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United States Should Develop Space-Based Missile Interceptors, Report Says
A report released last month by the Heritage Foundation calls on the United States to develop space-based missile interceptors as part of a national missile defense system, Space News reported Monday (see GSN, Aug. 1, 2003). According to the report, written by Los Alamos National Laboratory Senior Fellow Gregory Canavan, space-based kinetic kill vehicles developed with Cold War-era “brilliant pebbles” technology would be the cheapest and most effective defense against enemy ballistic missiles in their boost and midcourse flight phases. “Space-based systems have good coverage for large areas. They are intrinsically global … (which) counts to their advantage when the goal is to protect America, its allies and friends from missiles launched anywhere,” the report says. It also criticizes the U.S. Defense Department for failing to consider viable space-based technologies that could produce missile interceptors for about $2 million each within the next three years, Space News reported. The U.S. Missile Defense Agency, however, has chosen to focus its development efforts on ground- and sea-based interceptor systems, according to Space News. “The near-term priority for missile defense is to develop, test and deploy ground- and sea-based interceptors for use against short-, medium- and long-range ballistic missiles,” agency spokesman Rick Lehner said. “While space-based interceptors have potential for global coverage … our efforts will remain focused on the programs more mature in their development,” he said (Randy Barrett, Space News, Jan. 19).
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