PRESIDENT BUSH has made much of his resolution to defend the American people against terrorists and rogue states. This is laudable. But take a close look at a major part of his strategy 鈥� national missile defence 鈥� and you may wonder if he is going about it the right way.
NMD is a ground-based system that the White House claims will be capable of intercepting any long-range ballistic missile launched at the US. This is optimistic at best. Even though it is due to go operational in the next few weeks, the system is nowhere near ready and has not been properly tested. What鈥檚 more, it has a basic flaw: the physics of its sensors tells us it will never be able to differentiate between heavy nuclear warheads and even the simplest types of decoys.
And there are other fundamental reasons why NMD may be a bad idea. The US has a history of flawed missile defence in the Patriot system used in both Gulf wars. After the liberation of Kuwait, the US army claimed its Patriot batteries had intercepted 96 per cent of the Scud missiles they had engaged, but within a year our research group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology proved that the real intercept rate was almost certainly zero. Now we have discovered a similar but far more insidious cover-up following Operation Iraqi Freedom.
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Although the technology used in NMD is unlike that used in the Patriot, the two share the same problematic ideology 鈥� the belief that we can reliably knock out incoming missiles. And the evolution of both has been scarred by wishful thinking and cover-up by the Pentagon. If we cannot trust the Patriot, why should we trust its big cousin?
The latest Patriot scandal concerns the deaths of the crew of Yahoo 76, a British Tornado GR-4 that was shot down by a Patriot air and missile defence unit over Kuwait on 22 March last year as it descended with another Tornado in a pre-planned 鈥渟afe鈥� corridor towards its home base west of Kuwait City. The Pentagon鈥檚 much delayed investigation report concluded that 鈥渢he tragedy鈥as caused in major part by the incorrect setting of the [Tornado鈥檚] Identification Friend or Foe (IFF)鈥� 鈥� an electronic system used to determine an aircraft鈥檚 intent.
The report also stated that the Patriot battery detected what appeared to be a hostile Iraqi missile; that the battery indicated the missile was heading directly for it; that this 鈥渕issile鈥� turned out to be the Tornado; and that the Allied integrated air-defence system did not work correctly and failed to identify it.
We believe that every one of these claims is false. Moreover, they are all contradicted by data in the appendices of the Pentagon鈥檚 report. What the data shows is that the Patriot did not initially identify the Tornado as a target at all, and that the 鈥渕issile鈥� it registered was in fact a 鈥済host鈥� 鈥� an illusion probably generated by electronic interference from other nearby Patriot units. Furthermore, the Patriot detected this false target 15 kilometres east of the approaching Tornados, heading not towards the Patriot but towards a troop encampment roughly 15 kilometres to the north. If it had been heading towards the Patriot, the battery鈥檚 weapon control computer would have classified it as an Air Threat Category 1. Instead it classified it as a Category 9, a threat level so low that the computer did not even mark it for engagement.
The Patriot鈥檚 crew, believing they were under attack, launched an interceptor missile at the false target, which by this stage had 鈥渕oved鈥� into the vicinity of the Tornados. In the absence of any other target, the interceptor鈥檚 radar homed in on one of the planes.
Where did it all go so disastrously wrong? The data in the Pentagon鈥檚 report show there was nothing wrong with the Allied air-defence system. All the other elements had identified Yahoo 76 as friendly. Instead, the problem lay in the Patriot battery, which it turns out was being allowed to operate without the high-speed data links that would have enabled it to 鈥渢alk鈥� with the rest of the air-defence system. Unbelievably, the communications module needed for the data links had not been shipped with the rest of the equipment.
This was a crucial error. Had the links been working, the Patriot battery would have known from other units that the target it was tracking was a ghost. Moreover, its crew would have known that they were operating under a safe approach corridor. They would also have known that Yahoo 76 had already been identified as friendly. So they would have had no cause to launch an interceptor missile.
This incident was no freak. Eleven days later a different Patriot crew fired on another false target and destroyed a US Navy F-18, killing its pilot. The US army has still not released the report into this. This is no way to safeguard the soldiers and pilots risking their lives for their countries. Indeed it dishonours the memories of those who have died.
The message is clear: safe and reliable missile defence is impossible while the Pentagon and the White House continue to cover up the many life-threatening flaws in these systems.