Oelrich Explains New START and Missile Defenses
In a new blog post, Dr. Ivan Oelrich of the Federation of American Scientists, a Ploughshares grantee, provides a detailed analysis of an element of the New START treaty that has been seized upon by critics.
The New START treaty contains a provision that prohibits the conversion of ICBM silos into missile defense silos. As the U.S. has no plans to do so, this limitation does not effect U.S. missile defenses. Even Lt. Gen. Patrick O'Reilly, head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, has testified that "New START does not constrain our plans to execute the missile defense program." Nonetheless, treaty opponents persistently declared otherwise.
Oelrich confronts
START opponents' missile defense objections and explains the logic of ensuring that only offensive weapons are in offensive silos. Oelrich should know, he spent years doing classified work at the Institute for Defense Analysis on exactly these kinds of issues. He says:
New START is different because it limits launchers, missiles, and warheads. But for the launcher limit to make sense and to simplify the counting rules, it has to be clear-cut what can and cannot be in each [ICBM] silo. If we mixed offensive and defensive missiles in identical silos then even more frequent and more intrusive inspections would be required to sort it all out [for verifications purposes]. I suspect the motivation for the restraint was to clarify the meaning of silo counting rules.
