Missile Shield Prudence

"The committee is unanimous in recommending that the government of Canada enter into an agreement with the United States to participate as a partner in ballistic missile defence."
"The committee heard worrying testimony about the ongoing efforts of North Korea and Iran to acquire capabilities to deliver long-range, nuclear-armed ballistic missiles so as to threaten neighbouring countries, NATO and North America."
Senate Committee on National Security and Defence

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei examining latest Iranian drone (Photo: AFP)

"Tehran's anti-Canada rhetoric continues and is well-documented. [The regime threatens Canada with] swift retaliation; [the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper is] racist, radical, extremist, Iran-phobic [and a] lackey [of Israel]."
"The presence of numerous high-profile federal institutions, foreign embassies, military facilities, tourist attractions, and special events make the NCR [National Capital Region] a rich environment for possible plots by a variety of differently motivated terrorists."
Integrated Terrorist Assessment Centre report

Military parade in Iran (photo: EPA)

"There was in fact a rise in the rhetoric, and it likely was just that, rhetoric. But you really can't take that chance."
Matthew Levitt, U.S. counter-terrorism analyst, author of Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon's Party of God

Iranian ballistic missiles (Photo: AP)

According to Senator Daniel Lang who heads the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, both North Korea and Iran have developed missile technology "to the point where a threat has become a practical reality." A Canadian Department of National Defence report dated 2003 cited U.S. spending of over $200-billion over a 50-year period with attempts to develop various types of missile defence.

American plans dating from the early 1960s stressed stationing of nuclear-armed missile interceptors at the North Bay-situated North American Aerospace Defence Command's regional headquarters. Similar missile batteries were to be deployed to defend Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton, Detroit, Windsor, Seattle and Vancouver, but were never carried through.

Of more recent vintage was the expenditure of $30-billion by the U.S. on a ground-based midcourse defence system whose interceptors have failed roughly half the time; 8 out of 17 tests, failing to destroy incoming mock warheads. Installed in Alaska and California, the interceptors are meant to destroy incoming missiles through collisions with enemy warheads; a process described as "hitting a bullet with a bullet". 

Testifying before the commission, Phillip Coyle, formerly Pentagon chief weapons tester in the 1900s, currently an associate director of national security in the Obama administration, informed the committee that the missile shield simply does not work. "Shooting down an enemy missile going 15,000 mph out in space is like trying to hit a hole-in-one in golf when the hole is going 15,000 mph" he stated. "And if an enemy uses decoys and countermeasures, missile defence is like trying to shoot a hole-in-one in golf when the hole is going 15,000 mph and the green is covered with black circles the same size as the hole."

"The (midcourse) hardware being deployed in Alaska and California has no demonstrated capacity to defend the United States, let alone Canada, against enemy missile attack under realistic operational conditions", Canadian senators were informed by Mr. Coyle. On the other hand, the committee heard evidence from Dean Wilkening, physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of the authors of a three-year study conducted by the Washington-based National Research Council concluding that while missile defence systems remain problematic, "ground-based missile defence is worth pursing."

"We (the NRC) concluded that the technology is feasible, certainly to deal with threats from countries like North Korea and Iran." Such a system "should be adequate or could be adequate for defending against a small number -- a handful or a few tens of -- ballistic missile warheads from a country like North Korea." The Senate committee argues that even some of the harshest critics of missile defence feel "it would be in Canada's interest to participate in the U.S. effort."

As for the integrated intelligence report, they appear to conclude that "Simple straightforward, small-scale attacks, using available weapons and minimal preparation against undefended targets are a realistic match with the actual capabilities of most extremists". On the other hand, they're discussing lone jihadi-type terrorist attacks by disaffected Islamist fanatics that are mostly home-grown, not the types of attacks mounted by dysfunctional warring governments with missiles and warheads at their disposal.