NATO's Anti-Tactical Ballistic Missile Requirements and Their Relationship to the Strategic Defense Initiative.

This report attempts to structure the broad range of issues affecting the potential development of anti-tactical ballistic missile ATBM systems by evaluating the relationship among NATOs potential needs for ATBMs, the technologies under development in the Strategic Defense Initiative SDI program, and the political constraints in the Federal Republic of Germany FRG, where ATBMs would be deployed. The authors conclude that planners attempting to improve NATOs air defenses and those attempting to advance SDI research goals are faced with distinctly different problems. Since NATOs requirements have little connection to SDI, an ATBM system intended to advance SDI goals must be based almost entirely on SDI objectives and could cause controversy in the FRG. Conversely, the limited systems of most interest to NATO stand outside the political debate. JHD