The Pentagon Wants Stealth Rocket Fuel. Could It Trigger A Nuclear War?

TR_123456 · Oct 6, 2020

This photo provided by the Defense Department's Missile Defense Agency, taken Jan. 28, 2016, shows a ... [+]

ASSOCIATED PRESS

The U.S. military wants a stealthy rocket fuel to enable U.S. missiles to avoid detection.

But could undetectable missiles trigger a nuclear war?

The project “seeks to develop solid propellants that exhibit reduced IR [infrared] signatures while maintaining thrust to mass ratio performance,” according to the research solicitation from the Missile Defense Agency. “Detection of missile launch and booster burnout are important threat identification points. Since remote IR surveillance is often used to detect and track missile launches, the ability to avoid detection through IR signature reduction would be beneficial for mobile defense platforms as well as forward deployed offensive assets.”

The fact that America’s missile defense organization wants a low-IR propellant isn’t necessarily sinister. While anti-missile lasers are on the way, for now U.S. ballistic missile defense — Ground-Based Interceptors and Patriot missiles on land, and Aegis SM-3 and SM-6 missiles at sea – relies on rockets to shoot down other rockets.

However, rocket-based interceptors use boosters that generate plenty of heat and light (see the blast in this video of a Ground-Based Interceptor test). It’s logical to assume that adversaries could use the infrared flash of an interceptor to pinpoint and destroy U.S. missile defense launchers and ships. In addition, the infrared plume from an interceptor rocket could potentially be detected in mid-flight, giving an incoming offensive missile a chance to deploy decoys or take evasive action.

But stealth rockets could generate a much more catastrophic risk. Nuclear deterrence – which has kept the U.S. and Russia from annihilating each other for 70 years – is based on the assurance that both sides could detect a first strike in time to launch a retaliatory strike. This is why America and Russia – and now China – have satellites in orbit that are designed to detect the infrared signature of an ICBM launch. The U.S., for example, maintains the Defense Support Program constellation of missile warning satellites, which are being replaced by Space-based Infrared System (SBIRS) satellites.

But rocket fuel that produces a minimal infrared plume raises the possibility that a nation could launch a surprise nuclear attack with low-IR missiles. Given that an ICBM takes 15 to 30 minutes to reach its target, and that a warhead descends through the atmosphere at Mach 23, even a few minutes could make a difference for whether the defender can intercept the incoming missiles, or launch a retaliatory strike before its own ICBMs are destroyed.

The fact that the U.S. military specifies that the stealth rocket fuel would be used on “forward deployed offensive assets” suggests the Pentagon wants offensive missiles that can’t be detected by an adversary.

Critics fear this could have unintended consequences. “The U.S. is actually the country that relies the most on detecting IR signatures for strategic warning of nuclear attacks, and tactical warning of theater missile attacks,” Brian Weeden, a former U.S. Air Force officer and an expert on space warfare, tells me.

“So if this technology were developed, I think it could actually hurt U.S national security more than help it. And history shows that technology has a way of proliferating, particularly if it has significant military value.”

James Acton, a physicist and co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is skeptical about the feasibility of rocket fuel that can minimize IR emissions without sacrificing performance.

He also worries that a stealthy rocket fuel could provoke Russia and China.

“They will interpret this as a way to conduct preemptive strikes against their nuclear forces,” Acton says. “And frankly, it's not clear to me what else it would be useful for.”