Ground-based Missile Defense Interceptor
As most people have learned in the 20-plus years since the late
president Ronald Reagan announced his Strategic Defense Initiative
in 1983, shooting down an incoming ICBM even under the best of
conditions is a daunting challenge.
And the US missile defense system is far from perfect. Phillip
Coyle III, a senior adviser at the Center for Defense Information
and former assistant secretary of defense and director, operational
test and evaluation, said this in January:
The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency has not had a successful
flight intercept test with its Ground-based Missile Defense (GMD)
system for three and a half years. In the most recent two
flight-intercept tests, the interceptor never got off the ground.
Nevertheless the GMD system is being deployed in Alaska and
California. The MDA plans 20 or 30 more developmental
flight-intercept tests before they will be ready for realistic
operational testing. At the current rate of success it could take
over 50 years before the system was ready to be tested under
realistic operational conditions.
Even the few so-called successful tests of the GMD system are
dubious. According to Coyle, flight-intercept tests have
been conducted under artificial and unrealistic
conditions. Examples include prior knowledge by
the defender as to the time of attack, the type of attacking
missile, its trajectory and intended target location, and the
makeup of its payload. No real enemy would ever knowingly
provide such information to the US military in advance of an
attack.
As a result, while there have been 10 flight-intercept tests of the
GMD system since 1999, five of which were successful, the GMD
system has no demonstrated capability to defend the US under
realistic operational conditions. In fact, the system has
not successfully intercepted a single missile in its current
configuration.
The Washington, DC-based Center for Arms Control and
Non-Proliferation put out a news release noting that the
past tests of the system prove an intercept is feasible
only:
When operators know in advance the location of a single target
missile, the date and time of its launch and its flight
trajectory.
When a surrogate booster rocket launches the missile, which flies
at slower than normal speed in daylight and good weather.
When the target re-entry vehicle is equipped with
global-positioning technology and a radar beacon to send its
position to a surrogate ground-control radar.
The past two times - December 2004 and February 2005 - the Missile
Defense Agency (MDA) tried to attempt an intercept, the US rocket
didn't even leave the launch pad. (For the latter, it turned out
that the arms holding the missiles up in their silos weren't
properly built for the salty environment in which they were
fielded, so the MDA is replacing those components in all the
silos.)
Furthermore, Samson notes, the radar system that is needed
to help detect missile launches, the sea-based X-Band Radar (SBX),
is still undergoing tests outside Hawaii - nowhere near its home
port of Adak, Alaska. The satellite network being built to track
missiles once they're launched - the Space-Tracking and
Surveillance System (STSS) - isn't planning its initial launch of
two test satellites until next year, with the goal of getting the
system up and running somewhere around 2012.
And the command and control system necessary to link everything
together was cited in a recent report by the Pentagon's
Inspector General's Office as having such poor network security
that it very well could be hacked. That report proved so
embarrassing that the Pentagon subsequently removed it from the
inspector general's website.
However, there is one bit of good news. Samson
said the program did have significant success in that last December
the MDA held a flight test where the major goal was to get
the rocket off the ground. That they were able to do.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/HF24Dg01.html
In mid-July of this year, North Korea tested a long-range
ballistic missile, the Taepodong-2, in its early stages of
development. This missile is believed to have the capability to
reach Alaska and northern portions of the West coast of the United
States. In response to preparations for that launch, the
Bush administration placed its ground-based, mid-course
missile defense system (GMD) on alert; its purpose is to protect
the United States against one or a very few warheads that states
hostile to the United States might deliver by long-range ballistic
missiles.
One observer has characterized these actions as representing a
symmetrical international Kabuki dance: the North Koreans tested a
missile with no idea whether or not it would function as intended,
and the United States activated its missile defense system without
any evidence that it had the capability to intercept the North
Korean missile if it threatened the territory of the United
States.
The North Korean Taepodong-2 failed within a minute of its launch,
plunging into the Sea of Japan. However, it is highly
likely that the U.S. GMD system would have been similarly
unsuccessful in intercepting the North Korean missile had it
approached Alaska or the west coast of the United States. The last
successful developmental intercept test of GMD, under artificially
scripted conditions whereby the velocity, characteristics and
location of the missile were known in advance, was in October 2002;
even under similarly scripted conditions, three subsequent attempts
have failed.
A series of recent reports from the Government Accountability
Office, the Congressional Research Service, and even from the
Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General and the
Pentagons own Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, point
out that the GMD system suffers from a number of critical
deficiencies. These reports make it clear that the system has no
proven operational capability; and currently there are no plans for
operational tests tests in actual combat conditions conducted by
soldiers of the system.
In addition, it would be cheaper and technologically easier
to attack the United States by launching a cruise
missile from a boat in or near a U.S. harbor, or
transporting a crude nuclear weapon in a paneled truck across the
U.S. border rather than using expensive and technically
complex long-range missile technology.
Better look elsewhere for a better sys for our
protection........
