NMD Deployment Readiness Program Overview,
Abstract
This paper summarizes America's National Missile Defense Deployment Readiness Program and describes the defenses we are developing to defend the United States against ICBMs from the Third World. Some countries, including North Korea, are developing ICBMs indigenously but relatively slowly, while others could obtain ICBMs in the near term through proliferation. Effective defenses against such threats would include space based and ground based sensors for early warning, ground-based sensors at sites within the United States and, if needed, at forward bases, for identifying and tracking threat objects, ground based interceptors at one or more sites, and a battle management, command, control, and communications system for controlling the architecture and relaying its messages. Such a system, even with only one interceptor site, could defend all 50 States with high effectiveness against a few missiles from a Third World country. The uncertainties associated with when such a threat might appear, and from where, and with what characteristics, have dictated that we adopt a highly flexible and evolutionary "deployment readiness" acquisition program. With this program, we will reach an initial deployment readiness state in 1999. We will remain ready thereafter to deploy defenses at any. time, within three years of a deployment decision.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 1996
- Accession Number
- ADA319989
Entities
People
- David F. Mcnierney
Organizations
- United States Department of the Air Force