This story first appeared in Aerospace Daily’s Defense Technology International and is written by Michael A. Taverna.

NATO members appear ready to approve deployment of a territorial ballistic missile defense (BMD) network in Europe, although the scope of the European contribution is uncertain.

At a missile defense conference here last week, experts from both sides of the Atlantic agreed that the Phased Adaptive Approach (PAA) adopted by the Obama administration facilitates a change in the NATO view. (3AF, the French aeronautics and astronautics society, organized the event.) The alliance has studied the feasibility of transforming its Active Layered Theater BMD (ALTBMD) into a system capable of defending European territory, but has so far not embraced the concept of territorial BMD.

The PAA strategy envisions deploying sea-based SM-3 Block 1A interceptors and AN/TYP-2 X-band radars capable of meeting short– and medium-range threats starting next year, and gradually adding land-based SM-3s and incremental upgrades to improve the system’s capability as the threat evolves (AW&ST Sept. 21, 2009, p. 22). The objective is for PAA to be able to counter intermediate-range missiles by 2018 and to afford some protection against ICBMs by the end of the decade. The approach is premised on the sharp growth in the quantity and quality of short– and medium-range missiles able to threaten Europe, and the likelihood that long-range missiles capable of reaching the U.S. will not emerge as a real threat until later.

The NATO territorial missile defense plan, known as ALTBMD Capability 2, would enable various short– and medium-range interceptors and sensors to be federated around an improved version of the alliance’s Air Command and Control System (ACCS). It could be fielded around 2017–18. “By shifting the focus from long-range to regional short– and medium-range threats, the new U.S. plan better matches the European view,” says Patrick Auroy, deputy head of the French armaments agency (DGA).

The consensus at the conference was that the alliance will take advantage of its next summit in Lisbon this fall to endorse BMD. “Parameters have changed since Strasbourg,” says Richard Froh, NATO’s deputy assistant secretary general for armaments, referring to the last NATO summit in France, when various factors, including the lack of a firm U.S. position, kept missile defense off the agenda. “With the threat increasingly visible, especially from Iran, it’s no longer a question of whether BMD is desirable, but how to make it work and affordable.”

The U.S. proposes to make PAA the fulcrum of the NATO capability as part of a broad cooperative BMD effort that could ultimately encompass Russia as well as Europe. On Feb. 4, Romania became the third NATO member, after Poland and the Czech Republic, to agree to host interceptor and radar sites. “We are not asking NATO nations to fund [PAA], remarks Frank Rose, deputy assistant secretary of State for defense policy and verification operations. “We are just asking them to fully fund ­ALTBMD and ACCS and the modifications needed for Capability 2.”

However, with NATO in a funding crisis precipitated by the war in Afghanistan, Rose acknowledges it will be difficult for the alliance to find the money. Indeed, funding shortages have already held up final contracts needed to bring ALTBMD to an initial operating capability, planned for the end of 2010, and NATO heads recently had to work out supplemental funding and economy measures.

Be sure to check out more in this story from Aviation Week, check out how Ivan is getting all Web 2.0 on NATO, see the Beast in SK and get all technical on the PAK-FA from our Av Week friends.

– Christian

According to a Boeing release…

This experiment marks the first time a laser weapon has engaged and destroyed an in-flight ballistic missile, and the first time that any system has accomplished it in the missile’s boost phase of flight. ALTB has the highest-energy laser ever fired from an aircraft, and is the most powerful mobile laser device in the world.

During the experiment, the aircraft, a modified Boeing 747-400F, took off from Edwards Air Force Base and focused its high-energy laser at the missile target during its boost phase as the aircraft flew over the Western Sea Range off the coast of California.

And from the Missile Defense Agency:

A short-range threat-representative ballistic missile was launched from an at-sea mobile launch platform. Within seconds, the ALTB used onboard sensors to detect the boosting missile and used a low-energy laser to track the target. The ALTB then fired a second low-energy laser to measure and compensate for atmospheric disturbance. Finally, the ALTB fired its megawatt-class High Energy Laser, heating the boosting ballistic missile to critical structural failure. The entire engagement occurred within two minutes of the target missile launch, while its rocket motors were still thrusting.

– Christian

I have to take issue with DT colleague John Noonan’s post at the Weekly Standard blog today on the story (revelation?) that the Russians are reluctantly working on anti-satellite weapons to counter U.S. missile defense initiatives and other perceived ills.

John says essentially “what’s the news here?” The Sovs had been working on this technology for decades and that “they’ve been there all along”…

Well, my thoughts on this are: prove it!

Though Noonan reminds us of the Soviet-era investments in anti-sat weapons, my question is what have they been doing since then? I go back to the paranoid bomber boogieman story that “oh no, the Russians are coming because they’re flying Bear bombers (propeller driven, hello!?) along the Alaska border”…

Can someone please tell me how many flight hours on average a Russian bomber crew gets per month — or per year? So, tell me, if they’re still flying the same bombers for a few hours a year that they were during the Cold War (I know, I know — we’re still flying the B-52, but it’s a very different bomber in its guts than it was in 1960) then tell me how the Russians can pose any kind of threat to satellites in space?

It’s typical of an Associated Press reporter who knows little about military technology to excite his editors with some unrealistic threats from an obscure former space forces commander:

Russia already has some “basic, key elements” of such weapons, he said without elaboration.

Popovkin, who previously was the chief of Russian military Space Forces, reportedly made the statement at a news conference in response to a question about U.S. and Chinese tests of anti-satellite weapons.

Huh? Basic key elements? Like the Mir? Oh yeah, that went down in flames a few years ago…And didn’t we just shoot down a satellite with a missile launched from a ship about a year ago? I’d say Popovkin in dreaming.

– Christian

The U.S. Navy marshaled its resources quickly to shoot down a broken satellite recently, but there are no plans to stay ready for a repeat performance, a senior Navy official said Wednesday.

When the U.S. government decided that the falling spy satellite posed a risk, missile defense officials assembled a takedown plan within weeks. It worked — last month, the Pentagon smacked the satellite out of the sky and demolished the bird’s hydrazine fuel tank, which the military officials said could have survived re-entry and spilled its poisonous cargo.

Despite this success, the Missile Defense Agency ducked when asked whether it could spring into action faster for a repeat performance. It would depend on too many technical specifics to say, said Rear Adm. Alan “Brad” Hicks, Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense program manager, at a Navy League press conference.

He said there’s no further work on the concept because last month’s shootdown was a one-time event, so there’s no active requirement for the technology to work against satellites on an ongoing basis.

“It is not a core mission. It is not a capability out there for us to use,” Hicks said.

The U.S. Navy’s satellite shootdown cost around $90 million, he said. That’s not including additional costs for sensors, engineers and other support that isn’t factored into the initial ballpark estimate.

– Rebecca Christie

The Pentagon just put out a release saying “debris analysis” indicated the SM III hit on that wayard spy satellite had done its job…

“…officials are confident the missile intercept and destruction of a non-functioning National Reconnaissance Office satellite, achieved the objective of destroying the hydrazine tank and reducing, if not eliminating, the risk to people on Earth from the hazardous chemical.

“By all accounts this was a successful mission. From the debris analysis, we have a high degree of confidence the satellite’s fuel tank was destroyed and the hydrazine has been dissipated,” said Gen. James E. Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Now, that’s interesting…but…(queue up the conspiracy theory montage here…) I’m wondering A.) just how did they do a debris analysis when it either burned up in the atmosphere or is still floating in suborbital space, and B.) what exactly does “reducing, if not eliminating, the risk to people on Earth from the hazardous chemical” mean? It’s either gone, or it’s not gone…Which is it?

Anyway, I think this whole satellite shootdown was a high-profile test of the ABM architecture, and we’ll have to wait and see when the brass starts to testify on Capitol Hill over next year’s funding outlay for the Missile Defense Agency if they start using this “one off” event as a rallying cry for more ABM money.

– Christian

Noteworthy is the fact that the missile didn’t have a warhead. Now whether it was about the hydrazine or the possible compromise of spy tech is another matter … and one that seems somewhat moot now. In any case, a DT high five to the Pacific Fleet blackshoes who pulled this feat off.

– Ward

As we reported here a few days back folks in Texas are seeing UFOs and now the Air Force appears to be changing it’s story a bit. The plot thickens. This from a report running in Military.com’s headlines right now:

Fighter jets were training nearby the night dozens of Stephenville-area residents reported seeing a UFO this month, Air Force Reserve officials said Jan. 23, backtracking on earlier statements.

The announcement did little to satisfy residents of Texas dairy country who swear that what they saw in the sky Jan. 8 was no airplane. Some said it even bolstered their claims, because several people reported seeing at least two fighter jets chasing an object.

“This supports our story that there was UFO activity in that area,” said Kenneth Cherry, the Texas director of the Mutual UFO Network, which took more than 50 reports from locals at a meeting last weekend. “I find it curious that it took them two weeks to ‘fess up. I think they’re feeling the heat from the publicity.”

Officials at the Joint Reserve Base Naval Air Station in Fort Worth initially said none of their planes had been in the area, but on Wednesday they said 10 F-16s were there that day. The officials said they were mistaken and wanted to set the record straight “in the interest of public awareness.”

Public awareness, indeed. Something is rotten in Denmark … and Texas. Remember, this is the same organization that developed the F-117 in the Nevada desert for years and years without anybody knowing about it. Have the citizens of Texas been given an unintentional glimpse of a black program?

Read the entire report here.

(Image: Secret base at Tonopah, Nevada where the F-117 was developed.)

– Ward

]]> http://defensetech.org/2008/01/24/plot-thickens-in-texas-ufo-crisis/feed/ 53 http://defensetech.org/2007/11/14/mda-pressing-ahead-with-euro-bmd/ http://defensetech.org/2007/11/14/mda-pressing-ahead-with-euro-bmd/#comments Wed, 14 Nov 2007 13:37:53 +0000 Ward http://deftech.usmilblog.com/?p=2660

Lt. Gen. Henry (Trey) Obering, U.S. Missile Defense Agency director, says the $85 million funding cut to his plans for radar and interceptor installations in Eastern Europe is “not as bad as it could have been.”

“I do believe that this is something that we can live with,” Obering said during an interview with Aviation Week & Space Technology. The cut was recently approved by a House-Senate conference committee on Fiscal 2008 appropriations.

The reduction could result in at least a six-month delay in plans to establish a site for interceptors in Poland and a sophisticated tracking and targeting radar in the Czech Republic.

Obering wants the interceptors in place by 2013 and the radar operating by 2011 to counter ballistic missile attacks from Iran that threaten the Middle East and most of Europe. Despite Russian opposition to the plans — the Russian government says the system poses a threat to its security in the region — the U.S. is moving forward. Obering maintains that the Russian radar in Gabala, Azerbaijan, will not provide the midcourse discrimination necessary to target missiles from Iran.

Russia proposed the Gabala radar as an alternative to the sensor planned for the Czech Republic. MDA plans to relocate a midcourse tracking radar from the Pacific region to the site in the Czech Republic.

Obering spoke with AW&ST from Kiev during one of a series of visits to explore opportunities to expand industry cooperation between the U.S. and Ukraine, which provided hefty technical expertise for the Soviet ballistic missile fleet.

Already, cooperation exists with Boeing on the Sea Launch program and other efforts are under way with Lockheed Martin. The Ukraine is also thought to have conducted development work for the countermeasures incorporated into Soviet and now Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Read the rest of this story and see others from our Aviation Week partners at Military.com.

– Christian

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