Friday, August 4, 2006

Report Supports Sea-, Space-Based Missile Defenses

The United States should focus on developing sea- and space-based missile defenses rather than expanding ground-based systems beyond the interceptors already deployed in Alaska and California, according to a experts’ report issued last month (see GSN, May 11).

“Near-term options exist for developing viable sea-and space based defense within the next decade resulting in a comprehensive, global layered missile defense system,” says the 202-page report from the Independent Working Group on Missile Defense, the Space Relationship and the 21st century.

“This option would complement the [Ground-based Midcourse Defense] system currently being deployed but afford superior coverage at less cost than expanding the number of GMD sites,” the report says.

The group also recommended the United States re-examine missile defense concepts considered during the Reagan and first Bush administrations, including the space-based Brilliant Pebbles kinetic energy weapon system, according to Inside Missile Defense.

The document addresses work on several sea-based Standard Missile systems. It urges hastening development of the U.S. Standard Missile 3 Block 1 Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system “to provide late-midcourse and boost-phase interception.” That would probably cost “an additional $100 million over current funding,” it says.

The U.S.-Japan Standard Missile 3 Block 2 program also ought to move quickly “to provide interdiction capabilities beyond the SM-3 Block 1,” the report states. “An additional $300 million over three yeas would push initial operating capability forward by more than year.”

Funding for the Standard Missile 2 Block 4 should be increased by “between $50 million and $100 million” to protect the country against a ship-borne Scud ballistic missile launched off a U.S. coast, the group said. Missile defense and homeland security efforts should be incorporated “to protect coastal cities and infrastructure such as key energy-producing and storage complexes.”

During a July 21 event, working group co-Chairman Robert Pfaltzgraff said he was skeptical about the U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s existing ability to prepare missile defense systems of the future. “I think that the structure that we have there has to be radically rethought.”

“The Missile Defense Agency as it stands is unfortunately very much wedded to the concepts of the recent past,” Pfaltzgraff said. “The record of the Missile Defense Agency in innovation is not great, and … to do these kinds of things, we are going to need new blood, new thinking and I do not believe that you can get that within a bureaucracy that has been in existence now for a quite long time. And that’s the Missile Defense Agency unfortunately.”

With regard to the space-based missile defense efforts, the report urges the United States to:

— “Initiate a streamlined development program building on Brilliant Pebbles (and advanced technologies produced since then) for space-based interceptors for boost-, midcourse, and terminal-phase interdiction.”

— “Within three years test a space-based missile defense system. Anticipated cost is $3—5 billion.”

— “Begin operating a space test bed for space-based interceptors that would be integrated into U.S. Strategic Command’s global architecture in three to five years.”

—“Utilizing an event-driven procurement strategy, deploy 1,000 Brilliant Pebbles interceptors with the goal of an initial capability in 2010. Anticipated cost is $16.4 billion” (Inside Missile Defense, Aug. 2).

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