The spectacles of the Syrian Scud missile launches, the recent North Korean ballistic missile test, and the relative success of the Iron Dome rocket intercept system have combined to thrust ballistic missiles back into the international spotlight. Cooperation between North Korea and Iran has become a great concern, especially with the relative success of North Korea’s latest launch. Syrian missile use has raised fears that Assad’s government might take further escalatory steps, such as using chemical weapons. These efforts have highlighted ongoing multilateral and domestic steps to manage ballistic missile proliferation, and particularly to stop “problem” states from further developing their missile capabilities. This attention has elevated ballistic missiles to the illicit plateau normally inhabited by chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. It is unclear, however, that ballistic missiles deserve this attention; the historical record of ballistic missile effectiveness is mixed at best.
In 1944 and 1945, Germany struck the United Kingdom with 1,402 V-2 ballistic missiles, killing upwards of 2,700 British soldiers and civilians. While terrifying, the V-2s killed only a small fraction of the total from the London Blitz (some 40,000) or from the Combined Bomber Offensive (which the U.S. Air Force itself estimated in 1945 as having killed 300,000 German civilians and wounded over 700,000 others). During the various “War of the Cities” phases of the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq launched over 500 ballistic missiles at Iran (some armed with chemical warheads), which responded with, by some estimates, 600 of its own. The strategic effect of these attacks was limited; civilians were terrified — 2,000 Iranians were killed from missile attacks with another 6,000 injured — but there is little evidence that either campaign was decisive in ending the war. Iraq launched Scuds at Israel and Saudi Arabia during the 1991 Gulf War, but failed to seriously damage U.S. forces or drag Israel into the conflict. In the waning days of the Libyan Civil War, government forces launched a Scud missile against rebel positions, to no apparent effect.
Most recently, Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have launched a series of ballistic missile strikes on rebel-controlled parts of the country. The impact of these strikes remains unclear, but they quickly earned the condemnation of the international community.
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Tamagawa_D9
This article is basically "ballistic missiles are nothing to worry about…unless you're talking about the massive stockpile of hyper-accurate ballistic missiles that a rising and belligerent Chinese military has aimed at nearly every democratic country in the region". Clearly it's not the weapons themselves that are overhyped, but the capabilities of the North Korean and Iranian forces that this article focuses on.
blert
Because of Garmin, it is now possible for any tin pot dictator to equip all of his ballistic missiles with terminal homing guidance — for peanuts.
So all prior conflicts provide no track record going forward.
No-one spends the serious money to mass produce/ batch produce ballistic missiles without equipping them with atomics… for all of the reasons expounded above.
No-one with atomic weapons fails to construct ballistic missiles for them. The sole historical example, America, has almost abandoned using bombers. They're frightfully expensive. Every other power considers aircraft to be purely a 'clean up' mode of final attack.
This makes ballistic missile expenditures a 'tell'… and points to Tehran as being on the cusp of deliverable atomic weapons able to reach at least 1,500 km. She is testing missiles with a continental range. No such missile exists without an atomic warhead.
The American proposal to mount a conventional warhead on their SSBN missiles was shot down by the Russians. It is now internationally accepted that ANY missile with that range is deemed an atomic launch…. no ifs ands or buts.
That's something to think about.
peter a. wilson
Mr. Farley, I think you have set up a technological straw man. The 50 year-old SCUD class SRBM is an obsolete weapon. This class of weapon becomes something entirely different when equipped with a maneuvering re-entry vehicle (MaRV). Using technology demonstrated by the radar guided MaRV on the Pershing II of some 40 years ago, the Chinese have taken the lead with the DF-15 class SRBM and the much touted DF-21D MRBM to produce a very powerful class of weapon with meaningful operational if not strategic effect. Similar to the diffusion of the precision guided Tomahawk class cruise missile a increasing number of countries will able to build MR/IRBMs with MaRV payloads. I note that even Syria appears to possess the M600 series SRBM, variant of an Iranian precison guided SRBM. Now with precision guidance, the previouos stupid terror weapon, can be used to attack individual key targets with major if not strategic effect. This evolution of the ballistic missile threat has been emerging over the last decade. I would be happy to send you a PDF of a RAND Corporation white paper I co-authored more than a year ago this elaborates on this point. Peter A. Wilson, Washington, D.C.