|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
Midrange Missile May Be Backup To Modified Trident By Elaine M. Grossman Initial conceptual work has begun on a “Submarine-Launched Global Strike Missile” that could be carried by four U.S. Navy Ohio-class submarines undergoing conversion from their longtime nuclear weapons-carrying role to use solely in conventional missions. Behind the scenes, the idea appears to be gaining steam among Pentagon leaders as a potential backup to their 2006 proposal to modify a small number of nuclear-armed Trident D-5 submarine-launched missiles for conventional strikes. Government officials are examining the possibility of funding the intermediate-range missile at $120 million in fiscal 2008 and $140 million in 2009 if prospects for modifying the longer-range Trident D-5 remain dim on Capitol Hill, Global Security Newswire has learned. The Pentagon’s earlier proposal to field conventional D-5 missiles aboard submarines that also carry their nuclear-armed counterparts has proved to be a political hot potato. Lawmakers have curtailed funds for the “Conventional Trident Modification” effort, citing worries that The conventional weapons are to be used in a relatively new military mission called “prompt global strike,” in which the Pentagon seeks to field highly precise weapons capable of hitting an urgent target anywhere around the world within 60 minutes of a launch order. The weapons might be used in instances in which targets are fleeting, such as when a terrorist has been located a safe house or a rogue nation is readying a nuclear missile for launch. Lacking a long-range conventional missile capability today to stage such rapid attacks, the president is left only with nuclear weapons, and those remain unlikely to be used, a former While lawmakers generally support the idea of building conventional weapons that could substitute for nuclear-tipped missiles, skepticism about fielding the conventional Trident has hamstrung Pentagon plans. “If Congress outlaws [the conventional Trident missile] but does not outlaw conventional [prompt global strike in general], then what have we got in our brains to carry on?” asked one Defense Department official, interviewed last month on condition of anonymity. The answer: Pentagon officials have begun to quietly develop a “Plan B,” exploring payload and engineering options for the intermediate-range Submarine-Launched Global Strike Missile, which would be carried on conventional-only vessels. To nudge that effort along, defense officials are drawing from $20 million in fiscal 2007 funds that Congress appropriated for technologies usable in a number of future prompt global strike weapons (see GSN, Aug. 17). The Pentagon’s growing interest in a new Submarine-Launched Global Strike Missile reflects an evolving view that funds previously earmarked in future-year budget plans for a Conventional Trident Modification technology demonstration might be better spent on demonstrating a more politically viable weapon, defense officials said. “It pays to have a range of options and technologies and industrial base components that can be selected for future systems,” the Defense Department official said last month. Developing a brand new missile might also hold considerable technical appeal for Pentagon and industry officials. Starting with a clean design slate could allow for a more effective conventional destructive capability than the existing D-5 re-entry vehicle offers, according to defense experts. Building a missile that is smaller than the D-5 also might allow a lower unit cost in production, after research and development is complete. Once in use, the new missile could also offer shorter flight times to target. However, with an anticipated maximum range of approximately 2,000 nautical miles — about half that of the Trident D-5 — the new missile would have to be launched closer to its target. The new missile would not necessarily be strictly an alternative to the conventional Trident. Should that program move forward, it appears that the intermediate-range weapon might still be developed in tandem to augment the modified D-5’s capabilities, defense sources said. Assuming the intermediate-range weapon enters initial stages of development in the near term, technology demonstrations could begin as early as fiscal 2011, according to defense sources. These tests would be limited to simply proving the design concept. Underwater test launches could begin before the end of 2012, officials said. The technology demonstrations would be followed by a potentially expensive “system development and demonstration” phase, according to defense sources. The missile might be initially fielded sometime between 2015 and 2018, defense officials said. Early planning envisions potentially fitting two of the missiles per launch tube, according to these sources. Each Trident submarine undergoing conversion has 24 tubes, but the Navy plans to use some of the tubes to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles and special operations forces. The Pentagon remains “a long way from figuring out” how many of the global strike missiles would be carried aboard each submarine, one defense official said this week. In May, a National Academy of Sciences study panel found that the intermediate-range missile approach “presents less technical risk than the others being proposed.” Missile payloads could include “larger munitions such as an earth penetrator for attacking deeply buried facilities,” the group stated in a congressionally mandated interim report (see GSN, May 16). Ironically, altering the focus of prompt global strike development efforts from the conventional Trident D-5 to the intermediate-range missile still might not assuage critics’ concerns about launch ambiguity, according to some nuclear weapons experts. Russia — currently the only nuclear power with an advanced early warning system — might mistake the launch of an intermediate-range weapon from a converted Ohio-class submarine for a U.S. nuclear strike using a “depressed-trajectory” Trident D-5, said Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists. Launching the missile in a flatter arc allows for a shorter flight time to target and less time for an adversary to detect and react to an incoming attack, according to experts. The U.S. Navy in 2005 carried out a D-5 flight test off the East Coast using a depressed trajectory that gave the missile a 1,200 nautical mile range — “right in the range of that [intermediate] missile,” Kristensen said. The Defense Department has not given up hope that the Conventional Trident Modification will go forward, according to officials. Pentagon budgeters have tentatively allocated $118 million in fiscal 2009 and $103 million in 2010 for that effort, which could lay the groundwork for initial fielding in 2010, GSN has learned. Overall, the Pentagon is eyeing $160 million in fiscal 2009 and $148 million in 2010 for technologies developed by the Army, Air Force and Navy across the prompt global strike mission, according to a draft Defense Department budget slide reviewed by GSN. In the latest budget action on Capitol Hill, the Senate Appropriations Committee zeroed the $175 million in fiscal 2008 funds the White House requested for Trident missile modification. The panel moved $125 million into a new multiservice account for prompt global strike, directing that the Pentagon use the funds “for engineering and development of alternatives to the conventional Trident missile program.” House appropriators carried out a similar move over the summer, shifting all funds out of the conventional Trident account and investing $100 million in the multiservice account. The House bill would allow some of those pooled funds to be used for the conventional Trident, at the defense secretary’s discretion.
| ||||||||||
Back to top
