wes Rumbaugh.

Founders Broadsheet, from its beginnings nine months ago has promoted Codevilla’s missile defense writings, e.g., here and here.

Codevilla in his most recent writing explains the delusive reasoning that US legislators and military used to justify building a vulnerable, barely usable system, despite the obvious criticisms that

• The present system of ground-based radars warns too late;
• “[O]rbit-based optical information systems and fire control instead of ground-based radars” would remedy that defect;
• All sensors, launchers, and special technologies need to be connected in an integrated battle-management system;
• Space-based boost-phase laser and other high-energy interception technologies should be deployed.

The CSIS team of Carako and Rumbaugh point out that President Trump’s 2019 Defense Budget, as it presently stands, “chooses capacity” — adding a few more legacy-technology radar and interceptors — “over capability” — that is, research and deployment of the new space-based technologies that will be capable of actually defending the US from Chinese, Russian, and North Korean threats. They write that expenditures on just purchasing add-ons to existing limiting technologies need to be weighed against

“the opportunity cost for larger improvements in capability provided by a space-based sensor layer that could provide substantially more capable birth-to-death tracking and discrimination on a more global scale and against a wider diversity of threats….The failure to more aggressively pursue more advanced capabilities is consistent with the 2019 request’s overall choice to prioritize near-term capacity, but nevertheless represents a major shortcoming.”

The Codevilla and Carako-Rumbaugh recommendations are partly mirrored in the head of Strategic Command, General John Hyten’s, call for “satellites to track both ballistic missiles and emerging threats such as hypersonics” and a “mid-course element of a surveillance architecture alongside existing early warning radars — which spot the initial launch — and surface-based radars — which are best suited to tracking the latter phases of a missile’s flight.”

Space News highlights not only Carako and Hyten’s calls but their seconding by several other prominent officers and planners.

Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite system might  contribute to the sensor and battle-management effort, as well as research and development on directed-energy weapons.

There is also a major need to be sure the space-based assets are defended.

Click here to go to the previous Founders Broadsheet post (“US postponing tariffs by month but not for TPP leader Japan”)