An Intercontinental Ballistic Missile with conventional explosives in place of its usual nuclear warhead would allow the U.S. military to take out terrorist targets on the other side of the world in an hour or less. Too bad any ICBM launch – nuclear or non-nuclear – looks the same to other countries' radars, meaning every strike on a terrorist camp risks sparking World War III. It's for that reason that just this week the Air Force wisely shelved all discussion of its loopy "ICBMs vs. terrorists" scheme.

Or maybe not.

Or maybe so.

Truth is, it's no longer clear what the Air Force thinks about non-nuclear ballistic missiles. Are there plans to build them despite the risks? Or did cooler heads prevail? Could an armed, hypersonic glider based on the finicky Hypersonic Test Vehicle replace the strike-anywhere nuke-less ICBM? Or would the super-fast glider merely complement the potentially world-ending terrorist-killing rocket?

In just a week's time, one Air Force official or another has announced each of these positions, directly contradicting some other officials ... or himself.

Maj. Gen. David Scott, the Air Force's requirements chief, jump-started the confusion on Feb. 17 with a garbled statement. "Conventional Prompt Global Strike, which is the conventional [Navy] Trident missile and it's the conventional strike missile; it's the things that we in the Air Force are working very closely with, with the Hypersonic Test Vehicle that you've seen in the newspapers," Scott said.

Roughly translated: the Pentagon is considering both non-nuke ICBMs and the hypersonic-glider option.

Eight days later, Scott walked back his earlier remark. "Our focus is on boost-glide capabilities, including the Hypersonic Technology Vehicle concept," he said. "We have no plans for conventionally armed sea-based missiles such as a Conventional Trident Modification or conventionally armed ICBMs."

That was clear enough. Then, just four days later on March 1, Air Force science and technology director Stephen Walker told a Congressional hearing that a nuke-less ICBM was still on the table.

A day later, Air Force chief of staff Gen. Norton Schwartz added a caveat to Walker's position. "We don't know yet," Schwartz said of the trade-off between ICBMs and hypersonic gliders. "The less challenging solution to that demand signal clearly is a conventional ICBM application or [a sub-launched ballistic missile]. There are complications with that, which are pretty self-evident."

"The hyper-velocity test vehicle is another potential solution, which is much less mature obviously," Schwartz continued. "We have another test coming up. We'll see how that one goes."

So where are we today? Who knows. If we assume that Schwartz – the higher-ranking general – has the final say, then the Air Force simply hasn't made up its mind and is keeping all options on the table for now. Including the super-dumb, non-nuclear ICBM.

Photo: Air Force

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