Britain and Ballistic Missile Defence, 1942-2002

Jeremy Stocker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135765811
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Britain was the first country to come under sustained ballistic missile attack, during 1944-45. Defence against ballistic missiles has been a persistent, if highly variable, subject of political policy and technical investigation ever since. The British Second World War experience of trying to counter the V-2 attacks contained many elements of subsequent responses to ballistic missile threats. After the war, a reasonably accurate picture of Soviet missile capabilities was not achieved until the early 1960s, by which time the problem of early warning had largely been solved. From the mid-1960s on, British attention shifted away from the development of the country's own defences towards the wider consequences of US and Soviet deployments. After the end of the Cold War there was renewed interest in a limited active-defence capability against Third World missile threats. This well-researched book is primarily aimed at students of post-war British foreign and defence policies, but will also be of interest to informed general readers.

1
Introduction

The UK was the first country ever to come under sustained ballistic missile attack, in 1944–45. Defence against these weapons has been a persistent topic of policy and technical investigation for the UK ever since. It has been a contentious political issue on three main occasions, each of them in response to a planned US deployment of defences. The UK’s own efforts to develop missile defences have largely gone unnoticed outside a small military and technical community. In fact, the greatest amount of work done in the UK in the field has actually been to overcome Soviet missile defences, rather than to produce them for the UK. At the end of the twentieth century, the UK was considering how to respond to an imminent US deployment of missile defences, and whether to acquire its own.

Because of its very high speed, range and altitude, defence against the ballistic missile in flight has always presented formidable technical problems. Just as problematic have been the political and strategic issues surrounding missile defence, not least because of the association between ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.

Many of these wider issues have lain at the heart of foreign policy and national strategy since the end of World War II. A condition of stable nuclear deterrence became the basic requirement for national survival for most of the Cold War, and ballistic missile defence (BMD) has been a major factor in that equation, both for those that had, or were developing, missile defences, and those that did not. Missile defences were themselves the subject of arms control and underpinned other, more wide-ranging, agreements. BMD has often been a significant factor in transatlantic relations and specifically in NATO alliance cohesion. It has also been an item in relations between the West and Moscow, especially since the end of the Cold War.

Only four countries have had indigenous ballistic missile defence programmes: the United States, the Soviet Union, the UK and Israel, the latter with considerable US assistance. In each case, BMD development has followed a few years after a state’s nuclear weapons programme, though this seems more coincidental than a direct consequence. US research into missile defence began in February 1946 as a result of a study of the V-2 campaign, and has, in one form or another, continued to the present day.¹ The Soviet Union is known to have begun considering ABM development as early as 1948, but the decision to develop a defence system was probably not taken until after Stalin’s death in 1953.² Israeli development of its Arrow system began in 1986 with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the United States.³ Of these three, only Russia and Israel currently have BMD systems deployed, though the operational status of the Russian system around Moscow is uncertain. The United States will deploy a range of BMD systems over the next decade.

When Britain was attacked by German V-2 rockets in 1944–45, its gun-based defence proposals were somewhat ‘Heath Robinson’, were never implemented, and ceased at the end of the War. The UK did not resume work on missile defence until 1954 and unlike the other three states never came close to deploying an operational system.

Defence against ballistic missiles has, however, been a persistent issue for successive British Governments except, ironically, during the one period when development of an actual system was proceeding. More important by far than Britain’s own hesitant attempts to develop defences, have been UK attitudes and responses to the other countries’ missile defences.

At the start of the twenty-first century, BMD was once again a subject of both technical investigation and policy debate. The UK was moving cautiously towards the procurement of some form of missile defence, while at the same time a major shift in official thinking on the subject saw many long-held axioms being overturned, a British Government, for the first time, viewing an imminent US deployment of missile defences with a degree of equanimity. Outside government circles, however, missile defence has lost none of its controversy.

A ballistic missile is a form of rocket that can be used to deliver a variety of payloads via the upper atmosphere and space back to earth, at very high speeds and over very long ranges. It is closely related to spacelaunch vehicles which are used to deploy satellites into orbit—indeed the two are largely interchangeable. It is powered only for the early part of its travel, following a ballistic trajectory thereafter, somewhat like an artillery shell.⁴ The missile is propelled upwards by one or more boosters burning liquid or solid fuel. It includes a guidance and control system, a warhead, and protection against the extreme environments experienced during ascent and descent through the atmosphere. Some missiles carry one or more separating re-entry vehicles (RVs), but simpler systems like the ubiquitous ‘Scud’ do not, the missile returning to earth largely intact.

Ballistic missiles have, since the mid-1950s, been closely associated with nuclear warheads, but they can be used to deliver other Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs)— biological, chemical or radiological—or conventional high explosives.

The technicalities of intercepting and destroying a ballistic missile are related directly to the three phases of its trajectory. As it climbs up out of the earth’s atmosphere with the boosters still attached and burning, the missile is large, hot and relatively slow, but accelerating. It is easily detected by radar and particularly by infra-red sensors. Interception during the boost phase, however, is more problematic, as a defensive weapon needs to be positioned within range and have a very fast speed of reaction, which is generally taken to require directed-energy weapons, such as lasers, rather than an aerodynamic missile.

Once the booster(s) have burnt out and separated, the remaining front end of the missile carrying one or more warheads follows a ballistic trajectory through the upper atmosphere and into near space. During this mid-course phase it is much smaller and cooler than hitherto. Multiple warheads and decoys, where present, will separate. Infrared detection becomes much more difficult, though radar tracking is still possible, made easier by the stable, predictable path that the missile follows. Interception in space requires a missile that can manoeuvre without the use of aerodynamic control surfaces.

During the final terminal phase, the one or more RVs descend towards their intended target(s). The effect of re-entering the atmosphere will be to slow (or ‘retard’) the missile. All but the most sophisticated decoys, being lighter, will fall behind the warheads. Interception is now possible by a conventional aerodynamic missile, which may itself be an adaptation of a weapon designed to intercept ‘air-breathing’ threats (ABT), such as manned aircraft and cruise missiles.

The range of a ballistic missile following an ‘optimum’ trajectory is directly proportional to speed, though missiles can be ‘depressed’ or ‘lofted’ with some range/payload penalty. On an optimum trajectory a missile’s apogee (maximum altitude) will be roughly 20 per cent of its range, thus a missile with a range of 1,000 km will climb to a maximum height of about 200 km. Because of the curvature of the earth, ascent and descent angles will be between about 35° and 43°, longer ranges inducing shallower angles. Even a relatively short-range ‘Scud’ will travel at speeds of up to 2 km per second, and an intermediate-range missile travelling 3,500 km will attain a speed of 5 km per second—about 11,000 miles per hour.

The appreciable atmosphere extends upwards to about 70 km. Even a relatively short-range missile will therefore climb beyond it, and longer-range systems spend the great majority of their time outside the atmosphere altogether. Interceptions within and beyond the atmosphere are known as endo- and exo-atmospheric, respectively.

Figure 1: Typical Ballistic Missile Trajectory

Source: DERA/WX9/6/173/1/3/2/2.0. The UK Ballistic Missile Defence Pre-Feasibility Programme Report, June 1998, p. 2; © Crown Copyright/MOD. Reproduced with the permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.

Figure 2: Summary of Ballistic Missile Interception Terminology

Source: DERA PFP Report, p.3; © Crown Copyright/MOD. Reproduced with the permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.

A successful interception requires two fundamental problems to be solved— discrimination (finding the warhead) and lethality (destroying it). This is true of any target and any weapon system, but is particularly challenging for BMD in view of the very high speeds, ranges and altitudes involved.

Active defence entails the physical interception and neutralisation of a ballistic missile after it has been launched. It is, however, only one of a number of counters to this type of threat.

The first is a diplomatic response, to prevent missiles and their associated warheads being secured by potential enemies. Export controls and arms control agreements are examples of non-proliferation. The second is deterrence, seeking to dissuade a state from employing the weapons in its possession, and is particularly associated with nuclear-armed missiles. A third approach is counter-force, the pre-emptive destruction of missiles on the ground prior to launch.⁵ And finally, if all these and active defence are unsuccessful, passive defence (sometimes known as civil defence) seeks to ameliorate the effects of the missile’s warhead once it reaches its target. Passive defence measures include concealment, hardening and decontamination.⁶

Ballistic missiles can, broadly, be employed to meet two kinds of objective. Particularly (but not only) when carrying nuclear warheads, they may be used for direct, strategic effect. In this role they have largely, though not entirely, supplanted the manned bomber. They can also be used in a tactical role, against targets of military importance. This distinction is not absolute, however. Bombardment of a major port, for example, may have both strategic and tactical significance. But it remains a useful categorisation, and defence against ballistic missiles may therefore also be ‘strategic’ or ‘tactical’. Only the former has, in general, generated much political interest and dispute, the latter being little more than a technical challenge subject to operational requirements, financial constraints and competing priorities. Until recently, the US Government classified missile defences into Theater Missile Defense (TMD) and National Missile Defense (NMD), though the former included defence of regional friends and allies (strategic) as well as forces deployed overseas (tactical).

Defence against ballistic missiles was, until the early 1970s, usually referred to as Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) defence. Since then, the term has tended to be replaced by Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD), though the two are essentially interchangeable.

The first operational ballistic missile was the German V-2. Most missiles today can trace their origins, directly or indirectly, back to that original, revolutionary weapon. The early Soviet missiles were developed straight from the V-2, and though US missile developments featured rather more original, indigenous work, the US programme was headed for many years by the V-2’s chief designer, Wernher von Braun.⁷

Despite the Cold War association between ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads, all of the 5000–6,000 ballistic missiles actually fired in anger have carried high-explosive warheads (see Table 1).

Table 1: History of Ballistic Missile Use

There is a very substantial body of secondary literature on the subject of ABM/BMD. Most, though not all of it, is American. Much of it deals with US missile defence, especially the 1980s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and post-Cold War TMD and NMD.⁸ Although several works have been published in the UK, especially among the Adelphi Papers monograph series from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London, many of them are by US authors and deal with US defences. Some of the literature does deal with European attitudes to US programmes, often a chapter or two in a more general work.⁹ So-called theatre or tactical missile def...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
• LIST OF FIGURES
• SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ABBREVIATIONS
• 1 INTRODUCTION
• 2 THE WARTIME V-2 EXPERIENCE
• 3 THE EMERGING SOVIET THREAT
• 4 EARLY EFFORTS AT ACTIVE DEFENCE
• 5 BALLISTIC MISSILE EARLY WARNING
• 6 US ABM DEPLOYMENT
• 7 SOVIET ABM DEPLOYMENT
• 8 BRITAIN AND THE STRATEGIC DEFENSE INITIATIVE
• 9 AFTER THE COLD WAR
• 10 BRITAIN AND US NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE
• 11 CONCLUSIONS AND PROSPECTS
• APPENDIX I
• APPENDIX II
• BIBLIOGRAPHY