Ballistic Missile Defense: Put the
Navy In the Lead!
by Bart L. Denny
Disclaimer:
Opinions expressed in this paper are the author’s and do not
necessarily represent the official view of any component, service,
or agency within the U.S. Department of Defense.
The U.S. Navy has an emerging
capability to defend against short-to-intermediate range ballistic missiles in
the mid-course and terminal phases of flight residing in evolved versions of
its long-serving Standard Missile and Aegis Weapons System.
Sea-based ballistic missile defenses appear,
at first glance, to be a capability first envisioned within the last 15 years
and embraced only reluctantly by the Navy admiralty near the dawn of the
twenty-first century.
While it is true
that the Navy did not aggressively pursue a role in early ballistic missile
defense systems, concepts for sea-based ballistic missile defense date back
over half a century.
With further development, sea-based ballistic
missile defenses will give the United States the capability to defeat even the
largest, most long-range missiles in all phases of flight.
Sea-based systems and their
land-based derivatives could potentially replace
systems currently in development, while enhancing the flexibility of
the nation’s ballistic missile defenses, reducing development and production
costs, and fielding systems sooner than presently planned.
The U.S. Navy first proposed the
Talos missile for use as an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) in 1959, though this
proposal rapidly withered with neither the enthusiastic support of the Navy
Department secretariat nor the admiralty.
The U.S. Navy began the Typhon missile
program in 1957, under the auspices of the Johns Hopkins University Applied
Physics Laboratory.
This ramjet-powered
missile could cruise at Mach 4.7, flying to an altitude of up to 100,000 feet.
The Navy intended to pair Typhon with the
AN/SPG-59 radar system, which would have been the first U.S. phased array
radar.
The electronically scanned radar
faces would have been capable of simultaneously tracking and providing fire
control illumination of numerous air targets when coupled with massive shipboard
computing power.
Conceptually, the Typhon/SPG-59 combination
was the progenitor of today’s Aegis/Standard Missile/SPY-1 system, and even in
the early 1960s, proponents within the Navy saw potential uses for Typhon in
ballistic missile defense.
Fielding Typhon would have presented
numerous challenges for the fleet.
Miniaturizing
radar components to the degree required by phased array radars was difficult in
those days, and the radar transmitter elements suffered from extremely poor
reliability.
The SPG-59 radar was so
large—and demanding of electrical power—that only a large cruiser-type vessel,
likely nuclear powered, would have been able to accommodate the system.
Computers that were state of the art when the
U.S. was developing Typhon, while extremely modest in capability by today’s
standards, required enormous amounts of space, cooling capacity, and electrical
power.
While the Typhon missile flew
nine times from 1961 to 1963, the state of the art in radars and computing was
not up to the task of producing the desired multi-targeting capabilities within
the constraints on space and power placed on it by the shipboard setting.
Typhon further lacked the reliability and
maintainability required in the maritime environment.
The Navy cancelled Typhon in 1965.
Early ideas for maritime ballistic
missile defense did not end with Typhon, however.
In the late 1960s, the Navy and industry
advanced a concept known as SABMIS (for Sea-based Anti-Ballistic Missile
Interceptor System), as a complement or alternative to the Sentinel and
Safeguard ABM systems under development for the Army.
In 1967, Navy planners led by Rear Admiral
George Miller envisioned a force of six to forty large ships, each displacing
about 20,000 tons, equipped with about sixty interceptor missiles.
These interceptors were to have borrowed
heavily on technologies developed both for the submarine launched ballistic
missile (SLBM) program and for the land-based based missile defense systems
under development at the time.
Miller and his group pointed out that
missile defenses from the sea would mean that intercepts could take place far
from American shores, with debris falling safely away from U.S. territory.
Stationed in the North Atlantic and used in
conjunction with land-based defenses, ship-based interceptors would have provided
a layered defense of the United States.
U.S. Congressman Richard Anderson, former
commanding officer of USS Nautilus (SSN
571), said in 1969 that SABMIS could be ready two years before the Army’s
Sentinel, with four ships providing the same coverage as Sentinel at a cost of
$2 billion, compared to $5 billion for Sentinel.
In
the end, Admiral Thomas Moorer, then Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), would not
support SABMIS, and no work on the concept advanced after 1969.
Why were Admiral Miller’s superiors so
disinterested in a Navy role in ballistic missile defense?
Publicly, CNO Moorer affirmed in 1969 that he
fully supported the President Nixon’s vision of an ABM system that protected
ICBM sites using the Safeguard and Sentinel systems.
Admiral Moorer reiterated his position that
SABMIS was only conceptual, and not capable of substituting for the land-based
systems then in development.
Very likely, Moorer and most of the rest of
the admiralty viewed SABMIS as a competitor for resources they preferred to
spend on aircraft carriers and the vaunted Polaris ballistic missile
program.
Moreover, it is doubtful the
Navy saw ballistic missiles as posing the same threat to the fleet as to fixed,
land-based targets, and preferred instead to concentrate on defending against
the waves of Soviet bombers that the service did view as a tremendous danger to
its ships.
In 1972, U.S. President Richard
Nixon and Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty.
Article V of the ABM Treaty
prohibited development of sea-based ballistic missile defenses, effectively
ending a U.S. Navy role in ballistic missile defense for the next two decades.
In a March 1983 address to the
nation, President Ronald Reagan challenged the paradigm of “mutually assured
destruction” setting out a vision where peoples of the free world would live
free of the threat of attack by nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.
As much of the technology development and
conceptual systems associated with Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)
revolved around space-based defenses, the program quickly earned the moniker “Star
Wars.”
By 1991, the Strategic Defense
Initiative Organization (SDIO) possessed a more solid understanding of what
types of missile defense systems were practical, or even possible, in the near
term.
Planners further began to grasp
the potential costs associated with large-scale ballistic missile
defenses.
President George H. W. Bush
re-oriented the program to defend against small-scale attacks or accidental
launches.
Known as Global Protection
Against Limited Strikes (GPALS), this scaled down version of SDI retained a
space-based element, but it also envisioned from 500-to-1000 sea and land-based
interceptors using kinetic energy, or “hit-to-kill,” destroying targets by
colliding with them at high speed.
GPALS concepts did not specifically advocate
a particular naval architecture or weapons system.
Congress was, to say the least,
unexcited about GPALS.
Moreover, the
Clinton Administration, which took office in 1993, opposed such a national missile
defense, preferring instead to stay within the confines of the ABM treaty and
to concentrate on treaty-compliant theater missile defense (TMD).
Under the Clinton presidency, the SDIO
received a new name that more accurately reflected its new focus:
the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization
(BMDO).
Development priorities shifted
with the name change, with theater missile defenses receiving 80 percent of the
missile defense budget, and programs for so-called national defenses receiving
20 percent of the funding.
This
represented an almost complete reversal in funding proportions as compared to
the Reagan and Bush-41 years.
Under the U.S.-Soviet Intermediate-range
Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty of 1987, both sides eliminated all nuclear-tipped
theater ballistic missiles.
Consequently,
the Soviets (and later Russia) had little to lose by the United States
possessing a capability against such threats and neither the Russians nor the
Americans considered theater defenses a violation of ABM Treaty prohibitions on
sea-based and land-mobile anti-ballistic missile systems.
The Navy thus began the Lightweight Exo-Atmospheric
Projectile (LEAP) program in 1989 in an effort to demonstrate at least some of
the basic technologies required for ships to launch ballistic missile
interceptors.
From 1992 to 1995, the
Navy launched four old Terrier missiles fitted with LEAP payloads from the two
pre-Aegis cruisers, USS Jouett and
USS Richmond K. Turner.
While Terrier LEAP missiles did not intercept
targets (nor were they intended to), they demonstrated the ability to
miniaturize the components required to build a kinetic kill vehicle capable of
operating outside the atmosphere.
During Operation Desert Storm in 1991,
the U.S. Army Patriot missile system proved at least a rudimentary capability
to intercept (or at least to deflect) unsophisticated ballistic missiles in
flight.
This capability undoubtedly
provided Israel with the reassurance that country needed to stay out of the
conflict even as Saddam Hussein’s regime fired SCUD missiles into Israeli
territory.
Furthermore, Patriot proved
the adaptability to ballistic missile defense of weapons systems designed to guard
against traditional air-breathing threats.
The Navy, likewise, believed the Aegis Weapons System, with its
three-dimensional phased array radars, along with evolved variants of its
Standard Missile series—originally designed to protect the fleet against a
massive Soviet air attack—could be adapted to the theater ballistic missile
defense role.
By the mid-1990s, the U.S. Navy intended
to field two missiles capable of ballistic missile defense.
Both relied upon the sensors and computing
power of the Aegis Weapons System.
The
Navy Theater Wide (NTW) defense (later called Navy Upper Tier) was to use kill
vehicles developed in the Terrier LEAP program, launched by the Standard
Missile Three (SM-3), which added a new first stage to the basic SM-2 design (the
first and second stages of SM-2 would, then, serve as second and third stages
of SM-3, respectively).
At 21 inches in
diameter, the new first stage was considerably larger in girth than the SM-2
(13.5 inches), and was the biggest size that could fit into the cells of the
Navy’s Mark 41 Vertical Launch System.
An infrared seeker, with the ability to discriminate warheads from
debris and decoys, was to provide guidance to the missile.
The Navy envisioned that NTW missiles could
intercept medium-range ballistic missiles in mid-course, or even intermediate
range ballistic missiles high in their terminal phase.
The Navy began test flights of SM-3 in 2000,
and in 2002, the second SM-3 ever to fly destroyed its target.
To defend against ballistic missiles and
warheads late in their terminal phase—ostensibly protecting the both the fleet
and marines near the shore—the Navy planned a modified version of its venerable
SM-2 missile as the centerpiece of its Navy Area Defense program.
The SM-2 Block IVA was to add an infrared
seeker, to the SM-2, which used a blast fragmentation warhead to destroy its
target with shrapnel.
The Block IVA
variant, which retained the ability of SM-2 to intercept air-breathing threats,
began test flights in 1997 aboard two Aegis cruisers—USS Lake Eerie and USS Port
Royal—equipped with the developmental “Linebacker” software system (Naval
Studies Board 2001, 107).
In a 2001 study, the Naval Studies Board
of the National Academy of Sciences called both Navy Area Defense and Navy
Theater Wide defense, “essential if naval forces are to operate in littoral
areas.”
Apparently neither the BMDO leadership nor
the Clinton administration viewed maritime ballistic missile defenses as a
near-term prospect, believing a viable sea-based anti-missile capability would
not emerge before 2010 (Graham 2003, 362).
In fact, former BMDO director Mal O’Neill, an Army lieutenant general,
once called the program a “science project.”
Admiral Jay Johnson, for one, believed
differently.
In 2000, late in his term
as Chief of Naval Operations, Johnson took Defense Secretary Cohen and the BMDO’s
leadership to task for dismissing the Navy BMD efforts as experimental and for granting
that the majority of theater missile defense funding went to the Army’s Theater
High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system.
Both the CNO and the Commandant of the Marine
Corps stated that Navy Area Defense was their top missile defense priority.
Still, by late 2001, Under Secretary of Defense
for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Edward C. “Pete” Aldridge cancelled Navy
Area Defense (SM-2 Block IVA), based cost breach rules of the Nunn-McCurdy
amendment, citing it as 60% over budget (having spent over $2 billion to date)
and two years behind schedule.,
The attacks of September 11, 2001 were
the deadliest terrorist acts in the history of the world, and caused the United
States to conduct a major reexamination of its security posture.
While the Cold War ended nearly a decade
before, the new world security situation proved even more volatile.
As one result of the American national
security reassessment, President George W. Bush announced in December 2001 that
the United States would withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
While Mr. Bush was quick to call Russia a
friend of America, he cited the emerging threat from rogue states as reason the
U.S. now found remaining a signatory to the ABM Treaty untenable.
In 2002, then-CNO Admiral Vern Clark
spelled out his vision for a revised maritime strategy, known as “Sea Power 21.”
One of the pillars of Sea Power 21, the Sea
Shield concept made clear that Admiral Clark considered ballistic missile
defense a core Navy mission.
Vice Admirals Mike Bucchi and Mike
Mullen, the authors of the Sea Shield portion of Clark’s Sea Power 21, spelled
out the need to defend the “sea base” and forward sea ports of debarkation from
ballistic missile attack.
After succeeding Clark as CNO in 2005, Mullen
later reiterated the Navy’s commitment to ballistic missile defense in the 2006
Naval Operations Concept.
As of today, the Aegis BMD Program SM-3
Block I missile—once known as Navy Theater Wide defense—has successfully
intercepted ballistic missile targets outside the earth’s atmosphere in nine of
eleven attempts, with testing continuing.
In 2003, Congress reversed the Defense
Department’s cancellation of the Navy Area Defense program, directing the Navy
to reactivate its 100-odd SM-2 Block IVA missiles, and providing $25 million in
funds—directly to the Navy, independent of the MDA—to test and field the
missiles as an emergency “Near-Term Sea-based Terminal Defense System.”
“The Congress’s action was huge,”
retired Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel L. J. Carino, a senior air defense
analyst with the United States Central Command related.
“We were shocked in 2001, when the Under
Secretary (of Defense for Acquisition) cancelled the program.
For years, we (at Central Command), along
with the other combatant commanders, loudly stated in our IPL that sea-based terminal
defenses were our number one missile defense priority.”
Carino shook his head.
“What’s more the Chairman (of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff) had certified in writing that the program was critical.
I mean, basing rights are a big deal in the
CENTCOM AOR (area of responsibility); not a lot of countries in the Middle East
are eager to see battalions of Patriot missiles—and the American soldiers who
operate and maintain them—rolling onto their soil.
With the Aegis ships, we can station in
international waters without causing political discomfort for the governments
of our Middle Eastern partners.”
Colonel
Carino added, “It’s a limited capability; only a few ships that were involved
in the 1990s ‘Linebacker’ tests are able to shoot the (SM-2) Block IVA, but if
you need it in an emergency, it’s there.”
In May 2006, USS Lake Eerie demonstrated
the capability of the SM-2 Block IVA in a successful terminal phase engagement
against a ballistic missile target.
Aegis warships are not the only
sea-based element of the U.S. ballistic missile defense system.
The Sea-Based X-band Radar (SBX) supports
long-range ballistic missile defenses—primarily the GBI missiles in Alaska and
California—by way of large phased array radar based installed atop a modified
oil-drilling platform built in Russia and modified in Brownsville, Texas.
Combined with the power of its X-band
radar—providing nearly ocean-wide area coverage—and the mobility of its
platform, the SBX can provide radar coverage to any part of the world.
The SBX can track extremely small objects,
discriminate between warheads and decoys, and relay tracking data to the BMDS
command and control system.
With the introduction of planned (or
easily introduced) upgrades and new systems, sea-based platforms will provide
increasingly robust capabilities to detect, track, and intercept ballistic
missiles of all ranges in the boost, mid-course, and terminal phases of
flight.
Such added wherewithal will make
the sea-based component of the U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) a
truly national system in its own
right.
Boost Phase Defenses
The ability to intercept a ballistic
missile while it is still in powered ascent, a portion of its trajectory known
as the boost phase, remains a capability in development.
It is difficult to understate the importance
of boost phase defense, however.
An
effective boost phase defense serves as a force multiplier, intercepting
missiles before they can deploy warheads and countermeasures (presenting
interceptors with only one target, rather than multiple targets).
Every missile intercepted in the boost phase
is a missile that mid-course phase and terminal phase defenses do not have to
contend with, enhancing the overall effectiveness of the BMDS.
Another added benefit of boost phase defense
is that intercept debris are more likely to crash in the launching nation’s own
territory, possibly serving as a deterrent against launching the missile in the
first place (especially if the missile’s warhead is chemical, biological, or
nuclear).
The Missile Defense Agency tasked
Northrop Grumman as the prime contractor for the Kinetic Energy Interceptor, or
KEI.
Under current funding KEI is a
land-based system, designed to emplace relatively close to enemy ballistic
missile launch sites, intercepting hostile missiles in the boost phase.
Recognizing the mobility provided by sea
basing the KEI, the MDA advocates a maritime version of the system.
Unlike the Standard Missile family, KEI—at
89-centimeters in diameter—is far too large to fit in the Navy’s Mark 41
Vertical Launch System, or for that matter, within the confines of present-day
cruiser and destroyer hulls.
Developing
the infrastructure to support a sea-based KEI will require the Navy and MDA to
embark on a lengthy and extremely expensive acquisition program.
As a possible alternative to an
expensive new warship, the MDA could procure a commercial hull (much as it did
with the SBX platform), mounting numerous KEI launchers only slightly modified
from their land-based counterparts.
This
KEI ship may be no more than a barge, pulled on station by a tugboat.
The KEI ship would operate in company with a
Navy Aegis ship—or future CG(X) cruiser—that would provide fire control data
from its radars to the missile system on the KEI ship.
The warship would also provide protection
against surface, air, and submarine targets for the unarmed KEI ship.
At least one study suggests that KEI could
utilize the Ohio-class ballistic
missile submarine as a launch platform.
The KEI would certainly fit within the
missile tubes of these enormous submarines.
The U.S. Navy already possesses a system, known as “Cooperative
Engagement Capability,” that allows one ship to provide tracking and fire
control data to another ship that launches an air defense missile, effectively
extending the range of Navy’s air defense systems, so no seaborne KEI launch
platform need be fitted with expensive radars or fire control systems.
There may be an even less expensive way
to attain a sea-based capability to intercept ballistic missiles in the boost
phase.
According the Independent Working
Group on Missile Defense and the Space Relationship 2007 Report, the Navy and
MDA could modify the SM-3 Block II missile—now under development to intercept
an ICBM in the mid-course phase of flight—to perform boost-phase
intercepts.
To perform boost-intercepts,
the Independent Working Group says that the MDA could adapt the Advanced
Technology Kill Vehicle (ATKV), developed during the late 1980s, for use on the
SM-3 Block II.
The ATKV, the Working
Group says, is small and light enough to fit on the SM-3 Block II, but capable
of attaining the high velocities needed to intercept ballistic missiles in the
boost phase.
Mid-course Phase
Defenses
By 2015, the U.S. Navy, the Missile
Defense Agency, and Japan’s Maritime Self Defense Force (JMSDF) intend to have
jointly upgraded the Standard Missile SM-3, enlarging the missile to 21-inches
in diameter along the entire length of the missile.
With the Block II variant, SM-3 will possess
the speed required to intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles in
mid-course flight.
The U.S. and Japan could further enhance
the effectiveness of SM-3 Block II by adding the Multiple Kill Vehicle (MKV)
technology now under development by MDA.
Fitted with MKV, a single SM-3 Block II would
ostensibly have the capability to destroy multiple warheads dispatched from the
same threat ballistic missile.
Terminal Phase Defenses
While the service possesses a terminal
phase interceptor in its SM-2 Block IVA, the Navy considers the current missile
a “limited, emergency capability.”
The Navy still requires a robust
terminal-phase missile defense.
Indeed,
Admiral Mullen (later to become CNO) said in 2002 that, “The cancellation of the
Navy Area missile defense program left a huge hole in our developing basket of
missile defense capabilities.
Cancelling
the program didn’t eliminate the warfighting requirement.”
Given the requirement to protect ships
operating in the littoral, marines operating near the shore, and the seaports
where the majority of all American military equipment (not just the Navy and
Marine Corps) arrives from the U.S., advanced sea-based terminal defenses are critical.
The Navy considered a sea-based variant of
the Army’s Patriot PAC-3, but could also choose to continue developing its
Standard Missile series to fulfill the terminal defense role.
The Navy is already developing the Standard
Missile-6 (SM-6) Extended Range Active Missile as an incremental improvement to
its air defenses.
According to its
manufacturer, Raytheon, the SM-6, which builds upon the SM-2 Block IVA
airframe, adding a seeker from the AIM-120 missile could provide a long-term
solution to the Navy’s ballistic missile defense needs.
Since
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will likely remain a huge drain as a huge draw
on America’s military resources, Defense Department leaders (both military and
civilian) will undoubtedly look for ways to economize.
Ballistic missile threats across the globe
will not diminish, however, and the need to defend the homeland, deployed
American forces, and U.S. allies will continue or even become more urgent.
Given both constrained resources and the
enduring need for missile defenses, the United States should place a higher
priority on its sea-based systems than on other land-based or airborne weapons
or sensors.
In particular, the
Department of Defense should further modify and upgrade the Aegis Weapons
System to a true national missile defense asset.
Naval assets provide unprecedented
mobility, able to reach station anywhere across more than two thirds of the
globe in just days (in many places land-based forces simply cannot reach), ready
to fight upon arrival, and to stay on station indefinitely.
Ships do not require airlift, nor do they
rely upon the good will of foreign governments to provide basing rights.
Aegis BMD ships also provide a “long range
surveillance and tracking” function, utilizing the AN/SPY-1 radar to provide
missile track data to other Aegis ships and to the land-based elements of BMDS.
When not tasked
with ballistic missile defense, the Navy’s Aegis ships perform maritime
interdiction, cruise missile strikes, anti-submarine warfare, anti-ship
warfare, shore bombardment, and a host of other tasks.
While critics argue that ships are more
expensive to build, operate, and maintain than land-based missile launchers,
such multi-mission capability makes allows the costs of the ship to be borne
across a wide spectrum of warfare areas, and makes the Aegis ship a superb
value.
Further, the Aegis BMD system
relies upon a well-established base of Navy and contractor support.
Indeed, the U.S. has invested over $60
billion in the Aegis infrastructure separate of efforts to incorporate BMD
capabilities into the system.
While it takes
several years from placing an order to build an Aegis warship and its
associated combat systems, this is nothing to the decades required to develop
new weapons systems.
The Aegis BMD ships
already operationally deploy with the fleet.
Meanwhile, the Army’s THAAD is still in developmental testing, twelve
years after its first test flight—ironic, since THAAD proponents claimed in the
1990s that the system represented a far more mature anti-ballistic missile
capability than Aegis.
In fact, Aegis
BMD test flights, including Terrier LEAP technology demonstrations, boast an 82
percent success rate since 1992.
The
THAAD missile, by comparison, failed in six of eight tests in the late 1990s,
prompting the DoD to stop flight tests in 2000 for five years of major redesign
work before beginning test flights anew.
Similarly, SM-3 compares favorably with
the 78 percent success rate seen in the Ground-Based Interceptor test program.
Indeed, Ambassador Henry Cooper, a former
SDIO director, has consistently stated that the sea-based BMD program involves
the most mature technology of any system in the U.S. BMDS and is the most ready
for deployment.
With
its ready availability, solid infrastructure base, and mature technology, along
with the advantages inherent in sea basing, Aegis BMD represents a logical
choice for most countries with a navy.
In applications where sea-based assets cannot provide the necessary
sensor or weapon coverage, ground-mobile derivatives of naval systems could
present a quick and cost-effective solution to ballistic missile defense
requirements.
Allies will further
benefit from the ability of its Aegis BMD systems to interoperate with the U.S.
BMDS command and control architecture.
Given an immediate commitment by the U.S. Government
to do so, maritime ballistic missile defense assets—building almost entirely on
the mature and robust Aegis infrastructure—could provide the full spectrum of
boost, mid-course, and terminal defense against missiles from the SRBM class to
large ICBM types by 2015.
This
capability will come at a fraction of the price of other weapons systems where
the Defense Department must build the system infrastructure from scratch.
With all of this flexibility and potential for
further growth, the United States should elevate the maritime BMD program to predominance
in its National Missile Defense system.
In
support of this paradigm shift, the U.S. Navy and Missile Defense Agency should
(in priority order):
1.
Modify all of the Navy’s planned 84
Aegis-equipped ships to include BMD capability (present plans call for only 18
ships to receive these alterations).
At
present-day prices, the Navy can accomplish this capability at a cost of $10.5
million and six weeks’ time (the modifications could be done concurrently with
other shipyard maintenance).
By leveraging the economies of scale and
by shifting its Aegis Weapons System computers to an open architecture, as it
plans, the Navy could further substantially reduce the per ship cost of adding
BMD capability to the entire cruiser and destroyer fleet.
2.
Procure additional SM-3 Block IA
missiles.
The present acquisition
program is for 147 missiles, yet recent DoD studies indicate this inventory is
insufficient for the potential wartime scenarios the U.S. is likely to face in
the near term.
3.
Accelerate the SM-3 Block II program.
If financial constraints are at issue,
sacrifice additional Ground-Based Interceptors (GBI, based at Vandenberg Air
Force Base and Fort Greeley, Alaska) to field a sea-based anti-ICBM capability
as soon as possible.
4.
Proceed immediately with the acquisition of
the Standard Missile-6, which will provide both cruise missile defense and long-term
terminal defense against ballistic missiles.
Divert resources from the THAAD program, if required.
This will give an urgently needed capability
to protect the fleet, seaports of debarkation, and other critical assets and
deployed forces along the world’s coasts.
5.
Add ATKV technologies to the SM-3 program
immediately, with the aim of fielding sea-based boost phase defense by 2015 and
taking advantage of the existing Aegis infrastructure.
If funding constraints will not permit the
simultaneous development of the KEI and the SM-3 boost defense capability,
defer development of Northrop Grumman’s KEI in favor of ship-based and
land-mobile SM-3/ATKV.
6.
Add Multiple Kill Vehicle (MKV) capability to
the SM-2 Block IIA.
This will provide
sea-based missile defenses with the ability to intercept multiple warheads from
a single threat ballistic missile.
The
MKV is an important force multiplier, which could significantly lower the
stresses placed on terminal phase defenses.
7.
Study the benefits and feasibility of
building another SBX.
SBX is inherently
mobile, while other comparable radars are fixed, land-based sites, giving
missile defense planners tremendous flexibility in tailoring sensor coverage to
myriad situations.
The MDA should give
priority to another SBX before it builds or modernizes any land-based radar.
8.
Study the feasibility of building land-based
systems that take advantage of the Aegis and Standard Missile technologies and
support infrastructure as a means of further cost savings.
This measure could also improve
interoperability between land-based and sea-based BMD systems.
9.
Encourage foreign operators of Aegis to add
BMD capability to their fleets.
Work with allied Navies that operate advanced
phased array radar systems to develop a BMD capability that is interoperable
with Aegis and the Standard Missile series.
10.
As part of the spiral development of the BMDS
as a whole, the Missile Defense Agency must redouble its efforts to deal with
maneuvering warheads, advanced decoys, and the more exotic countermeasures that
will undoubtedly arise in response to America’s deployment of an effective
missile shield.
These problems are not
unique to sea-based missile defenses.
However, the MDA should place priority on first upgrading the sea-based
systems to deal with such threats and countermeasures.
While sea-based
ballistic missile defenses cannot entirely replace ground-based systems (nor
should they), they offer an inherently mobile, flexible capability, potentially
effective against all ballistic missiles in every phase of flight.
Given the ability to place sea-based sensors
and weapons in areas inaccessible to their landlocked counterparts—a sizeable
battlespace, considering the oceans cover more than two-thirds of the globe—the
BMDS could not effectively function without its maritime element.
The Navy’s Aegis BMD system is
technologically mature, yet can still evolve to receive new capabilities.
Many of America’s allies operate the Aegis
Weapons System, or conceptually similar shipboard systems compatible with the
Standard Missile family.
In a fiscally
constrained environment, the United States would do well to place its research
and acquisition priorities on sea-based missile defenses.
When land-based anti-missile systems are
required to provide coverage for the limited areas sea-based systems cannot
defend, the U.S. missile defense program should leverage the infrastructure,
research, and hardware systems of the maritime ballistic missile defense
element, essentially converting nautical systems to land-based versions.
This approach, centered on sea-based and
maritime derivative systems will allow the U.S. to field more ballistic missile
defense capabilities in a shorter time.
Glossary
ABM
Anti-Ballistic
Missile
ATKV
Advanced
Technology Kill Vehicle
BMD
Ballistic
Missile Defense
BMDO
Ballistic
Missile Defense Organization
BMDS
Ballistic
Missile Defense System
CENTCOM
U.S.
Central Command
CNO
Chief
of Naval Operations
DoD
Department
of Defense
GBI
Ground-Based
Interceptor
GPALS
Global
Protection Against Limited Strikes
ICBM
Intercontinental
Ballistic Missile
INF
Intermediate-range
Nuclear Forces (Treaty)
IRBM
Intermediate
Range Ballistic Missile
KEI
Kinetic
Energy Interceptor
LEAP
Light
Exo-Atmospheric Projectile
MAD
Mutually
Assured Destruction
MDA
Missile
Defense Agency
MRBM
Medium
Range Ballistic Missile
NAD
Navy
Area Defense
NTW
Navy
Theater Wide
SBX
Sea-Based
X-band Radar
SDI
Strategic
Defense Initiative
SDIO
Strategic
Defense Initiative Organization
SABMIS
Sea-based
Anti-Ballistic Missile Interceptor System
SM
Standard
Missile
SRBM
Short
Range Ballistic Missile
THAAD
Theater High Altitude Area Defense
TMD
Theater Missile Defense
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