U.S. Plans:  Pentagon Aims for Miniature Interceptor Testing by 2005

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Missile Defense Agency is hoping to flight-test miniature missile interceptors for the first time in fiscal 2005, according to Pentagon budget documents released Friday.  The system will be designed to resolve the technical problem of distinguishing enemy warheads from decoys by attacking both with large numbers of interceptors (see GSN, April 10, 2002).

The “miniature kill vehicles” are not expected to be ready for deployment until sometime after 2010, agency spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Lehner said today.  They have been considered a risky technology because of challenges in reducing the size and mass of traditional kill vehicle technologies and reducing cost.

Some experts consider the miniature interceptors a more viable alternative to the agency’s current approach to defending the United States from long-range missile warheads.  The current approach seeks to intercept an enemy warhead with a single “exo-atmospheric kill vehicle” launched by a ground-based missile.  Critics have charged that such a single interceptor can be easily fooled by simple countermeasures such as decoys and camouflage (see GSN, Oct. 17, 2002).

Depending on the development of the technology, 20 to 40 miniature interceptors would be deployed from a single launcher to attack warhead and decoys alike.

For further information, see:

U.S. MDA fact sheet

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British Plans:  Parliamentary Committee Backs U.S. Radar Upgrade

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

An influential British Parliament committee today decisively supported a Bush administration request to upgrade a U.S. early warning radar on British soil for use in the U.S. national missile defense system (see GSN, Jan. 15).

“We have concluded that the U.K. should agree to the upgrade,” according to a report released today by the bipartisan House of Commons Select Committee on Defense, headed by a member of the ruling Labor Party.  Improvements to the existing U.S. early warning radar at the Fylingdales air base are justified and the benefits of approval outweigh the costs, the report says.

However, the committee also concluded that upgrading the radar would not itself enhance British or European security — because there are no immediate plans to deploy U.S. missile interceptors in Europe — and questioned whether the overall missile defense system would work.

Nevertheless, “the factors in favor of that agreement — the importance of the U.K.-U.S. relationship, the improvement to the early warning capability, the opportunity to keep open the prospect of future missile defense for the U.K. and the potential for U.K. industrial participation in the program’s further development — outweigh the arguments against,” the committee report says.

Criticism Persists

British Defense Minister Geoffrey Hoon this month announced a “preliminary conclusion” to approve the U.S. request that would enable the radar to play a major role in an expanding U.S. missile defense system.

Hoon’s announcement provoked considerable criticism in the British press and from a large number of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s own Labor Party members, though from backbenchers, those not holding government office.

A retired senior British defense official, former Assistant Defense Staff Chief Timothy Garden, today warned that the radar upgrade would make Fylingdales a target for potential enemies.

“Enemies intent on using weapons of mass destruction would see the need to take on our infrastructure, of which the ballistic missile warning radars would be a very important and perhaps the most vulnerable part,” he told the BBC, in comments disputed by Hoon.

Garden asserted if the British experience participating in the Strategic Defense Initiative backed by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan was an indication, British costs would greatly outweigh the benefits of further participation in missile defense.

“I think the best estimate was that over the whole project, which spent billions upon billions of dollars, we got about 1 million pounds of business,” he said.

“The U.S. is concerned, just as other nations are, about not letting work go overseas that could be done at home,” he said.

A “Real and Increasing” Threat

The committee report says U.S. efforts to develop a national missile defense system are justified.

“There is a real and increasing threat from the proliferation of ballistic missiles.  The United States is justified in believing that it is a principal potential target of that threat.  It is therefore justified in taking steps to counteract it,” the report says.

Nigel Chamberlain, a missile defense critic at the British American Security Information Council, took issue with the committee’s reasoning.

“Missile proliferation is an undoubted problem but it does not follow that the either the U.K. or the U.S. is under threat from an attack.  I think the threat perception is exaggerated, in part to justify the deployment of missile defense systems,” he said.

“Missile control and verification regimes backed up by intensive diplomacy are, in my opinion, more likely to produce the desired results, even if deployed missile defense systems worked in practice, which is highly questionable anyway.”

The committee acknowledged persistent questions about whether the system might ever be made to work effectively.

“There are still significant technical obstacles to be overcome, and at great cost, before an effective system could be deployed.  But the U.S. has made substantial progress.  In doing so it has so far not caused the international instability which many had predicted,” it said.

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Jordan:  Patriot Systems Arriving in Jordan by Early February

The United States will provide Jordan with three Patriot anti-missile batteries “in a few weeks,” a Jordanian official told Agence France-Presse yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 28).

The missiles, and a U.S. team to train Jordanian personnel, are scheduled to arrive at the “beginning of February,” a diplomat said, speaking in Amman.

The moves comes less than a week after Jordanian King Abdullah told the visiting commander of U.S. forces in the Gulf, General Tommy Franks, that he was interested in buying an air defense system “to control the airspace and protect it against any foreign intervention” (Agence France-Presse/Jordan Times, Jan. 29).

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U.S. Plans:  Pentagon Awards X-Band Radar Contract to Boeing

The U.S. Defense Department has awarded Boeing a $747.5 million contract to develop a sea-based X-Band Radar, the Pentagon announced yesterday (see GSN, July 19, 2002).

The floating radar will be part of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense program, according to Pentagon plans.

Defense officials want a test version of the radar completed by the fourth quarter of fiscal 2005.

Raytheon Electronic Systems, a Massachusetts subcontractor, will be mainly responsible for completing the order (Defense Department release, Jan. 27).

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Jordan:  Officials Say United States Will Supply Patriot System

The United States will send a Patriot missile defense system to Jordan in the event of a conflict with Iraq, the Financial Times reported today (see GSN, Jan. 21).

U.S. troops would accompany and operate the Patriot system, according to a U.S. official.

Meanwhile in Israel, the U.S. embassy said yesterday the Pentagon would withdraw three Patriot batteries from Israel after joint military exercises end there in early February (see GSN, Jan. 21).

“A number of Patriot missiles missed their targets in 1991 and caused significant damage in Israeli urban areas,” said Mouin Rabbani, a Middle East analyst in Jordan.  “It would therefore technically make sense to locate them in the relatively unpopulated deserts of eastern Jordan instead,” he added.

U.S. officials would not confirm the report (Nicolas Pelham, Financial Times, Jan. 28).

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Bahrain:  Country Deploys Patriots

Bahrain has deployed Patriot missile interceptor batteries as a defense from any potential missile threat, Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa said Saturday (see GSN, Jan. 21).

The Patriots “would bolster the Bahrain Defense Force capabilities to defend the nation with competence and efficiency,” Khalifa told the Royal Field Artillery Unit.

All necessary measures have been enacted to defend Bahrain in the event of a U.S.-led war on Iraq, Bahraini Defense Minister Gen. Sheikh Khalifa bin Ahmed al-Khalifa recently said (Mohammed Almezel, Gulf News, Jan. 27).  During the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq launched two Scud ballistic missiles into Bahrain, where the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet is based (Adnan Malik, Associated Press/Miami Herald, Jan. 26). 

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