U.S. Plans:  Pentagon Delays GMD Booster Rocket Tests

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency has decided to delay tests of competing booster rockets being developed by defense contractors Lockheed Martin and Orbital Sciences for use in the Ground-based Missile Defense system, Inside Missile Defense reported today (see GSN, April 18).

In February, the agency sent Congress a proposed testing schedule that called for two booster verification tests to be held in the second and third quarter of fiscal 2003, according to Inside Missile Defense.  Under that schedule, Lockheed Martin’s booster would be tested first followed by Orbital’s booster.  The agency said last week that it has decided to test Orbital’s booster this month, and Lockheed’s booster will probably be tested in September.

Once those tests have been conducted, the agency plans to test the boosters carrying payloads in two integrated flight tests, which were originally scheduled to be held in the third and fourth quarters of fiscal 2003, Inside Missile Defense reported.  Those tests are now set to be held in the fall at the test site on Kwajalein Island, the agency said.

If the integrated flight tests are successful, the agency plans to conduct an intercept test using one of the two booster designs, according to Inside Missile Defense.  That test had originally been scheduled for first quarter of fiscal 2004, but is now scheduled for the second quarter of fiscal 2004 (Thomas Duffy, Inside Missile Defense, Aug. 6).

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United States:  Officials Providing Mixed Signals on Patriot’s Record in Iraq

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — U.S. military officials have been presenting mixed signals on how well Patriot missile defenses worked during the Iraq war, with the release of details on a much-awaited U.S. Army study on the performance experiencing delay and a second, Army inspector general review underway.

For several months since Patriots were fired against nine Iraqi missiles during the conflict, some officials, Patriot commanders in particular, have characterized its performance as nearly or fully effective.  Two senior missile defense officials, however, have publicly said such judgments should wait for the conclusion and release of results from a formal performance review.

Statements by those officials, one as recently as July 8, suggested reported conclusions about Patriot’s high effectiveness were based largely on tallied successful “engagements,” which are the number of Iraqi missiles, fired at by Patriot interceptors, and that did not cause any damage.

The aim of the Army review, however, has been to determine whether those nine reported successful engagements were caused by Patriot “intercepts,” where Patriot missiles or Patriot warhead fragments hit the Iraqi missile, possibly “killing” the Iraqi warhead, as opposed to bad Iraqi technology or aim.  The review, officials have said, includes surveying the desert for signs of warhead explosions and reviewing recorded “black box” and radar data.

Senior Army officials appear reluctant to rely primarily on engagement statistics to publicly characterize the Patriot’s record, as they did to claim a high success rate during the 1991 Gulf War.  Later analyses suggested that while Patriots successfully “engaged” many Iraqi missiles at the time, very few Patriots actually intercepted their targets or killed the warheads.

Reports of Effectiveness

Some U.S. military officials mostly without being identified have been telling reporters that the Patriots were successful against eight or nine of the nine Iraqi missiles engaged during the recent war (see GSN, April 16).  One official told Global Security Newswire Friday that the “battle damage assessment” from the “air-defense community” is “eight-of-nine enemy warheads killed” in the air by the Patriots.

In a rare on-the-record comment, Lt. Col. Joe DeAntona, who commanded a Patriot battalion that actually launched interceptors during the war, said Patriots “destroyed” nine Iraqi missiles, according to a July 15 Associated Press report.

Two of the military’s most senior missile defense officials, however, have cautioned against drawing such conclusions before the study of the Patriot’s record is complete.

“Here’s what we don’t know.  We don’t know the overall effectiveness of the Patriot system.  The Army’s assessing that and will be presenting that shortly,” Army Maj. Gen. Peter Franklin, then the deputy director of the Missile Defense Agency, said July 8.

“We’re sorting through all of that data now to give the scientific answer as to how effective Patriot was,” Army Space and Missile Defense Command Director Lt. Gen. Joseph Cosumano said in April.  Cosumano is overseeing the review.

A major aspect of the Army’s unfinished review is to determine exactly what the Patriot’s record was in terms of intercepts and kills, said Army spokesman Maj. Gary Tallman last week.

“That’s working right now.  That’s going to be part of the official performance review,” he said.

Counting Engagements

Despite the controversial claims of 1991 Patriot success and the pending review, some officials have continued to equate the lack of damage from Iraqi missiles with Patriot success in the recent war.

In his April 24 remarks, Cosumano indicated that this was how the Patriot’s battlefield commander viewed the success of the U.S. missile defense system.

“The commander in the field says it was apparently very effective because there was nothing damaged,” he said.

Maj. Gen. Stanley Green, then commander of the Army’s Air Defense Artillery Center at Fort Bliss, Texas, appeared to use such a formulation to characterize Patriot’s success for a May 8, Boston Globe story.

“We think that we engaged missiles that saved hundreds of lives at the least and allowed us to execute and prosecute the war on our terms from the start,” he said.

Some unidentified officials have gone further, asserting to the press that actual intercepts and kills have been confirmed.

In the first such story, on April 16, the Boston Globe reported that eight Iraqi missiles were “destroyed in the air,” while another was “significantly damaged and landed without causing harm,” attributing the information to an unidentified U.S. Central Command official.

Counting Intercepts, Kills

A week after that story, in an apparent corrective, Cosumano told reporters that while Patriots “engaged” nine Iraqi missiles, various radar and other data was being collected to determine how many Patriots actually connected with Iraqi missiles (see GSN, April 24).

“There’ve been some quotes out of CENTCOM, and I’ll just re-emphasize what those were.  Of the nine potential TBMs [theater ballistic missiles] that could be engaged by Patriot, they were engaged and appeared to be effective,” he said.

Cosumano said, though, that the formal review would determine the “scientific answer of how effective Patriot was.”

“So now, the next step of that is the science and engineering questions that always have to be answered, of ‘OK, what does effectiveness mean?’  To the combatant commander there was no damage on the ground, so you did what you were supposed to do.  You protected the force,” he said.

The Army last week declined a Global Security Newswire request for definitions for the terms it will use to describe the Patriot’s performance until it provides its briefing.  Army spokesmen have said they are not authorized to comment officially on the review until it is completed and a public briefing is given.

Questions About Evidence

Reviewing the Patriot’s record does not appear to be a cut and dry endeavor from either a technical or public relations perspective. 

Potentially complicating the Army’s data assessment, according to a prominent Patriot critic, is the fact that recording devices on some of the Patriot batteries were not operating during the action, a situation that officials have acknowledged.

Data from those “black boxes” is key for determining exactly how the Patriots performed and its absence would make conclusions about the system’s success questionable, said Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Theodore Postol.

Without the data, he said, “They don’t have information to justify the performance claims.”

Cosumano has suggested otherwise, saying in April that while some Patriot black boxes did not operate, “new sources of data” such as from Aegis ship radars would be assessed in the review.

An alternative method for assessing the Patriot’s record, Postol said, is to survey the desert for craters, or a lack of craters, to attempt to judge how many warheads were destroyed in the sky, or rather, exploded when hitting the ground.

He questioned that method, however, saying it would require a search by many people over a large area using strong information about where to look.

Postol also questioned the Army’s commitment to thoroughly searching for such evidence, citing a 1992 General Accounting Office report that said the Army’s damage assessment following the Gulf War was limited because a single engineer in Saudi Arabia had conducted a search for 24 days in February and March 1991.  That investigator had relied heavily on photographs and interviews with military personnel assigned to the Patriot units, and conducted the search days and weeks after the missile engagement, when craters might have been filled or missile debris removed, that report said.

Franklin, in his July 8 comments, said the Army’s review was still conducting a search of the ground for debris.

“We don’t know the complete battle damage assessment.  We don’t have an assessment of the debris impact at this point,” he said.

An official said last week the disclosure of the results of the review were delayed after Cosumano asked its preparers to provide additional information for addressing potential questions from the press.

The Army is not expected to release the actual study, the official said.

In another development said to cause further delay, the Army’s inspector general has begun his own review of the Patriot’s record.

According to another official, the Army might not brief the public on its review until the inspector general’s assessment is known, perhaps to “reconcile” differing conclusions.

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Japan:  Defense Report Calls for Improved Missile Defenses

Japan should improve its missile defense systems and speed up research on cutting edge interceptor technologies, according to an annual Japanese defense report released yesterday (see GSN, June 24).

Citing a missile threat from North Korea, the Japanese Defense Agency encouraged continued military cooperation with the United States.  Tokyo spent $114 million between fiscal 1999 and 2002 on missile defense research and the Japanese military currently operates 27 Patriot missile defense batteries.

The 393-page report also calls for the establishment of commando units that specialize in chemical and biological defense (Kenji Hall, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Aug. 5).

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U.S. Plans:  Officials Might Expand Airborne Laser Mission

U.S. Defense Department officials are considering using the developing Airborne Laser system to defend against a broad spectrum of missiles, Space & Missile reported today (see GSN, July 24).

The Airborne Laser is currently being developed to defend against theater ballistic missiles, but it could be used against intercontinental ballistic missiles, according to Air Force Col. Ellen Pawlikowski.

“With the ABM [Antiballistic Missile] Treaty going away, we are looking now at the full spectrum of missiles, not just the theater class, and how we best fit in with other members of the ballistic missile defense system,” she said.

However, Pawlikowski said the program will require some minor improvements.

“There will be certain things that will be redesigned, smaller pieces and components, but we’re sticking with the same basic design,” she said (Ray Nelson, Space & Missile, Aug. 4).

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U.S. Plans:  Defense Department Suspends Space-Based Kinetic Interceptor

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency has suspended plans to develop a space-based kinetic weapon to intercept ballistic missiles in their boost phases, Defense Daily reported today (see GSN, July 15).

The agency is still developing plans for a ground-based version of the program, but officials decided the technology for a space-based weapon was not mature enough to move forward.  The Pentagon has cancelled planned industry days on the space-based program.

“With the funding constraints and anticipated cuts to the boost-phase accounts in the FY ’04 defense bill, the space-based boost just does not fit,” an industry official said (see GSN, July 3).  The program, however, has not been shelved completely, Defense Daily reported (Kerry Gildea, Defense Daily, Aug. 1).

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