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Now!
When Steven Colbert declared George
W. Bush not to be "brainiac" or a "factinista,"
he likely wasn't thinking of Dubya's policies on Iran or national
missile "defense." But Colbert would have been on target
if he had been.
Bush's folly of refusing to
sign a nonaggression pact with Tehran in return for Iran's cessation
of nuclear enrichment and future possible bomb making is that
the US cannot effectively project forces into Iran in any event.
We are fighting the Iraq war
with repeated deployments of the National Guard and reserves,
which were not designed for this use. The U.S. Army is, perforce,
almost broken. Now the Taliban is challenging our forces anew
in Afghanistan, our commander-in-chief is about to militarize
the US-Mexican border with-surprise!-more National Guardsmen,
and the next Gulf Coast hurricane season is almost upon us-a
certain, future drain on guard and reserve resources.
Moreover-and the mainstream
media is mostly silent about this-the Islamic bomb to worry most
about in the near-term is in Pakistan, not Iran, yet the administration
hyperventilates about Tehran, not Islamabad. In Pakistan, the
Musharraf regime already has the bomb, yet is barely managing
to stay one step ahead of increasingly powerful opponents in
the streets (who are enraged about the American invasion of Iraq
and would inherit the "Islamic Bomb" if Musharraf should
fall).
Now Bush has announced a plan
to use a missile "defense" against Iran. It beats negotiates,
the president seems to be saying. The anti-missile-missile system
would be similar to the one the administration deployed in Alaska
where tests still have not proved its viability, despite an initial
cost of $122 billion.
To improve the systems chances
of success, the folks in charge of the Alaska-based system lowered
the bar to success in tests recently: only one interceptor went
up against a target that employed countermeasures. In other words,
it's an anti-missile-missile that depends on an enemy who would
cooperate with us by eschewing decoys and countermoves. The administration
will not, cannot estimate the cost of our own anti-missile program,
much less the proposed new one.
That's not the half of it.
Even if the Pentagon could
deploy an anti-missile missile that was 80 percent effective-a
better success rate than any in history-the system would be unlikely
to prevent a successful enemy attack. The explanation lies in
probability theory:
Let's assume an 80 percent
success rate for a U.S. missile interceptor matched against an
incoming warhead (the equivalent of trying to hit a gnat with
a b-b gun). Let's further assume an enemy has launched eight
ICBM warheads against us.
Probability theory teaches
that the U.S. missile interceptor attacking the first warhead
takes an 80 percent bite out of its (the interceptor's) probability
of success, leaving a 20 percent probability that the attack
will succeed and the defense will fail.
The Pentagon's second interceptor
takes an 80 percent bite out of the second warhead's probability
of success.
But in terms of totally defeating
the attack, 20 percent of the attack is now beyond the ability
of the second interceptor to change. That is, there's a 20 percent
probability that the attack has already succeeded with the first
warhead, and the defense has failed in its mission of total protection.
Therefore, the second interceptor
can only take an 80 percent bite out of the remaining 80 percent,
which means the best you can do with two interceptors against
two warheads is 80 percent of 80 percent, or 64 percent.
Run through the declining success
rates to the eighth incoming warhead, and you'll discover that
U.S. interceptors boasting "80 percent reliability"
will collectively achieve only a 17 percent probability of success
against the eight-missile attack.
If the enemy launched 20 missiles
instead of eight (more likely), the national missile defense
system's probability of success falls to 1 percent - meaning
there is a 99 percent chance that the attack will succeed.
Bush's anti-missile missile
system gives new meaning to a "faith based initiative."
Les AuCoin is a former congressman from Oregon
who served on the House Defense Appropriations Committee, where
he led a study of missile defense and won the Herman Scoville
Award from the Union of Concerned Scientists for legislating
a ban on anti-satellite weapons during the Reagan Administration.
A retired professor of political science, he is an Ashland, Oregon
writer. He can be reache through his blog: http://lesaucoin.squarespace.com
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