(Military Times) Op-Ed: The Need for Missile Defense

[unhappycamper]

The Need for Missile Defense
Peter Brookes | October 07, 2008

Despite Iran's runaway nuclear program, North Korea's atomic assistance to Syria, and robust ballistic missile production and testing by Russia and China, a missile defense system for protecting the homeland and U.S. interests overseas remains a controversial idea in some corners. It should not be. The security challenge arising from the proliferation of ballistic missiles and the dangerous payloads they might carry, including weapons of mass destruction (wmd) like nuclear arms, is a threat that — in fact — may be growing.

While the Bush administration has taken significant steps to develop sea- and land-based missile defense systems, the next White House and Congress should continue supporting missile defense programs to enhance our national security. Indeed, just this summer, the Washington Post broke a story claiming the international nuclear smuggling ring once run by the prodigious Pakistani proliferator A.Q. Khan had also managed to acquire the blueprints for an "advanced nuclear weapon."

Owned by three Swiss members of Khan's international cabal, a laptop containing 1,000 gigabytes of data (roughly equivalent to the information contained in a local library) on designs and engineering for nuclear weapons was discovered by investigators. Regrettably, according to the story, the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (iaea) believes the nuclear weapons designs found on the laptop could be mated — in theory — to the ballistic missiles used by "more than a dozen developing countries."

In fact, the iaea, which reportedly verified the destruction of the data by Swiss authorities, cannot guarantee the nuclear warhead designs were not shared with others, according to a report by David Albright, a weapons expert who has been investigating the Khan network. While North Korea, Iran and Libya — the three states with which Khan had the most intimate contact — are the most likely recipients of the Pakistani's atomic assistance, there may be others who received this nuclear know-how as well, although some experts view the report as alarmist. (Not surprisingly, Khan, who has been under house arrest in Pakistan since 2004, denied that he was involved in any way in proliferating nuclear weapons designs. Of course, others in his nuclear network may have done so.)

With Israel's strike on a suspected Syrian nuclear site in September 2007 and news of nuclear power programs popping up across the Middle East (which may be hedging against Iran's nuclear efforts), this sort of dire speculation about possible proliferation makes security experts increasingly nervous. Indeed, the ballistic missile and nuclear proliferation trend is not positive. Ten years ago, there were only six nuclear-weapons states. Today there are nine members of the once-exclusive nuclear-weapons club, with Iran perhaps knocking at the door. Twenty-five years ago, nine countries had ballistic missiles. Today there are 28 countries with ballistic missile arsenals of varying capability.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,176798,00.html?wh=wh



uihc comment: If you happen to read the original article, be sure to check out Peter's bio.