Price Tag for Fast Missile Might Top $600 Million

By Elaine M. Grossman
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — A U.S. Army program to develop a land-based hypersonic missile capable of hitting targets halfway around the globe within minutes of launch might cost more than $600 million, according to service officials and backers (see GSN, Nov. 8).

The Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command, based in Huntsville, Ala., has conceived of an Advanced Hypersonic Weapon that could boost into space aboard a two-stage rocket, separate and glide to a target up to 6,000 kilometers away in less than 35 minutes.  

Proponents of the advanced weapon say it could be fielded as early as 2009 for the Defense Department’s “prompt global strike” mission, under which the United States seeks the ability to attack a small number of fleeting targets at long range. 

To accomplish that today, the only weapons in the U.S. arsenal with sufficient range and speed are nuclear arms, Pentagon leaders have said.  In an effort to expand targeting options for a U.S. president seeking to avoid nuclear war, the military has proposed developing a new set of conventionally armed, prompt global strike weapons.

With terrorist hideouts or rogue nations as its primary targets, an Advanced Hypersonic Weapon could carry a 900-pound penetrator warhead or 900 pounds of rods to impact at Mach 4 speed, according to the system’s advocates. 

However, critics have said the Army weapon faces some daunting technological challenges that would require a heavy investment of dollars and time to resolve.  Chief among them is the development of a thermal protection technology capable of withstanding atmospheric flight at extremely high speeds, according to defense experts.

The missile defense command has estimated that the Pentagon would spend nearly $390 million on the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon over a five-year period beginning in this fiscal year, during which just two missiles would be built. 

Alternatively, with a 55 percent funding boost, the Army could build 16 missiles in the same time frame, military officials told Global Security Newswire.  Under this option, the Pentagon would spend roughly $600 million on the effort through 2012, officials said.

One weapon proponent said it is too early to know how many Army missiles might be required, so research and development on the technology should remain the primary focus for now.  The Army might ultimately opt to build even more than 16 missiles, though, particularly if the per-missile cost in production appears affordable, said this supporter.

“Buy a dozen?  Buy two dozen?” the weapon advocate asked in a telephone interview this week.  “Those are issues down the road.”

Lacking the authorization to speak publicly about the program, this source and several others contributed to this article on condition of anonymity.

The lion’s share of the near-term investment required for an Advanced Hypersonic Weapon appears to be in research and development, estimated at more than $320 million in fiscal 2005 dollars, without taking annual inflation into account.

While the Army is the hypersonic weapon’s official sponsor, the service has never sought funds for its development.  Instead, the effort has survived for two years on congressional earmarks, with lawmakers giving the Army $8.9 million to develop the system in fiscal 2007 and $1.5 million the year before in start-up funding, according to congressional sources.

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) — in whose home state the Army project office resides — has spearheaded support for the fledgling program on Capitol Hill. 

As the ranking member of a key Senate Armed Services subcommittee overseeing strategic programs, Sessions recently landed another $41.7 million in fiscal 2008 defense appropriations for the hypersonic weapon.

Yet with the new five-year budget numbers emerging, some of the weapon’s biggest supporters are finding the price tag higher than expected.

Asked to respond to the figures obtained by GSN, one hypersonic weapon backer said the multiyear cost “sounds remarkably high.”  Even Sessions might reconsider his support for the system “if he thought the cost would be so egregious,” this official opined.

However, the lofty price tag for the next five years’ work on the hypersonic missile “doesn’t, on its face, provide a problem” for Sessions, said one congressional staffer interviewed today.  “I don’t think [Congress] could carry them on $600 million [in] earmarks for five years, though. … At some point, we believe this should be adopted in [the Army] budget.”

Thus far, the Army’s top leaders have preferred to direct service funds into other, higher priority accounts, including ongoing operations in Iraq and procurement programs for weapons such as combat vehicles and helicopters, defense sources said.  That has left Army interest in pursuing the hypersonic weapon largely confined to a handful of service officials and their contractors in Alabama.

“It’s not surprising there’s not a lot of Army boosters for this weapon,” Chris Hellman of the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation said in an interview this week.  “I find it hard to believe this is ever going to be a high-priority weapon for them.”

For the longer term, once the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon is built and fielded, it appears the Army missile command is exploring the possibility of handing off day-to-day operations to the U.S. Air Force.

The hypersonic weapon program office has proposed that the Army and Air Force share responsibility for a prototype weapon during an “initial operating capability” phase, service sources said.  Once the weapon becomes fully operational, the Army would transfer all responsibility — and its attendant personnel and maintenance costs — to the Air Force, GSN has learned.

However, the Air Force has funded its own weapon concept for prompt global strike — the Conventional Strike Missile — and appears largely disinterested in inheriting the Army effort, officials said.

“The Air Force is just sitting there with horror that anyone is seriously considering this program,” said one defense expert tracking the program.

Though there is little interest in the Army weapon at the top reaches of the Pentagon, “Congress just funded it at $41 million,” this observer said.  The Defense Department is reluctant to turn away valuable research and development funds, so the Huntsville command’s hypersonic weapon concept is not expected to disappear anytime soon, several officials said.

Back to top
About Newswire  |  Contact National Journal  |  Re-Use Guidelines © Copyright 2008 by National Journal Group, Inc. The material in this section is produced independently for NTI by National Journal Group, Inc. Any reproduction or retransmission, in whole or in part, is a violation of federal law and is strictly prohibited without the consent of the National Journal Group, Inc. All rights reserved.