From FPRI:
RESETTING MISSILE DEFENSES:
Setting the Matter Straight
by Captain George V. Galdorisi, USN (Retired)
and Scott C. Truver, Ph.D.
May 12, 2011
We print below an exchange between George Galdorisi, Scott
Truver, and James Jay Carafano stimulated by Carafano's
earlier FPRI E-Note "Resetting Missile Defense," which can
be accessed at:
http://www.fpri.org/enotes/201104.carafano.missiledefense.html
Captain George Galdorisi (U.S. Navy retired) is Director of
the Corporate Strategy Group at SPAWAR Systems Center
Pacific. Prior to joining the Center he completed a 30 year
career as a naval aviator, including four command tours. As
Commanding Officer of HSL-43, he fielded LAMPS detachments
on the Navy's first Aegis cruisers, and his involvement in
Aegis and Aegis BMD has followed him to his current job
where he has written extensively on Aegis BMD for
professional journals in the United States, Australia and
the United Kingdom.
Dr. Scott Truver is Director, National Security Programs, at
Gryphon Technologies LC. Since 1972 he has participated in
numerous studies and assessments for government and private
industry, and assisted in the development of Navy, Marine
Corps and Coast Guard strategy policy and doctrinal papers.
Available on the web and in pdf format at:
http://www.fpri.org/enotes/201105.galdorisi_truver.missiledefense.html
RESETTING MISSILE DEFENSES:
Setting the Matter Straight
by Captain George V. Galdorisi, USN (Retired)
and Scott C. Truver, Ph.D.
James Carafano's April 20, 2011 commentary, "Resetting
Missile Defenses" is breathtaking in scope as it moves from
missile defense, to the overall defense budget, to
prescriptions regarding government-wide spending and
national priorities. While there is much in his piece we
agree with-particularly the importance of ballistic missile
defense to the United States and key allies-some of his
remarks fly in the face of the current realities regarding
one aspect of the National Ballistic Missile Defense System
(BMDS), Aegis BMD.
That said, we agree with him when he acknowledges, "The
Aegis sea-based missile defense with Standard Missile 3 (SM-
3) interceptors provide the U.S. with the most promising
opportunities to remain protected in the face of the
evolving threat" and calls for producing more SM-3
interceptors. But he loses his technical bearings as he
bemoans the demise of the Bush Administration's "Third Site"
plan for European missile defense and denigrates the Obama
Administration's Phased Adaptive Approach (PAA). In arguing
for a return to the original Bush Administration plan that
"would have been built with proven radars and interceptors,"
instead of an Obama plan, which "requires new missile
technologies that have yet to be developed and expects them
to be fielded on a very ambitious timeline," he is just flat
wrong and is playing fast and loose with the facts.
In that, he ignores one of the linchpin standards he sets:
the need to provide cost-effective ballistic missile defense
on a realistic timeline. By design, Aegis BMD takes maximum
advantage of more than $80 billion of investments in the
sensors, weapons, command-and-control systems, ships and
facilities that comprise the Aegis weapon system. Each
expansion of the Aegis capabilities-including its adaptation
to the BMD mission-has been rigorously tested, and the
system has proven effective time and again.
Beginning in the early 1960s, when Aegis was first
conceived-and throughout nearly two decades of development
that led to the commissioning of the first Aegis cruiser in
1983-Navy planners structured the Aegis system with the
potential to take on future missions. Under the stewardship
of visionary but demanding program managers like the late
Rear Admiral Wayne E. Meyer, the system had an overarching
imperative to "build-a-little_test-a-little_learn-a-lot" as
the way to insert revolutionary capabilities into the fleet
in an evolutionary manner.
The success of Aegis BMD to date thus is not surprising.
Much of this success is reflected in and can be attributed
to the robust nine-year test program, involving 25 at-sea
live-firings between January 2002 and early 2011 with 22
hits-19 for 22 with the SM-3 missile. Not bad for a program
that, until recently, accounted for only 10% of annual MDA
budgets. With the Navy's string of successes, MDA has now
boosted ABMD spending to about a quarter of its total
funding.
Aegis BMD's accomplishments are even more impressive in
light of the complex technical challenges that all BMD
systems must overcome. For example, the Terminal High-
Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system went zero-for-six
during the 1990s before achieving two hits. Then, after a
five-year hiatus and redesign, the system has had an eight-
for-eight record. Likewise, the Ground-based Midcourse
Defense (GMD) system has had eight successful intercepts in
15 attempts, but the last two tests in January and December
2010, were failures. This performance was behind the MDA
decision last February to restructure the GMD test program.
Efforts are still underway to understand why the system
failed in two consecutive flight tests.
Dr. Carafano's comments ignore the repeated successes of the
Aegis BMD component of the national BMDS. Most recently, on
April 15 the Missile Defense Agency conducted the first-ever
"launch-on-remote" test of the Aegis BMD system against an
intermediate-range "separating target"-a warhead separating
from its booster missile. The Flight Test Mission (FTM)-15
featured an Aegis BMD-equipped ship firing a Standard
Missile-3 Block IA missile in response to remote sensor data
provided by a forward-based radar.
The FTM-15 test featured a standard Aegis BMD system
installed in the guided-missile destroyer USS O'Kane (DDG-
77) and pitted for the first time an in-service SM-3 Block
1A missile against an intermediate-range (1,800-3,400 miles)
modified Trident ballistic missile target. This test was
well beyond Aegis BMD's original design, which since the
early 1990s has focused on short- and medium-range threats.
Importantly, FTM-15 used technologies and systems that are
at sea and in service today. There were no changes to
O'Kane's BMD suite for the test. And, the success unveiled
new possibilities for Aegis BMD using technologies and
systems available today. What's also important about the
FTM-15 launch/engage-on-remote concept is that it linked the
ship to remote sensor data to increase the coverage area and
responsiveness. Once this capability is fully developed, the
interceptors-no longer constrained by the range of the Aegis
radar to detect an incoming missile - can be launched sooner
and fly farther.
Aegis BMD's continuing test successes and the potential for
further improvements makes the Phased Adaptive Approach's
focus on Aegis all the more understandable. The first phase
of the PAA focuses on existing sea-based Aegis missile
defense ships and radars in southern Europe to defend
against short/medium-range ballistic missiles. That has
already happened. In March, the Navy deployed the Aegis
cruiser USS Monterey (CG-61), armed with SM-3 Block 1A
missiles, to European waters. In 2015, Aegis BMD
capabilities will migrate to a land-based "Aegis Ashore"
site.
With this successful test of the SM-3 Block 1A missile, the
Navy will now focus its attention on the first firing of the
SM3 block IB from the USS Lake Erie using the next upgrade
of the Aegis BMD weapon system, an initial test of the PAA
Phase 2 architecture due for deployment in 2015. The focus
of FTM-16 and subsequent tests will be on the SM-3 Block IB,
the next-generation sea-based missile spiral upgrade. These
engineering upgrades have already undergone laboratory and
ground tests, and flight-testing of the SM-3 Block IB
missile is scheduled for this year. Aegis BMD in 2010 began
sea trials Aegis BMD 4.0.1, the next-generation system that
will fire the SM-3 Block IB missile. Fleet deployment could
begin soon thereafter-roughly 18-24 months ahead of the
test/deploy schedule defined by the Phased Adaptive
Approach.
Additionally, as noted in the Missile Defense Agency's Aegis
Ballistic Missile Defense Program Review 2011, "The PAA for
BMD in Europe will leverage several elements of the BMDS,
including forward-deployed sensors as well as sea- and land-
based variants of the SM-3 interceptor. Evolutionary
upgrades to the SM-3 Standard Missile and sensors, combined
with improvements to command and control infrastructure,
provide capability to the warfighter to perform an
increasingly complex and critical regional and homeland-
defense mission."
At the current stage of the PAA, the Aegis/SM-3 combination
does not yet have the ability to perform boost-phase
intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles that can
threaten U.S. territory, a point that clearly concerns Dr.
Carafano. The Navy and MDA also are moving methodically
toward that goal, however, with the SM-3 Block II upgrades
that are currently in work. Dr. Carafano may perceive this
approach as overly "ambitious," but this upgrade process
incorporates the same "build-test-learn" philosophy that has
served Aegis and the nation so well in the past.
Moving forward, MDA plans call for the Navy to increase the
number of Aegis BMD-capable ships from the 21 today, to 27
by 2012, to 38 ships by 2015, and as many as 60 ships by
2024, in addition to "Aegis Ashore." Concurrently, U.S.
friends and allies continue Aegis shipbuilding as well as
Aegis BMD installations. The United States will deploy SM-3
interceptors using the sea-based Aegis BMD system, and then
deploy improved SM-3s in 2015 on both ships and land as part
of the PAA. "Aegis Ashore" will deploy dozens of SM-3
missiles at shore sites, with more onboard Navy BMD ships.
No one system can perform the entire gamut of ballistic
missile defense missions, but it is undeniable that Aegis
BMD has become a key pillar of the U.S. national BMDS. The
system has earned this position through proven performance
and processes, a fact Dr. Carafano missed.
JAMES JAY CARAFANO REPLIES
Dr. James Jay Carafano is the Deputy Director of The Kathryn
and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies
and is Director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for
Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
Captain George V. Galdorisi and Dr. Scott C. Truver's
critique of my April 2011 commentary "Resetting Missile
Defenses" wrongly interprets my criticism of the Obama
Administration's Phased Adaptive Approach (PAA) for missile
defense as an attack on the Aegis-based missile defense
program. The PAA is much broader than the Aegis program and
includes a variety of errors of both commission and
omission. I recognize that Aegis is making the fastest
progress of all the U.S. ballistic missile defense systems,
especially in the view of the most recent successful
"launch-on-remote" test against an intermediate-range target
missile.
In my view, the PAA needlessly holds back the progress on
the broader missile defense program, including to a lesser
degree the Aegis ballistic missile defense system. Starting
with the broader program, the Obama Administration's policy
is to subordinate missile defense to its arms control
agenda. This was made clear by its successful fight against
a proposed amendment in the Senate to the New START arms
control treaty with Russia to strip out of the treaty's
preamble sweeping, though not precisely defined,
restrictions on missile defense. This is why the
Administration moved to terminate the so-called Third Site
missile defense deployments in the Czech Republic and
Poland. Second, the policy makes it clear that the missile
defense program will not be permitted to achieve
capabilities that would permit the intercept of Chinese and
Russian missiles. The Clinton Administration's policy to
establish such a "demarcation" in missile defense
capabilities was rejected by Congress in the 1990s for good
reason. It would have required "dumbing down" missile
defense capabilities. Finally, the PAA omits any commitment
to deploy missile defense interceptors in space.
Turning to the Aegis program in particular, the PAA even
serves to restrict unnecessarily progress here.
Specifically, the PAA structures the Aegis missile defense
program so that the system will not achieve a capability to
counter long-range missiles until 2020. This is because it
seeks to provide this capability only with the deployment of
the untested Block II-B version of the Standard Missile 3.
It is not necessary to wait for the deployment of the Block
II-B. With a number of narrow modifications, including in
command and control arrangements and systems, the tested
Block I-A version of the interceptor could be demonstrated
to perform intercepts against long-range missiles long
before 2020.
The fact is that I am strongly committed to making the Aegis
missile defense program as effective as possible as soon as
possible. This commitment, however, is in no way
inconsistent with a missile defense policy that permits more
rapid advancements than the Obama Administration's PAA. This
includes the simultaneous pursuit of ground-based and space-
based systems.
----------------------------------------------------------
Copyright Foreign Policy Research Institute
(http://www.fpri.org/).
RESETTING MISSILE DEFENSES:
Setting the Matter Straight
by Captain George V. Galdorisi, USN (Retired)
and Scott C. Truver, Ph.D.
May 12, 2011
We print below an exchange between George Galdorisi, Scott
Truver, and James Jay Carafano stimulated by Carafano's
earlier FPRI E-Note "Resetting Missile Defense," which can
be accessed at:
http://www.fpri.org/enotes/201104.carafano.missiledefense.html
Captain George Galdorisi (U.S. Navy retired) is Director of
the Corporate Strategy Group at SPAWAR Systems Center
Pacific. Prior to joining the Center he completed a 30 year
career as a naval aviator, including four command tours. As
Commanding Officer of HSL-43, he fielded LAMPS detachments
on the Navy's first Aegis cruisers, and his involvement in
Aegis and Aegis BMD has followed him to his current job
where he has written extensively on Aegis BMD for
professional journals in the United States, Australia and
the United Kingdom.
Dr. Scott Truver is Director, National Security Programs, at
Gryphon Technologies LC. Since 1972 he has participated in
numerous studies and assessments for government and private
industry, and assisted in the development of Navy, Marine
Corps and Coast Guard strategy policy and doctrinal papers.
Available on the web and in pdf format at:
http://www.fpri.org/enotes/201105.galdorisi_truver.missiledefense.html
RESETTING MISSILE DEFENSES:
Setting the Matter Straight
by Captain George V. Galdorisi, USN (Retired)
and Scott C. Truver, Ph.D.
James Carafano's April 20, 2011 commentary, "Resetting
Missile Defenses" is breathtaking in scope as it moves from
missile defense, to the overall defense budget, to
prescriptions regarding government-wide spending and
national priorities. While there is much in his piece we
agree with-particularly the importance of ballistic missile
defense to the United States and key allies-some of his
remarks fly in the face of the current realities regarding
one aspect of the National Ballistic Missile Defense System
(BMDS), Aegis BMD.
That said, we agree with him when he acknowledges, "The
Aegis sea-based missile defense with Standard Missile 3 (SM-
3) interceptors provide the U.S. with the most promising
opportunities to remain protected in the face of the
evolving threat" and calls for producing more SM-3
interceptors. But he loses his technical bearings as he
bemoans the demise of the Bush Administration's "Third Site"
plan for European missile defense and denigrates the Obama
Administration's Phased Adaptive Approach (PAA). In arguing
for a return to the original Bush Administration plan that
"would have been built with proven radars and interceptors,"
instead of an Obama plan, which "requires new missile
technologies that have yet to be developed and expects them
to be fielded on a very ambitious timeline," he is just flat
wrong and is playing fast and loose with the facts.
In that, he ignores one of the linchpin standards he sets:
the need to provide cost-effective ballistic missile defense
on a realistic timeline. By design, Aegis BMD takes maximum
advantage of more than $80 billion of investments in the
sensors, weapons, command-and-control systems, ships and
facilities that comprise the Aegis weapon system. Each
expansion of the Aegis capabilities-including its adaptation
to the BMD mission-has been rigorously tested, and the
system has proven effective time and again.
Beginning in the early 1960s, when Aegis was first
conceived-and throughout nearly two decades of development
that led to the commissioning of the first Aegis cruiser in
1983-Navy planners structured the Aegis system with the
potential to take on future missions. Under the stewardship
of visionary but demanding program managers like the late
Rear Admiral Wayne E. Meyer, the system had an overarching
imperative to "build-a-little_test-a-little_learn-a-lot" as
the way to insert revolutionary capabilities into the fleet
in an evolutionary manner.
The success of Aegis BMD to date thus is not surprising.
Much of this success is reflected in and can be attributed
to the robust nine-year test program, involving 25 at-sea
live-firings between January 2002 and early 2011 with 22
hits-19 for 22 with the SM-3 missile. Not bad for a program
that, until recently, accounted for only 10% of annual MDA
budgets. With the Navy's string of successes, MDA has now
boosted ABMD spending to about a quarter of its total
funding.
Aegis BMD's accomplishments are even more impressive in
light of the complex technical challenges that all BMD
systems must overcome. For example, the Terminal High-
Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system went zero-for-six
during the 1990s before achieving two hits. Then, after a
five-year hiatus and redesign, the system has had an eight-
for-eight record. Likewise, the Ground-based Midcourse
Defense (GMD) system has had eight successful intercepts in
15 attempts, but the last two tests in January and December
2010, were failures. This performance was behind the MDA
decision last February to restructure the GMD test program.
Efforts are still underway to understand why the system
failed in two consecutive flight tests.
Dr. Carafano's comments ignore the repeated successes of the
Aegis BMD component of the national BMDS. Most recently, on
April 15 the Missile Defense Agency conducted the first-ever
"launch-on-remote" test of the Aegis BMD system against an
intermediate-range "separating target"-a warhead separating
from its booster missile. The Flight Test Mission (FTM)-15
featured an Aegis BMD-equipped ship firing a Standard
Missile-3 Block IA missile in response to remote sensor data
provided by a forward-based radar.
The FTM-15 test featured a standard Aegis BMD system
installed in the guided-missile destroyer USS O'Kane (DDG-
77) and pitted for the first time an in-service SM-3 Block
1A missile against an intermediate-range (1,800-3,400 miles)
modified Trident ballistic missile target. This test was
well beyond Aegis BMD's original design, which since the
early 1990s has focused on short- and medium-range threats.
Importantly, FTM-15 used technologies and systems that are
at sea and in service today. There were no changes to
O'Kane's BMD suite for the test. And, the success unveiled
new possibilities for Aegis BMD using technologies and
systems available today. What's also important about the
FTM-15 launch/engage-on-remote concept is that it linked the
ship to remote sensor data to increase the coverage area and
responsiveness. Once this capability is fully developed, the
interceptors-no longer constrained by the range of the Aegis
radar to detect an incoming missile - can be launched sooner
and fly farther.
Aegis BMD's continuing test successes and the potential for
further improvements makes the Phased Adaptive Approach's
focus on Aegis all the more understandable. The first phase
of the PAA focuses on existing sea-based Aegis missile
defense ships and radars in southern Europe to defend
against short/medium-range ballistic missiles. That has
already happened. In March, the Navy deployed the Aegis
cruiser USS Monterey (CG-61), armed with SM-3 Block 1A
missiles, to European waters. In 2015, Aegis BMD
capabilities will migrate to a land-based "Aegis Ashore"
site.
With this successful test of the SM-3 Block 1A missile, the
Navy will now focus its attention on the first firing of the
SM3 block IB from the USS Lake Erie using the next upgrade
of the Aegis BMD weapon system, an initial test of the PAA
Phase 2 architecture due for deployment in 2015. The focus
of FTM-16 and subsequent tests will be on the SM-3 Block IB,
the next-generation sea-based missile spiral upgrade. These
engineering upgrades have already undergone laboratory and
ground tests, and flight-testing of the SM-3 Block IB
missile is scheduled for this year. Aegis BMD in 2010 began
sea trials Aegis BMD 4.0.1, the next-generation system that
will fire the SM-3 Block IB missile. Fleet deployment could
begin soon thereafter-roughly 18-24 months ahead of the
test/deploy schedule defined by the Phased Adaptive
Approach.
Additionally, as noted in the Missile Defense Agency's Aegis
Ballistic Missile Defense Program Review 2011, "The PAA for
BMD in Europe will leverage several elements of the BMDS,
including forward-deployed sensors as well as sea- and land-
based variants of the SM-3 interceptor. Evolutionary
upgrades to the SM-3 Standard Missile and sensors, combined
with improvements to command and control infrastructure,
provide capability to the warfighter to perform an
increasingly complex and critical regional and homeland-
defense mission."
At the current stage of the PAA, the Aegis/SM-3 combination
does not yet have the ability to perform boost-phase
intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles that can
threaten U.S. territory, a point that clearly concerns Dr.
Carafano. The Navy and MDA also are moving methodically
toward that goal, however, with the SM-3 Block II upgrades
that are currently in work. Dr. Carafano may perceive this
approach as overly "ambitious," but this upgrade process
incorporates the same "build-test-learn" philosophy that has
served Aegis and the nation so well in the past.
Moving forward, MDA plans call for the Navy to increase the
number of Aegis BMD-capable ships from the 21 today, to 27
by 2012, to 38 ships by 2015, and as many as 60 ships by
2024, in addition to "Aegis Ashore." Concurrently, U.S.
friends and allies continue Aegis shipbuilding as well as
Aegis BMD installations. The United States will deploy SM-3
interceptors using the sea-based Aegis BMD system, and then
deploy improved SM-3s in 2015 on both ships and land as part
of the PAA. "Aegis Ashore" will deploy dozens of SM-3
missiles at shore sites, with more onboard Navy BMD ships.
No one system can perform the entire gamut of ballistic
missile defense missions, but it is undeniable that Aegis
BMD has become a key pillar of the U.S. national BMDS. The
system has earned this position through proven performance
and processes, a fact Dr. Carafano missed.
JAMES JAY CARAFANO REPLIES
Dr. James Jay Carafano is the Deputy Director of The Kathryn
and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies
and is Director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for
Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
Captain George V. Galdorisi and Dr. Scott C. Truver's
critique of my April 2011 commentary "Resetting Missile
Defenses" wrongly interprets my criticism of the Obama
Administration's Phased Adaptive Approach (PAA) for missile
defense as an attack on the Aegis-based missile defense
program. The PAA is much broader than the Aegis program and
includes a variety of errors of both commission and
omission. I recognize that Aegis is making the fastest
progress of all the U.S. ballistic missile defense systems,
especially in the view of the most recent successful
"launch-on-remote" test against an intermediate-range target
missile.
In my view, the PAA needlessly holds back the progress on
the broader missile defense program, including to a lesser
degree the Aegis ballistic missile defense system. Starting
with the broader program, the Obama Administration's policy
is to subordinate missile defense to its arms control
agenda. This was made clear by its successful fight against
a proposed amendment in the Senate to the New START arms
control treaty with Russia to strip out of the treaty's
preamble sweeping, though not precisely defined,
restrictions on missile defense. This is why the
Administration moved to terminate the so-called Third Site
missile defense deployments in the Czech Republic and
Poland. Second, the policy makes it clear that the missile
defense program will not be permitted to achieve
capabilities that would permit the intercept of Chinese and
Russian missiles. The Clinton Administration's policy to
establish such a "demarcation" in missile defense
capabilities was rejected by Congress in the 1990s for good
reason. It would have required "dumbing down" missile
defense capabilities. Finally, the PAA omits any commitment
to deploy missile defense interceptors in space.
Turning to the Aegis program in particular, the PAA even
serves to restrict unnecessarily progress here.
Specifically, the PAA structures the Aegis missile defense
program so that the system will not achieve a capability to
counter long-range missiles until 2020. This is because it
seeks to provide this capability only with the deployment of
the untested Block II-B version of the Standard Missile 3.
It is not necessary to wait for the deployment of the Block
II-B. With a number of narrow modifications, including in
command and control arrangements and systems, the tested
Block I-A version of the interceptor could be demonstrated
to perform intercepts against long-range missiles long
before 2020.
The fact is that I am strongly committed to making the Aegis
missile defense program as effective as possible as soon as
possible. This commitment, however, is in no way
inconsistent with a missile defense policy that permits more
rapid advancements than the Obama Administration's PAA. This
includes the simultaneous pursuit of ground-based and space-
based systems.
----------------------------------------------------------
Copyright Foreign Policy Research Institute
(http://www.fpri.org/).
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