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Deployed U.S. Missile Interceptors Contain Questionable Parts By David Ruppe WASHINGTON — The first nine anti-ICBM interceptors deployed in Alaska and California as part of the Bush administration’s national missile defense system contain potentially unreliable parts that will need to be replaced, a congressional report said last month (see GSN, Jan. 12). The unidentified parts of the interceptor’s “kill vehicle” could undermine the system’s potential effectiveness, according to the report. “Even if MDA had successfully completed flight tests needed to anchor the models and simulations used to predict the performance of the initial BMDS [overarching Ballistic Missile Defense System] capability, the performance of some emplaced GMD interceptors would still be uncertain,” it says. The agency to date has installed between 10 to 13 interceptors, with two in California and the rest in Alaska, though it will not say exactly how many. Auditors recommended replacing the “questionable” parts as the interceptors are upgraded in fiscal 2007, which officials said would require removing the interceptors from their silos, according to the report. It is not clear that will happen. Missile Defense Agency spokesman Richard Lehner said by e-mail today, “There are no plans for removal of any interceptors for upgrades at this time since there is nothing to be upgraded at this time.” Bush Deployment CitedAccording to the report, use of faulty parts appeared to be part of broader quality control problems with the program that resulted from the 2002 directive by President George W. Bush to rapidly deploy Ground-based Midcourse Defense system elements before they were fully developed and deemed operationally capable. It notes the agency has said the first two intercept attempts of the operationally deployed interceptors failed as a result of quality control problems (see GSN, Feb. 15, 2005). “Management compromises made to accelerate fielding prevented MDA from meeting its Block 2004 goals,” it says, referring to the first fielded “block” of hardware. “Quality control problems occurred when the program was accelerated. According to MDA’s own audits, the interceptor’s design requirements were unclear and sometimes incomplete, design changes were poorly controlled, and the interceptor’s design resulted in uncertain reliability and service life,” it says. Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Henry Obering said yesterday the GAO report was overly pessimistic about the quality of the deployed interceptors. “Every interceptor that’s sitting in that silo in Alaska and California has been acceptance-tested. … They were acceptance-tested to what we call the maximum predicted environments,” he said at hearing of the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee. The report says the questionable parts were not detected during the interceptors’ acceptance tests. Obering acknowledged “poor quality control” and said the agency “did not do sufficient qualification testing” of the robustness of certain parts. However, Obering said he and “all of the experts” — including those from quality control teams — concluded that the parts did not need to be replaced. He added that an interceptor flight test in December contained the parts in question and “performed exactly as we had hoped and had planned. So I don’t share the pessimism that came out of the conclusions.” Senator Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) appeared less optimistic. He described the parts as “critical” to the system. “This creates uncertainty about the performance of those interceptors,” he said.
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