Posted on 07/08/2006 1:31:59 PM PDT by Paul Ross
Reprinted from NewsMax.com
Hit or Miss: Grading U.S. Missile Defense
Dave Eberhart, NewsMax
Friday, July 7, 2006
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- On July 5, just hours after the provocative North Korean test-launch of seven missiles, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stated that the threat remained clear and present.
The communist country's launch included a missile capable of hitting the U.S. Northwest.
Critics charge that U.S. missile defense remains a long way from being a reliable sentinel against that clear and present danger.
Bryan Whitman, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) revealed after the North Korean launches, "Each and every launch was detected, monitored, and interceptors were operational during the missile launches that took place. The commander of NORAD was able to determine rather quickly that the missiles didn't pose a threat to the United States or its territories."
Indeed, two Navy Aegis warships were patrolling near North Korea as part of the global missile defense system and were on the first line of detection.
Beyond Detection
A poignant question remains.
What if that new long-range Taepodong missile hadn't fizzled - and instead arched in the direction of Seattle, Washington?
"The United States has a limited missile defense system," Whitman admitted.
"U.S. Northern Command continues to monitor the situation, and we are prepared to defend the country in any way necessary," said another spokesman Michael Kucharek.
That "any way necessary" is by cranking up the U.S. missile defense system, which presently includes 11 long-range interceptor missiles, including nine deployed at Fort Greeley, Alaska, and two at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.
The system was switched from test to operational status during the threat period.
A Bush administration official went as far as to say that shooting down the Taepodong missile with interceptor missiles was an option on the table.
However, there are many who doubt that such a response would be routine and push-button easy.
In December 2004, an interceptor missile failed to launch during the first flight test of the system in two years.
That previous test, in December 2002, saw the kill vehicle failing to separate from the booster.
Bad Grades
What may be more telling, however, are the various failing-grade report cards on U.S. missile defense.
President Bush announced in December 2002 that, within two years, the U.S. would have deployed a first-stage missile defense system that could defend against a limited ICBM attack.
Progress on that pledge has gotten some failing marks from some important and qualified graders, who have taken a hard and unbiased look at a finicky system that has reportedly cost $130 billion and is scheduled to burn through $50 billion more in taxpayer dollars over the next five years.
In March of 2006 the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported, "Compared to its original goals set in 2003, MDA [Missile Defense Agency] fielded 10 fewer GMD [Ground-based Midcourse Defense] interceptors than planned, two fewer radars, 11 fewer Aegis BMD [Ballistic Missile Defense] missiles, and six fewer Aegis ships.
Here are other related findings by the GAO:
In March 2006, the Department of Defense (DoD) Office of Inspector General (IG) also got in its licks, reporting, "The Missile Defense Agency had not completed a systems engineering plan or planned fully for system sustainment. Therefore, the Missile Defense Agency is at risk of not successfully developing an integrated ballistic missile defense system."
In January 2006, the Congressional Research Service blasted, "The data on the U.S. flight test effort to develop a national missile defense [NMD] system is mixed and ambiguous. There is no recognizable pattern to explain this record nor is there conclusive evidence of a learning curve over more than two decades of developmental testing."
A Burgeoning Price Tag
On the cost front, the Congressional Budgetary Office (CBO) in January 2006 opined, "If . . . costs grow as they have historically, pursuing the programs included in CBO's missile defense projection will cost an additional $3 billion a year, on average, peaking at about $19 billion in 2013."
Thomas Christie, the Pentagon's director of operational testing and evaluation, in a 2004 report, pointedly opined that assessments of the system's capabilities were based primarily on modeling and simulations or on canned tests of components and sub-systems - not on "operational tests of a mature, integrated system."
"Due to the immature nature of the systems they emulate, models and simulations cannot be adequately validated at this time," Christie added.
All is not bad news, however.
In June, 2006, the Missile Defense Agency and the Navy scored a successful "hit to kill" missile defense test near the island of Kauai, Hawaii.
A Standard Missile 3 was fired from the Aegis-class cruiser USS Shiloh. Its mission? To hit a "separating" target - a target warhead separated from its booster rocket.
In "hit to kill" operations, the interceptor missile destroys the target missile by using only the kinetic energy from the force of the collision.
The Kauai test was touted as the seventh successful intercept test -- out of eight attempts - involving the sea-based component of the nation's ballistic missile defense system.
Long-term American missile defense plans envision a layered system using land, sea, and air platforms to neutralize incoming missiles.
Limited successes cast doubt on the current system - and do not instill confidence for long-term solutions.
Note how he castigates the Aegis successes, which he pointedly buries at the bottom of his article, as "only" successful 7 out of 8 tests. Nor does he examine that one failure...where a hardware glitch was expressed...and now fixed. Nor does he explain that the under-deployments of interceptors and Aegis missile boats...is because the Administration won't spend the money it has been authorized to spend by the Congress. Nor has it deployed the new SM-3 Flight IIa 21-inch diameter interceptor for the Navy for a still-more-robust NMD capability...continuing the lameness in the missile that Clinton, Albright, and Strobe Talbott had coerced the Navy into adopting....
Excellent analysis of the article. Thank you.
I renew my call to alter the evacutaion plan of Congress in the event of a missile threat. Members will be formed into two groups, one who historically supported SDI and the other who opposed it (Kerry at the head of that pack). The former group will be helecoptered to the underground bunkers constructed for their protection; the latter group will be chained and dumped at ground zero.
NVA, I love your idea, but could we get this numbskull up in the front to share the shame with sKerry?
I recommend the movie/book 'The Right Stuff' if anyone has any doubts about our ability in getting the job done once we set our minds on it.
But……. no doubt this is also a DoD sales pitch for: "Give me more money and I'll build you more and better" just like the F22 games that were intended to sell the need for the F22. I fully support both, but nonetheless, it’s still a sales pitch aimed at the public.
I agree with you in wanting more and better regarding BMD. However, I am far less concerned about the cost (yeah, and I pay taxes, too). You see, the article is talking in terms of $10s of billions being spent over the next few years, and a total of $130 billion since inception. While that's a tremendous amount of money in the abstract, compared to the cost of a city (and all of its people) it is nothing. New Orleans should give us a small taste of what a city costs - and the people there weren't/aren't, in economic terms, worth very much (i.e. they are, relative to other places in the US, quite unproductive). NYC lost 2 buildings, VA part of one, and the airlines 4 planes, and our economy lost some $700 billion of economic activity over a couple of years.
See what happens after a city goes up in a mushroom cloud. There will be utter chaos, dozens of companies and millions of people will likely go bankrupt, and the first thing everyone will say is "we should've spent more on missile defenses." That NK or some other offender was turned into a radioactive parking lot 1/2 hour after our city was destroyed will be little consolation (though it will likely serve as a great deterrent for at least the next 50 years...again, rather small consolation).
Bottom line: get the systems on line, and do it fast - damn the expense. The biggest peacetime defense budgets will be as nothing compared to those during a shooting war, not even counting repair/rebuilding costs.
Your conclusion should be the Memo to the President:
Bottom line: get the systems on line, and do it fast - damn the expense. The biggest peacetime defense budgets will be as nothing compared to those during a shooting war, not even counting repair/rebuilding costs.
I have no more patience with the naysayers...and even less...for the non-performers who aid and abet the naysayers, all the while they claim accomplishments.
"Limited" NMD is tantamount to no NMD, and no "Deal" with "Pooty-Poot" Putin is worth those self-imposed castrations of our defenses.
Kill the Strategic Framework Addendum Agreement*.
*[ The Secret Protocols Attached to the Treaty of Moscow, Wherein Putin got the President to agree to basically secretly abide by the ABM Treaty which we publically withdrew from! We AGREED to drastically limit our defenses...while meanwhile...it's okay for the Russians to have 8,800 operational interceptors. ]
This Addendum explains the "slow-walk" testing schedule (1/100th the rate of testing we accomplished in 3 years with the old Safeguard ABM system) the less-than-lame deployments, and the intentionally anemic Clinton-imposed interceptor designs, which remain uncured by the President...five and a half years after his inauguration...
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