August 30 - 4:00pm Phys 223
(Coffee at 3:30p.m. in room 242)
Professor of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
On May 1, 2001, President Bush gave a speech declaring his Administration's intention to actively pursue ballistic missile defense technologies that could be used in the boost-phase, mid-course, and reentry phases of a ballistic missile attack on the US. The President further declared that his Administration would also pursue the use of sea-based interceptors in addition to those on land. Although the President's remarks were obviously intended to be vague, it is nevertheless clear that his Administration has not conducted an adequate or informed assessment of basic technical facts about missile defenses that are quite well-known. This talk will describe some of the basic technical facts that the President should have known about boost-phase, mid-course, and reentry phase missile defense systems before he gave his speech.
Of particular interest in this talk is the currently under development mid-course defense system. This National Missile Defense System is designed to intercept nuclear warheads at high altitudes in the near vacuum of space. This design feature makes the defense extremely vulnerable to very simple decoy countermeasures that need only work in the near vacuum of space. A still more problematic feature of this defense is that its interceptors - called homing kill vehicles - must discriminate between warheads and decoys by analyzing the infrared signals from distant real and false targets during a period of roughly 60 seconds from target acquisition to flyby. Not surprisingly, experimental data on targets and decoys taken in an experiment flown in June of 1997 revealed that relatively simple infrared decoys could not be discriminated from warheads. Much of the data from this experiment was censored by the missile defense government contractor with the knowledge and approval of Department of Defense managers. In addition, data that showed the system could not discriminate was concealed from scientific review, and analysis of the remaining data was improperly altered to create scientifically insupportable outcomes that created the appearance to non-specialists that the kill vehicle would be able to discriminate between warheads and decoys. This talk will describe the nature of the collusion between Government managers and contractors, and show data that was used to create the false case that discrimination had been demonstrated. It will also be shown that the analysis was further fraudulently bolstered by tampering with the experimental data, and critical science-based signature results. In addition, evidence will be shown that the entire follow-on test program was altered to hide the fact that the defense-system could not function against the simplest of decoys.
Boost-phase and reentry-phase defenses have different strengths and weaknesses relative to mid-course systems. Some of the more important technical features of these systems will also be covered in the presentation.
THEODORE A. POSTOL is Professor of Science, Technology and National Security Policy in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. He did his undergraduate work in Physics and his graduate work in Nuclear Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After receiving his PhD, Dr. Postol joined the staff of Argonne National Laboratory, where he studied the microscopic dynamics and structure of liquids and disordered solids using neutron, x-ray and light scattering, along with computer molecular dynamics techniques. Subsequently he went to the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment to study methods of basing the MX Missile, and later worked as a scientific adviser to the Chief of Naval Operations. After leaving the Pentagon, Dr. Postol helped to build a program at Stanford University to train mid-career scientists to study developments in weapons technology of relevance to defense and arms control policy. In 1990 Dr. Postol was awarded the Leo Szilard Prize from the American Physical Society. In 1995, he received the Hilliard Roderick Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.