Archie to SAM: A Short Operational History of Ground-Based Air ...

Chapter 7
Ballistic Missile Defense in the 1990s
The breakup of the Soviet Union ended the Cold War and
dramatically changed the balance of strategic power and the
nature of the threat to the United States. On the positive side,
the lessening of tensions between Russia and the United
States greatly reduced the possibilities of an all-out nuclear
exchange between the two. At same time, the fragmentation of
the Soviet Union presented new challenges. There were fears
for the security of Russian nuclear weapons, as underscored
by the abortive August 1991 coup. The threat from Russia
seemed to be less of a massive, planned strike and more of an
accidental or unauthorized launch (action by a rogue commander
or perhaps a rebel group).
Aside from Russia, another problem was the proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, biological, and chemical
[NBC]) and of ballistic missiles. If some could shrug off possession
of such weapons in the hands of such responsible states as
Britain, France, and Israel, the same was not the case with such
terrorist-sponsoring states as Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, and
Syria. During a visit to Russia in 1991, a congressional delegation
found that this was more than just a Western perception. 1
In response to these changes, the United States refocused
its BMD program. In his 1991 State of the Union address,
Pres. George Bush announced that the American BMD would
be redirected from defending against a massive Soviet ballistic
missile strike to defending against a more limited missile attack
of up to 200 warheads. His view was summed up in the
system’s new name, global protection against limited strikes
(GPALS). It would shift the strategic defense initiative into a
three-fold program consisting of theater warning to allies and
forward-deployed US troops, defense of stateside Americans, and
a space-based system to fend off an attack anywhere in the
world. 2 GPALS was a two-layer system consisting of 1,000
space-based brilliant pebbles to intercept hostile missiles in
their boost phase and 750 ground-based interceptors to defend
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