Outstanding! Milestone #1 approaching...
Posted on 02/22/2004 11:51:06 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
WASHINGTON - In his office near the Pentagon, Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish oversees a vast universe, encompassing thousands of scientists, defense contractors and sinister-sounding technologies such as hit-to-kill and High Altitude Area Defense.
After years of top-secret research and billions of dollars in expenditures, the first phase of a national missile defense system is about to be deployed under Kadish's command, even as debate rages over the necessity, cost and effectiveness of the program.
In the fall, 10 interceptor rockets based at Fort Greely in Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California are scheduled to be activated.
From there, the defense shield will be a perpetual work in progress, growing into what planners say will be a network of satellites, aircraft, ships, missiles, sensors and radars arrayed across ground, sea and sky. The total cost could exceed $100 billion, congressional budget analysts say.
Kadish describes the undertaking as "revolutionary -- on the order of when we invented ballistic missiles, put man on the moon and did our first atomic bomb."
President Bush made the system one of his earliest priorities, pulling the United States out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia to create a defense shield against nuclear weapons delivered by rogue states. The ABM treaty banned missile defense systems on the premise that fear of retaliation would prevent a nation from launching an attack.
Hundreds of opponents, including lawmakers and scientists, dispute the president's assessment of the potential threat and argue that the system relies on unproven technology.
China and Russia are among the few countries with the ability to strike the continental United States with long-range missiles. Administration officials, however, believe that nations such as North Korea could eventually have the same capability.
The emerging defense network is a major undertaking, involving virtually every top defense contractor, legions of subcontractors and at least 50,000 employees throughout all 50 states.
Lockheed Martin Corp., which employs thousands of workers at its aircraft plant in Fort Worth and its missile division in Grand Prairie, is participating in all but one of the 15 major projects for the shield. Nearly a fourth of the 2,800 employees in Grand Prairie are involved in some form of missile defense work.
The economic benefits are spreading to hundreds of smaller subcontractors and suppliers in Texas, some of them barely more than mom-and-pop operations.
A.E. Petsche Co. in Arlington, which Arnold Petsche, 73, started in a garage in the mid-1960s, is supplying wiring and cable.
Aerospace Optics, which employs more than 50 workers in east Fort Worth, is providing push-button switches for Lockheed Martin's Patriot Advanced Capability-3, or PAC-3, program, the successor to the Patriot missile.
"It's one of the biggest programs for the company," said Craig Morgan, vice president of sales at Aerospace Optics, which pursued the contract after recognizing that the government would provide years of work. "Once you're in the door, you can enjoy 15 or 20 years of opportunity."
Borne out of research that began with President Reagan's ill-fated Strategic Defense Initiative, nicknamed Star Wars, the defense program is benefiting from advances in laser weaponry and kinetic energy interceptors, which destroy objects with the force of a collision.
It promises an abundance of show-stopping gadgetry, such as the self-propelled floating radar being assembled on the Texas Gulf Coast. The globe-shaped radar rises 25 stories from the deck of an ocean-going platform. It is so powerful that it can detect a golf-ball-size object more than 3,000 miles away.
Then there are multiple kill vehicles being developed by Lockheed engineers in Grand Prairie, among others. Resembling aerodynamic coffee cans, the vehicles can crash into inbound missiles at 14,000 mph, disintegrating the target by sheer force and speed and avoiding a midair explosion that would rain debris on Earth.
Giant airships, 21st century versions of the lighter-than-air behemoths used in World War I, would keep watch more than 12 miles above the earth. Military versions of 747 jumbo jets would smash enemy missiles with lasers.
Plans call for the system to be layered, with technology capable of stopping a missile at any of the three phases of its flight -- as it climbs, as speeds along in space and as it plunges toward its target.
Unlike Reagan's Star Wars, which called for a vast network of space-based weapons and was abandoned after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the latest venture is more limited and designed to counter threats from smaller nations.
Over the years, Kadish said, advances in computers and sensors, as well as the miniaturization of components, led to technology that might have seemed inconceivable in the Reagan years.
An early version of a kill vehicle, for example, weighed 2,400 pounds.
The latest generation weighs 120 pounds, and future versions may be around 30 pounds, making them easily transportable atop rocket launchers.
Building the shield
The underlying principle of the system is hit-to-kill, in which a defensive missile accurately hits and destroys an incoming missile like a bullet hitting a bullet.
Planners envision having up to 40 ground-based missiles by mid-decade as well as 20 sea-based interceptors on Aegis-equipped cruisers. The Aegis system is a complex network of radar and weaponry used to help defend carrier battle groups at sea.
Bush has asked Congress to allocate $9.2 billion to the missile defense program for the 2005 fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, an increase of $1.5 billion over this year.
Development and research costs have ranged from $3.5 billion to $5 billion a year since the mid-1980s, and the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the total price tag will exceed $100 billion, fueling opponents' assertions that the program is too expensive.
The Bush administration disputes the estimate but has not offered its own.
Pulling all the parts together is Kadish, 55, who was once the Air Force program director for the Fort Worth-made F-16 fighter. Kadish has headed the nation's missile defense efforts since June 1999 and was named director of the Defense Department's Missile Defense Agency when it was created in 2002.
Kadish said the agency plans to start modestly with the ground-based missile system and gradually expand after testing and development.
The program is on track to start as scheduled Sept. 30, Kadish said, although he acknowledged that the timetable could slip by a few weeks. He also countered criticism about the program's cost.
As it continues to develop, Kadish said, missile defense will consume 2 percent to 4 percent of the defense budget, which totals $401.7 billion in Bush's 2005 proposal.
"Is it expensive?" he asked. "You bet it is. The real question is, 'Is this affordable for the country, and is it the right thing to do?' And the judgment through four presidents and nine or 10 congresses is yes, it is affordable, and we will proceed with it."
Predictably, not everyone agrees.
Steven Weinberg, a University of Texas professor who won the 1979 Nobel Prize in physics, is among those criticizing the cost.
"I think it's worse than nothing because not only is it very expensive, it takes money away from other things we need to do," he said.
Weinberg also said the system will only encourage countries such as China to increase their missile stockpiles. Last week, Russia tested a warhead designed to elude missile defense systems.
Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., a leading critic in Congress, said he supports the premise but does not believe the Bush administration's system is ready for deployment.
Thomas Christie, the Pentagon's chief of weapons testing, said recently that the number of missile tests have been too small for him to make an adequate assessment about the weapons' effectiveness, although administration officials point out that 55 flight tests and 60 ground tests have been conducted over the past two years. Roughly the same number are scheduled through 2006.
The debate has the potential to spill into the 2004 presidential race. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, emerging as the likely Democratic nominee, favors curtailing funding. Bush pressed his case for the system and restated the rationale for a missile shield in a major policy address this month, warning of emerging black markets that peddle nuclear materials.
New technologies
For Lockheed Martin Corp., which is based in Bethesda, Md., the missile program is a companywide undertaking. Lockheed and Boeing are leading the national team.
"It's one of the most strategically important businesses in the Lockheed Martin Corporation," said Mike Trotsky, vice president of air and missile defense programs at Grand Prairie.
The unit pioneered hit-to-kill technology in the 1960s when it was a branch of LTV Aerospace and now manages three major missile defense projects.
The best-known project is the PAC-3 missile, which was proved in combat during the war in Iraq and is scheduled to be part of the defense system rollout in the fall.
The launchers for the PAC-3 contain 16 missiles that can be fired at an incoming missile seconds before it reaches its target.
The Grand Prairie team is also managing what is known as Theater High Altitude Area Defense, a land-based missile system designed to destroy attacking missiles in space or just after they enter the earth's atmosphere.
Under a contract that Lockheed Martin won in January, Grand Prairie engineers are also participating in an eight-year, $768 million program to develop multiple kill vehicles. A group of the tiny vehicles would be packed atop a rocket, then separate and slam into an incoming missile. The force of the collision would destroy the missile.
In Akron, Ohio, another branch of Lockheed Martin is pursuing work on the giant airships, which are a bit fatter and a little shorter than the famed Hindenburg. The balloon could be outfitted with radars and sensors to detect and track incoming missiles. It would likely be deployed later in the decade.
Equally breathtaking in both size and potential is the floating radar, which will straddle a deck as long as two football fields. Weighing 30,000 tons, the twin-hulled self-propelled unit is too big to squeeze through the Panama Canal and must travel past the tip of South America on its eventual journey from the Gulf Coast to the shores of Alaska.
The platform, built in Norway, is undergoing final preparations at a shipyard in Brownsville under a contract with Boeing. Completion is scheduled for 2005, when workers in Corpus Christi will attach the radar to the platform. Vertex RSI of Richardson is building the radar support structure.
In his office, Kadish points to a model of an olive-drab Boeing 747 to illustrate another emerging technology: airborne laser weapons.
"That's designed to carry a chemical laser in the back of its fuselage and shoot the laser beam out of that ugly nose," he explained. "If we can make it work, it will be truly revolutionary. I think we have almost every person in the country who knows something about lasers working on that."
Boeing is the principal contractor on the project, leading a team that includes Northrop Grumman, based in Los Angeles, and a unit of Lockheed based in Orlando, Fla.
The first flight tests are expected later this year. Plans call for one laser-equipped aircraft to be operational by 2008.
With a four-member crew, the modified 747 will fly at altitudes of up to 40,000 feet to shoot down enemy missiles shortly after launch, when they are still climbing. A laser tracking beam would light the target, and a second laser would fire bursts from a turret in the nose, rapidly heating the missile skin until it cracks and explodes.
"Having this capability makes me feel a lot better," Kadish said. "And I hope our fellow citizens feel the same way."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ONLINE: Missile Defense Agency, www.acq.osd.mil/bmdo/bmdolink/html/ bmdolink.html Dave Montgomery, (202) 383-6016 dmontgomery@krwashington.com
The U.S. Air Force has filed a futuristic flight plan, one that spells out need for an armada of space weaponry and technology for the near-term and in years to come.
Called the Transformation Flight Plan, the 176-page document offers a sweeping look at how best to expand America’s military space tool kit.
The use of space is highlighted throughout the report, with the document stating that space superiority combines the following three capabilities: protect space assets, deny adversaries’ access to space, and quickly launch vehicles and operate payloads into space to quickly replace space assets that fail or are damaged/destroyed.
From space global laser engagement, air launched anti-satellite missiles, to space-based radio frequency energy weapons and hypervelocity rod bundles heaved down to Earth from space – the U.S. Air Force flight plan portrays how valued space operations has become for the warfighter and in protecting the nation from chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high explosive attack.
Now to far-term needs
A number of space-related transformational capabilities are described in the document. While some of these are seen as needed in the near-term (until 2010), others are described as mid-term efforts in 2010-2015, while some efforts are viewed as far-term, beyond 2015.
Among a roster of projected Air Force space projects:
Air-Launched Anti-Satellite Missile: Small air-launched missile capable of intercepting satellites in low Earth orbit and seen as a past 2015 development. Counter Satellite Communications System: Provides the capability by 2010 to deny and disrupt an adversary's space-based communications and early warning. Counter Surveillance and Reconnaissance System: A near-term program to deny, disrupt and degrade adversary space-based surveillance and reconnaissance systems. Evolutionary Air and Space Global Laser Engagement (EAGLE) Airship Relay Mirrors: Significantly extends the range of both the Airborne Laser and Ground-Based Laser by using airborne, terrestrial or space-based lasers in conjunction with space-based relay mirrors to project different laser powers and frequencies to achieve a broad range of effects from illumination to destruction. Ground-Based Laser: Propagates laser beams through the atmosphere to Low-Earth Orbit satellites to provide robust, post-2015 defensive and offensive space control capability. Hypervelocity Rod Bundles: Provides the capability to strike ground targets anywhere in the world from space. Orbital Deep Space Imager: A mid-term predictive, near-real time common operating picture of space to enable space control operations. Orbital Transfer Vehicle: Significantly adds flexibility and protection of U.S. space hardware in post-2015 while enabling on-orbit servicing of those assets. Rapid Attack Identification Detection and Reporting System: A family of systems that will provide near-term capability to automatically identify when a space system is under attack. Space-Based Radio Frequency Energy Weapon: A far-term constellation of satellites containing high-power radio-frequency transmitters that possess the capability to disrupt/destroy/disable a wide variety of electronics and national-level command and control systems. It would typically be used as a non-kinetic anti-satellite weapon. Space-Based Space Surveillance System: A near-term constellation of optical sensing satellites to track and identify space forces in deep space to enable offensive and defensive counterspace operations. Rapid launch needs
The newly issued Air Force document makes the following point: "The U.S. space capability rests on the foundation of assured access." There is need to deploy, replenish, sustain, and redeploy space-based forces in minimum time to allow them to accomplish the missions assigned to them - through all phases of conflict.
In this regard, the Air Force is exploring various future system concepts to launch, operate, and maintain space assets responsively. These include the Air Launch System, a dedicated, weather avoiding, on-demand (within 48 hours) system that can rocket into the sky at a wide variety of trajectories and can loft a Space Maneuver Vehicle, Common Aero Vehicle, or a conventional payload.
As explained in the Air Force document, a Space Operations Vehicle (SOV) enables an on-demand spacelift capability with rapid turnaround. This SOV can be one of the vehicles that could deploy the Space Maneuver vehicle – a rapidly reusable orbital vehicle capable of executing a range of space control missions. In addition, the SOV can be utilized to deploy the Common Aero Vehicle, or CAV.
The CAV is an unpowered, maneuverable, hypersonic glide vehicle deployed in the 2010-2015 time period. The CAV could be delivered by a range of delivery vehicles such as an expendable or reusable small launch vehicle to a fully reusable Space Operations Vehicle. It can guide and dispense conventional weapons, sensors or other payloads world wide from and through space within one hour of tasking. It would be able to strike a spectrum of targets, including mobile targets, mobile time sensitive targets, strategic relocatable targets, or fixed hard and deeply buried targets. The CAV’s speed and maneuverability would combine to make defenses against it extremely difficult.
Directed energy beams
Given the growing number of nations that utilize space, Air Force strategists see that trend as worrisome.
"The ability to deny an adversary’s access to space services is essential so that future adversaries will be unable to exploit space in the same way the United States and its allies can. It will require full spectrum, sea, air, land, and space-based offensive counterspace systems capable of preventing unauthorized use of friendly space services and negating adversarial space capabilities from low Earth up to geosynchronous orbits.
The focus, when practical, will be on denying adversary access to space on a temporary and reversible basis," the document states.
Air Force scientists and technologists are busy in the labs exploring the possibility of putting a warning energy "spot" on any target worldwide that could be rapidly followed with varying levels of effects.
A possible breakthrough, the document adds, deals with a solid-state directed energy beam systems, operating at 100-kilowatt levels. "If the generation of large quantities of heat could be managed, the Air Force could develop highly effective, cheap, high power energy weapons."
For example, Air Force researchers are looking at ways to collect or generate large quantities of energy on orbit in order to rely on space-based platforms for more missions and provide a greater degree of true global presence. "This would change many equations about traditional ideas of rapid response," the document explains.
Sensor-to-shooter
The report emphasizes that space capabilities are integral to modern war fighting forces, providing critical surveillance and reconnaissance information, especially over areas of high risk or denied access for airborne craft.
Space capabilities also provide weather and other Earth observation data, global communications, precision position, navigation, and timing to troops on the ground, ships at sea, aircraft in flight, and weapons en route to targets.
Space assets are critical to achieving information superiority as they enable predictive and dominant battlespace awareness. As a result there can be a reduction in the "sensor-to-shooter" cycle to minutes or even seconds, the document explains.
Real-time picture of the battlespace would involve an initial space-based Ground Moving Target Indicator capability.
This capacity provides U.S. global strike forces with the ability to identify and track moving targets anywhere on the surface of the Earth. Also desirable is the ability to detect, locate, identify, and track a wide range of strategic and tactical targets that the United States currently has minimal capability to detect. These include weapons of mass destruction, hidden targets, and air moving targets.
A real-time picture of the battlespace enables a commander to know where all friendly forces are, not only to better coordinate operations and avoid fratricide -- accidentally injuring or killing your own troops.
Roadmap to the future
In a February 17 press statement issued from the office of the Secretary of the Air Force, the public document on Air Force transformation is described as "a roadmap to the future".
The Air Force flight plan is a reporting document that enables the Secretary of Defense to evaluate and interpret the Air Force's progress toward transformation.
"Transformation is using new things and old things in new ways, and achieving truly transformational effects for the joint warfighter," said Lt. Gen. Duncan McNabb, Air Force director of plans and programs.
The newly issued, publicly releasable report is the one unclassified document that presents an overarching picture of Air Force transformation, added Lt. Col. James McCaw, from the plans and programs directorate's transformation branch.
"It will help the reader understand where the Air Force is going, and why we chose this path," McCaw concluded.
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/higher_ground_040222.html
Outstanding! Milestone #1 approaching...
even as debate rages over the necessity, cost and effectiveness of the program...
Notice how there is no substanciation of this "rageing debate", its just tossed out there as if it were real.
You can bet your last sawbuck any and all debate will cease the day the system stops the first korean missle. Even if never fired in anger we have to remember the money was spent here in US employing US technitians who might otherwise be on wellfare.
There are only two problems: 1) they all must survive a Democrat administration and/or congressional majority, and 2) he never gets out in front of the public and explains or cheerleads his vision. He needs to do so.
The underlying assumption is that the Democrats can return to the "partnership" of the Cold War. Their failure to do so may be his - and our - undoing.
This plan is much more prudent then star wars and needs to be implemented. It affords theater level protection in the near term and could well scale up to a national shield in the coming decades as our space infracstucture allows.
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