The Full Costs of Ballistic Missile Defense
The first and still the only independent study of the full costs of the proposed multi-layered system, including land, sea, air, and space-based components. Edited by Richard Kaufman, preface by Kenneth Arrow, and articles by Rodney Jones, William Cox, and David Gold.
Commissioned by the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, the full study is available as a PDF.
Executive Summary (excerpt)
Ballistic missile defense is technologically extremely challenging and efforts to solve the technical challenges, including those of evolving countermeasures, are inevitably laden with uncertainty and, therefore, are expensive. The Bush administration’s interest in building a comprehensive, or “layered,” missile defense system could lead to extraordinary defense budget costs over the next twenty to thirty years. The projected costs of all the layers and components of a layered missile defense are seldom in public view, and never all at one time. Moreover, the projected future costs over the plausible life cycles of missile defense systems are rarely examined and poorly understood by key decision makers, at least outside the missile defense realm itself. Presentations of the technical and cost issues needed for congressional accountability frequently conceal more than they reveal. Assessments of the likely cost of missile defense architectures that are intelligible to the public as a whole hardly exist.