ABL: Airborne Laser.
ABM: Anti-Ballistic Missile. The older acronymn ABM, as in the ABM Treaty, is sometimes still used instead of more recent ones such as NMD (National Missile Defense) or BMD (Ballistic Missile Defense). All three mean substantially the same thing, however, in technical terms. “ABM” is especially used to refer to the Russian missile defense system, because while not primitive in application Russia has had such systems since 1967?? (??)
ABM Treaty: The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, signed on May 26, 1972.
Active defenses: Weapons systems or countermeasures to blunt an attack while it is occurring
ASAT: Anti-Satellite Weapon, A system designed to destroy or disable orbiting satellites
Ballistic Missile: A missile that travels unpowered and unguided after being launched and at a velocity such that it will follow a flight trajectory to its target. Part of the flight of longer-range ballistic missiles may occur outside the atmosphere and involve the “reentry” of the missile
BAMBI: Ballistic Missile Boost Intercept
BMD: Ballistic Missile Defense. Refers to any species of systems designed to destroy ballistic missiles.
BMDO: The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, since renamed by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld as the Missile Defense Agency (MDA).
Bilateral: Negotiations, treaties, agreements, or arrangements that affect or are between two parties, countries, etc. A bilateral treaty may be contrasted with a multilateral one, one with three or more parties. Unilateral applies to a country’s actions taken by itself, such as unilateral arms reductions.
Biological weapons: Organisms such as bacteria or virus that causes disease used to incapcitate or kill, the most lethal substance known to man
BMEWS: Ballistic Missile Early Warning System
Boost Phase: section of the trajectory of a ballistic missile or space vehicle in which the booster engine and sustainer engine operate, occurs directly after lift-off, for an ICBM it lasts 3-5 minutes and ends at an altitude of about 200 kilometers
BSTS: Boost Phase Surveillance and Tracking System
CEP: Circular Error of Probability: Measures the expected accuracy of a weapon system, in which 50% of warheads will hit the target, represented by the radius of the circle surrounding the targeted area.
Chemical weapons: non explosive chemical agents that include choking, blood and nerve agents.
C3I: Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence systems
Conventional forces: Armed troops that operate weapons such as tanks, artillery, and tactical aircraft but do not operate nuclear weapons or other weapons using kinetic energy
Conventional weapons: weapons including aircraft, tanks, and artillery that use non-nuclear explosives or kinetic energy to hit targets
Counterproliferation: Effort by military to stop proliferation, including the application of military power to protect forces and interests, intelligence collection, and analysis.
Crisis instability: Small events or minor conflicts causing large disturbances or major conflicts within the internationally
CTR: Cooperation Threat Reduction. A U.S. Department of Defense program established in 1992 by Congress.
DARPA: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
DOD: Department of Defense
Deterrence: The actions of a state to dissuade an opponent from initiating an attack or conflict by threatening equal or worse retaliation. As the term is usually used, however, it applies especially to the use of purely offensive actions or rather capabilities for such dissuasion.
Entry into force: The moment at which all provisions of a treaty are legally binding on its parties
ERIS: European Regional Information Society
Export control arrangements: treaties, agreements, or laws that restrict the sale of goods to certain countries that are applied to the export and sale of certain types of technologies and materials. The Missile Technology Control Regime is of this sort (MTCR).
Extended deterrence/Nuclear umbrella: Process involving security through military protection from a nuclear power. The country under the nuclear umbrella would then be protected from nuclear attack or threat
FEL: Free Electron Laser
GBI: Ground Based Interceptor
GBR: Ground Based Radar
Gimbaled:
GPALS: Global Protection Against Limited Strikes
HEDI: High Endoatmospheric Defense Interceptor high alert the state of readiness of nuclear forces that is needed to launch an immediate attack
Horizontal proliferation: the spread of weapons of mass destruction to states that have not previously possessed them
ICBM: Inter-continental Ballistic Missile
INF: Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty
IMU: Inertial Measurment Unit
IRBM: Intermediate range ballistic missile
Kinetic weapons: High-speed projectiles that are non-explosive; may have homing devices
Land-based missile systems: missile systems located on land in hardened bunkers, underground silos or on mobile launchers. The positions of the mobile land-based missile systems can change, rendering the missiles less vulnerable. Layered BMD system: A ballistic missile defense system that consists of several sets of defensive interceptors that operate against incoming ballistic missiles at different phases during the missile’s flight. There could be a first layer of defense during the boost phase with remaining targets passed on to later phases including midcourse and the terminal phase. The Bush Administration uses the terms “BMD” or “layered BMD”. “TMD” and “NMD” were phrases preferred by the Clinton Administration.
MAD: Mutually Assured Destruction
MAR: Multi Functional Phased Array Radar
Megaton: A unit of measure of explosive power of an atomic weapon that has the equivallance of one million tons of TNT.
Midcourse phase:
MIRV: Multiple Independently-targetable Re-entry Vehicle is an offensive ballistic missile system with multiple warheads, each of which can strike a separate target and can be launched by a single booster rocket.
MRBM: Medium Range Ballistic Missile
MTCR: Missile Technology Control Regime
NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NIE: National Intelligence Estimate
Nodong: Name for a series of theater ballistic missiles being developed by North Korea.
Nonproliferation: Prevention of the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
Nuclear Deterrence: to have a country realize the catostophic consequence of launching a nuclear attack by having the willingness and ability to counter attack with nuclear weapons.
NMD: National Missile Defense. The phrase national missile defense has been around for as long as the debate has existed, but came to prominence about during the distinction between “national” and “theatre” missile defense (TMD) which rose in prominence during the Clinton administration. Three of the four laws passed by congress were titled “National Missile Defense Act” of their respective years. In George W. Bush’s NSPD 23 of December 2002, the artificial distinction between theatre and national missile defense was explicitly rejected. National missile defense has always meant the sort of capabilities necessary for defending the American population at large. However, during the Clinton years it acquired a more sophisticated meaning relating to teh speed of the missiles a particular system could intercept. A TMD interceptor could intercept missiles with shorter ranges which had a rentry speed of no greater than 5km/sec. Anything over that was considered “NMD.” The relation of this to the real world was that any ICBM launched by Russia or China would be traveling much faster, around 7km/sec. National Missile Defense thus became a euphemism for any system which threatened to defend against Russian and Chinese ballistic missile threats.
NPT: Nonproliferation Treaty
PAC: Patriot Advanced Capability
PBV: Post Boost Vehicle
Preemptive strike: Attack launched to destroy a country’s weapons in order to eliminate the threat of those weapons being used in an attack against an enemy. Orders to launch a preemptive strike would be given after intelligence data has been received and analyzed. If the data indicate that an adversary is preparing for a nuclear attack, a preemptive strike could be undertaken to stop (or ‘blunt’) the nuclear attack.
Proliferation: fast growth or spread of weapons and weapon technology to other countries
Ratification: The implementation of the formal process established by a country to legally bind its government to a treaty, such as approval by parliament. In the United States, treaty ratifications require approval by the president after he has received the advice and consent of two-thirds of the Senate. The country then submits the required legal instrument of ratification to the treaty’s depositary governments.
Road mobile: A road mobile missile is one which is launched from a rail or truck launcher. Because these may be moved they may be more easily hidden from prior targeting. Russia has maintained several ICBMs which are mobile launched.
Rogue states: Sometimes called “states of concern,” so-called rogue states are countries regarded as hostile to the United States and its allies and suspected of developing or deploying WMD including North Korea, Libya, Syria, Iran and Iraq. In contemporary discourse, they are those which do not fit into the “rational actor” model underlying concepts of deterrence such as mutually assured destruction (MAD). The existence of irrational rogue states is an embarrassment to rational actor models of purely offensive deterrence, such as Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).
RV: Reentry Vehicle
Silo-based:
Strategic ballistic missile:
SBIR: Space Based Infra Red.
SBL: Space Based Laser
SCUD: Name for a class of short-range ballistic missiles originally developed by the Soviet Union in the 1950s and subsequently transferred to many other countries.
SDI: Strategic Defense Initiative. the name given to the program launched by President Reagan in 1983 for the research and development of ballistic missile defenses. It has subsequently renamed the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, and then the Missile Defense Agency in 2002.
Shahab: Name for a series of theater ballistic missiles under development in Iran. Also spelled Shehab. silo: Hardened underground facility for housing and launching a ballistic missile and designed to provide pre-launch protection against nuclear attack
Taepo Dong: Name for a series of theater ballistic missiles under development in North Korea. The most advanced versions of this series may have sufficient range to strike Alaska, Hawaii, and parts of the western United States.
Tactical nuclear weapons: Short-range nuclear weapons, such as artillery shells, bombs, and short-range missiles, deployed for use in battlefield operations.
Targeting: Use of computer code to determine the location where a missile will strike. Computer code cannot be observed by the adversary and, therefore, it is difficult to verify whether de-targeting pledges have been implemented.
TEL: Transporter Erector Launcher
Terminal-phase: The final phase of a warhead’s trajectory when it re-enters the earth’s atmosphere and strikes the target.
THAAD: Theater High Altitude Area Defense is the U.S. Army’s air defense program designed to collide with the target ballistic missile. The interception is intended to occur outside the earth’s atmosphere, or high in the atmosphere.
Theater missile: Short-range delivery system (missile) with a range of 1,000 kilometers or less.
Theater missile defense: Theater Missile Defense is a system of missile interceptors designed to destroy shorter-range ballistic missiles aimed at deployed troops or overseas facilities. The ABM Treaty prohibited NMD but allowed defenses against shorter-range missiles. The Clinton Administration tried to separate TMD and NMD. The Bush Administration, planned on withdrawing from the ABM Treaty, and therefore eliminated the distinction between NMD and TMD combined both programs into a layered ballistic missile defense.
THEL: Tactical High Energy Laser
Tactical ballistic missile:
TEL: Transporter Erector Launcher
Thermonuclear weapon: Also called a hydrogen bomb, it is a nuclear weapon in which fusion of light nuclei, such as deuterium and tritium, is responsible for the majority of explosive energy. The high temperatures needed for such fusion reactions are obtained by means of an initial fission explosion.
Triad: The strategic force structure that has nuclear weapons deployed on intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarines, and aircraft.
Unauthorized launch: The accidental or unintended launch of nuclear missiles, usually in the sense that a particular nation’s normal hierarchy did not authorize or intend it.
WMD: Weapons of Mass Destruction. The phrase first came into usage to refer to nuclear weapons, but is now regularly applied to chemical and biological weapons as well.
Yield: The amount of energy released by a nuclear explosion, generally measured in equivalent tons of TNT
Other Sources:
Expanded MDA Glossary
