America’s New Super-Weapon: Prompt Global Strike

The New York Time yesterday unveiled a new super-weapon, called Prompt Global Strike, in development by the United States military. Though not currently operational this new weapon will surely redefine American military strategy for many years to come. A multi-stage launch process would allow for the launch of a missile, the deployment of a ‘glider’ that could maneuver with pinpoint accuracy, and the final deployment of a very large conventional warhead. This allows for the deployment of munitions to any point on the globe with in an hour, theoretically. Seeing as Obama has taken the United States a few steps away from the nuclear option, this new technology could prove extremely useful for both war time military action as well as the targeting of terrorist networks.

Such a weapon is always a double-edged sword. The ability of any great power to accurately target and deliver massive conventional power within an hour is a development that will surely strike suspicion and fear into the hearts of our competitors (most notably Russia and China). That much is to be expected (imagine how we would feel if Russia developed something like this…). Due to the powerful nature of this weapon, it is proposed that Russia will be allowed to inspect our active sites to be sure that nuclear warheads are not attached to these tricky weapons systems. It is worth noting that the Bush administration chose to push off dealing with this issue to the Obama administration: clearly, fighting two unpopular wars demanded too much of their time to develop theory and procedure for this new weapon. However, it also highlights just how much work needs to go into handling this development: it has the ability to upset the international relations considerably. This clearly shouldn’t limit our ambitions, but the United States must carefully approach rolling out this new technology.

Information about this weapon system was found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/world/europe/23strike.html?scp=5&sq=us%20military%20nukes%20russia&st=cse

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