Sheila Vemmer / Defense News Media Group Dennis Gormley, senior fellow at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterrey Institute, Calif.

The United States should begin programs to hedge against land-attack cruise missiles, which are fast becoming the preferred weapon in the arsenal of most developing countries, said Dennis Gormley, senior fellow at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterrey Institute, Calif.

While the United States and its allies have erected stiff barriers to the spread and use of ballistic missiles — including the Missile Technology Control Regime and ballistic missile defense systems — the lack of such hurdles have made cruise-missile development attractive, he said.

The United States and its allies must strengthen international regimes to stanch the flow of cruise-missile technology and at the same time start programs to counter the threat from land-attack cruise missiles, he said.

Gormley spoke April 27 at the Cruise Missile & IED Defense 2006 Conference: Joint Engagement of Time-Critical Air & Ground Targets, sponsored by the Defense News Media Group, in Arlington, Va.

The United States continues to view defense against land-attack cruise missiles as a “lesser included case” of the broader ballistic missile defense effort, but it’s anything but a lesser included case, Gormley said.

Russia and China are among the chief proliferators of cruise-missile technology, helping countries like Pakistan, India and Iran develop a strong arsenal of the low- and fast-flying missies, which can evade radar designed to track high-flying ballistic missiles, he said.

Regional rivalries between India and Pakistan in South Asia and between China and Taiwan in the Far East show that countries are acquiring land-attack cruise missiles as a way to thwart their adversaries’ defense against ballistic missiles, he said.

For example, while the United States is discussing the possible sale of ballistic missile defense systems to India, Pakistan recently announced a land-attack cruise-missile program that would render such anti-missile systems useless, he said.

On the domestic front in the United States, land-attack cruise missiles present a growing threat to the homeland, he said.

Cheap UAVs designed to function as cruise missiles or even a low-flying aircraft with a suicide pilot on board can mimic cruise-missile characteristics and defeat conventional air-defense radar, which is designed to look up and not at the horizon, he said.

The solution is for the Pentagon to begin looking at airborne platforms linking the future Air Force E-10 electronic surveillance plane with the Army’s Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Elevated Netted Sensor — a large aerostat mounted with radar — to pick out cruise missiles, he said.

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