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Controversial Missile Idea Lingers By Elaine M. Grossman WASHINGTON — The U.S. Defense Department is leaving open the possibility of developing a conventional long-range missile for deployment on submarines, despite stern congressional warnings against fielding anything that might be mistaken for a nuclear weapon during launch (see GSN, Dec. 13, 2007). The issue under debate involves the type of arms the Pentagon should develop for a new military mission called “prompt global strike.” Last year, lawmakers broadly endorsed the emerging mission, in which the However, Congress rejected the Pentagon’s specific concept for an initial prompt global strike weapon: a new version of the Navy’s nuclear-armed Trident D-5 missile that would be modified to carry a conventional warhead. Under Navy plans, the service would deploy 24 of the four-warhead missiles aboard the same Ohio-class submarines that carry look-alike, nuclear-tipped weapons. Lawmakers voiced serious concerns that dual-loading the missiles on submarines introduced so much “ambiguity” that any Trident launch — nuclear or conventional — might trigger a hasty nuclear response from In the fiscal 2008 budget, lawmakers zeroed funds for the Conventional Trident Modification effort. Instead, they created a new, multiservice spending account the Pentagon could use to explore an array of alternative technologies and weapons concepts for prompt global strike. In offering the $100 million spending pot for research and development, Congress issued a caveat: “No funds” from the defense-wide account “are authorized for the [Conventional Trident Modification] program,” lawmakers stated in a House-Senate conference report authorizing the expenditure of defense funds for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, 2007. Lawmakers noted they “remain concerned about prompt global strike concepts that would employ a mixed loading of nuclear and non-nuclear systems and believe that DOD should carefully address these ambiguity concerns.” Yet, budget documents recently submitted to Congress suggest that the Pentagon intends to continue research and development on submarine weapons closely related to Trident. Specifically, the Defense Department is proposing to develop technologies that could be fitted onto the Trident D-5 to make it more accurate as a conventional or nuclear weapon. In one budget document sent to Capitol Hill last month, the Pentagon says it intends to spend $59 million in this fiscal year and $69 million next year to “assess the feasibility of producing … ballistic missiles [launched] from an underwater environment” for conventional prompt global strike. The funds would lay the groundwork for a 2009 flight experiment “using a Life Extension Test Bed (LETB-2) re-entry body [on] a currently planned Trident D-5 missile flight,” states one Navy document. During the test, officials would demonstrate a communications and data link that could prove useful for subsequent experiments, the service says. The LETB-2 was designed to go on the front end of a Trident D-5 missile, and comprises a Mk-4 re-entry body warhead and a tail kit containing a Global Positioning System receiver. The tail kit also includes flaps that would allow the weapon to maneuver precisely to its target. The Lockheed Martin technology was derived from an “Enhanced Effectiveness” modification the company flight-tested on a Trident D-5 in October 2002, according to company and defense sources. The Navy requested funds in fiscal 2003 to demonstrate Enhanced Effectiveness on the D-5. Congress canceled the effort, though, citing concerns about the possibility that giving the Trident re-entry body maneuvering capabilities might encourage nuclear exchanges (see GSN, Aug. 17, 2007). Nonetheless, the Navy was able to perform enough research and development in the Enhanced Effectiveness initiative to generate an initial design for a more-precise Mk-4 re-entry body, one defense official explained last year. The service capitalized on that design work in its nascent plans for the Conventional Trident Modification effort, according to officials. Now — following the conventional Trident’s legislative demise — the Navy is proposing to breathe new life into virtually the same designs under the Life Extension Test Bed moniker. Lockheed Martin first flight-tested that version of its re-entry body design in 2005, officials said. In the run-up to next year’s LETB-2 demonstration, the Pentagon wants to use nearly $60 million from the 2008 multiservice funding account for Navy “test completion and delivery of flight software; assembly and integration of components into LETB-2; fabrication and delivery of heat shield, nose tips and flaps; and, assembly and delivery of power distribution unit and telemetry systems,” according to budget documents. Would this work violate the congressional ban on developing conventional Trident? Congress “made it very clear that they have to be very careful about this bright line,” one congressional aide said last week, referring to a Senate warning last June that the Pentagon must clearly separate “legacy nuclear capabilities” and any future prompt global strike capabilities (see GSN, June 22, 2007). “Why don’t we just get on with something?” the staffer added, noting Capitol Hill remains open to land-, air- or even sea-based alternatives as long as they do not share conventional Trident’s problems with launch ambiguity. However, there is yet more Trident-related work afoot. The Navy also wants to use fiscal 2009 funds to prepare for a second flight experiment in 2011, in which a larger “Medium Lift Re-entry Body” would be demonstrated aboard a test-launch vehicle called STARS. Advance work next year would include “completion of a detailed design [and] 80 percent completion of [re-entry body] software,” the Navy budget documents state. This re-entry body would be too large to fit on the Trident D-5 missile or inside existing missile tubes on nuclear-armed submarines. Defense officials say the new warhead instead would require the Pentagon to develop a new missile to launch it, perhaps deployable on four submarines the Navy recently converted to carry conventional cruise missiles and special operations forces. One such option might be to put this larger re-entry body on an intermediate-range missile, according to defense officials (see GSN, Sept. 18, 2007). The four converted submarines remain technically capable of carrying either nuclear or conventional weapons, though. That could pose new ambiguity problems for the Navy on Capitol Hill, congressional and defense officials said. Navy officials have described the Medium Lift Re-entry Body as a “scale-up” of the Conventional Trident Modification design. That has some defense officials crying foul, noting there would be few technical obstacles to prevent the Navy from scaling the MLRB design back down for use on Trident, once it is fully developed. That possibility, some officials contend, makes the Navy’s proposed MLRB work a violation of the congressional ban on spending funds to fabricate or test a conventional Trident missile. Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright — who initially advocated for the conventional Trident as the nation’s strategic commander — said last fall he wanted to move on to explore alternative concepts for prompt global strike. Now vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Cartwright told Global Security Newswire he saw “signaling … from the Hill, which I don’t necessarily disagree with,” to shelve the conventional Trident and “start to focus the [research and development] on the next generation beyond conventional Trident.” Still, Air Force Air Force Space Command, which Chilton formerly headed, in 2006 began formally analyzing an array of technological alternatives for prompt global strike on behalf of the entire “I didn’t have anybody say, ‘No, don’t even consider submarines’ as a starting position” in launching the analysis of alternatives, the general told GSN in a Feb. 29 telephone interview. “And I think submarines can work. We just have to make sure we address the issues and concerns that are of concern to the Hill. [The Pentagon] obviously didn’t adequately or effectively enough do that with regard to a modified [Trident] approach. But the discussions have been very open.” As for spending some of the fiscal 2008 monies on submarine weapon research, “I don’t rule that out at all,” Chilton said. Even before Congress zeroed conventional Trident, Cartwright conceded in meetings on Capitol Hill that it was less than an ideal weapon for prompt global strike. The general was concerned that modifying the existing D-5 design would limit the new weapon’s ability to damage targets conventionally, according to defense officials. Cartwright also came to realize that pursuing a dual-use missile concept would introduce political baggage into the program. However, he said last year, conventional Trident was the only technology far enough along in development that it could be fielded relatively quickly, potentially by fiscal 2010. Just this month, Michael Vickers, the Pentagon’s top civilian overseeing strategic and conventional capabilities, told a Senate panel that conventional Trident “remains our really only near-term option in the next three years.” He noted that longer-term alternatives to be funded under the joint spending account include conventionally armed ground-based missiles, hypersonic weapons and “new re-entry vehicles that could be used on our sea-based platforms.” Appearing at the same March 12 hearing, Navy Strategic Systems Program Director Rear Adm. Stephen Johnson elaborated on his service’s technologies under development. “We think that there are a wide range of opportunities, including scaling up the flechette warhead that was the previous R&D effort that the Navy did,” he told the Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee. The flechette, a conventional Trident warhead designed for attacking targets on the Earth’s surface, has “been tested at 5,000 feet per second and a little over 7,000 feet per second,” Johnson said. “We would propose two [new] flight tests: one to do the range-safety [measures] necessary” for either a Navy or Air Force re-entry body, and a second for “further tests on warheads,” he said. Fiscal 2008 defense authorization legislation called on the Pentagon to submit two reports to Congress on its weapons development plans for prompt global strike. One would detail the Defense Department’s research, development and testing plan between 2008 and 2013, and no funds to begin executing the plan may be spent until 10 days after the report is submitted. Lawmakers also directed the Pentagon’s head of acquisition and technology to report on how the agency would allocate its fiscal 2008 prompt global strike funds. The defense buying czar must submit the document before the funds can be spent. Five months into the fiscal year, neither report has arrived on Capitol Hill. The delay could push any potential technology demonstration into fiscal 2010 or beyond, officials told GSN. Absent the reports, it remains unclear if the Navy budget documents submitted last month accurately reflect the Pentagon leadership’s current intentions about proceeding with conventional Trident-related technologies, one congressional aide said last week. Until the reports are in, the Pentagon cannot legally spend funds on prompt global strike. Meanwhile, those responsible for the mission know “very well” the bill language that prevents funds from being expended on conventional Trident technologies, the staffer said. “It’s very clear what we’ve been telling [them].”
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