MISSILE AGENCY WANTS MORE CASH

Remember that big cut to the mis­sile defense bud­get? It could be com­ing back, if the anti-​​missile agency has its way.
“Although it expects to reduce spend­ing in the next fis­cal year, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) wants to ramp up its bud­get over the next four years to more than $10 bil­lion annu­ally by fis­cal 2009, accord­ing to Defense Department bud­get doc­u­ments,” David Ruppe at the Global Security Newswire reports. That’s about $2 bil­lion a year more than what’s cur­rently spent.
With the extra loot, the MDA plans to buy some more radars and sea-​​launched inter­cep­tor mis­siles. According to the Newswire, the agency also wants to “acquire by the end of 2009 an addi­tional 20 land-​​based inter­cep­tor mis­siles through the mid­course pro­gram to bring the pro­jected total to about 40.“
Now, buy­ing more of the sea-​​going anti-​​missiles, that makes some sense. Those inter­cep­tors have been per­form­ing pretty well in recent tests. But the land-​​based mis­siles are another story. In tri­als, they’ve been flop­ping over and over again. A February test, in which fiz­zling ground sup­port equip­ment kept the anti-​​missile from launch­ing, was only most recent in a long string of exam­ples. Why spend extra to get more of these clunk­ers?
The Arms Control Wonk has more on the Missile Defense Agency’s bud­get, includ­ing which pro­grams got cut, and which “went black.“
THERE’S MORE: Inside Defense knows where the MDA wants to put $672.9 mil­lion of that extra luchre — into space. Specifically, into an orbit­ing ver­sion of the non-​​explosive pro­jec­tiles known as Kinetic Energy Interceptors, or KEIs. They’re designed to knock down enemy mis­siles before they too far off of the ground.

Under the MDA’s plan, in 2008 the agency will choose sev­eral con­trac­tors to design a space test bed… The fol­low­ing year, a con­trac­tor team or teams will be selected for the space test bed devel­op­ment and test phase, dur­ing which they will qual­ify the kill vehi­cles for space use, mod­ify the KEI program’s com­mand and con­trol sys­tem, develop the interceptor’s motors and com­plete sev­eral other tasks.
The team will be required to launch five space-​​based inter­cep­tors and per­form space-​​based inter­cept test­ing against medium– to long-​​range bal­lis­tic mis­sile tar­gets, accord­ing to MDA. We antic­i­pate the devel­op­ment and test phase to run through FY-​​15 [fis­cal year 2015] in order to enter a pro­duc­tion phase for a small space layer in FY-​​16, the agency said…
The agency says a lim­ited con­stel­la­tion of space-​​based inter­cep­tors, housed in 50 to 100 satel­lites, could offer a “thin boost/​ascent defense against inter­con­ti­nen­tal range bal­lis­tic mis­siles…“
Mixing the space-​​based inter­cep­tor with the KEI pro­gram offers the best defen­sive com­bi­na­tion to defeat both rogue and near-​​peer adver­saries, MDA told Congress. 

April 7th, 2005 | Money Money Money | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.