By Gerry Doyle
(Reuters) -The success of ballistic missile defenses facing their first complex, high-stakes combat scenarios in Israel, the Red Sea and Ukraine will encourage militaries worldwide to invest in the expensive systems, experts say – and end the missile arms race intensify.
Iran launched as many as 120 intermediate-range ballistic missiles at Israel on April 13, US and Israeli officials say. American SM-3 and Israeli Arrow interceptors destroyed almost all of them, leaving behind drones and smaller threats to the Iron Dome system.
In previous months, interceptors fired from US Navy destroyers stopped Houthi anti-ship missiles, while in Ukraine US-made MIM-104 Patriot batteries shot down advanced Russian Iskander and Khinzal missiles.
Reuters spoke to six experts who said more militaries would be looking to invest in ballistic missile defense, a potential windfall for companies like Lockheed Martin (NYSE:) and Raytheon (NYSE:), which build these types of systems.
“There is no denying that any prosperous country with the technological resources will continue to invest in missile defense,” said Ankit Panda of the US-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a defense and security think tank. “All this is a recipe for a conventional arms race.”
European countries such as the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden and Poland already use Patriot batteries from RTX subsidiary Raytheon, the most common Western advanced ballistic missile defense system.
Saudi Arabia has been using its patriots to defend against Houthi attacks for years; they and the United Arab Emirates also operate the Lockheed Martin Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) system. Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain also have Patriot batteries, and Oman has expressed interest in missile defense.
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In the US, Lockheed Martin won a $17.7 billion contract in April for a next-generation interceptor for the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) program – designed to shoot down small numbers of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) focused on the continental United States. .
But the impact may be most acute in Asia, where China has invested heavily in conventionally armed ballistic missiles. A 2023 Pentagon report said the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force has about 500 DF-26 missiles, designed to accurately strike targets thousands of miles away.
That puts American and allied bases in Japan and Guam within range of an attack that may take 20 to 30 minutes to precede.
“In the Pacific you will see further interest in missile defense, which will push the Chinese to build more systems,” said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International studies in California. “Countries will want to buy (offensive) missiles because they see other countries using them… That will increase the demand for missile defense.”
The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and China’s Ministry of Defense did not respond to requests for comment.
China rarely discusses its missile arsenal, aside from statements that its forces are intended to keep the peace and not targeted at any specific country.
Raytheon did not respond to a request for comment. A Lockheed Martin spokesperson referred questions to the company’s first-quarter earnings briefing in late April, in which it said it continued to lead the industry in “missile defense missions, which are becoming more important than ever given world events.” .
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DOLLAR SIGNS
Ballistic missile defense works by detecting an offensive weapon at launch or in flight and then using surface radar to guide an interceptor to the target.
Intercepts can take place in the atmosphere or in space, and each domain requires different hardware. For example, fins will not work outside the atmosphere; interceptors must have small steering missiles to function there.
The necessary powerful computers, far-sighted radars and missiles the size of telephone poles are not cheap and together cost in the billions. For example, in 2022, the US approved the sale of both Patriots and THAAD systems to Saudi Arabia, in deals worth as much as $5.3 billion.
In the Indo-Pacific region, wealthier countries like Japan, Australia and South Korea are prime candidates for missile defense, Lewis said, while almost every country in Asia is already investing in missiles.
Japan’s Defense Ministry said the country must “fundamentally and rapidly strengthen its defense capabilities, including integrated air and missile defense.” It said it is investing in upgraded Patriot missiles, better radars and improved Navy anti-missile capabilities.
In its latest defense budget, South Korea increased funding for its Korea Air and Missile Defense System by 12% to expand it “from the existing lower-level defense concept,” the country’s Defense Ministry said in a statement.
“Cases such as the Israel-Hamas conflict and the war between Russia and Ukraine have reaffirmed the importance of a ‘ballistic missile defense system’ to respond to increasingly sophisticated missile threats,” the ministry said.
In mid-April, Australia announced a A$500 million ($328 million) contract with Lockheed Martin to supply its Joint Air Battle Management System for tracking and destroying aircraft and missiles.
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The cost of a ballistic missile is often much cheaper than the system intended to stop it.
But that’s not the right way to look at the costs, says Yoji Koda, former commander-in-chief of Japan’s Self-Defense Fleet and a proponent of stronger missile defense in his country.
‘In a war economy, the cheaper the better. But what is sometimes necessary is that we must protect important infrastructure or important command centers at all costs. Because without them we would lose.”
THE CHINA QUESTION
Most of China’s conventionally armed ballistic missiles are designed to hit land-based targets.
But it also uses steerable warheads intended to hit ships at sea, including the DF-21D and variants of the DF-26 developed by state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.
Such anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs) had not been used in combat until late 2023, when Houthi forces in Yemen began firing Iranian-made models at ships in the Red Sea.
Between November – the first documented use – and April, US Central Command reported at least 85 ASBMs fired in the region, with 20 interceptions and one civilian ship sunk.
CENTCOM has declined to provide details on the effectiveness of Iranian ASBMs, but has noted that missiles that did not pose a threat were not deployed and that most missiles not intercepted landed harmlessly.
The effectiveness of missile defense on land and sea will draw China’s attention, said Tong Zhao, a senior fellow at the Nuclear Policy Program and Carnegie China.
“It raises the possibility that the US and its allies could significantly rely on missile defense against a ballistic missile attack,” Zhao said.
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While the technical characteristics of China’s missiles are closely guarded secrets, the country’s heavy investment means they are likely to be more reliable, and are widely believed to use complex countermeasures to make interception difficult.
“For adversaries like China, who have missile stockpiles orders of magnitude greater than those of Russia or Iran and deploy more advanced systems … it is not clear that lessons learned negate existing operational constructs,” said Sidarth Kaushal, a senior researcher. fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.
But the political and practical incentives to invest in missile defense will be too attractive for many countries to ignore, Lewis said.
“All defense procurement decisions are ultimately about politics,” he said. “The politics of this stuff is very simple: Do you want to defend the country or not? And the winning answer is always ‘Yes’.”
($1 = 1.5225 Australian dollars)
