Nitze criteria

The Nitze criteria are three basic requirements that encompass the Reagan administration's definition of a successful Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) deployment.

Nitze summarized this concept in a 20 February 1985 speech to the Philadelphia World Affairs Council:[1] For the next ten years, we should seek a radical reduction in the number and power of existing and planned offensive and defensive nuclear arms, whether land-based, space-based, or otherwise.

For example, Nike Zeus was highly vulnerable to attacks by the very ICBMs it was supposed to defend against,[2] while the later Spartan missile left many questions about its ability to actually destroy its targets at reasonable range.

Previous BMD systems had always been far more expensive than the missiles they were designed to shoot down; during the Nike-X program in the 1960s it was estimated that every dollar the Soviets spent on new ICBMs would require $20 of spending to counter it, a 20-to-1 ratio.

[7] Nitze's criteria shifted the focus away from absolute costs to a very simple statement about whether the system would ultimately increase or decrease the total number of weapons.

[6] The criteria were judged to be so clear and obvious that they were ultimately adopted as law by Congress as a way to stop the deployment of interim BMD systems that would offer no real advantage.