Boost Intercept Study Completed

After more than two and a half years of work, the American Physical Society’s study group on boost-phase intercept systems for national missile defense has released a 396-page report on the scientific and technical aspects of intercepting an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) during the first few minutes of the missile’s flight. The study reaches six conclusions based on 17 findings about a boost-phase intercept system but, based on an APS mandate to take “no position with regard to the wisdom of deployment,” makes no recommendations. Overall, the report says that developing an effective boost-phase interceptor system would be extremely difficult.

The federal government is currently spending about $9 billion on missile defense; in his current budget proposal, President Bush has requested about $626 million for development of a boost-phase intercept system. In a letter she wrote two weeks before the 15 July release of the report, APS President Myriam Sarachik told Representative Duncan Hunter (R-Calif), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, that the “technical analysis contained in the report should be of value to Congress, the Department of Defense, and other policy makers in shaping our nation’s missile defense program….”

Pre-release restrictions prevented an in-depth story about the study in this issue of Physics Today. A full news story will appear in the September issue.