Pentagon Plan: Hit Anywhere on Earth, in an Hour
I've had sources ask to meet me in some pretty odd places. But there was one meeting last year that had to be just about the strangest request yet. It wasn't just that this very-recently retired Defense Department strategist wanted to meet at the Pentagon City Mall -- that's a pretty common place to grab an off-the-record cup o' joe. It was where in the mall he had in mind: at the Nordstrom's coffee shop, tucked all the way in the far reaches of the store, just past the little kid's clothes section.
So I walk past the rows of toddlers' jumpers, past the blue-haired ladies ordering around their grandkids. I sit down with my source. And he begins to tell me about a Pentagon plan that's even odder that the place where we're meeting.
Here's the goal, as another source -- U.S. Strategic Command's deputy commander, Lt. Gen. C. Robert Kehler -- later told me on-the-record: "strike virtually anywhere on the face of the Earth within 60 minutes."
Sounds... ummm, ambitious, right? So how do you pull off that kind of mission, now known as "Prompt Global Strike?" Well, that's the subject of my cover story in this month's Popular Mechanics.
Now, of course, the American military has weapons that can destroy just about anything on the planet in a matter of minutes: nuclear missiles. Which might have been the right answer for containing our Soviet adversaries. But as the Cold War receded into memory, U.S. strategists began to worry that our nuclear threat was no longer credible. That we were too muscle-bound for our own good. Were we really prepared to wipe out Tehran in retribution for a single terrorist attack? Kill millions of Chinese for invading Taiwan? Of course not. The weaker our enemies grew, the less ominous our arsenal became. Military theorists called it "self-deterrence." "In today's environment, we've got zeros and ones. You can decide to engage with nuclear weapons, or not," Navy Capt. Terry Benedict told me. "The nation's leadership needs an intermediate step – to take the action required, without crossing to the one."
Benedict's option -- one of two I explore in the article -- is Trident ballistic missiles, armed with conventional warheads instead of nukes. For lots of good reasons (like the better-than-average chance the missiles could start World War III) Congress has negged the idea. But, in the military establishment, there's still a great deal of interest in using ballistic missiles for the hour-or-less mission. How exactly the nuclear holocaust issue is supposed to be resolved is, at this point, unclear.
Which brings us to option #2. It's a long-term play. And a long-shot, too. The military's research divisions are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into exotic, high-speed weapons like the X-51 hypersonic cruise missile, illustrated on the cover. If it works out as planned, the X-51 will go Mach 5 (roughly 3600 mph) -- much, much faster than any equivalent in the U.S. arsenal. Some Pentagon planners see the X-51 as part of a suite of futuristic weapons that can almost-instantly threaten American adversaries everywhere, without threatening the entire planet in the process. But it's way off in the distance; the X-51's first test flight isn't until 2008. I'm expecting several more trips to Nordstrom's Cafe before then.
UPDATE 11:40 AM: If you want to learn how the Prompt Global Strike concept got started -- and how it's being put into early development, today -- I strongly recommend this chronology, from the Federation of American Scientists' Hans Kristensen.
Comments to Hit Anywhere in an Hour: In reading this article I became aware that the planners as well as the writer of it forgot a few details along the way. What is the definition of strike in one hour anywhere? What are the methods to be used like force deployment, air strike or missle attack. You only described missle attack because its the only way the requirement can be achieved today. I agree with some of the comments that using a Trident missle is the most expensive way to strike anywhere in an hour. But if instead of spending billions on worthless military hardware programs we could shift our priorities to development of hardware for rapid deployment forces like a supersonic troop transport with VSTOL capability and Mach 5 then you would come close to deploying a strike force anywhere within that time frame. The technology exist to do it but like the man space exploration program we traded it for sattelite reconnaisance of the planets. This has been a grave error and giant mistake because as the planet warms up, millions on people are going to die from heat and lack of oxygen! By the time governments come around to recognizing they have a global problem it will be too late! The most important part of this comment is that we will not have the capability to transport people to Mars or Venus and relieve the pressure on our natural resources. Also save their lives and expand humanity. That is the one single thing the planners at NASA have denied us with their bad decisions....the ability to expand humanity into other planets. This is the same problem with the worthless military hardware programs of today. They are misguided and serve no real purpose. It seems that the Threat identifyers and the hardware designers to meet that threat are not talking to each other. Back in the Thirties we had a choice: Use hydrogen as our vehicle fuel or oil. We chose oil! Now that we need to switch in order to reverse the effects of decades of polluting the world with hydrocarbon emissions, we don´t have the will power to do it. It seems we have left it to mother nature to fix the problems we created as humans. Mother nature is going to make sure we know the real reason the dinasaurs disappeared from the face of the Earth. And it was no asteroid as scientist claim! So forget about striking in 1 hour as long as the military establishment does not want to fabricate the correct hardware to achieve that mission. Remember, just like in war there is no substitute for victory, there is no substitute for sending in the Marines in One Hour to achieve your goals as a nation. Forget about the Trident and vacations in Maui. The troop SST is what you need. But instead we will get a missle at 200 Million each! Why? Because it generates continued revenue for the Industrial Military Complex. Forget about effectiveness! And thats the point expressed here: From the misguided decisions of the space program, fuel selection to power our industry and military weapons systems, our planners have always made the wrong decisions! So this article and its implied solutions do not surprise me. Hopefully the tax payers will not allow it.
Posted by: Miguel Salles at January 17, 2007 10:48 AM