October 2012 CSWMD Proceedings 1

At present and for the near future, missile defense 

(MD) is not in peril of dismemberment. Indeed, 

the level of political consensus on the need for a 

missile defense runs high, as demonstrated by the Obama 

administration since 2009.1

 But there probably will be questions about the most appropriate policy and technical options 

going forward when the President and administration take 

office in 2017 either as incumbents or new arrivals. While the 

debate in Washington will probably concern such matters as 

whether the United States needs a maritime or land-based 

MD and where within the program the Nation should place 

its budgetary chips in what could become a very tense financial atmosphere, events elsewhere around the globe may 

confront the 2017 administration with some delicate strategic dilemmas and force it to make difficult choices.

Complications of a Regional MD

Thanks to a constant policy effort launched by the 

George W. Bush administration, MD will be integrated in 

the U.S. allies’ defense strategy “software.” But that does 

not mean the United States will have been successful in 

replicating a similar and global MD architecture based on 

interoperable technical solutions everywhere, from Asia to 

Europe and throughout the Gulf region. As illustrated by the 

Gulf Cooperation Council’s difficulties in finding a political 

agreement on operating their future assets—including the 

United Arab Emirates’ Terminal High Altitude Area Defense 

(THAAD) and Kuwait’s PAC-3—or by North Atlantic Treaty 

Organization (NATO) hardships in funding national or 

common programs, things will probably not be as smoothly 

coherent as a rational mind would hope.2

 Nonetheless, in 

most regions, America’s allies and some of its partners will 

possess more or less evolved MD capabilities that are more 

or less coordinated or plugged in (integrated) with the U.S. 

global MD command and control.

The challenge for the 2017 administration will probably 

lie in hammering down regional differences so groups of 

countries are able to protect themselves in an independent 

yet coordinated manner. One of the questions stemming 

from that challenge is how Washington will decide on its 

level of participation in various regional defense systems given what will definitely be finite available assets. Differences 

between Democrats and Republicans may appear—as they 

have in the fiscal year 2013 budget discussion—on whether 

it is useful to pursue a substantial effort in regions with no 

www.ndu.edu/WMDCenter

Proceedings

Star Wars Rebooted: 

Global Missile Defense in 2017

October 2012

By Bruno Gruselle

Bruno Gruselle is a Senior Research Fellow and Engineer at the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris. His is the first international contribution 

to the Proceedings series and is part of the Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction effort to make international perspectives available 

on issues important to the U.S. counter-WMD community.
2 CSWMD Proceedings October 2012

immediate interest for Washington or to invest more in places where the threat of use of ballistic missiles is high.3

 For 

instance, the question may hang on the need to rebalance the 

effort between the Middle East and Europe on theater missile 

defense. It is indeed arguable that the development of Iran’s 

ballistic missile programs will have a graver potential impact 

on allies and partners in the Gulf than on European allies.

Precisely because of these differences and because some 

regional situations may have evolved to the point where missile defense not only has to be considered but will soon need 

to be deployed and fully operational, the 2017 administration may need to reconsider some of its policy priorities. The 

2012 announced “pivot” to Asia may require, for instance, 

that more is done to protect some allies and partners in 

that region who, like South Korea, are not willing to invest 

massively in MD solutions for their own security. New challenges to U.S. homeland security or a drastic change in Iran’s 

trajectory may also affect the decisionmaking process and 

existing plans including technical development. As Steven 

Pifer writes, “the United States might slow development of 

and/or in consultation with NATO choose not to deploy the 

SM-3 Block IIB interceptor if it were clear that Iran were not 

making significant progress toward achieving a longer-range 

missile capability.”4

Programmatic Issues Could Derail Plans

Such a decision may also be made inevitable by plausible 

obstacles in the development of new high performance capabilities, which are now running on very strict timetables. For 

instance, the Block IIB version of the SM-3 is a brand new 

interceptor that is supposed to be as fast as a Ground-Based 

Interceptor (GBI) and will need to be integrated before 2020 

on evolutions of existing and future Aegis-equipped cruisers 

and destroyers. The Government Accountability Office’s recent 

analysis of the ability of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) to 

respect its own timetables for such a project and the usual delays 

in such complex defense programs make it unlikely that Block 

IIB will be ready anywhere near that date.5

 Notwithstanding the 

priority the current administration gives to naval MD and the 

early success of the SM-3 Block IA, other programmatic challenges may well affect the ability of the United States to deliver 

on its own plan, including anticipated difficulties in integrating 

key new systems into existing platforms.6

Hedging bets on MD could also be a challenge if still 

unproven solutions are used to provide defense for all of the 

continental United States. The test track record of the GBI 

and its Exo-atmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV), particularly 

the system’s failure to intercept a target in 2009, pushed the 

MDA to slow deployment and reconsider the whole program.7

 The EKV performances are particularly relevant if the 

2017 administration plans on using that kill vehicle (or an 

evolution of it) for the future SM-3 Block IIB, which will be 

the only interceptor other than the GBI capable of engaging 

intercontinental ballistic missiles.8

Last but not least, budgetary issues could irrevocably 

impact the carefully crafted plans of the current administration, especially the delicate calendar of the European Phased 

Adaptative Approach. With a little under $8 billion, the 

MDA fiscal year 2013 budget request is not as constrained as 

it could have been (which reinforces the view that MD is here 

to stay as a military and strategic tool),9

 but with the specter 

of sequestration looming ahead—that is, a 10 percent cut on 

all government budgets—phase IV of the European Phased 

Adaptive Approach may well not be achieved before the middle or the end of the next decade. This may not prove such 

a terrible problem provided Iran or North Korean missile 

threats do not grow to the point of threatening the continental United States but could be catastrophic if other less 

optimistic scenarios materialize.

If the “threat factor” indeed has influence on future 

U.S. choices on MD, the natural evolution of MD as a 

military tool will also change the way programs are handled. MD is a relatively young military capability for the 

United States. Although the first research and development (R&D) efforts were conducted in the 1950s, it was 

not until the late 1990s that most enabling technologies 

became mature enough to make key advances possible, 

such as hit-to-kill.10 For the last 15 years, missile defense 

has been mainly about scientific innovation and the integration of technological advances into real operational 

systems. But now, as it has matured into deployable systems, MD will enter a different phase where production, 

procurements, and upgrades (replacements) will become 

more important than R&D.11 This is, for instance, already 

the case with the need to modernize the PAC-3, which 

was designed in the beginning of the 1990s and has been 

in service for almost a decade. In 2017, the Pentagon (and 
October 2012 CSWMD Proceedings 3

MDA) will have to worry more about production difficulties and component upgrades than how to make an 

exo-atmospheric intercept possible.

Russia, China, and the Nuclear Equation

Although technical and budgetary as well as programmatic issues will almost certainly complicate future efforts, 

the international political equation may prove so difficult to 

solve that it could derail some of the 2017 administration’s 

missile defense policy.

As the need for more advanced systems continues to 

grow, Russia will surely get even crankier about European 

efforts to deploy new systems. Moscow’s posture is almost 

certainly the result of an internal political calculus by the 

Kremlin that it needs to continue demonstrating that the 

West is conspiring to isolate Russia in order to weaken it. But 

Moscow’s reaction is also the result of the natural paranoia of 

nuclear planners who must calculate in terms of preserving 

Russia’s capability to devastate the rest of the world, and notably the United States, with its strategic weapons. In theory, 

as Dean Wilkening proved, the planned U.S. missile defense 

system is not remotely capable of defeating a salvo of Russian 

nuclear warheads with associated penaids and decoys.12

In practice, though, the Russian military by its nature will 

react as if future SM-3 Block IIBs—which will be capable 

of intercepting simple intercontinental ballistic missiles 

(ICBMs)—have that capability. This worst case assessment 

of U.S. future capabilities, which is characteristic of nuclear 

planners,13 explains in turn why the question that planners 

ask concerns the net balance between their deployed ICBMs 

and sea-launched ballistic missiles and their worst-case fears 

of a future U.S. naval-based MD rather than whether SM-3 

Block IIB will really have the capability to intercept their 

nuclear assets. Even if the whole intellectual construction 

is intrinsically flawed because it is based on the assumption 

that Russia and the United States would actually threaten one 

another with nuclear annihilation, it nonetheless constitutes 

the unmovable horizon of the Russian position. The 2017 

administration will have to deal with it at some point if it 

wants to continue to progress with Russia on such matters as 

negotiated nuclear disarmament or security in Europe.

Although it is set on another level, the management of 

the People’s Republic of China’s posture on missile defense 

is even more complicated. Beijing is in fact confronted with 

a strategic dilemma an order of magnitude greater than the 

one Russia has artificially created for itself. Chinese nuclear 

capabilities are and will be more vulnerable to the mix of 

offensive and defensive strategic capabilities that the United 

States and its allies in the region are developing. China’s current efforts to modernize its nuclear deterrent were launched 

before MD became a technical reality, and Beijing is expected to continue to possess far fewer strategic nuclear ballistic 

missiles than Russia.

China, however, will take into account the development 

of MD in the regional and global environments.14 As Brad 

Roberts put it in 2004, “there will be responses [to the evolution of missile defenses] in China’s posture of strategic 

forces.”15 The ambivalence of Washington’s position on the 

role of Conventional Prompt Global Strike and (theater as 

well as global) missile defenses to check Chinese military 

developments will be seen in Beijing as evidence that in 

the long run it will have to be able to overcome an existing regional MD architecture. But China may not have the 

means to start a full-fledged arms race with the United 

States. Such a race could cause a crash of the country’s 

already fragile economic equilibrium and in turn threaten 

the primacy of the ruling Communist Party.16 The risk is 

that China will instead put more emphasis on enhancing its 

nuclear deterrent not only by accelerating the modernization of its weapons but also by developing new capabilities 

that could support an undesirable transformation of its 

nuclear doctrine.

China’s efforts to create a more efficient early warning radar network, as well as its 2007 and 2010 tests of 

an exo-atmospheric kill vehicle, could well be foretelling the emergence of a limited Chinese missile defense 

capability.17 But they also could mean that Chinese military leaders are contemplating options for the use of their 

nuclear assets, such as launch on warning. In any case, 

the 2017 administration will at least have to continue and 

maybe deepen its dialogue with China on stability in Asia 

in the hope of finding a way to avoid worst-case scenarios. 

That dialogue must eventually include questions related to 

the deployment of missile defense systems in the region. 

Obviously, this will require that Beijing works to make its 

own strategic objectives and strategies more transparent 

to Washington.
4 CSWMD Proceedings October 2012

Finally, the United States will have to deal with the 

question of India (and the related issue of Pakistan). As 

New Delhi is set on establishing its own missile defense 

architecture, it will increasingly look to Washington for 

support and at some point may try to have its capabilities interconnected with U.S. regional systems. The 2017 

administration in its discussions with India will have to 

consider how its moves will affect Pakistan’s determination to be capable of circumventing any Indian defense. For 

instance, Islamabad’s development of dual-capable cruise 

missiles may fuel the nuclear ambiguity in the region with 

possible adverse repercussions in times of crisis.

Eventually, the 2017 administration’s policy on missile defense will have to deal with an environment where 

MD has become a reality more than a possibility or a 

project. Moreover, it will be confronted with the fact 

that the external perception of MD will be influenced by 

more than a decade of continuous U.S. support and the 

articulation of a largely coherent strategy (exemplified 

by the 2010 Ballistic Missile Defense Posture Review). 

Whoever will sit in the White House will indeed find the 

margin for maneuver to be very limited internally as well 

as internationally.

Notes

1 Andrew Futter, “The elephant in the room: U.S. ballistic missile defence 

under Barack Obama,” Defense & Security Analysis 28, no. 1 (April 2012), 3–16.

2 “U.S. Seen Pursuing Differing Strategies for Gulf, Europe Missile Shields,” 

The New York Times, August 9, 2012.

3 “House Lawmakers Not in Agreement on U.S. Missile Defense Plans,” 

Defense News, May 15, 2012.

4 Steven Pifer, Missile Defense in Europe: Cooperation or Contention? Paper 8 

(Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, May 2012).

5 “GAO: Five Missile Defense Programs at Risk For Delays, Inefficiencies,” 

Inside Missile Defense, July 25, 2012.

6 “AMDR Still Faces Key Technology Challenges, GAO Says,” Aerospace 

Daily & Defense Report, April 19, 2012.

7 Government Accountability Office (GAO), Missile Defense: Actions Needed 

to Improve Transparency and Accountability (Washington, DC: GAO, March 2011), 

80.

8 “Republicans Seek Kill Vehicle for Block IIB, GMD,” Aviation Week, April 

23, 2012; Dean A. Wilkening, “Does Missile Defence in Europe Threaten Russia?” 

Survival: Global Politics and Strategy 54, no. 1 (2012), 31–52.

9 NTI Newswire, “Pentagon Says Missile Defense Remains Key Amid 

Cutbacks,” August 15, 2012.

10 Arguably before that the only possible technical solution to intercept a 

ballistic missile with a range greater than 1000 km was to detonate a nuclear warhead near it.

11 Amy Butler, “New Challenge for MDA: Field More Interceptors,” Aviation 

Week, August 15, 2012.

12 Wilkening.

The Proceedings series presents key discussions, ideas, and conclusions from National 

Defense University symposia, workshops, strategic exercises and other research, 

and occasionally those of international counterparts. The opinions, conclusions, and 

recommendations expressed or implied within are those of the contributors and do not 

necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Defense or any other agency of the 

Federal Government. For information on NDU Press, visit www.ndu.edu/press.

The mission of the Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction is to prepare U.S. national 

security leaders to address the challenges posed by weapons of mass destruction through its 

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Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction

Dr. John F. Reichart Director

13 Gordon S. Barrass, “The Great Cold War: a Journey Through the Hall of 

Mirrors,” Stanford Security Studies, 2009, 98–99.

14 Atlantic Council, “Chinese general warns that new missile shield may 

spark China nuclear upgrade,” July 17, 2012.

15 Brad Roberts, “China and Ballistic Missile Defense: 1955 to 2002 and 

Beyond,” IDA Paper, Institute for Defense Analyses, September 2003, 33.

16 Valérie Niquet, “La réunion de l’APN et les turbulences politiques : évaluation de la stabilité du régime chinois,” Notes de la FRS, July 3, 2012.

17 IMINT & Analysis 2, no. 2, May 2012.