November 15, 2010
Tomorrows Tomahawk
When Thomas Edison first created the incandescent light bulb, he used vegetable fiber as a filament to actually create light. Today’s bulbs light up our lives with tightly wound tungsten wire. Who knew that the same element that lights our homes could also be used to light up America’s enemies? By retrofitting currently useless ballistic missiles, meter long tungsten rods could be doing just that. The idea is elegantly simple. Replace the warheads of a missile with these tungsten rods, boost them to a suborbital ballistic trajectory, and let physics do the rest. By the power of gravity, the tungsten rods fall to earth with pinpoint accuracy and the force of a small nuclear weapon. Furthermore, the system could be reconfigured to deliver sub munitions like cluster bombs, or even unmanned aerial vehicles. All of this, anywhere on Earth, in an hour or less.
The advantages of this system are incredible, especially with the types of conflicts the United States will be fighting. Currently, the fastest response time the US can muster, without exercising the nuclear option, is 48 hours by way of an Air Expeditionary Force, and heavy hitting can be accomplished in a 96 hour timeframe with a Navy Carrier Battle Group. Prompt Global Strike would reduce one way strike time to just under an hour for anywhere on earth without utilizing a nuclear warhead. Even a low yield device has the inevitable problems of fallout and collateral damage, both of which make even low yield warheads simply unacceptable as a first strike weapon. Prompt Global Strike offers this rapid response time without the astronomically high costs of nuclear weapons. PGS also has the power to punch meters into the ground and through concrete, making it effective against hardened targets like bunkers or missile silos without risking the life of a pilot.
This response time will be absolutely critical as the US continues to fight decentralized threats. Already, US drone strikes in Pakistan underscore the nature of conflict to spread beyond a specific theatre. When a conflict tends to spread, rapid strike capability is necessary to cut off violence before it spills over. PGS also has an incredible advantage in precision. Currently, cruise missiles are the chosen option for a precision strike, but they suffer from the handicap of being subsonic weapons, drastically increasing their response time compared to a PGS weapon. To illustrate the gravity of this shortcoming, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, the location of Osama bin Laden had been pinned down to a base in the Tora Bora mountains. Cruise missiles were launched by American naval forces in the Persian Gulf took over four hours to arrive, giving Al-Qaeda forces ample time to evacuate the area, costing the US a crucial opportunity in the war on terror. Prompt global strike would have overcome this waiting problem and permitted the US to capitalize on this opportunity, potentially ending the war on terror years ago.
Furthermore, precise, powerful, and timely strikes would be invaluable when it comes to dealing with potential future nuclear threats in Iran and North Korea. The ability to promptly deal with these emerging threats, especially the ability to destroy missile silos and hardened structures dedicated to weapons production, gives the US an incredible edge in the fight against nuclear proliferation. If properly timed, PGS could even be used to destroy enemy missiles before they are launched without utilizing nuclear weapons, making it an ironic tool of peace.
Granted, no system is perfect. PGS has one major problem: a nasty tendency to set off Russian early warning systems and make Ivan think we’re about to flip one at him. A missile that is, not the bird. The only way to solve this problem would be to broadcast a warning over the hotline, an unbreakable communications link between Washington and the Kremlin created during the cold war to stave off Armageddon. Now, it can be used as a tool to inform the Russian government of a PGS launch. This step could be implemented immediately; the infrastructure is already in place. All that is needed is a change in rhetoric before a tool created to stop a nuclear war becomes a weapon against nuclear proliferation.
Prompt Global Strike is an incredibly powerful tool, and if properly implemented it could give unused strategic missiles new life and purpose in combatting terrorism and weapons proliferation. Doubtless there are hurdles, but the ability to deliver a precise, powerful, and nearly immediate non-nuclear strike is incredibly valuable to the US as well as the entire global community. Clearly, the benefits of this technology far outweigh the easily solvable costs. The US is currently at the forefront of developing this technology, and it is paramount that this development move forward. President Bush shelved the project. As wars become increasingly decentralized and full scale invasions impractical, it is imperative that Prompt Global Strike at least be reexamined.
Nova Americana 