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home > March 24, 2008 issue > article
Building defense in depth
By Kevin Fogarty
Special to Defense Systems
The Missile Defense Agency promises the reality of global missile defense will be greater than the sum of its parts – but the parts have a long way to go before they fit together
Shooting down a failed satellite Feb. 20 — at a reported
cost of around $60 million — might have gotten the world’s
attention and eroded the lingering incredulity about some U.S.
plans for Star Wars missile-defense technology. But in the $9
billion budget proposal the Missile Defense Agency submitted
for fiscal 2009, the Aegis cruiser-based satellite killer is only
one of two systems with any practical, immediate value,
according to experts tracing the development and integration
of the systems.
The sea-based Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System (Aegis
BMD) — the integrated radar and targeting systems of one or
more guided-missile cruisers equipped with Lockheed Martin’s
Aegis Weapon System and the RIM-161 Standard Missile-3
(SM-3) from Raytheon Systems — had successful tests even
before it was tailored for a one-time shot at a failed satellite, said
Victoria Samson, research analyst at the Center for Defense
Information (CDI), a division of the nonpartisan World Security
Institute.
Defense analysts have raised questions about whether the Feb.
20 Aegis strike was an explosive success, as a video released by the
MDA seemed to show, or whether the explosion was simply the
SM-3’s self-destruction. However, a Defense Department
announcement Feb. 25 said traces of hydrazine had been detected
that indicated the missile had at least punctured the satellite’s tank,
if not entirely destroyed the orbiter.
However, the real-world applicability of the tests, aside from the
satellite shoot-down, is so far unclear, as is the road map for what
would qualify it for deployment, Samson said. “MDA has made
some progress, but they don’t have their milestones spelled out,
and their 2009 budget [proposal] makes their plans and progress a
lot less clear,” he said.
Even knowing the current stage of development and whether
each phase is on schedule or not is difficult, according to a March
2007 Government Accountability Office report, “Missile Defense
Acquisition Strategy Generates Results but Delivers Less at a
Higher Cost.”
MDA, whose budget had been set in two-year blocks in which
specific goals were funded, shifted some phases of the Terminal
High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and Ground-based
Midcourse Defense (GMD) development from the 2005-2006
block to 2007-2008, making it more complicated to assign costs to
specific functions, the GAO report states.
MDA’s fiscal 2009 budget plan abandons the time-block
approach and breaks Global Missile Defense Systems (GMDS)development into blocks of
capabilities.
Each set of capabilities will be
delivered by parts of a system so
integrated that it is hard to separate
one part from another, said
Rick Lenor, an MDA public
affairs officer. Defending the
continental United States from a
North Korean ballistic missile
could involve space-based sensors,
ground-based radar, command-
and-control systems
based in Greenland, Colorado
or elsewhere, and kill vehicles
or lasers developed during different
stages of an evolutionary
process, he said.
Existing weapons and command-
and-control systems are
divided according to the function
MDA expects them to perform,
but only three systems are
mentioned in its 2009 proposal: the theater-based THAAD; global
GMD system, which has 24 missiles in Fort Greeley, Alaska,
and Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.; and Aegis BMD.
Block 1 capabilities will be delivered by GMD, but so will Block
3 capabilities, with the addition of more kill vehicles and indeterminate
improvements in radar systems and command-and-control,
according to MDA’s budget projection. Why developments that
are part of the same system should be divided into different blocks,
different budget areas, and different physical locations – including
plans to base some missiles in Europe – is unclear, according to the
GAO report.
VERY BASIC CAPABILITIES
Overall, the capability of U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense Systems
(BMDS) “remain very basic,” according to a late-2007 evaluation
from the Operational Test and Evaluation Directorate (DOT&E) —
the division within the Office of the Secretary of Defense that evaluates
the efficacy of defense programs.
The Aegis BMD, the DOT&E report states, has demonstrated
“limited capability against a simple threat” but has not been tested
enough to demonstrate a statistical level of confidence high
enough for even limited deployment. Extensive testing and
development will be necessary before it’s ready for any realworld
applications.
As for the command, control and battle management command,
DOT&E concludes that while it “continues to add new
functionality,” it still “is not mature enough to provide an integrated,
layered defensive capability against any range of threat
missile.”
Aegis BMD is the closest to being classified as fully deployable,
but MDA still classifies it as being in the early capability delivery
phase — the earliest of three developmental phases that include
partial capability delivery and full capability delivery. Full capability
is the point at which the system is turned over to the military
services for deployment and operation.
DOT&E mentioned deficiencies in performance of the Patriot
PAC-3 — the only missile defense system so far fully released by
the MDA to the military services.
The PAC-3 system uses a completely new missile compared to
the Patriot PAC-2, according to reports from defense think-tank
GlobalSecurity.org. Eight interceptors occupy each firing unit,
rather than four, and the interceptor is designed as a hit-to-kill
vehicle with a small explosive warhead, rather than a warhead
with a proximity fuse, as was the case with earlier versions.
It has had problems, however.
Deployed with great publicity during the 2003 Gulf War —
famous partly because of the Patriot’s high-profile role in the 1991
conflict — PAC-3 recorded nine inconclusive engagements with
enemy missiles. The PAC-3 also was responsible for three friendly
fire incidents that took down two fighter aircraft, killing three
people.
DOD investigations blamed at least one of the incidents — the
downing of a British Tornado and the death of its two-man crew
— on conflicting signals resulting from the overlap of the radar
patterns of multiple PAC-3 batteries that caused the Patriot’s artificial
intelligence systems to identify discrepant signals as incoming
missiles. The Tornado was descending in an approved safe
corridor when a Patriot battery reportedly identified a “ghost”
missile 10 miles away from the Tornado, on course to intercept
it. After launch, the missile detected no other incoming threat, so
it identified and attacked the Tornado instead.
A U.S. Strategic Command spokesman said details of progress
on specific systems and integration among them was classified or
unavailable.
Lenor said the agency has no information on improvements or
work on the PAC-3 because that system is now the province of the
military services. MDA has been making continual progress on all
fronts, and the schedule for and results of tests would continue to
be posted.
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