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| By United States Navy photo (http://www.navy.mil/view_single.asp?id=36116) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons |
During a recent discussion with a friend, I came across an
article in the Washington Times which reported the Obama administration was going to give away nuclear secrets to Russia. The President stated, in his
signing statement of this fiscal year's
National Defense Appropriation Act, his intention to go against legislation written which would require him to report to Congress any deals he made with foreign countries with regards to weapons information and development. It included instructions he couldn't make such deals without Congress's approval. While, the President asserted these limitations went against his executive authority to conduct foreign affairs and saw them as "nonbinding", he did promise through
Undersecretary of Defense Robert Nabors' letter to Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL), any such information would go through a "vigorous review" and he would seek advice from appropriate members of Congress.
Here's the question of the day: What information would the President be looking to exchange and with who. Simply put, the limitations were put in place due to the administration's intention to exchange missile defense information with the Russians to reassure them our missile defense system was not offensive nor was it geared towards them. The information entailed a single data point - the maximum effective range of the missile known as its burnout velocity.
MissileThreat.com defines it as, "The range of a missile is essentially determined by the velocity it reaches when all its propellant has been used up (its ‘burnout velocity’)." The weapon system in question is the
SM-3, a ballistic missile shipboard interceptor. Imagine a Patriot missile launched from a boat for nuclear missiles.
So why would the Obama administration give up such information? The first thing that should be noted is
information exchanges occur with the Russians all the time involving various weapon systems and programs. On December 1, 2010, the US State Department issued a fact sheet on the then-draft Defense Technology Cooperation Agreement which stated,
"U.S.-Russia and NATO-Russia cooperation on missile defense is intended to help improve our defensive capabilities, strengthen transparency, and reduce Russia’s concerns about the United States’ missile defense efforts by providing it with further insight into the nature of and motivations for U.S. and NATO ballistic missile defense plans and programs"
Most notably, defense information exchanges occur in compliance with our START II treaty requirements as well. The amount of disclosure which has occurred with the Russians about our most lethal weapons is astounding. Just because it happens all the time, shouldn't we be protecting our missile defense knowledge any way? Not really. This missile defense shield isn't being developed for the Russians entirely.
It was conceived with them in mind initially under the Reagan administration. However, as our Iranian, Chinese, and Pakistani "friends" develop more sophisticated missile technology which could jeopardize American interests and our homeland eventually, the missile defense shield can no longer afford to be stationary with all its attention on Russia.
We could not afford to appear to the Russians as developing a weapon system directed towards them with offensive intentions. This was the problem with
the follow-up missile defense plan envisioned by the Bush administration. It was difficult convincing the Russians that was not our intention when we wanted to park a bunch of missiles in their backyard. So, the Obama administration nixed the idea for a mobile seaborne and airborne option. The information they will exchange will only give them information about a single interceptor in the entire system. The idea is to convince the Russians, even though the systems are mobile, they pose no offensive concern for them absent an overt attack by them against us.
Given the nature of weapons development and testing cycles which are extremely lengthy before anything becomes operational and the Russians only recently (within the last 10 years) becoming active in new weapons technology, it would be a very long time before they developed a suitable countermeasure for this system which could see countless upgrades before then. Seeing how the Russians, the Pakistanis, the Chinese, nor the Iranians have an SM-3 to test this information on, who says the data we provide has to even be correct? It should also be noted this exchange goes along with
former President Bush's plan that was suspended. This is an
extremely small price to pay when looking at being able to park a missile defense shield in the Persian Gulf or the Yellow Sea.
Here's a datasheet of the SM-3:
www.raytheon.com/newsroom/.../rtn_rms_ps_sm3_datasheet.pdf
Here's video of it in action:
In Russia, Energomash, the rocket manufacturer of the Soyuz capsules, learned this lesson when fellow bloggers Lana Sator entered their manufacturing plant while guards were sleeping on duty. As a former supervisor of security personnel, I can attest there is nothing like having a facility penetrated because your responders were asleep. To make matters worse, Lana and several of her friends made five visits and each time the guards were asleep. They gained access to several critical manufacturing sections and posted their exploits online. As you can imagine, Russian defense and space bureaucrats were not happy and are looking at steep punishments for guards and I'm sure, managers.
