Missile-defense physics may require interceptors to fly into ‘the teeth of the Russian early warning net.’
4:46 PM ET
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4:46 PM ET
If Pyongyang fires a missile at the United States, its most-likely trajectory would take it over the North Pole. A U. S. attempt to shoot down that missile would probably occur within Russian radar space — and possibly over Russia itself. “It’s something we’re aware of,” Gen. Lori Robinson, who leads both U. S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, said Wednesday. “It’s something we work our way through.”
By year’s end, the U. S. will have deployed 44 ground-based interceptors, or GBIs: 40 at Fort Greeley, Alaska, and four at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. If deterrence fails, those interceptors would be the last line of defense against a North Korean missile. Each incoming ICBM might be met with four or more GBIs.
Last week, Joshua Pollack told an audience at the annual Air Force Association conference in Washington D. C. that the most probable intercept route aims the U. S. GBI “ into the teeth of the Russian early warning net.”
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The actual route will depend on the incoming missile’s course and speed, and just how quickly the U. S. system can react. Pollack, a professor at Middlebury Studies and editor of Nonproliferation Review, elaborated in a subsequent write up of his presentation. “Defending a West Coast target…means engaging the attacking [reentry vehicle] above the Russian Far East. Yikes.”
Robinson, in her remarks, was more guarded. “What you have to do is sit down and go, okay, what is the azimuth” — the direction of the object in the air from the perspective of the observer. The next question, she said, is: “When would be the right time to take the best shot to defend? That’s about all I’ll say.”
Cornell University arms researcher George Nelson Lewis offered another possibility, the most effective intercept course might actually engage the enemy missile on its way down, not rising from North Korea over Russia.
