US Missile Defense Successfully Tested

The Boeing Co.-made Ground-based Midcourse Defense System includes a fleet of 30 rocket-like interceptors in underground silos at the Army’s Fort Greely, Alaska, and the Air Force’s Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The last successful exercise of the technology — designed to knock down incoming threats from such countries as North Korea and Iran — occurred in late 2008.

On Sunday, a three-stage booster launched from Vandenberg rammed into a dummy warhead fired from a test site on the Kwajalein Atoll in Marshall Islands, the Pentagon announced in a statement. The interceptor featured a newer type of exoatmospheric kill vehicle, or EKV, which sat atop the interceptor and destroyed the projectile on impact.

“This is a very important step in our continuing efforts to improve and increase the reliability of our homeland ballistic missile defense system,” Navy Vice Adm. James Syring, director of the Missile Defense Agency, said in the statement.

Chicago-based Boeing, the world’s largest aerospace company, was equally enthusiastic.

“Today’s test demonstrated the system’s performance under an expanded set of conditions that reflect real-world operational requirements,” Jim Chilton, vice president and general manager of the company’s Strategic Missile & Defense Systems, said in a press release.

After the intermediate-range dummy missile was launched from the Reagan Test Site, the Navy destroyer USS Hopper (DDG-70) detected the target using its Aegis Weapon System and AN/SPY-1 radar, which sent data to the GMD fire-control system, according to the Pentagon statement. The sea-based X-band radar also tracked the object and relayed information to assist with target engagement and data collection, it stated.

About six minutes after the target was launched, the interceptor lifted off from Vandenberg, according to the Pentagon statement. The booster propelled the second-generation kill vehicle, known as the Capability Enhancement II EKV, into the target’s projected trajectory, it stated. The vehicle maneuvered to the target, performed discrimination and intercepted the warhead, it stated.

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Return of Raptor/Talon Missile Defense Drones?

THE best time to shoot down a hostile missile is straight after take-off. During this initial “boost phase” it moves more slowly, is easier to spot (because its exhaust plumes are so hot) and presents a bigger target (having not yet ditched its first-stage fuel tanks). A bonus is that the debris may come crashing down on the country that launched it—your enemy—rather than you.

But the main advantage of “boost-phase missile defence” is that a missile that has breached the atmosphere and begun its midcourse glide can throw off lots of decoys. In the vacuum of space, tinfoil balloons, or clouds of aluminium strips known as chaff, will keep pace with the missile that released them. Not even the American military can distinguish sophisticated decoys from a warhead (though it might manage with crude ones designed by Iran or North Korea, say).

The downside, though, is that such an approach requires speed. Interceptors (anti-missile missiles) fired from sea or land will probably be too late. Ronald Reagan’s proposed solution was “Star Wars”: armed satellites orbiting above hostile nations’ launchpads. It cost a packet, didn’t work and was scrapped in the 1990s. But some experts say the moment has arrived for a sequel: high-altitude drones.

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During the early 1990s there was a program called RAPTOR/TALON  run by DARPA to design and build a long loitering drone equipped with missiles to shoot down just launched ballistic missiles.  I was intensely interested back in the day, but the program was cancelled.  It might have been a victim of technological unreadiness.  Or it might have been a victim of politics.  Or it might have been a victim of the fact under the Clinton administration there was a lot of legal debate whether or not armed drones counted as cruise missiles under the treaties the US had signed with the Soviet Union (and Russia inherited).  All I know is that it faded away.

However, I always found the program to be fascinating.  Imagine the possibilities.  Rather than for suppressing, say Russia's, ICBMs or Iran's, think SLBM defense.  If the escalation hits a high point, the President could order the USAF (or USN) to deploy the defensive drones.  They fly out and take orbit (airplane version) off the coasts.  While it would never be impregnable, it would potentially reduce the usefulness of sub launched nukes.  Not a bad thing.  

Even more so, it kills the lone lunatic launch.  Even better.

Congress Directs Pentagon to Evaluate Railgun for Missile Defense

The strategic forces subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee requested on 29 April that the US Department of Defense outline a plan for determining if the Electro-Magnetic (EM) Railgun could be an affordable alternative for missile defence.

The language, approved during the subcommittee's markup of the US House of Representative's version of the fiscal year 2015 (FY 2015) defence authorisation bill, requested both the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO) provide a report by November 2015 that includes: an agreed series of test events to determine the suitability of the EM Railgun technology for transfer to MDA for further development activity; necessary funding in FY 2016 and future years to conduct testing; opportunities to use existing MDA test events and assets to evaluate features of a railgun system; and opportunities to leverage other military service development and test activities to ensure the most cost-effective commitment of funds.

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India to Conduct Exoatmospheric Missile Intercept Test This Month

In another fortnight, India will be conducting one of the most complex interceptor missile tests. For the first time a state-of-the-art interceptor missile at supersonic speed will seek to engage and destroy an incoming target missile at a very high altitude of 120-140 km over the Bay of Bengal.

Entirely new interceptor and target missiles have been developed by scientists of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) for the upcoming engagement, to be conducted in exo-atmosphere (altitude above 40-50 km) on April 27 or 28. The test was originally planned to be conducted in November, 2013 but had been delayed since then.

A real battle-like scenario would be simulated for the test, DRDO missile technologists told The Hindu. For the first time, the interceptor missile (PDV) would be seeking to destroy the separating payload of the target missile (a modified PAD) after discriminating between the booster and the payload.

Describing it as a “big challenge,” they said the interceptor’s “kill vehicle,” equipped with a dual seeker, would attack the payload (warhead portion) as it descends towards its intended target. The advantage of intercepting an incoming missile at such a high altitude was that the debris would not fall on the ground and there would be no collateral damage.

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Why Russia is Just Plain Hostile to American Ballistic Missile Defense

America wants to use policy — talks on missile defense cooperation — to make Russia feel better about the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA). But the Russians, who say they think EPAA threatens their ICBMs and thus creates all sorts of arms control problems. say technology — not policy — is the problem.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has continually insisted on legally binding guarantees that US missile defenses are not aimed at it and that would allow Russia access to sensitive aspects of the system. Russia has also threatened to deploy a range of countermeasures against NATO’s missile defenses, including tactical nuclear missile deployment in Kaliningrad and improvements to its strategic nuclear missile arsenal to make it capable of evading missile defense. Whether EPAA is aimed at Russia or technically capable of even potentially intercepting Russian missiles, however, are very different considerations. But the Russians seem to ignore that simple truth that the technology is limited by physics and engineering, not political considerations.

Ironically, moving the technology further away from Russian borders could increase the potential for its successful use against Russian missiles. So, whether or not Russian technical concerns could ever really be assuaged must be questioned.

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Aegis Conducts Successful Ballistic Missle Intercept (again)

At 1:30 am this morning – 7:30 pm yesterday Hawaiian time — the Navy’s newest missile defense system marked its second successful shootdown in a month. Under what Lockheed Martin called an “operationally realistic scenario” – more on that in a moment – the USS Lake Erie picked up the target with its Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense “version 4.0.2” fire control system and launched a Raytheon Standard Missile-3 Block IB to blow it out of the Pacific sky.

Code-named FTM-22, the test was one more step towards an anti-missile system that could make North Korea or Iran think twice before launching their relatively small arsenals of ballistic missiles. And that’s the principal reason for the missile defense program: to deter those two countries.

But China’s infamous Second Artillery Force commands, by the Pentagon’s public estimate, more than 1,100 short-ranged ballistic missiles (SRBMs), not counting smaller numbers of longer-ranged types. A single Aegis destroyer can carry at most 96 Standard Missiles in its launchers, and the Navy has four of them upgraded to do BMD, with another five in the current program of record. That math means that even if all nine were deployed in the Western Pacific (logistically unlikely) and all 864 Standards hit their targets (simply impossible), at least 300 Chinese missiles would get through.

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