Missile Defense Capability Could Improve Next Year

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The capability of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s flagship anti-ICBM program could improve over the next year with the addition of fielded interceptors and new, more powerful sensors for tracking enemy missiles through space, a senior Army official said here yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 8).

Lt. Gen. Larry Dodgen, who commands the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, reiterated previous official statements that the multibillion-dollar Ground-based Midcourse Defense system that launches interceptors into space is believed now to have only a “thin line” of capability.

He said, though, that the capability could be improved with the planned fielding of more powerful X-band radars “in the next four or five months” (see GSN, Aug. 2).

The Missile Defense Agency said earlier this year it aimed to have by the end of the year a sea-based X-band stationed off Alaska and a smaller forward-deployed X-band stationed in East Asia.

The military currently operates “sensors that were designed for other functions but have utility in the ballistic missile defense fight,” Dodgen said at the annual meeting of the Association of the U.S. Army.

By adding the new sensors, “you will begin to be not so dependent upon the other sensors and that will add a greater discrimination … because they were designed as very powerful radars to do this mission,” he said.

The system’s capability also could be improved by the scheduled fielding of additional missile interceptors in silos, he said, so “we can begin to not … look at a firing doctrine from an inventory standpoint, but to look at our firing doctrine from what we want to achieve against any particular threat that may come our way.”

There were as of August six interceptors fielded in Alaska and two in California, with another six planned for Alaska by the end of the year. Up to 20 more are expected through 2007.

Dodgen said a reassessment of the GMD system’s capability could occur in 2006, following an intercept test reportedly scheduled for next summer. 

“At some point when we finish off the testing that’s planned next year and get as close as we can to an end-to-end intercept, then I think we’ll know a lot about this system. We’ll have a robust inventory, and we’ll have great sensors out there, and at some point our nation may decide that we have more than a thin line,” he said.

Dodgen said Defense Department debate continues over whether and when the military services might take ownership of the growing ballistic missile defense infrastructure that is being purchased annually by the Missile Defense Agency.

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget over the past two years has criticized the Pentagon for not transferring future costly missile defense procurement plans to the services. It warned that increasing costs for purchasing interceptor missiles, radar and other equipment threatened Missile Defense Agency technology investment and deployments (see GSN, April 7).

“That’s probably going to be debated in this next POM, exactly how we’ll look at the transition of systems,” he said, referring to the Program Objectives Memorandum process for determining the services’ multiyear budget plans that will occur in the coming months.

Dodgen said he does not favor transferring ownership to the services, noting the systems are still under development by the Missile Defense Agency.

“I’m not for that model, because I think we’ll lose some of the synergies that we have with the integration of everything in the Missile Defense Agency.   We ought to man the systems and operate the systems, but allow the Missile Defense Agency to continue to make those programmatic improvement decisions as we go forward and not separate the systems from a truly integrated developmental base,” he said.

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