Distinguished experts and supporters of the U.S. Missile Defense movement with over 40 years of experience with the sustained campaign to protect America were surprised, gratified and shocked when they saw and read the missile defense primer on the digital New York Times website over the weekend.
The New York Times has been an ardent opponent of U.S missile defense efforts since President Reagan’s 1983 speech, going so far as to publish front page stories about test failures, yet totally ignoring successful tests. Apparently, it was to revise their historical editorial policy of ensuring their readers that everything about missile defense boiled down to a huge contradiction: 1) Missile Defense would never work and its main value was profiteering by defense contractors and 2) Missile Defense would work so well that it would prompt an arms race with Russia and China, and probably North Korea and Iran. They held this illogical and irrational position for more than 40 years.
The recent NYT online story took on a different tack–that Missile Defense does, in fact, work, but it is hard to detect, track, and launch an interceptor in the required amount of time to effect, for example, a midcourse intercept of a small target moving in space at perhaps 15,000 mph. The time crunch is even more apparent when dealing with drones, cruise missiles and rockets with their much shorter flight time, and even more so when it comes to hypersonic missiles. This different New York Times editorial position states that a major drawback to our current missile defense effort is that there are not enough missile defense assets in the form of warning and tracking satellite and radars, integrated command and control and, of course, interceptors.
While not stating so, what someone could take away from the article is that substantially more resources must be added to our BMD efforts because threats are increasing–hostile nations and non-state actors know the limits of U.S. BMD and those collective capabilities of our allies around the world. Iran and Russia certainly understand this–it has launched thousands of drones, rockets and missiles against Israel and Ukraine in order to overwhelm missile defenses.
The article is mostly accurate in noting the challenges faced with developing and deploying missile defenses that are reliable and effective against weapons at all threat levels, from rockets to hypersonic vehicles.
No doubt that the New York Times will remain a skeptic when it comes to missile defense, yet we want to recognize that this revised IAMD more evolved point of view offers a more logical and rational approach to the discourse. Clearly, the New York Times’s slow reversal of its history of outright opposition to the concept of Missile Defense is a small step, yet a giant leap, in the right direction toward understanding the linkages between Missiles Defense, Deterrence Theory, and Grand Strategy.
We are relentless with our drive and advocacy to make our nation and world safer with missile defense.
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