Importance of building a homeland missile defense against all adversaries

OPINION:

More than 40 years ago, President Ronald Reagan challenged the nation to build defenses to shield America from ballistic missile attacks.

Despite successfully fielding capabilities against short- and intermediate-range threats to protect our military forces and allies, Reagan’s challenge remains unmet. Except for small-scale strikes from North Korea, our homeland is defenseless against ICBM-class missiles of our enemies.

President-elect Donald Trump shares Reagan’s vision and has pledged to build an effective American Iron Dome defense against all adversaries. A fundamentally different approach is needed to succeed, one that draws lessons from the past and recognizes that the established way of developing and deploying strategic defenses must be changed.

Reagan rejected the long-standing conventional wisdom that mutual assured destruction provided the best means of deterrence. He saw the possibility that defending against missile attacks could stabilize the balance of power with the Soviet Union. The goal was never an impenetrable perfect defense but rather the ability to intercept enough missiles in an initial strike to decrease the Soviets’ confidence that their objectives could be met, thereby strengthening deterrence.

After the Soviet Union fell, President George H.W. Bush continued the pursuit of strategic defenses through the GPALS program, which provided global protection against limited strikes. This program envisioned both ground-based interceptors and 1,000 small satellites with sensors and kinetic kill capabilities for intercepting missiles in space.

With President Bill Clinton, a distinct partisan pattern emerged. Secretary of Defense Les Aspin gleefully announced the end of GPALS. The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty prohibited all defenses to protect the nation and was upheld as the “cornerstone of strategic stability.”

Under George W. Bush, we withdrew from the ABM Treaty and, in 2004, deployed defenses to protect against “handfuls” of missiles from rogue states such as North Korea. Although a major accomplishment, the GMD (ground-based midcourse defense) system did not anticipate the coercive threats from Russia and China that have emerged recently, as witnessed over Ukraine and Taiwan.

The Obama administration did what the Clinton administration had done. Defenses were seen primarily as an arms control bargaining chip to secure nuclear reductions. The number of GMD interceptors was reduced, the third site in Europe was canceled and all major programs intended to keep pace with the North Korean threat were ended.

President-elect Donald Trump said all the right things in his first term, but the results were disappointing. In remarks introducing the 2019 Missile Defense Review, or MDR, he said, “We are committed to establishing a missile defense program that can shield every city in the United States.” Mr. Trump emphasized that “space is a new warfighting domain” and that “my upcoming budget will invest in a space-based missile defense layer.”

Despite these promising words, the MDR focused almost solely on North Korea and called for a study of space-based interceptors. The next-generation interceptor, or NGI, became the program of record to augment or replace aging interceptors despite not contributing to the deterrence of coercive threats or perhaps even being able to keep pace with the North Korean threat.

That the Biden administration continued the NGI program is telling. The 2022 MDR explicitly ruled out defenses to strengthen deterrence against Moscow and Beijing. It also ruled out work on space-based interceptors on the grounds that such capabilities would “weaponize space.” Given the militarization of space by Russia, China and other adversaries, and the creation of our own Space Force, space is already “weaponized.”

The question is whether Mr. Trump will succeed this time or whether the naysayers, especially those in the Pentagon and State Department, will prevail again. Past results suggest that the naysayers will win out, but there is another path.

First, Mr. Trump should restate the priority of homeland defense during the transition and on his first day in office. He must move quickly and achieve the key milestones in the first 18 to 24 months of his term. Major initiatives that challenge standard government procedures must be undertaken before the bureaucracies reassert themselves.

Second, the incoming team should build on previous work and contemporary analyses of space-based defenses that provide a firm foundation to proceed. The unique advantages of space have long been recognized but have not been pursued for political reasons.

Third, while the programmatic work must be conducted within the Department of Defense, the president should assign someone with a direct line to him to oversee the effort. This is not about cost or technology. A robust, space-based defense would likely cost a fraction of what is being spent on NGI, and the needed technologies have been achieved. This is about vision, determination and accountability.

One candidate is Elon Musk. No one has a better track record of innovation and results. While already taking on many tasks, this could be his most important. Mr. Musk has changed the world by delivering revolutionary capabilities in multiple sectors. Through SpaceX, he is putting up thousands of satellites at a cost thought unimaginable a few years ago. Having Mr. Musk oversee the homeland missile defense effort may provide the best opportunity for success. Most important, Mr. Trump would fulfill Reagan’s promise.

• Robert Joseph was a special assistant to President George W. Bush and a former undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.