A large amount of missile defense-related news is appearing these days. To date, the bulk of the opposition to the development of anti-missile technology revolves around two arguments. One is that a tiny nuclear device, or any weapon of mass destruction for that matter, can be easily moved to any site. This was spelled out years ago in detail by Frederick Forsyth, for example, in his novel The Fourth Protocol.

A second argument is that it is remarkably easy to effectively conceal an inbound warhead in a cloud of decoys such as balloons. Decoys in a various shapes and sizes, the critics of missile defense tell us, represent perhaps the most effective countermeasures which can render any anti-missile system useless. Such arguments surface again and again.

But if an enemy’s long-range, multi-stage missile could be knocked out before the re-entry vehicle separated from the launch vehicle, this would eliminate the objections based surrounding decoys altogether. So, how do we get as close as possible to the enemy’s launch site? And why not deploy a large mobile missile platform for this specific purpose, one which could lie silently offshore, and is ready to intercept anything launched by a hostile power? By reconfiguring the Navy’s missile-firing submarines known as SSBN’s — these happen to be the largest mobile missile launchers in the U.S. arsenal — we might accomplish this objective.

The U.S. Navy’s surface ships could be used for this purpose, but the limited range of the existing theater anti-missile defense system rules this out for now. As for attack submarines, they cannot be ruled out entirely either. SSBN’s simply offer more capacity and fire large, long-range missiles. In addition, SSBN’s are positioned such that any future anti-missile interceptor fired by an SSBN could chase the enemy missile, and not collide head-on with it.

Could a missile fired from an SSBN lurking offshore successfully intercept a missile during its boost phase at high altitude? This is the key question, given the billions of dollars spent thus far in the ongoing attempt to intercept a missile head-on at very long range. These tests have not been very successful thus far. This SSBN anti-missile option is based on a proven scenario, very similiar to a conventional anti-aircraft missile downing a high- speed aircraft.

Is this easy to accomplish? Not really, but there is no need to refit an entire SSBN to prepare it for this sort of defensive role. With the conversion of as few as two or perhaps four missiles and four missile launch tubes aboard an SSBN, we could be well on our way to creating a mobile undersea platform which could effectively address a very real and growing threat of a missile attack by a rogue state involving the firing of a single missile or a handful of missiles, and not a barrage of missiles.

For the Russians in particular, this issue of a handful of defensive missiles aboard an SSBN is critical. Why? The Russians would see immediately that a very limited number of missiles deployed for defensive purposes in this manner aboard what appears to be a limited, and diminishing number of U.S. Navy SSBN’s rules out any possibility that this underdea-based anti-missile system could play a major role in anything other than the accidental ICBM launch and the so-called hostile rogue state ICBM launch scenarios.

What needs to be addressed? Beyond the need for an updated ABM treaty which reflects new new technologies, the high speed transfer of data from our nation’s space-based satellite surveillance, launch detection and missile tracking network down to SSBN’s well below the surface of the ocean is a big challenge. And part of this challenge involves providing an SSBN with wireless access to the SPY-1 radar system aboard the U.S. Navy’s Aegis cruisers and destroyers.The SPY-1 radar lies at the very core of the theater anti-missile system now being deployed by the U.S. Navy’s surface fleet with a range of approximately 75 miles which is too limited for the mission described here.

To suggest that an SSBN surrender its most-prized advantage, stealth, by plugging into a dynamic, defense-oriented, and highly networked environment may not sit well with many submariners. However, innovative approaches are required to better address the adverse set of circumstances we are likely to encounter in the 21st century. SSBN’s are on patrol today awaiting a signal to launch their missiles which hopefully never has to be sent. In this new role, that mission remains fundamentally unchanged. The target and the flow of data including the signal to launch changes, but no undesirable transmissions from SSBN’s which might disclose their locations are required.

Given the limited success to date high up over the Pacific, we need to think about alternatives. What we need is a mobile platform, a layered approach and not just a single site in Alaska. This is serious business where nothing can be ruled out yet.

Peter J. Brown is a Mount Desert freelance writer.