The Continuing Debate on National Missile Defenses

DEC 01, 2000

Concerns about “emerging missile states” have spurred development of a system to defend the US from small‐scale ballistic missile attacks. But the planned system could be compromised by simple countermeasures, and the security costs of deployment could be high.

DOI: 10.1063/1.1341913

Lisbeth Gronlund

George N. Lewis

David C. Wright

Over the past several years, the Clinton administration has developed a national missile defense (NMD) system, the first phase of which could be operational sometime in the second half of this decade. President Clinton was scheduled to decide this fall whether to begin deployment of the system next spring; on 1 September he announced that he did not have “enough confidence in the technology, and the operational effectiveness of the entire NMD system, to move forward to deployment,” and would leave that decision to his successor. Whether or not to go forward with deployment of this system—or any other one, perhaps based on different technologies—will be a central policy concern for the next administration.

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More about the Authors

Lisbeth Gronlund. Union of Concerned Scientists, Cambridge, Mass.

George N. Lewis. Union of Concerned Scientists, Cambridge, Mass.

David C. Wright. Security Studies Program Massachusetts, Institute of Technology.