U.S. Plans:  Pentagon Works to Defeat Possible Countermeasures

The U.S. Defense Department has begun work on developing ways to defeat any enemy countermeasures that would hinder a U.S. missile defense system, Aviation Week & Space Technology reported today (see GSN, Aug. 23).

A U.S. missile defense system could face enemy ballistic missiles equipped with countermeasures such as active jammers, infrared flares, radar-absorbing materials on warheads and decoy-equipped reentry vehicles, according to a report to the Defense Science Board.

The Missile Defense Agency is working to develop a kill vehicle that would have both passive infrared sensors and other active sensors that could distinguish between a warhead and a decoy, according to Aviation Week.  The agency is expected to have defense contractor Boeing develop a complementary exotatmospheric kill vehicle (CEKV), which would replace the kill vehicle designed by Raytheon for use in the Ground-based Midcourse Defense program, Aviation Week reported.  Officials would probably also use the new kill vehicle in the Navy’s ship-based missile defense system.

Multiple types of sensors are planned for the new kill vehicle because missile defense countermeasures are often based on either infrared or radar detection techniques.  An enemy could build a decoy that matches both a warhead’s infrared and radar signatures, but it would be complex and decrease the size of the warhead payload that a missile could carry, defense officials said.

The report to the science board calls for developing active sensors to defeat countermeasures because passive sensors are seen as ineffective against advanced decoys.  An active system works by causing a physical effect, such as a temperature change, in a target to determine whether it is a warhead or a decoy (Robert Wall, Aviation Week & Space Technology, Sept. 16).

For further information, see:

MDA Basics of Missile Defense

MDA Missile Defense System

MDA Midcourse Defense Segment

Sea-Based Midcourse

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