Technical Controversy and Ballistic Missile Defence: Disputing Epistemic Authority in the Development of Hit-to-Kill Technology

Public debate about Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) has long centred on the question of feasibility, particularly as regards the realism of testing. Thus BMD opponents have argued that flight-tests are insufficiently similar to operational use to provide a reliable guide to real-world performance. However, an in-depth account of the development of US hit-to-kill technology—an approach to BMD that relies on the direct impact of an interceptor on the enemy missile warhead—reveals a far less-recognised issue: some BMD supporters have specific technical doubts which centre on the design of the current system rather than on its testing. These concerns hinge on contrasting claims to epistemic authority between two camps of BMD supporters. On the one hand, advocates of space-based BMD oppose the current system on in-principle conceptual grounds. On the other hand, some BMD supporters close to the development of ground-based hit-to-kill technology claim that the empirical evidence from testing shows that the current design is suboptimal because it is the outcome of a bureaucratic politics compromise between the two camps. Although the battle for epistemic authority has swung in favour of the latter hit-to-kill supporters recently, the lack of operational experience with a defence against nuclear-armed ballistic missiles means that further disputes are likely. So long as empirical knowledge claims rest solely on testing, they are unlikely to prove sufficiently politically compelling to silence advocates of space-based defence.