Another promising weapon. Another worrying gaggle of mixed directions, uncertain focus and a lack of strategy.
That’s the story of Prompt Global Strike, touted as the answer to one of the country’s most vexing problems — how to take out high-value targets far behind the lines and way beyond line of sight with accuracy and great speed. The Government Accountability Office looked at the Pentagon’s stop-and-go efforts on this critical capability in a report released yesterday. The report was requested by three stalwart supporters of PGS, Reps. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.) , chairwoman of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, Terry Everett (R-Ala.), ranking member of the subcommittee, and Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), formerly a senior member of the subcommittee and now chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
The GAO told them there is no official DoD definition of global strike. The different combatant commanders support different approaches. Global strike does not figure in “any existing or proposed joint doctrine publications.” Regional commanders and service officials believe that the Strategic Command — lead proponent for the capabality — needs to work with them more “to mitigate any misconceptions commands may have about global strike, particularly in light of frequent staff turnover.” Those who would use the capability “have not widely participated in joint exercises and other training, which can increase their understanding of global strike.” Correcting these would help the Pentagon better plan and develop a system and how to use it, the report says.
Plus the Pentagon needs to conduct a comprehensive assessment of possible systems because it “has not yet begun to develop a prioritized investment strategy,” so it doesn’t know what choices to make. From past conversations with staff and with intelligence officials it’s clear that one of the biggest hurdles for Prompt Global Strike isn’t the weapon itself — though that ain’t simple — it’s having the intelligence and a way to link the intelligence with the weapon system. After all, this approach is meant to come up with something that can kill someone or take out a WMD facility pretty much anywhere in the world within half an hour. Perhaps DoD could use that definition and get started?
UPDATE: One congressional aide told me: “Global strike, particularly long-range conventional prompt global strike, hasnt come very far since its inception in the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review. One of the reasons is that the Administrations preferred approach — Conventional Trident Modification — was a non-starter with a majority of congress. It took DoD a number of years before this fact set in. There now appears to be consensus in Congress for this type of capability; it will be up to the next administration to put forth a technically and operationally viable concept that is also politically acceptable.”
– Colin Clark
You mean congress is now coming around to having a conventional modified trident capability?
Thats the dumbest thing I have heard congress doing. I’m sure the Russians and the Chinese won’t raise alarms if they see ballistic missiles of ours flying, even just one of them, especially since they most likely would fly over their landmasses to get to targets in the northern hemisphere. The southern hemisphere doesn’t have as much difficulty since most nations in the southern hemisphere, with a couple exceptions, don’t have a ballistic missile capability more than Scuds or equivalent.
Popular Mechanics wrote about this a couple years ago if I remember correctly and they mentioned a hypersonic cruise missile would probably do the trick. The missile would be flying so fast that kinetic energy alone would do the job normally reserved for the weapon payload. Besides, if we make it cruise missile sized, we could hand a few of these off to our new Ohio Class SSGNs and let them have fun with deep strike targets.
No Ed, the article says the exact opposite. It will take the next administration (whoever is elected President in November) to come up with a new proposal that Congress will find acceptable. i.e., NOT Trident modification.
I know that it’s not the same thing,but is there any reason why they couldn’t have converted the Pershing Missiles into conventional warhead missiles? I understand the problem with “conventional warhead” Trident Missiles.How would Russia &/or China know whether a Trident Missile Launch was conventional or nuclear? Are we suppose to notify them in advance that we are launching one of these missiles,& who is to say that they wouldn’t warn our target of the possible missile strike.Having the Pershing Missiles(too bad we scrapped them,huh?) conventionally tipped,with the option of putting nuclear warheads on them,would have made a great counter threat against Syrian & Iranian Scud Missiles in the Middle East.Maybe we were also too quick to scrap the Lance Missiles also.
Why exactly is this capability critical?
No military in the world has the capacity to be closer to every place it needs to apply force than the U.S. military with its combination of international bases, unmatched blue sea navy, and air tanker supported Air Force.
A growing recon drone force, spy satellites, a huge intelligence establishment and a generally shrinking world with modern telecommunications and the internet also means that, on average, we have more advanced warning than ever.
The public accounts of short fuse strike decisions have indicated that the primary issue has been the decision making process, and not the technology to deliver ordinance to the scene once the decision has been made.
It is far more sensible (and less expensive) to overhaul Pentagon decision making, decentralize authority and clarify rules of engagement, then to invest hundreds of billions on pie in the sky technology that may simply extend the time for deliberation without changing the results of that deliberative process.
If there are blind spots where we need a prompt response, lily pad bases make more sense than hyper-sonic vehicles or new ultrafast missiles.
Folks,
Given all the big brains we’ve got reading this site, I wonder if we can’t help the Pentagon out on this one and present come solid definitions of the capability.
Scram jets are nifty. Cruise missiles are cool. Hypersonics might fit the bill. But what would actually work and what would be a tight enough definition of the capability? Your thoughts please.
To ohwillke,
Why do we need this capability? Because we don’t have space based laser systems yet that can hit a target anywhere in the world.
To Roy,
The Lance? check the size of the ATACMS missile. You will find an interesting detail in the dimensions.
Hypersonics are the way to go here, but also the test of putting a laser into a C-130, and not a targetting laser but one similar to the ABM laser, holds some promise. The hypersonic weapon would be safer to use given the standoff range.
There are also some old treaties in effect that limit the choice of weapons.
I consider this capability as gold-plated high end; it fits into the region where small capability increases cost a fortune.
It would be a wiser choice to reduce the expectations a bit and use frugality in times of serious economic problems; a weak industry and huge trade balance and federal budget deficits.
picture a large uav. like the f/b-22 but without a pilot and set up for deep strike and capable of supercruise at low altitude.
how about atacms launched vertically from a converted commercial aircraft carrying a hundred or so. 766412.
we could fly them as regular aircraft on commercial routes to have them ready to fly near trouble spots on a regular basis.
This capability could recoup the cost of its development quite easily. Imagine if we could have snuffed out OBL (forget Clinton for a minute), or Saddam Hussein at the outset of war, or Zarqawi, hell, even Pablo Escobar (and conventionally, any regional commanders or missile systems).
This front-end capability could make terrorism extremely dicey. It could also have an extraordinary deterrent effect on any adversary. It is well worth exploring, and in exploring, well worth investing in.
I’m a fan of hypersonic drone bombers. They could be stationed at any of our overseas bases, have a small range and be less threatening than an ICBM. They’d also be cheaper and more flexible than suborbital bombers based in the US. The drawback would be that they’re more vulnerable to AA defenses, but would this capability be used against a target with robust high tech defenses? If it were, would we send it in alone and unsupported? If that situation arose, a high attrition rate would probably be acceptable. Hitting a hypersonic drone is a bit tricky anyway.
But as ohwilleke said, the decisionmaking process takes much longer than the actual attack.
we could fly them as regular aircraft on commercial routes to have them ready to fly near trouble spots on a regular basis.
Aaron,
Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure arming civilian aircraft is against the law.
Our govt is actively working all of the options mentioned above. They are putting more money into different baskets, but all of the projects are active. Supersonic sea skimming missiles, converted ICBMs, theatre-area weapons, etc. All of these systems are also having very intesting payload packages developed such as bunker busters, multiple warhead payloads, hypersonic manuevering reentry vehicles, stratospheric skimming vehicles like HTV, UAV-on-demand payloads w/wo weapons, the list goes on forever. If you were on the inside, you would see the work is urgent and the programs are many! Let’s Roll …