Bush System Could Go On Alert Without Intercept Test

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The long-range missile defense system President George W. Bush has ordered deployed this year could begin operations using a new interceptor rocket that has not been flight-intercept tested with the system, according to the Missile Defense Agency’s latest testing and deployment timeline (see GSN, Feb. 3).

The military could soon decide to activate the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, after the first long-range interceptor using the booster is scheduled to go into the ground at Fort Greely, Alaska, and to have a kill vehicle mated to it, in mid-to-late July, according to MDA spokesman Richard Lehner.

Reflecting program delays, however, the first flight-intercept test of the system using the booster is not scheduled until late September or early October, Lehner said.

The three-stage booster made by Boeing subcontractor Orbital Sciences has been used for years for commercial space launches, but the agency has not used it yet as part of the missile defense system to try to intercept a mock warhead. It has instead used a slower two-stage booster.

The agency this year pushed back a scheduled nonintercept flight test (IFT-13c) using the booster first, from March to June, and then from June until late July or early August, according to Lehner.

He attributed that delay to a problem with the wiring on the “kill vehicle” affixed on top of the rocket, and noted also a suspected anomaly with a second-stage propellant igniter.

Those delays, he said, have pushed back until around late September or early October the first planned intercept test using the Orbital booster (IFT-14), which should occur at the soonest 60 days after IFT-13c so its results can be fully analyzed.

The Missile Defense Agency is aiming to have five of the interceptors placed at Fort Greely by Sept. 30, Lehner said, which is also potentially before the flight-intercept test has taken place.

Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, Missile Defense Agency chief, earlier this year said that the system could be put on alert soon after the first booster is put in the ground at Fort Greely.

Lehner said, though, that while that is “technically possible,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the U.S. Northern and Strategic Commands, “among others,” would make that decision and not his agency.

“It would be made, at a time of their choosing, based upon their assessment of the military utility of placing the GMD element on alert,” he said.

In response to a question, Lehner said he was not aware of any threat concern or other reason driving the activation schedule. 

Bloomberg.com, however, quoted Kadish yesterday as saying that North Korea has “significantly” improved the capability of its long-range, offensive ballistic missiles (see related GSN story, today). Pentagon officials have previously signaled that the system is intended to address a potential North Korean ICBM capability.

Kadish might have been referring to reports last year that “North Korea may have gotten a Russian submarine-launched missile, a ‘jazzed up Scud,’” said David Wright, an analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists (see GSN, Sept. 12). He questioned, though, whether North Korea would have the capability to reverse engineer and manufacture a better engine for its missiles along those Russian designs, and by doing so pose a credible ICBM threat.

Some critics have charged that the deployment timeline is being politically driven, to allow Bush to claim prior to the Nov. 2 election he has made the United States safer with a long-range ballistic missile defense. 

As a candidate in 2000, Bush criticized then-President Bill Clinton for the “unfinished business” of having not deployed a national missile defense system. Basing his decision on a Pentagon “Deployment Readiness Review,” Clinton that year deferred a plan to begin deployment after determining the system had not yet proven technically ready.

Bush in December 2002 directed the Pentagon to “proceed with plans to deploy a set of initial missile defense capabilities beginning in 2004.”

Kadish earlier this year said the timeline for fielding the GMD system was not driven by politics (see GSN, March 26).

Critics said that regardless of whether the system is intercept-tested with the booster, the current state of testing is unrealistic because the system is not yet developed to the point that it can undergo operationally realistic testing (see GSN, May 14).

Employing the faster booster now, however, should provide an added challenge to the effectiveness of the system, according to Wright.

Moving from a two-stage booster to a three-stage booster will “close to double” the closing speed of the interceptor and its target, and cut in half the homing time, he said.

“It means the kill vehicle has to maneuver and respond much more quickly to do the intercept,” he said.

Missile Defense Agency Spokesman Lehner said that the fact that the new booster is faster should not pose any technical challenges to the overall effectiveness of the system.

Though it may be new to the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, Lehner said the booster itself is “not really a new booster, Orbital has been using the design for years for commercial launches so they have a long, documented performance history.”

“Remember, the role of the booster is to get the [kill vehicle] to a point in space, and this booster is perfectly capable for that role,” he said.

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