Columbia International Affairs Online
CIAO DATE: 11/5/2007
The Spread of Missile Technology and its Countermeasures
August 2007
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract
The proliferation of missiles is commonly viewed as one of the most pressing international security issues and has been a key concern in the arms control and proliferation debates over the past decade. This has occurred at the same time that apprehension about the horizontal spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) has risen, and the two issues have become closely related in formulations of potential threats, as well as in existing attempts to regulate the spread of missile technology and parts.
Missile development is of concern in a number of volatile regions around the globe, but also for the United States (US) and Western Europe which fear long range attacks from various states. Missile proliferation has thus been the motivation behind the drive for a missile defence shield by the US, in itself a contentious development that is having its own complicated impact on international security and stability.
It is the specific attributes of ballistic missiles that have come to make them popular among possessor states, but also objects of grave concern for the arms control community. Ballistic missiles are capable of traveling vast distances in very little time, have a relatively high level of targeting accuracy, and can carry payloads of substantial size, making them ideally suited to the delivery of nuclear weapons. Indeed it is their history during the Cold War, where they were developed by the nuclear weapon states (US, the Soviet Union/Russia, Britain, China and France) to carry nuclear warheads (often multiple warheads), that continues to characterize them today.
The range of ballistic missiles varies greatly: those that can travel up to 1000 kilometres are designated as short range; those covering a distance from 1000 to approximately 3000 kilometers are designated medium range; those from 3000 to approximately 5,500 kilometres are designated intermediate range; and those that can travel distances in excess of 5,500 kilometres are designated as long range, or inter-continental, missiles. Around 30 states are known to possess short and medium range missiles, but only a very few have been able to develop and successfully test long range missiles.
