BEST OF ANTI-​​MISSILES AXED

The most suc­cess­ful part of the star-​​crossed mis­sile defense sys­tem has been the one based at sea. So, nat­u­rally, the Pentagon has decided to cut the program’s bud­get, Defense Daily reports.
Launched from cruis­ers off the Hawaiian coast, the Standard Missile-​​3 inter­cep­tors have man­aged to hit their tar­gets in five out of six recent tests. Land-​​based anti-​​missiles, on the other hand, couldn’t even make it into the air dur­ing two recent exer­cises over the win­ter.
But never mind all that. The sea-​​based inter­cep­tors have been slated for a $95 mil­lion cut. That could keep a key sig­nal proces­sor from com­ing on line, which might “set back the whole pro­gram at least a year,” Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-​​HI) com­plained in a Senate Appropriations Committee hear­ing. (Here’s the tran­script.) “Why are we set­ting aside such a suc­cess­ful pro­gram, where the out­come is almost pre­dictable, and spend­ing it on other, riskier pro­grams?“
See if you can find the thread of logic in this answer from Missile Defense Agency chief Lt. Gen “Trey” Obering. Becasue I sure can’t.

Well, let me get to the — first of all, the pro­gram has been very suc­cess­ful in the test­ing that we have done to date.
Now, one of the things we have not done yet is fly against a sep­a­rat­ing [war­head one that detaches from the main body of the mis­sile]. And that is some­thing that we do need to do because that rep­re­sents the lion’s share of the threats that we may be fac­ing around the world.
And the rea­son that we haven’t done that is because, if you recall, the one fail­ure that we did have in the test pro­gram had to do with the [mal­func­tion of the] divert atti­tude con­trol sys­tem that we would need for a sep­a­rat­ing war­head.
And we have not com­pletely fixed that yet in the pro­gram. We’re still going through the ground test­ing for a new design to val­i­date that we do have a fix. We think we have iden­ti­fied the root cause of that and we’ve taken steps to address that.
But that’s why we don’t have a more robust pro­file, either in test­ing or in our pro­duc­tion pro­file, because we haven’t jumped all those tech­ni­cal hur­dles yet. But we are in the process of doing that.

“Would it improve the pro­gram if you got your sig­nal proces­sor?” Inouye responds.
Obering replies, “Yes, sir, it would.“
So Obering is wor­ried his sea-​​based mis­siles can’t hit sep­a­rat­ing war­heads, there­fore he’s scal­ing the project back. But his land-​​based mis­siles can’t hit any­thing at all — so he’s going full steam ahead with those. WTF?!?!?
THERE’S MORE: “Obering basi­cally admit­ted that while the Aegis sys­tem may be pro­gress­ing along its devel­op­ment path, it still can­not defend U.S. inter­ests against the threat for which it was designed,” says Center for Defense Information mis­sile guru Victoria Samson.

Minus the SDACS (solid divert and atti­tude con­trol sys­tem), which allows it more maneu­ver­abil­ity, the Aegis BMD [sea-​​based bal­lis­tic mis­sile defense] sys­tem can­not reli­ably inter­cept threat mis­siles with sep­a­rat­ing war­heads, which, to Obering’s own admis­sion, rep­re­sent “the lion’s share of the threats that we may be fac­ing around the world.“
Which puts the so-​​called suc­cess of the Aegis BMD sys­tem in a dif­fer­ent light.

AND MORE: Meanwhile, Defense Daily notes, one of mis­sile defense’ main cheer­lead­ers in the Senate is call­ing for big changes in the inter­cep­tor effort. His sug­ges­tion: weapons in space that can knock down mis­siles in their “boost phase” just as they take off. “We should begin the process of devel­op­ing a space-​​based boost phase capa­bil­ity,” Sen. Jon Kyl (R-​​AZ) said.

There is no money in the cur­rent bud­get, or in next years request, for space-​​based sys­tems, and Kyl bemoaned the fact that MDA is not expected to begin any devel­op­ment work on such pro­grams until FY 08. Everyone knows thats where we have to go, Kyl said.
Its the polit­i­cal argu­ments that restrain us, he said, adding that advo­cates must push the case for a space-​​based sys­tem.
In the 1980s, the Pentagon backed a space-​​based inter­cep­tor pro­gram known as Brilliant Pebbles that envi­sioned plac­ing thou­sands of inter­cep­tors in outer space. Opponents ridiculed the con­cept, which became a light­ning rod for criticism.

Obering also brought up space-​​based inter­cep­tors dur­ing his Senate testimony.

There are a lot of tech­ni­cal chal­lenges that we need to address. And I think that while it is impor­tant to have the debate on the philo­soph­i­cal advan­tage and strat­egy of hav­ing space-​​based inter­cep­tors, it would be pru­dent to lay in a tech­ni­cal exper­i­men­ta­tion pro­gram to see if we can even do that.

“To my knowl­edge, that’s the first time that some­one from MDA has admit­ted that they may be break­ing new ground with the SBI sys­tem and there­fore should dis­cuss the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of doing so,” Samson says. “Previously, Obering has been very care­ful to couch his remarks in the tech­ni­cal chal­lenges to SBI, not the philo­soph­i­cal ones.”

May 16th, 2005 | Missiles | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.