|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
U.S. Plans: Former Official Questions Boost-Phase Defenses By Greg Seigle While Bush administration officials are currently focusing missile defense efforts on intercepting incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles at the mid-course of their trajectory, their plans for subsequent boost-phase capabilities are fundamentally flawed, said Philip Coyle, who until last year served as the U.S. Defense Department’s director of operational testing and evaluation. “Boost-phase interceptors are being hyped unrealistically by some as the best hope for our future missile defense,” Coyle, now a senior advisor for the Center for Defense Information, said during a speech sponsored by the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation. “The problem is that some members of Congress think the Missile Defense Agency’s funds are going to produce a boost-phase interceptor defense against China, which it won’t.” Boost-phase intercept systems will not work with China, Russia or other large countries because they are too big, making an intercept shortly after takeoff highly unlikely, Coyle said. “You just can’t get interceptors close enough to hit the Chinese ICBMs in the boost phase. You’d have to invade China first,” Coyle said. “By the time the U.S. interceptors could get to the middle of China their Chinese missiles would be long gone.” “So boost-phase interceptor defenses are only practical only against a relatively small country like North Korea, not that the Pentagon knows how to do North Korea yet either, but in principle it’s feasible, whereas against a large country like China or Russia it simply isn’t.” Layered Approach Flawed The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency is now pursuing a strategy of layered missile defenses — the capability to knock out ICBMs in either their boost, mid-course or terminal phases. The Bush administration strategy is to develop systems that can protect areas, regions or continents, adding new technologies as they mature. MDA Director Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish has testified in past weeks that the layered approach has helped to streamline the Pentagon acquisition process. “We will build what we can technologically, and then improve it as rapidly as we can,” Kadish told the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces Thursday. “This evolutionary strategy allows us to put the high performance technologies ‘in play’ sooner than otherwise would be possible.” Coyle, however, said the layered strategy is flawed because intercepting ICBMs in either their boost phase or terminal phase will be extremely difficult because of the vast areas that need to be covered. He said Pentagon officials should focus on developing area protection systems, such as the Patriot Advanced Capability 3, then regional protection systems such as the Theater High-Altitude Air Defense before moving to the most difficult task of protecting the whole country from ICBMs with the larger national defense systems. The MDA is spending $6.7 billion on various missile defense programs this year, with about $2.4 billion going towards national missile defense efforts, according to MDA spokesman Rick Lehner. The only boost-phase intercept program underway, the airborne laser, is a concept that remains in development. Airborne Laser Questionable The airborne laser, which intends to use a chemical-iodine laser fired from a modified Boeing 747-400 to rupture ICBMs in their boost phase — and presumably to drop any WMD destruction warheads near the launch site — has experienced many problems, Coyle noted. The laser itself currently does not fit inside the 747, and the chemicals have exploded at least once, perhaps twice, he said. Critics have also derided system because they believe the laser will be too weak to blow up ICBMs in flight, or that the laser beam may easily be deflected or neutralized. Even if system works as advertised, it will not prove effective unless the Air Force could get the 747s near a launch site — a difficult task with North Korea, much less China or Russia, Coyle said. The unlikelihood of the laser system’s success against large countries puts the Bush administration’s whole layered missile defense strategy into question, Coyle said. “To have a layered system, that’s an even bigger problem because for all practical purposes there haven’t been any flight intercept tests for either the boost phase or the terminal phase as yet,” he said. “All the tests you’ve seen so far have just been ground-based, mid-course systems where the tests are targeted” (see GSN, Jan. 28). Intelligence Important Another key hurdle Pentagon planners need to overcome is securing timely, accurate information about any missile threats to the United States, Coyle said. “Basically missile defense only works if you have the right prior information, advance information ahead of time so you know what to look for,” Coyle said. “You need to know where [a missile is] fired from, where it’s going and what the missile you’re looking for looks like,” he said. “That prior information is the difference between all the early developmental testing you hear about in these programs and later-to-come operational tests where they won’t have that prior information,” he added. “Obviously in wartime… you might not get all the information you wanted or some of it might be wrong.
| ||||||||||
Back to top
