Why the National Missile Defense Should Not Be Deployed
Sentence Outline -- First Draft

Abstract. The proposed National Missile Defense will not protect the United States against the weapons of mass destruction. First, it has not shown that its technology is ready yet. With one of the defense's tests already completed being a failure and the other a questionable "success," the President and Congress could not in good faith affirm the proposed system's maturity, much less its reliability or operational effectiveness. Second, and more important, point is that even on paper the planned system could not defeat very simple countermeasures that the enemy will use to assure the mission's success. The decision to deploy the planned National Missile Defense system should not be made at this time.

How NMD is supposed to operate
1. The United States will decide in the fall of 2000 whether to begin deployment of a limited missile defense (NMD), "capable" of protecting all 50 states against ballistic missiles launched by one of the rogue states--North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Lybia.
2. The latest version of NMD includes 250 ground-based interceptors, ground-based X-band radars and space-based-spy satellites employing IR sensors.
3. By that time [when earlier paragraph said intercept would occur], the enemy target wold be released from the booster that carried it from the ground. or The task of hitting such a small target, often compared with hitting a bullet with a bullet, is technologically very formidable.
   Technology is not ready yet
4. The track record of US's "hit-to-kill" technologies is abysmal.
5. In view of these data, it is essential to verify if the technology is ready before deploying it. or perhaps this This decision to deploy should be on three criteria: technological maturity, operational effectiveness, and reliability.
6. To ensure the NMD technology is mature, a prototype of the full systems must be successfully tested.
7. The performance of the NMD system in the only "successful" test indicates kill vehicle's infrared sensor technology is immature.
8. Even by 2005, not enough tests will be carried out to give a statistically significant measure of the proposed system's reliability and effectiveness.
9. The reliability of the NMD system can be estimated only if the actual production level (as opposed to surrogate or prototype) hardware is used during the tests.
10. The performance of the NMD under real-world conditions, i.e., operational effectiveness, is essential, because countries employing ballistic missiles will also use countermeasures to try to defeat the missile defense.
    Inherent Ineffectiveness of the National Missile Defense
11. The inability of the proposed NMD system to defeat even the simplest countermeasures in theory, much less in practice, renders it inherently ineffective.
12. The proposed NMD system will have zero effectiveness against biological/chemical weapons that are delivered in submunitions, another name for small (< 10 kg) warheads.
13. Not only will this method of delivery defeat the proposed system, it is much more efficient at dispersing the agent over larger areas than a unitary warhead would be.
14. Releasing a large number of metallized balloons, only one of which contains the nuclear warhead, can overwhelm the proposed NMD system.
15. The release of balloons above the atmosphere and the presence of metal coatings render X-band radar useless.
16. The infrared sensors of the kill vehicle can be prevented from discriminating a balloon with a warhead by covering balloons with appropriate surface coatings for daytime attacks or inserting small heaters in them for nighttime attacks.
17. The attacker can choose to go the opposite route: instead of introducing additional sources of infrared radiation, it can cut down (by a factor of at least a million) the infrared output of the warhead by enclosing it in a shroud cooled to liquid nitrogen temperature.
18. The design of a very effective shroud is extremely "simple."
19. The amount of nitrogen required for cooling the shroud from 300 K to 77 K and keeping it at that temperature for the duration of the flight is surprisingly small-- 46 kg.
20. The additional baggage carried by a booster will not significantly alter the missile's range.
21. As figure 1 shows, the cooled shroud literally makes infrared sensors very "short-sighted."
22. The consequence of such a drastic reduction in acquisition range renders interceptors useless.

The decision to deploy the National Missile Defense should not be made because the technology has not demonstrated its readiness yet and, more importantly, because the design of the proposed defense makes it vulnerable to very simple countermeasures. Even assuming that it can be effective, NMD's maturity, operational effectiveness, and reliability cannot be estimated until after 2005. In view of the proposed NMD's susceptibility to countermeasures, the design should be reassessed before continuing with the testing program.