Cold War policymakers were accustomed to a world in which mutual deterrence was based on a balance of terror, where technology favored attack over defence. The United States and the Soviet Union invested a great deal of research and development in ballistic missile defenses (BMD) to protect their retaliatory strategic nuclear forces and their national territories. In the case of the United States, various missile defense systems were proposed and eventually deployed, such as ABM (anti-ballistic missile) systems such as Safeguard and Sentinel. The 1972 Ballistic Missile Limitation Treaty limited the United States and the Soviet Union to two national missile defense sites each (later revised to one site each). However, the George W. Bush administration later withdrew from it. The most ambitious proposal for national missile defense was President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in 1983, although this was never implemented.
After the Cold War, the United States deployed ground-based missile defense (GMD) in Alaska and California for midstream kinetic interception of ballistic missile attacks, with some limited capability against light attacks but well short of its ambition of defeating large-scale attacks. Attacks involving several hundred or thousands of attack vehicles and warheads. Mutual deterrence remained dependent on survivable second-strike offensive weapons deployed for missile launchers on land, sea or air.
New anti-missile defense technologies challenge the assumed priority of attack over defence. By the 2030s, new ballistic missile defense technologies may complicate the assumptions behind current strategies for deterring nuclear war, with the future relationship between technology and nuclear strategy unclear. Defensive technologies may be more competitive than offensive technologies, but this welcome feature entails some complications in terms of strategy and weapons selection.
Renowned scientist and nuclear policy expert Freeman Dyson predicted a transition from a neutralist defense world to an assertive defensive technologist. In his classic work Weapons and hope, Published in the 1980s, Dyson called for a “middle path” between what he saw as the dead end of nuclear counterforce warfare and assured destruction. Today, his proposed strategic model is to build defensively protected US and Russian strategic nuclear forces: improved defenses coupled with reduced numbers of offensive weapons to pave the way to a world completely free of nuclear weapons.
However, Dyson was also a political realist: he did not expect to get to nuclear zero in one big leap. Instead, his proposal called for incremental reductions in US and Russian offensive weapons in a phased process guarded by improved ballistic missile defenses. He summed up its basics: The defense-dominated world assumes we should prefer living Americans to dead Russians rather than basing deterrence on the self-defeating model of mutually assured destruction.
It is not necessary to adopt all of Dyson's assumptions to see the appeal of his basic instincts. After being informed of the consequences of nuclear war and the basics of deterrence strategy, President Ronald Reagan was horrified and demanded research and development in order to deploy improved defenses compared to attack. Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev came close to agreeing to completely eliminate their offensive strategic nuclear forces at Reykjavik in 1987 (much to the surprise of their advisors) until Reagan rejected Gorbachev's request to dismantle the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) program.
Some believe we are now on the cusp of a functional, incremental improvement in missile defense technology that could move us closer to the Dyson world of defensive and offensive competitiveness rather than the offensively dominated world of the past. One possible explanation is that power correlation in defense-related systems is no longer driven by heavy metals but by advanced software. By the 2030s, it may be possible to develop and deploy defenses that exploit “left-of-launch” technologies that can destroy ballistic missiles on their launch pads or shortly after take-off. Technologies that can accelerate this mission include directed energy weapons, electronic warfare, autonomous vehicles, and cyber warfare of various kinds.
However, as new missile defense technologies mature, the attack will not stand still. We are also moving toward an advanced, precision strike system with improved accuracy for longer-range weapons, whether nuclear or conventional. Hypersonic weapons will also reduce the time available for defenders to signal, warn, make a decision and timely respond to an attack. Some hypersonic aircraft will also be equipped with capabilities specifically designed to evade defenses, including cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and swarms of intelligent drones.
Both defense and offense will achieve quantum leaps in performance due to future advances in enabling technologies: artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and human-machine interfaces. In addition, future areas of conflict will include competitive space technologies, cyber deterrence, and warfare. Presumptive missile attackers would first have to neutralize or weaken the other side's space resources and cyber capabilities before attempting a disarmament first strike with any hope of success. The interactive complexity of deterrence and warfare across these domains, while exploiting these emerging technologies, will challenge the slowdown of decision-making based on hierarchical bureaucratic “stoves” in favor of high-speed networks.
There is also the Cheshire Cat effect: offense can become defense, and defense becomes offense. Consider the previous example of “left-handed” techniques for instantaneously disarming and disabling ballistic missiles. If one side has that ability and the other doesn't, then the first side has an actual first strike ability. Or let us take the case of defense satellites deployed in space to protect any country from any attack on its satellites for the purposes of intelligence, surveillance, communications, warning and navigation. If another nation's satellites approach the first nation's space assets and appear ready to conduct a disarmament strike, defender satellites (DSATs) may be tasked with preemptively striking the would-be attacker.
A DSAT attack could then be interpreted by potential attackers as a precursor to further escalation and instigating a satellite response or other response that the state on the receiving end deems hostile. The cognitive complexity of these examples is exacerbated by the possibility that systems may fail not comprehensively or all at once but in partial and unexpected ways. The degree of real-time systems dysfunction may not be apparent before a partial deterioration turns into a full-blown catastrophe – you don't know what you don't know.
The previous note highlights the capabilities of C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computer, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) systems and their impacts on the performance of offensive and defensive systems. Improvements in artificial intelligence and quantum computing are accelerating the rate at which digital systems are able to capture information, process data, and create alternative response patterns for decision makers. Analysts and policymakers will increasingly rely on elegant machines, pushing the human-machine interface toward automated response.
People will always be up to date, but they are organized in bureaucracies that rely on standard operating procedures and frequently rehearsed scenarios. Adaptive decision-making in dealing with non-standard events, including crises and events that have not been designed before and have not yet been mined in institutional memory banks, will by default rely on machines that can provide rapid responses at the speed of light. Another issue is the survivability of command control systems, as attacks on cyber networks and space assets can turn C4ISR systems into spaghetti even before kinetic strikes.
An important and challenging role for future missile defense is defending the National Command Authority (NCA). The NCA is not a building or facility but a complex network of networks that connects the Presidential Center to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and then to the unified and designated military commanders who manage the military forces. This network transmits all possible conflict domains (land, sea, air, space and cyberspace) and must be survivable against enemy attack. Although US missile defense is only one element among many in carrying out this mission, it is already charged with protecting forces and command elements at the regional and national levels across various domains. The current distribution of missile defense assets complicates the plans of any potential attacker, in addition to other uncertainties inherent in nuclear first strikes.
In short, we are headed toward an offensive-dominated, defense-dominated, or offensive-defense competitive environment for the remainder of the 21st century, in part due to the mastery of technology by artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and humanity. Machine interfaces. In addition, the United States faces the additional challenge of maintaining its leadership in military research and development relative to potential competitors. We can no longer take for granted the existence of a national culture that supports academic excellence and non-politicized research. As we move to a more information-based world, partisan platitudes collide with the imperative of cooperation. Knowledge is necessary, but wisdom is more precious, based on awareness of history and respect for human values. Wisdom suggests that deterrence is much better than war, and future weapons systems should be evaluated through this lens.
About the authors:
Lawrence J. corp He is a senior fellow at American Progress and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. He was previously a senior fellow and director for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Steven J. Cymbala He is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Penn State Brandywine and the author of numerous books and articles on international security studies, defense policy, nuclear weapons and arms control, intelligence, and other fields.