Back in 2008, US Pacific Command scored big when they knocked down a decay­ing US satel­lite with a sea-​​launched inter­cep­tor. Now ABC reports that CINCPAC, Adm. Timothy Keating, is ready to break out the fly­swat­ter again — this time under oper­a­tional conditions.

In an exclu­sive inter­view with ABC News’ Martha Raddatz, Adm. Timothy Keating, head of the U.S. Pacific Commands, said that the mil­i­tary is pre­pared to shoot down any North Korean bal­lis­tic mis­sile — if President Obama should give the order.
If a mis­sile leaves the launch pad we’ll be pre­pared to respond upon direc­tion of the pres­i­dent,” Keating told ABC News. “I’m not a bet­ting man but I’d go like 60/​40, 70/​30 that it will, they will attempt to launch a satel­lite. There’s equip­ment mov­ing up there that would indi­cate the pre­lim­i­nary stages of prepa­ra­tion for a launch. So I’d say it’s more than less likely.”

With plenty of Aegis assets float­ing around the ring of fire, ground-​​based inter­cep­tors at Vandenberg AFB, CA and Alaska, and a whole mess of radars that put Superman’s x-​​ray vision to shame.… there’s no doubt we could pull this off. But, like with all things defense, the ques­tion is whether or not we should.
Sure, the idea might appeal to those of us whose respon­si­bil­ity for national secu­rity and state­craft stop at the “pub­lish” but­ton on our blogs — watch­ing the Norks hopes for both a space pro­gram and a cred­i­ble nuclear deter­rent dis­si­pate in a cloud of inter­cep­tor smoke sure to hell appeals to me– but what about the State depart­ment wonks who are respon­si­ble for turn­ing off the North Korean nuclear pro­gram? What hap­pens if the North Koreans step up raids along their bor­ders, seize an American ship, or send nuclear sci­en­tists and sup­plies to Iran — or Syria?
The North Koreans are, by nature, aggres­sive crea­tures. But that doesn’t mean they’re stu­pid. In the fifty plus years since the cease­fire, they’ve fre­quently pushed us right up to our absolute, no shit limit, then quickly backed down. It’s a strange amal­ga­ma­tion of diplo­macy, pol­i­tics, and war­fare –a harsh cal­cu­lus of slaps and hand­shakes– that the Norks have mas­tered in their half-​​century of deal­ing with the West.
In other words, Kim Jong Il is damned good at being a gigan­tic pain in the ass.
So do we pro­voke him? Is it nec­es­sary? Does the ben­e­fit out­weigh poten­tial cost? I ven­ture a cau­tious yes (let our new CiC play a lit­tle hard­ball), but what say you?
–John Noonan

Can you say “inter­con­ti­nen­tal”? I can’t …

– Ward

Been quite a year for Minot AFB…

Truck car­ry­ing mis­sile booster tips in N.D.

A mil­i­tary trans­port vehi­cle car­ry­ing an unarmed Minuteman III booster tipped over Thursday morn­ing on its way to a 91st Missile Wing launch facil­ity at Minot Air Force Base, N.D.

Early reports show the vehi­cle tipped over on the gravel access road after the road gave out under the truck, accord­ing to an Air Force offi­cial. The acci­dent occurred between the sparsely pop­u­lated towns of Makoti and Parshall, N.D., about 70 miles south­west of Minot, right off County Road 24.
They are still inves­ti­gat­ing now but we know there is no dan­ger to the pub­lic and no nuclear mate­ri­als were onboard the vehi­cle at the time of the acci­dent, said Maj. Laurie Arellano, an Air Force Space Command spokeswoman.

The stan­dard fir­ings usu­ally ensue after pub­lic ker­fuf­fles with nukes. But at this point, I’m not sure there’s any­one left at Minot to fire…
–John Noonan

Isnt it funny how news like this is greeted with a col­lec­tive yawn from most of the media?

Its another exam­ple of what they call in the jour­nal­ism world a dog bites man event.

Boeing announced this week­end a suc­cess­ful inter­cept of a bal­lis­tic mis­sile in space of its mis­sion rep­re­sen­ta­tive exo-​​atmospheric kill vehi­cle. In the past, there would have been much made of this suc­cess­ful test, but now, its only news of a test fails the man bites dog event.

The test of the Ground-​​Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) sys­tem began at 4:01 p.m. Eastern when a long-​​range bal­lis­tic mis­sile tar­get lifted off from the Kodiak Launch Complex in Alaska. Seventeen min­utes later, mil­i­tary oper­a­tors launched an inter­cep­tor from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. As the inter­cep­tor flew toward the tar­get, it received tar­get data updates from the upgraded missile-​​warning radar at Beale Air Force Base, Calif. After fly­ing into space, the inter­cep­tor released its exoat­mos­pheric kill vehi­cle, which pro­ceeded to track, inter­cept and destroy the tar­get warhead.

The test, GMD’s sev­enth inter­cept over­all, was the sec­ond inter­cept with an oper­a­tionally con­fig­ured inter­cep­tor since September 2006.

WATCH THE MISSILE TEST VIDEO…

With another inter­cept under our belts, we have even greater con­fi­dence that the GMD sys­tem, if called upon in a real-​​world sce­nario, will defend the nation against a lim­ited bal­lis­tic mis­sile attack,” said Scott Fancher, Boeing vice pres­i­dent and pro­gram direc­tor for GMD. The Boeing-​​led test was highly com­plex, involv­ing a wide range of assets, includ­ing the Sea-​​Based X-​​Band Radar (SBX). SBX, a pow­er­ful new sea-​​based sen­sor devel­oped by Boeing, tracked the tar­get mis­sile to pre­pare for the next GMD flight test, which will see SBX pro­vide tar­get updates to an in-​​flight inter­cep­tor for the first time.

I guess its an exam­ple of how far the mis­sile defense debate has come. Its no longer about whether you can hit a bul­let with a bul­let, as oppo­nents used to say, was impos­si­ble. Now the debate is more about whether a radar in the Czech Republic will alien­ate the increas­ingly para­noid Russian government.

GMD defends the nation against a lim­ited num­ber of long-​​range bal­lis­tic mis­siles, with inter­cep­tors deployed in under­ground silos at Vandenberg and Ft. Greely, Alaska. An inte­gral ele­ment of the global bal­lis­tic mis­sile defense sys­tem, GMD also con­sists of radars, other sen­sors, command-​​and-​​control facil­i­ties, com­mu­ni­ca­tions ter­mi­nals and a 20,000-mile fiber optic com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work. The U.S. gov­ern­ment has announced plans to extend this capa­bil­ity to Europe.

Yes it has been expen­sive. Yes its been a long time com­ing. Yes there are many more hur­dles to over­come. But the fact that this story gained lit­tle trac­tion, is an even louder endorse­ment of the sys­tem than the actual space kill.

– Christian

The con­tin­ued prob­lems being encoun­tered in flight tests of the Joint Air-​​to-​​Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) could lead to res­ur­rec­tion of the air-​​launched Tomahawk mis­sile. The JASSM — des­ig­nated AGM-​​158 — was ini­ti­ated in 1995 fol­low­ing can­cel­la­tion of the Tri-​​Service Standoff Attack Missile (TSSAM) because of mas­sive cost increases.

The Lockheed Martin AGM-​​158 had won out in com­pe­ti­tion with the McDonnell Douglas AGM-​​159 design. Procurement of the Lockheed Martin JASSM began in December 2001 with the mis­sile intended for use on the F-​​15 Eagle, F-​​16 Fighting Falcon, F/​A-​​18 Hornet, and F-​​35 Lightning II (Joint Strike Fighter) as well as on the B-​​1B, B-​​2A, and B-​​52H Stratofortress strate­gic bombers.

Some 600 JASSMs have been pro­duced, but test­ing con­tin­ues to indi­cate poor reli­a­bil­ity. During tests launches from December 2006 to April 2007, the Air Force reported a sys­tem reli­a­bil­ity of only 58 per­cent. Coupled with increased costs, this reli­a­bil­ity fac­tor has led Department of Defense offi­cials to ques­tion the effi­cacy of the pro­gram, even at this late date.

(more…)

Russia recently launched a new Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) capa­ble of car­ry­ing Multiple Independently tar­geted Re-​​entry Vehicle (MIRV) war­heads, osten­si­bly intended to pen­e­trate the U.S. bal­lis­tic mis­sile defense sys­tem. The improved Topol-​​M mis­sile launched on 29 May was fired from a mobile launcher at the Plesetsk launch site in north­west­ern Russia. Its test war­head was reported to have landed on tar­get about 3,400 miles down range on the Far Eastern Kamchatka Peninsula.

The TOPOL-​​M — given the Soviet des­ig­na­tion RS-​​24 and the NATO des­ig­na­tion SS-​​27 — also has a submarine-​​launched vari­ant known as the Bulava (NATO SS-N-30).The naval mis­sile will be car­ried by the new sub­marines of the Borey class. Statements from Russian offi­cials indi­cate that the Topol-​​M and Bulava are being upgraded with new war­heads and other coun­ter­mea­sures (prob­a­bly decoys) to counter the U.S. bal­lis­tic mis­sile defense sys­tem now being deployed. If these mis­siles are specif­i­cally intended to over­come U.S. defenses, their war­heads can be expected to have maneu­ver­ing re-​​entry vehi­cles, called MaRVs in the strate­gic lexicon.

MaRV war­heads were devel­oped by the United States dur­ing the Cold War in response to Soviet bal­lis­tic mis­sile defenses, but were never installed on ICBMs.

(more…)

Lockheed Martin, which builds the Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile, had some dis­ap­point­ing results dur­ing a test last week that raised even more dif­fi­cult ques­tions about the ongo­ing devel­op­ment pro­gram.

(Photo from Lockheed Martin)

From the Orlando Sentinel:

Last week, the com­pany con­firmed that “anom­alies were expe­ri­enced” in four JASSM tests con­ducted at a mis­sile range in Utah in early May.

Lockheed would not pro­vide details or spec­u­late on the cause, cit­ing an ongo­ing inquiry into what went wrong.

Three mis­siles appar­ently missed the tar­get area entirely and one hit pay dirt but failed to det­o­nate properly.

“If you’re a JASSM sup­porter, this could not have come out at a worse time,” noted Christopher Hellman, a defense ana­lyst for the Center for Arms Control & Non-​​Proliferation, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

(more…)

The Pentagons Missile Defense Agency tested a key leg in its mis­sile shield triad yes­ter­day, shoot­ing down both a sub-​​sonic cruise mis­sile in the atmos­phere and a bal­lis­tic mis­sile in space with a ship-​​based interceptor.

To say the least, mis­sile defense has been extremely con­tro­ver­sial over the years, and it is a sub­ject of heated debate over whether the hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars spent on sys­tems over the years have been worth the cost.

But it is worth chalk­ing up this test in the win col­umn for the embat­tled agency.

From a Raytheon release:

In a first of its kind dual mis­sile defense test, Raytheon Company-​​produced Standard Missile-​​3 (SM-​​3) and Standard Missile-​​2 (SM-​​2) simul­ta­ne­ously engaged tar­gets over the Pacific Ocean.

This was the first time a U.S. Navy ship demon­strated simul­ta­ne­ous ship engage­ments against both cruise and bal­lis­tic mis­sile tar­gets. It was the eighth suc­cess­ful inter­cept for the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense sys­tems SM-​​3.

The SM-​​3 Block IA destroyed a short-​​range bal­lis­tic mis­sile tar­get in space while SM-​​2 Block IIIA engaged a cruise mis­sile threat at a lower alti­tude. Both inter­cept­ing mis­siles were fired from guided mis­sile cruiser USS Lake Erie (CG 70) by the ships crew. The bal­lis­tic mis­sile tar­get was launched from the U.S. Navys Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai. The sub­sonic cruise mis­sile tar­get was launched from a range aircraft.

This test, Flight Test Mission-​​11, was the sec­ond with the Block IA ver­sion of SM-​​3, and the first IA with a full-​​capability solid divert and atti­tude con­trol sys­tem. Raytheon is deliv­er­ing Block IA rounds for oper­a­tional use on Navy cruis­ers and destroyers.

The SM-​​3 Block IA pro­vides increased capa­bil­ity to engage short– to intermediate-​​range bal­lis­tic mis­siles. The SM-​​3 Block IA incor­po­rates rocket motor upgrades and com­puter pro­gram mod­i­fi­ca­tions to improve sen­sor per­for­mance, mis­sile guid­ance and con­trol, and lower cost. It also includes pro­ducibil­ity and main­tain­abil­ity fea­tures required to qual­ify the mis­sile as a tac­ti­cal fleet asset.

Its defi­nately worth not­ing the com­plex­ity of such a test. Two dif­fer­ent kinds of mis­sile threats, tracked by the Aegis radar sys­tem that was feed­ing infor­ma­tion to two dif­fer­ent inter­cep­tors — each with its own seeker tech­nol­ogy — to a ter­mi­nal kill. Experts on both sides of the debate rec­og­nize the steril­ity of such tests. In the real world, adver­saries might incor­po­rate decoys and other defenses to keep their mis­siles from being shot down.

But, despite the incred­i­ble costs, its impor­tant to remem­ber that well-​​meaning peo­ple are hard at work try­ing to solve a prob­lem and a threat that has so far kept most nations help­less to con­front militarily.

(Gouge: MS)

– Christian