The United States Federal Government should continue to invest in a missle defence system.

Thanks for the challenge, it should be fun. No country has initiated the deployment of ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States. North Korea, is years away from developing a reliable Ballistic Missile system that could deliver any warhead to the United States. North Korea's current need for support from the international community, and more importantly its action and interest toward the reunification of Korea, seriously undermine the possibility of it launching any kind of attack. North Korea has halted its missile flight testing, in an agreement with the US to loosen trade sanctions. In Iran it is unlikely that it will begin testing long range missiles, especially considering the international scrutiny already pointed in its direction. Iraq is even less of a threat, with most of its missile infrastructure destroyed since the latest war. Additionally Iraq is under severe sanctions, which limits its capability to acquire missiles and subsequent technology from other nations. One hundred and twenty-two billion dollars have been spent on Theatre and National Missile Defence (NMD) since World War II. The Pentagon forecasts it will cost 26.6 billion dollars to maintain a single missile defence site in Alaska, with an additional 4 billion dollars in annual maintenance fees. Each ballistic missile test conducted by the US has cost over 100 million dollars, with around half resulting in failures. In total, the US has spent 5.6 trillion dollars in nuclear arsenals. I'm sure we can all think of better uses for the money being spent. CPSR, Volume 19, 2 The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) was one of the first steps in ending the Cold War, by reaching an agreement to downsize the number or anti-ballistic missile systems. Although both the United States and Russia have violated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in prior years, it is still a valuable and significant treaty that serves as the backbone for arms reduction and future disarmament. The slightest indication of NMD construction would violate the treaty, alienating international ties (i.e. defence base in Poland). The stated purpose of NMD is to protect the US from a limited attack by strategic, long range ballistic missiles armed with devastating weapons (conventional, nuclear, chemical, and biological). Scenarios for such a limited attack, range from a few, to hundreds of missiles. Seen as the most probable, these attacks would be: an unplanned or unauthorized launch from Russia, an accidental, unofficial, or purposeful attack from China, or a planned attack from other countries that have, or may, acquire long range capabilities (e.g., North Korea, and Iran). Ballistic missiles are rocket driven, and have three discrete stages: the boost stage from launch within earth's atmosphere to space, next a midcourse stage in the vacuum of space and finally the fatal stage where the missile re-enters the earth's atmosphere to the intended site. Ballistic missiles propulsion occurs only in the boost stage then the missile normally follows a path according to the laws of physics in the Earth's gravitational field to its target. Therefore NMD has only limited capability and is vulnerable to both being under flown by short-range missiles and cruise missiles as well as being over flown by intelligent ballistic missiles that do not directly follow the laws of gravity and intelligently manoeuvre. Neumann, P. G. Inside Risks: Missile Defense, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 43 No 9, Sept. 2000, p. 128. NMD has the distinctive requirement that it must work perfectly on first use. This is an unparalleled requirement for any system approaching the extent and intricacy of NMD. Analogous systems include the US Navy's Aegis anti-missile system, Lucent's 5ESS telephone switch software, and Microsoft Windows operating system. All these systems have had decades to locate and debug errors and all have had, and carry on having, significant failures. New software upgrades on these established systems rarely perform reliably despite rigorous testing and simulation. Thus it is indeed likely that NMD will experience a software failure upon first use. The question needs to be asked as to whether this software error will prove catastrophic to overall intercept functionality. Sessler, A.M. et. al., Countermeasures: A Technical Evaluation of the Operational Effectiveness of the Planned US National Missile Defense System, Union of Concerned Scientists/MIT Security Studies Program Report, April 2000. Yurcik, W. and D. Doss, Achieving Fault-Tolerant Software with Rejuvenation and Reconfiguration, IEEE Software, July/August 2001, pp. 48-52. One of the easiest countermeasures to NMD is submunition. The firing of hundreds of submunitions at the end of the boost phase would overwhelm the NMD system, rendering it useless. An additional countermeasure could be achieved by implementing indistinguishable decoys that are released with the warhead. This would necessitate the defence system to launch an interceptor at each target in the hopes of hitting the actual warhead (costly, unlikely, and highly vulnerable). These high altitude countermeasures highlight yet another terrible flaw in the defence system. Delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction (conventional, nuclear, biological, and chemical) are more flexible so that a ballistic missile assault may not be the preferred method used by terrorists or a rogue nation (as already seen). To put it plainly, the NMD is flawed both in software, and deployment. It is highly vulnerable to countermeasures, there is no guarantee that an attack will occur that will require the NMD. The costs are exorbitant, and it endangers international treaties.