The Missile Next Time

No one seems to know who launched what appears to have been a ballistic missile – and by one account “a big missile” at that – from a point some thirty-five miles off the California coast on Monday evening. About all we have to go on is video of the event, which was serendipitously captured by CBS News’ LA affiliate.

To date, those who are supposed to monitor such things have confined their remarks to saying the missile was not one of ours. So, whose was it? What was it launched from – a surface vessel or platform, or a submerged one? If the former, has it been located and identified? Or was it scuppered so as to make it nigh on impossible to discern its provenance? What kind of missile was it and, if indeed it was one designed to deliver a weapon, what sort of weapon and over how long a range?

My guess is that the lack of publicly available information on such basic questions more than 24 hours after the event bespeaks an embarrassment of the U.S. government agencies charged with knowing if someone is attempting to do us harm. Perhaps the Defense Department, the intelligence community and/or the folks responsible for homeland security have more information and don’t want to share it until they have identified and, ideally, apprehended the perpetrators.

Or perhaps, they truly don’t have a clue and can’t bear to have their inadequacies put on display.

Either way, it seems evident that we have – as they say – a problem, Houston. That would be especially true if what happened turns out to have substantially followed a particularly scary scenario identified a few years back by a blue-ribbon congressional commission created to evaluate a threat few Americans have ever heard of: a strategic electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack against the United States. Under the leadership of President Reagan’s Science Advisor, Dr. William Graham, this panel concluded that there was a real danger that an adversary might bring a relatively short-range missile close to our shores, perhaps aboard a tramp steamer, and launch it high into space over this country’s interior.

Were a nuclear device to be detonated in outer space at the missile’s apogee, it would trigger an intense burst of electromagnetic energy. Depending on the height of the burst, large areas of the nation could rapidly degrade, if not destroy, the electronic devices, chips and electrical grid on which our society critically depends. The congressional commission found that the result could be “catastrophic,” to the point where Dr. Graham estimated that, within a year’s time, nine-out-of ten Americans would be dead.

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A short web video produced some years ago by the Center for Security Policy.

The threat remains just as ominous.

These cataclysmic losses would not be result of the direct effects of the nuclear blast. Rather, they would arise from the indirect impact of the power going, and staying, off: the near-simultaneous collapse of infrastructures required for food distribution, medical care, water and sewage services, transportation, finance, etc. Worst of all, thanks to the damage that would likely be done to such critical nodes as the backbone of our jury-rigged electrical grid – namely, several hundred transformers – power might not be fully restored for years.

Having trouble imagining such a state of affairs? Think of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina – only, on steroids: Communities in large swaths of the United States that are unable to sustain their populations and few, if any, other communities and government agencies are able to come to their assistance. (See Bill Forstchen’s riveting book, One Second After for a vivid portrayal of what a post-EMP environment would be like.)

What’s particularly worrying is that all of the rogue states and other prospective enemies of this country know about our vulnerability to such an EMP attack. In fact, Iran has actually tested the capability to carry out a sea-borne missile launch. Apparently, Tehran’s program in this case involves being able to put an explosive device into space and detonating it there. It’s what I always think of when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declares that a world without America is not only desirable, but achievable.

We don’t have enough evidence at the moment to know whether what happened yesterday was another such test, possibly a dress rehearsal for the apocalyptic strategic attack we have ample reason to fear. But even if it proves to have a different explanation, we should learn from this episode just how imperative it is that we prepare for – and thereby hopefully greatly reduce the likelihood of – a sea-launched strategic EMP attack.

To that end, two things are in order: First, the deployment of effective anti-missile systems of our coasts, immediately at sea aboard Navy ships equipped for this purpose, and as soon as possible in space (the most efficient way to protect large areas against ballistic missile threats). For this reason (among many others), the U.S. Senate should not agree to the ratification of the so-called New START Treaty, which would help the Russians institute new impediments to such defensive deployments, most especially not during the lame duck session.

And second, the Senate must complete action at once on the GRID Act (H.R. 5026), legislation that would, at long last, begin the process of hardening our electrical grid from EMP – whether precipitated by an attack or by impending intense geo-magnetic storms on the sun. This bill passed unanimously in the House, thanks to the strong support it enjoyed on both sides of the aisle. The way would have been clear for Senate passage and enactment earlier this Fall but for an ill-defined, and in any event unwarranted, objection by Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

There is not a moment to lose in taking these steps. After all, the missile next time may be a killer.