A Chink in the Armor

“Missile Defence Myopia: Lessons from the Iraq War” by Dennis M. Gormley, in Survival (Winter 2003–04), International Institute for Strategic Studies, Arundel House, 13–15 Arundel St., Temple Pl., London WC2R 3DX, England.

America’s Patriot missile defenses, such a dud in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, worked far better in the Iraq War last year. But amid all the dazzling displays of U.S. firepower, it wasn’t widely recognized that the United States was still operating with “only half a missile defense”—a dangerous condition that now cries out for correction, contends Gormley, a senior fellow in the Monterey Institute’s Center for Non­proliferation Studies.

The Patriot intercepted and destroyed each of the nine Iraqi ballistic missiles that posed serious threats. (Ten others, misaimed, were allowed to land harmlessly in the desert or gulf waters.) But low-flying Iraqi cruise missiles and aircraft—hard to distinguish on radar screens from all the friendly choppers and planes flying close to the ground—were another story.

“American and Kuwaiti missile defenses and warning systems apparently failed to detect or intercept four of five” Iraqi cruise missiles that were fired, Gormley reports. One of those missiles “came perilously close to a U.S. Marine encampment,” while another hit just outside a large Kuwaiti shopping mall. In addition, two Iraqi ultralight aircraft, which could easily have been carrying deadly chemical or biological agents, flew over a U.S. Army encampment—and thousands of Amer­ican troops—before being detected.

This record provides what one missile defense officer called “a glimpse of the future,” in which cruise missiles and piloted or drone aerial vehicles such as ultralights could constitute “a poor man’s air force.” Simple, inexpensive kit airplanes that hobbyists buy could readily be adapted to serve as weapons. The very success of the Patriot in dealing with ballistic missiles, Gormley observes, makes the cheap alternative that much more attractive to potential enemies.

In addition to stronger diplomatic efforts to curtail proliferation of cruise missile technology, he concludes, the United States should seek closer coordination among the relevant army, navy, and air force units, possibly under a single Pen­tagon agency. And deployment of a new “wide-area surveillance and battle management platform,” which is not scheduled to occur until 2011, may need to be speeded up.