Ballistic Missile Defense-2

U.S. missile intercept test fails again

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. – An interceptor missile launched from California on December 15 failed to hit a target fired from a Pacific atoll 4,000 miles away during another unsuccessful test of the United States anti-ballistic missile defense system, the Air Force announced. The ground-based interceptor missile lifted off from coastal Vandenberg Air Force Base, 130 miles northwest of Los Angeles, just after midnight and released an “exoatmospheric kill vehicle” (EKV) that was to collide with a target missile fired from the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The interceptor’s sensors worked and the EKV was deployed, but it missed the target, according to a statement from Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency. The cause of the failure will be investigated before another $100-million test is scheduled, Lehner said.

The MDA noted that the Sea-Based X-Band Radar, a critical component of the system, performed as planned. The radar, which cost more than $800 million, is mounted on an oceangoing-platform that can be towed to any point where the military needs to track missiles. The 280-foot-tall radar was built by Raytheon Co. for the Boeing Co., the prime contractor on the project.

In recent years the military has held a series of tests of the ABM system, which is intended to defend against ballistic missiles that might be developed by countries such as North Korea and Iran with sufficient range to reach the United States. The system was deployed by the George W. Bush administration at Fort Greeley, Alaska, in addition to Vandenberg AFB. It has been termed “cost-effective and proven” by President Obama and has continued to fail miserably.

In January 2010, the interceptor failed to hit its target because of two separate failures—either one of which would have been fatal for the people it hypothetically would have protected. The MDA’s massive sea-based radar was confused by the stream of incompletely burned solid fuel from the engine of the target rocket. And in addition, there was a failure of a thruster needed to steer the kill vehicle and it failed to intercept and collide with the target missile.

Riki Ellison, head of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, a booster group, said of the latest test: “This is a tremendous setback for the testing of this complicated system.” He said it raised troubling questions about the reliability of the interceptor missiles deployed in silos in Alaska and California.

Approaching an incredible 30 years now and already wasting some $200 billion, the succession of agencies commissioned to pursue the Reagan administration’s “Star Wars” fantasy have not produced anything with the functionality of a Model T.

– edited from The Associated Press, Aviation Week and Reuters
PeaceMeal, Jan/February 2010

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U.S. missile intercept test misses by miles

A U.S. attempt to shoot down a ballistic missile mimicking an attack from Iran failed on Sunday, January 31, 2010, due to a malfunction in a radar built by Raytheon Co., the Defense Department announced. It was the first time the United States had tested its long-range missile defense system against a simulated Iranian attack. After the failed Pacific test, Raytheon and Boeing, which manages the overall system, had no immediate comment.

The Missile Defense Agency said that both the target missile in the test, fired around 3:40 p.m. from Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands, and the interceptor, fired minutes later from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, had performed normally. “However, the Sea-Based X-band radar did not perform as expected,” the agency said. The SBX radar is a major component of the Ground-based Mid-course Defense (GMD) system, the sole U.S. bulwark against long-range missiles that could be tipped with chemical, biological or nuclear warheads. The radar is mounted on a mobile, ocean-going oil-drilling platform designed to provide the layered U.S. missile defense system with a powerful sensor that can be positioned to cover any spot on the globe.

Speaking at an Aerospace and Defense Summit in Washington in December, Army Lieutenant General Patrick O’Reilly, head of the Missile Defense Agency, said the test, costing about $150 million, would break new ground. He described it then as “more of a head-on shot, like you would use defending against an Iranian shot into the United States.” O’Reilly said the goal was to destroy the target over the Pacific when the missiles had a combined closing speed of more than 17,000 miles per hour. Experts have compared the simulation to a bullet trying to hit another bullet in space.

The day after the failed test, the executive director of the Missile Defense Agency, David Altwegg, took broad aim at defense contractors for chronic quality-control lapses. “I’m not going to name names today, but I’m going to tell you we continue to be disappointed in the quality that we are receiving from our prime contractors and their subs — very, very disappointed,” Altwegg said. Quality control has been an issue for military procurement for decades and is not unique to the missile defense organization, according to Altwegg, a retired rear admiral.

Faulty missile defense components have led to an enormous amount of “rework” that costs taxpayer money. The GMD program carries an estimated $35.5 billion price tag, according to the Government Accountability Office. The Pentagon is requesting $8.4 billion for MDA programs for fiscal 2011, a $525 million increase over 2010 appropriations.

In six of 16 GMD intercept flight tests since 1999, the missile has failed to hit its target. In another two, target or missile-decoy failures made it impossible for the main test objectives to be met.

A major congressionally mandated Ballistic Missile Defense Review report released February 1 asserts, “Before new capabilities are deployed, they must undergo testing that enables assessment under realistic operational conditions.”

However, there will probably not be another test until next year. Although Congress has repeatedly called for more frequent tests of the system under more realistic and challenging conditions, MDA director Altwegg said, “We find [that] with the pre-mission analysis that goes on and the post-flight analysis ... one year is about the limit — and it certainly is a challenge financially.”

President George W. Bush, who unilaterally withdrew the United States from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in December 2001, began the deployment of 10 interceptor missiles at Fort Greely, Alaska, and two at Vandenberg in 2004, unconcerned that they had never been subjected to realistic testing. Six years later, they still have not.

– edited from Reuters, Feb. 1, 2010 and Global Security Newswire, Feb. 2, 2010
PeaceMeal, Jan/February 2010

Obama to scrap Bush’s approach to missile shield

President Obama announced on Sept. 17 that he would scrap former President George W. Bush’s planned European missile defense system, consisting of a sophisticated radar in the Czech Republic and 10 ground-based interceptors in Poland. That system involved immensely expensive technology that still doesn’t work, designed for a threat that may never materialize. Instead, Obama will deploy a reconfigured system consisting of smaller SM-3 missiles, at first aboard ships and later on land, aimed at intercepting short- and medium-range Iranian missiles.

The decision amounts to one of the biggest national security reversals by the Obama administration, one that has caused consternation in Poland and the Czech Republic. But Russia, which had adamantly objected to the Bush plan, responded by canceling its plan to deploy missile systems near the border with Poland. Administration officials stressed that they are not abandoning missile defense, only redesigning it to meet the more immediate Iranian threat.

The decision drew immediate Republican criticism. “Scrapping the U.S. missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic does little more than empower Russia and Iran at the expense of our allies in Europe,” said Rep. John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House minority leader.

Anticipating the criticism, Mr. Obama said the decision was based on the unanimous recommendation of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Mr. Gates, a Republican first appointed by Mr. Bush, said the new system would actually put defenses in place seven years earlier than the Bush plan. He noted that land-based SM-3 missiles would eventually be located in Europe and said “we would prefer to put the SM-3’s in Poland.” Mr. Gates added that the new configuration “provides a better missile defense capability” for Europe and American forces there “than the program I recommended almost three years ago.”

The Obama review of missile defense was influenced in large part by evidence that Iran has made significant progress toward developing medium-range missiles that could threaten Europe, even as the prospects for an Iranian intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the United States remain distant. A further reason for the shift is to get better defenses in place sooner and closer to Israel to mitigate Israel’s desire to take military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

– edited from The New York Times and Los Angeles Times
PeaceMeal, Sept/October 2009

Missile defense ideology and counterspin

Chaos enveloping U.S. efforts to build an effective ballistic missile defense (BMD) system is summarized in a March 16 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on Missile Defense Agency (MDA) activities. GAO’s key findings include:

• Performance and Testing: “None of the six Director’s test knowledge points established by MDA for 2008 were achieved. Poor performing target missiles have been a persistent problem. Testing shortfalls have slowed the validation of models and simulations, which are needed to assess the system’s overall performance.”

• Cost: “MDA has not yet established baselines for total costs or unit costs, both fundamental markers most programs use to measure progress. Consequently, for the sixth year, GAO has not been able to assess MDA’s actual costs against a baseline.”

• Schedule: “Fielding decisions are being made with a reduced understanding of system effectiveness.”

Over the last eight years, no matter how many times MDA failed to do what it set out to do or didn’t progress to the next stage, the Bush administration dispensed little penalty. President Bush even exempted the agency from normal acquisition, testing, and reporting requirements in the hope that more flexibility would yield more results. That allowed the agency to avoid providing full cost estimates of its systems while deploying interceptor missiles that were not rigorously tested under realistic battlefield conditions.

In response to the GAO report, Mira Ricardel, vice president for business development at Boeing Missile Defense Systems, defended the ground-based midcourse (GMD) system, which already has been deployed in Alaska and California and may be built in eastern Europe, by claiming that it has met recent developmental milestones. She cited a December 5 test as proof that the system works.

However, the December test did not meet the operationally realistic threshold imposed by Congress. The target missile was supposed to include simple decoys, but they failed to deploy. This failure means that the system did not have the opportunity to prove whether or not it can discriminate warheads from simple decoys, which any nuclear-armed missiles that could reach the United States likely will have.

The Pentagon has yet to demonstrate that the U.S. ground-based missile defense system is capable of defending against a long-range ballistic missile in a real-world situation. Tests to date have been under highly scripted conditions.

In the 26 years since President Reagan made his “Star Wars” proposal, the United States has spent in the neighborhood of $150 billion on BMD development efforts. During that time, missile defense has morphed into a high-profile, politically symbolic program, rather than a militarily useful program judged on its merits. The BMD program not only offers no prospect of defending the United States from a real-world missile attack, it also undermines efforts to eliminate the real nuclear threats to the United States. But missile defense continues to march along as a public relations campaign and weapons industry welfare program promoted by a group of ideological believers who refuse to acknowledge the shortcomings of their enterprise.

– edited from NukesofHazardblog.com, March 17-18, 2009
PeaceMeal, March/April 2009