To Kill or not to Kill

Back in 2008, US Pacific Command scored big when they knocked down a decaying US satellite with a sea-launched interceptor. Now ABC reports that CINCPAC, Adm. Timothy Keating, is ready to break out the flyswatter again -- this time under operational conditions.

In an exclusive interview with ABC News' Martha Raddatz, Adm. Timothy Keating, head of the U.S. Pacific Commands, said that the military is prepared to shoot down any North Korean ballistic missile -- if President Obama should give the order.

If a missile leaves the launch pad we'll be prepared to respond upon direction of the president," Keating told ABC News. "I'm not a betting man but I'd go like 60/40, 70/30 that it will, they will attempt to launch a satellite. There's equipment moving up there that would indicate the preliminary stages of preparation for a launch. So I'd say it's more than less likely."

With plenty of Aegis assets floating around the ring of fire, ground-based interceptors at Vandenberg AFB, CA and Alaska, and a whole mess of radars that put Superman's x-ray vision to shame.... there's no doubt we could pull this off. But, like with all things defense, the question is whether or not we should.

Sure, the idea might appeal to those of us whose responsibility for national security and statecraft stop at the "publish" button on our blogs -- watching the Norks hopes for both a space program and a credible nuclear deterrent dissipate in a cloud of interceptor smoke sure to hell appeals to me-- but what about the State department wonks who are responsible for turning off the North Korean nuclear program? What happens if the North Koreans step up raids along their borders, seize an American ship, or send nuclear scientists and supplies to Iran -- or Syria?

The North Koreans are, by nature, aggressive creatures. But that doesn't mean they're stupid. In the fifty plus years since the ceasefire, they've frequently pushed us right up to our absolute, no shit limit, then quickly backed down. It's a strange amalgamation of diplomacy, politics, and warfare --a harsh calculus of slaps and handshakes- that the Norks have mastered in their half-century of dealing with the West.

In other words, Kim Jong Il is damned good at being a gigantic pain in the ass.

So do we provoke him? Is it necessary? Does the benefit outweigh potential cost? I venture a cautious yes (let our new CiC play a little hardball), but what say you?

--John Noonan

I'm Not a Laser Expert but I Do Play One on TV

Can you say "intercontinental"? I can't . . .

-- Ward

Eh, Our Bad

Been quite a year for Minot AFB...

Truck carrying missile booster tips in N.D.

A military transport vehicle carrying an unarmed Minuteman III booster tipped over Thursday morning on its way to a 91st Missile Wing launch facility at Minot Air Force Base, N.D.

Early reports show the vehicle tipped over on the gravel access road after the road gave out under the truck, according to an Air Force official. The accident occurred between the sparsely populated towns of Makoti and Parshall, N.D., about 70 miles southwest of Minot, right off County Road 24.

“They are still investigating now but we know there is no danger to the public and no nuclear materials were onboard the vehicle at the time of the accident,” said Maj. Laurie Arellano, an Air Force Space Command spokeswoman.

The standard firings usually ensue after public kerfuffles with nukes. But at this point, I'm not sure there's anyone left at Minot to fire...

--John Noonan

Another Missile Defense Success (yawn...)

Isn’t it funny how news like this is greeted with a collective yawn from most of the media?

It’s another example of what they call in the journalism world a “dog bites man” event.

Boeing announced this weekend a successful intercept of a ballistic missile in space of its mission representative exo-atmospheric kill vehicle. In the past, there would have been much made of this successful test, but now, it’s only news of a test fails – the “man bites dog” event.

The test of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system began at 4:01 p.m. Eastern when a long-range ballistic missile target lifted off from the Kodiak Launch Complex in Alaska. Seventeen minutes later, military operators launched an interceptor from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. As the interceptor flew toward the target, it received target data updates from the upgraded missile-warning radar at Beale Air Force Base, Calif. After flying into space, the interceptor released its exoatmospheric kill vehicle, which proceeded to track, intercept and destroy the target warhead.

The test, GMD's seventh intercept overall, was the second intercept with an operationally configured interceptor since September 2006.

WATCH THE MISSILE TEST VIDEO...

“With another intercept under our belts, we have even greater confidence that the GMD system, if called upon in a real-world scenario, will defend the nation against a limited ballistic missile attack," said Scott Fancher, Boeing vice president and program director for GMD. The Boeing-led test was highly complex, involving a wide range of assets, including the Sea-Based X-Band Radar (SBX). SBX, a powerful new sea-based sensor developed by Boeing, tracked the target missile to prepare for the next GMD flight test, which will see SBX provide target updates to an in-flight interceptor for the first time.

I guess it’s an example of how far the missile defense debate has come. It’s no longer about whether you can “hit a bullet with a bullet,” as opponents used to say, was impossible. Now the debate is more about whether a radar in the Czech Republic will alienate the increasingly paranoid Russian government.

GMD defends the nation against a limited number of long-range ballistic missiles, with interceptors deployed in underground silos at Vandenberg and Ft. Greely, Alaska. An integral element of the global ballistic missile defense system, GMD also consists of radars, other sensors, command-and-control facilities, communications terminals and a 20,000-mile fiber optic communications network. The U.S. government has announced plans to extend this capability to Europe.

Yes it has been expensive. Yes it’s been a long time coming. Yes there are many more hurdles to overcome. But the fact that this story gained little traction, is an even louder endorsement of the system than the actual space kill.

-- Christian

More Tomahawks May Fly

The continued problems being encountered in flight tests of the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) could lead to resurrection of the air-launched Tomahawk missile. The JASSM -- designated AGM-158 -- was initiated in 1995 following cancellation of the Tri-Service Standoff Attack Missile (TSSAM) because of massive cost increases.

The Lockheed Martin AGM-158 had won out in competition with the McDonnell Douglas AGM-159 design. Procurement of the Lockheed Martin JASSM began in December 2001 with the missile intended for use on the F-15 Eagle, F-16 Fighting Falcon, F/A-18 Hornet, and F-35 Lightning II (Joint Strike Fighter) as well as on the B-1B, B-2A, and B-52H Stratofortress strategic bombers.

Some 600 JASSMs have been produced, but testing continues to indicate poor reliability. During tests launches from December 2006 to April 2007, the Air Force reported a system reliability of only 58 percent. Coupled with increased costs, this reliability factor has led Department of Defense officials to question the efficacy of the program, even at this late date.

The TSSAM cancellation -- and other never-completed air-launched programs, including the Medium-Range Air-to-Surface Missile (MRASM), which was based on the Tomahawk missile -- has led some weapon experts to believe that initiation of a new air-launched attack weapon of this type is beyond the near-term capabilities of the U.S. defense industry.

In this environment, the Air Force and Navy may be required to take another look at the Tomahawk cruise missile as a successor to the JASSM. The Tomahawk has been operational in U.S. surface ships since 1982 and submarines since 1983. Beginning with the Gulf War of 1991, the Tomahawk has a demonstrated a high effectiveness. During the 1991 conflict U.S. submarines launched 12 land-attack variants and U.S. surface ships launched 276. They had a launch success rate with transition to cruise flight of 98 percent, with a higher-than-predicted accuracy.

The General Dynamics Tomahawk was originally developed as a nuclear strike weapon, but all missiles carrying the W80 nuclear warhead have now been retired, as have the anti-ship missiles with conventional 1,000-pound warheads. The submarine-launched (UGM-109) and ship-launched (BGM-109) weapons in the fleet today are Tomahawk Land-Attack Missiles (TLAM). They carry several warheads and have undergone continued updates of engines and guidance. The large number of missiles being procured, which are also used by Britain and will be bought by Spain, have led to additional production by Raytheon and McDonnell Douglas.

Two proposed Tomahawk variants were not deployed, the Ground Launched Cruise Missile (GLCM) --named Gryphon -- which was cancelled because of the U.S.-Soviet Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) agreement, and the AGM-109 air-launched Tomahawk. The latter weapon was flight tested from A-6 Intruder aircraft.

Should the JASSM effort be terminated, a prime candidate for the long-range, air-to-ground missile role will thus be a modification of the latest Tomahawk variants.

-- Norman Polmar

Russia's New BMD-Beater

Russia recently launched a new Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) capable of carrying Multiple Independently targeted Re-entry Vehicle (MIRV) warheads, ostensibly intended to penetrate the U.S. ballistic missile defense system. The improved Topol-M missile launched on 29 May was fired from a mobile launcher at the Plesetsk launch site in northwestern Russia. Its test warhead was reported to have landed on target about 3,400 miles down range on the Far Eastern Kamchatka Peninsula.

The TOPOL-M - given the Soviet designation RS-24 and the NATO designation SS-27 - also has a submarine-launched variant known as the Bulava (NATO SS-N-30).The naval missile will be carried by the new submarines of the Borey class. Statements from Russian officials indicate that the Topol-M and Bulava are being upgraded with new warheads and other countermeasures (probably decoys) to counter the U.S. ballistic missile defense system now being deployed. If these missiles are specifically intended to overcome U.S. defenses, their warheads can be expected to have maneuvering re-entry vehicles, called MaRVs in the strategic lexicon.

MaRV warheads were developed by the United States during the Cold War in response to Soviet ballistic missile defenses, but were never installed on ICBMs.

The original land-based Topol-M missile was deployed in small numbers, probably because of technical problems and large cost overruns. The first Topol-Ms were placed in service in 1997. The land-based Topol-M now appears to be in production to replace obsolete (and questionably reliable) fixed-silo ICBMs left over from mid-Cold War era and eventually the SS-25, the Soviet-era’s first generation land-mobile ICBM.

Similarly, the submarine-launched Bulava is apparently planned to replace the outdated missiles in the Soviet-era Delta IV class that remain in Russian service. The Topol was adopted for submarine use following cancellation of a new missile, the SS-NX-28, that apparently suffered massive technical problems.

President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that Russia would continue to improve its nuclear weapons systems and respond to U.S. plans to deploy a missile defense system in Europe. Following the ICBM test on 29 May, Russian news agencies reported First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov saying that the ICBM, as well as a tactical cruise missile that also was tested that day, can penetrate any missile defense system.

"As of today, Russia has new [missiles] that are capable of overcoming any existing or future missile defense systems," ITAR-Tass quoted Ivanov. "So in terms of defense and security, Russian can look calmly to the country's future."

Ivanov is a former defense minister seen as a potential candidate to succeed Putin in next year’s national elections.

-- Norman Polmar

The JASSM Spasm

Lockheed Martin, which builds the Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile, had some disappointing results during a test last week that raised even more difficult questions about the ongoing development program.

(Photo from Lockheed Martin)

From the Orlando Sentinel:

Last week, the company confirmed that "anomalies were experienced" in four JASSM tests conducted at a missile range in Utah in early May.

Lockheed would not provide details or speculate on the cause, citing an ongoing inquiry into what went wrong.

Three missiles apparently missed the target area entirely and one hit pay dirt but failed to detonate properly.

"If you're a JASSM supporter, this could not have come out at a worse time," noted Christopher Hellman, a defense analyst for the Center for Arms Control & Non-Proliferation, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

Cost overruns have already put the program on the Pentagon's "problem child" list: Last month, military officials included JASSM among eight weapons programs that were running as much as 50 percent over original cost projections.

Those Nunn-McCurdy violations, as they're called, require the Pentagon to notify Congress of the excessive cost-overruns, which could lead to the programs being canceled…

…The cost overruns were "triggered by a variety of factors," including the addition of an extended-range version of the missile, which more than doubled the number of missiles to be bought, Lockheed said.

This is what happens when you combine a low-cost ($400k/missile) weapon with high-cost requirements (stealth, standoff, precision guidance). The Air Force has to learn that they can't wage precision warfare on the cheap and also expect to buy high reliability.

There are two ironies in this situation:

1) JASSM used to be the poster-child for the late-1990s version of acquisition reform, which also gave us the now-discredited C-130J commercial contract and, (drum-roll ...) the scandal of the KC-X tanker lease deal.

2) The JASSM program was launched after the Tri-Service Standoff Attack Missile, or TSSAM, was cancelled because of its (drum-roll...) high-cost.

It's also become evident that the baseline JASSM missile's 250-mile-or-so range means that the launching aircraft must come within the engagement zone of the S400 surface-to-air missile system, meaning that the act of launching the missile may become something of a suicide mission for the lucky pilot.

The S400 is the latest version of Russia's robust SAM technology.

The JASSM-ER is necessary to ensure that a strike on a target protected by the S400 is a success.

That doesn't mean the JASSM is useless, but merely limited -- in addition to having what appears to be a chronic reliability problem.

-- Stephen Trimble

Navy Missile Intercept

The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency tested a key leg in its missile shield triad yesterday, shooting down both a sub-sonic cruise missile in the atmosphere and a ballistic missile in space with a ship-based interceptor.

To say the least, missile defense has been extremely controversial over the years, and it is a subject of heated debate over whether the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on systems over the years have been worth the cost.

But it is worth chalking up this test in the win column for the embattled agency.

From a Raytheon release:

In a first of its kind dual missile defense test, Raytheon Company-produced Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) and Standard Missile-2 (SM-2) simultaneously engaged targets over the Pacific Ocean.

This was the first time a U.S. Navy ship demonstrated simultaneous ship engagements against both cruise and ballistic missile targets. It was the eighth successful intercept for the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system’s SM-3.

The SM-3 Block IA destroyed a short-range ballistic missile target in space while SM-2 Block IIIA engaged a cruise missile threat at a lower altitude. Both intercepting missiles were fired from guided missile cruiser USS Lake Erie (CG 70) by the ship’s crew. The ballistic missile target was launched from the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai. The subsonic cruise missile target was launched from a range aircraft.

…This test, Flight Test Mission-11, was the second with the Block IA version of SM-3, and the first IA with a full-capability solid divert and attitude control system. Raytheon is delivering Block IA rounds for operational use on Navy cruisers and destroyers.

The SM-3 Block IA provides increased capability to engage short- to intermediate-range ballistic missiles. The SM-3 Block IA incorporates rocket motor upgrades and computer program modifications to improve sensor performance, missile guidance and control, and lower cost. It also includes producibility and maintainability features required to qualify the missile as a tactical fleet asset.

It’s definately worth noting the complexity of such a test. Two different kinds of missile threats, tracked by the Aegis radar system that was feeding information to two different interceptors - each with its own seeker technology - to a terminal kill. Experts on both sides of the debate recognize the sterility of such tests. In the real world, adversaries might incorporate decoys and other defenses to keep their missiles from being shot down.

But, despite the incredible costs, it’s important to remember that well-meaning people are hard at work trying to solve a problem – and a threat – that has so far kept most nations helpless to confront militarily.

(Gouge: MS)

-- Christian

Just Another Day on the Big Blue Ball

See if you can figure out what makes this particular capture at Google Earth noteworty to the Defense Tech audience.

What is it?

Where is it?

Why would it be there?

(Gouge: CM)

-- Ward

Copters' Missile Threat (and How to Stop it)

We do not have any direct evidence that insurgents in Iraq are using advanced surface-to-air missiles (sometimes called MANPADS – from MAN-portable Air Defense System); just best guesses, for now. But with the loss of five (and maybe even six or seven) helicopters in quick succession -- and an insurgent video apparently showing the latest loss to be a missile casualty -- the possibility needs to be considered.

Early MANPADS like the Russian SA-7 are fairly primitive, homing in on exhaust heat. As they steer towards the hottest object in their field of view, they can easily be lured away by decoy flares (or even the sun).

With more advanced missiles, it becomes a game of cat and mouse between the electronics in the missile seeker head and the countermeasures seeking to confuse it. Advanced seekers can not only discriminate flares from engines, but they can be smart enough to home in on the source of the flares. Advanced laser-based countermeasures like CLIRCM do not blind or dazzle seekers as is sometime supposed, but produce a signal which generates false targets and sends the missile off course.

Some missile makers claim that their seekers can beat all known countermeasures; some countermeasures manufacturers claim to be able to defeat all known missiles.

Certainly better missiles need better countermeasures. It's interesting that the proposed defenses for civilian airliners against terrorist MANPADS only goes up to the level of Stinger Basic, a technology now 20 years old.

Earlier missiles were intended to get close enough to have some chance of damaging an aircraft with shrapnel; modern warheads are contact fuzed, indicating that they are expected to actually hit the target. And hit in a specific place: the missile can discriminate between single-engine, multi-engine aircraft and helicopters and select the optimum point of vulnerability. The recent models are designed to send a dense pattern of high-speed fragments through the target for maximum damage, and the explosion may be enhanced by fuzing which detonates any unused fuel. Their destructive power is formidable.

This leads to last-ditch defenses like aim-point biasing, relatively cheap countermeasures (compared to the multi-million dollar laser jammers) to get the warhead to strike the less flight-critical parts of a helicopter and make the difference between a hit that results in a hard landing and one that destroys the helicopter completely.

Another way of dealing with the threat is to gets the MANPADS first. While Rules of Engagement are unlikely to be changed to alow helicopters to open fire at will, the AirCrcaft CounterMeasures (ACCM) laser provides one option. This is a laser dazzler fitted to helicopters to illuminate potential threats on the ground. The laser makes it much harder to target a helicopter, but more significantly the reaction of the person targeted gives a clue as to whether they are an insurgent getting ready to fire or an innocent civilian.

Another new approach, Ares notes, is DARPA's Battlefield Helicopter Emulator, an expendable decoy drone which produces the same noise and heat signature as a real helicopter. It may seem like an expensive option -- but losing helicopters is a far more costly prospect.

Helicopters operate at low speed and low altitude, making them especially vulnerable to MANPADS. Heavy armor is not an option except for attack choppers like the AH-64 Apache; transport, utility and scout craft carry much lighter protection. And in Afghanistan, even the Soviets' armored Mil-24 Hind gunships proved vulnerable to Stinger MANPADS.

The situation in Iraq has its parallels with the conflict then. The main importance of new missiles would not be in shooting down helicopters, but on the morale of both sides. The Mujahideen took new heart that the previously invincible ‘Devils Chariot’ could be defeated. Soviet helicopter crews found themselves facing an opponent who could shoot back, and were forced to adopt more evasive tactics which limited their effectiveness.

A similar decrease in effectiveness could happen in Baghdad.

"Based on what we have seen, we're already making adjustments in our tactics and techniques and procedures as to how we employ our helicopters," Maj. Gen. William Caldwell was reported as saying earlier.

Previously, US helicopter cover has prevented insurgents from operating from rooftops. If exposing helicopters becomes too risky, then that cover will be more limited. In this way, just a handful of MANPADS could have a significant impact on the ground battles. Which makes the timing of these latest helicopter losses -- just before the surge of US troops arrives for a make-or-break operation in Baghdad -- highly significant.

(My thanks to Jim O'Halloran, editor of the authoritative Jane’s Land Based Air Defence for providing an insider view on this topic.)

-- David Hambling

Giant Blimp Deflated; Laser Jet Delayed

The big weapons -- the destroyers, the aircraft carriers, and the stealth jets -- all emerged pretty much unscathed in the Pentagon's latest budget. Some of the more bleeding-edge projects weren't so lucky. Especially at the Missile Defense Agency, which took about a half-billion dollar hit for fiscal year 2008.

Take the High-Altitude Airship, for instance. Just a year ago, the Pentagon handed Lockheed a $150 million contract to build the missile-spotting dirigible. No, it wouldn't be 25 times bigger than the Goodyear Blimp, as originally planned. Nor would it be powered by lasers. But it would still be built to "hover above the jet stream at an altitude of 65,000 feet for months at a time." That is, if major advances in solar panels, fuel cells, aerodynamic controls, and flexible materials could be overcome.

Lockheed won't get the chance any time soon, however. The High Altitude Airship "has been canceled due to funding constraints," according to the Missile Defense Agency. But get too distraught, blimp-lovers; the budget for the Aerostat Joint Program Office just jumped from $243 million to $481 mil.

The Airborne Laser -- the modified 747, meant to zap missiles as they take off -- still gets more than $500 million in the new budget. But its first live-fire test has been delayed, again. Originally scheduled for 2002, the blast has now been rescheduled for 2009, Inside Defense notes. The Laser Jet's alternative -- the "Kinetic Energy Interceptor," a non-explosive interceptor missile -- has been pared back, as well. There's no longer a "kill vehicle," or warhead, part to the program, Defense News observes. Instead, the KEI has been tweaked, to become a "common booster" for all sorts of missile interceptions.

There's much, much, much more in this budget to explore. Expect lots of posts in the week to come.

Iran's Super Missile Will Defeat Great Satan, Steal Your Girlfriend

There was an AP story the other day that parroted some hilarious Iranian claims about the capability of their missiles :

Stressing Iran's preparedness, state television said the Revolutionary Guards planned to begin three days of testing the short-range Zalzal and Fajr-5 missiles Sunday. It could not be confirmed if the exercise had begun near Garmsar city, about 60 miles southeast of Tehran.

"The maneuver is aimed at evaluating defensive and fighting capabilities of the missiles," the report quoted an unidentified Guards commander as saying.

Last year, Iran held three large-scale military exercises to test what it called an "ultra-horizon" missile and the Fajr-3, a rocket that it claims can evade radar and use multiple warheads to hit several targets simultaneously. (emphasis mine)

When I first read this, I practically fell out of my chair laughing. For those unacquainted with the Fajr-3, it is spin-stabilized artillery rocket based with a range of about 50 miles. It is typically fired out of tubes mounted on the back of a truck, similar to the classic Katyusha. Iranian generals have tried to pass off the Fajr family of rockets off as some sort of medium range ballistic miracle before, which I imagine was greeted with a healthy amount of skepticism.

The only way an unguided rocket like the Fajr could avoid radar is if it was fired in a really low arc. The efficacy of this option is very limited, however, because it drastically reduces the rocket's range. The MIRV is just silly. The only way that rocket is going to strike a target in multiple times is if it breaks up in mid-air.

By the way, the Fajr also provides a excellent case of why Wikipedia isn't always the greatest source of information. Some poor sap named ArmanJan created a profile for a Fajr-3 ballistic missile based on the erroneous San Diego Trib article I linked to. Check out the discussion page for lots of great back and forth between him and the heroes that defend Wikipedia's veracity on a daily basis.

If that wasn't enough to crack a smile on your face, just look at how inconsistent the AP story is with a CBS.com story on the same subject:

The Iranian military on Monday began five days of maneuvers near the northern city of Garmsar, about 62 miles southeast of Tehran, state television reported. The military tested its Zalzal-1 and Fajr-5 missiles, the TV reported.

The Zalzal-1, able to carry a 1,200-pound payload, has a range of 200 miles, making it able to hit anywhere in Iraq or U.S. bases in the Gulf as well as into eastern Saudi Arabia. The Fajr-5, with a 1,800-pound payload, has a range of 35 miles.

Neither could reach Israel, but Iran is known to have missiles that can. It is not known if either missile tested Monday is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. (again, emphasis added)

To quote Donald Rumsfeld, "Oh my goodness gracious." 1,800 pound payload? I think I will go with Globalsecurity.org and the Nuclear Threat Initiative's more conservative payload estimate of 90 kilograms (about 200 pounds).

As for the nuclear question, I think that even 1,200 pounds is a bit light for basic gun-type payload. We managed to get our kiloton W9 and W19 nuclear artillery shells down to 850 and 600 pounds, respectively, but I don't know if the Iranians are anywhere near that level of technical prowess yet.

- Crossposted from Robot Economist's blog The Arms Control Otaku

UPDATE 11:33 AM: Now the Mullahs are claiming they've got a hand-launched UAV, too.

“Researchers in this company have for the first time designed and built four-kilo (nine-pound) hand-launched aircraft,” Rasool Peyghambari, director of aeronautics company Asr-e Talai Factories told the ISNA news agency.

“These aircraft are unique in the country and they are as good as the best and most efficient ones internationally,” he said, adding “we prefer to display its capabilities after operational tests”.

This isn't really my areas of expertise. But Armscontrol.ru has a extended article on Iranian drones, with pictures and data. Needless to say, I don't think they can compete with our snappy F-22 Raptor RC plane, let alone the RQ-11 Raven UAV.

UPDATE 11:433 AM:Check out Jane Vaynman's take on the trouble brewing for Iran's psycho president.

Good Luck Stopping Missiles Early

"I have to say that it is the ugliest aircraft I have ever seen."

That's what Missile Defense Agency director Lieutenant General Trey Obering said when he laid eyes on the Airborne Laser at a rollout ceremony in October.

I'm not one of those guys that swoons in front of aircraft. But I were, I guess I'd agree, with the modified 747's turrets and antennae and protrusions. But the Airborne Laser isn't mean to win beauty contests. It's being to blast ballistic missiles -- using a chemically-powered, megawatt-class laser -- as they're first climbing into the sky. That's when missiles are slowest and most vulnerable.

This is called boost-phase intercept. Mid-course intercept is up to the Navy's SM-3 missile and the Ground-Based Interceptors based in California and Alaska. Terminal interception -- right before the suckers hit -- is left to Army Patriot missiles, Navy SM-2s and the Army's forthcoming Terminal High-Altitude Air Defense missile, or THAAD. It takes defenses in all three phases to make a fully-functioning missile shield.

The boost-phase intercept is the hardest. There's just a short window before a missile accelerates, noses over, deploys decoys and gets a lot harder to kill. Some folks in the military think the job is so difficult, we shouldn't even bother, going with "pre-boost phase" defense instead -- blowing up the missiles before they ever get off the launching pad, with lightning-quick attacks. But with three Airborne Laser jets, you could maintain a 24-hour orbit near a launch area and zap the missiles mere seconds after launch. Theoretically.

Problem is, the 747's chemical laser and delicate sensors don't quite work yet, despite about a zillion tests, and planning going back the Reagan Administration. The first was supposed to enter service in 2002, then 2005. Now, the target date has been pushed back at least until 2009, and further production is on hold. Obering says he hasn't lost hope -- yet. "Airborne Laser, if it pans out, is very capable," he said at the Surface Navy Symposium, held yesterday in Crystal City near Washington, D.C. "[It is] our primary boost-phase program -- but it's a high-risk program. If it doesn't pan out, we [still] need a boost-phase capability."

So Obering has a back-up... sorta. It's called the Kinetic Energy Interceptor, a fancy name for a "hit-to-kill" (no explosion) long-range missile. Obering figures it will launch from ground silos or from the Navy's projected CG(X) missile cruiser. The general prefers the latter. "I'm a big believer in a more mobile capability. An increased emphasis on seabasing ... is important."

But the Kinetic Energy Interceptor exists mostly on paper, and couldn't be operational before 2014. So too the CG(X), which is still in the study phase. It's supposed to be based on the $2-billion DDG-1000, itself clinging to life after a series of cutbacks. A theoretical missile on a theoretical cruiser is hardly a confidence-inspiring alternative to the finicky flying chemical bomb that is the Airborne Laser.

But nobody's got a better idea.

UPDATE 12:10 PM: "Besides the [Airborne Laser's] technical difficulties, of which there are many, I don't think that MDA [the Missile Defense Agency] has even begun to address how one could realistically try to use ABL in an operational setting," adds missile defense analyst Victoria Samson.

One justification for the ABL is that it's better than other types of interceptors because it can continually shoot at a target until the threat is gone - unlike others, which would have to shoot-look-shoot. However, that doesn't take into consideration the logistics of how one would continually shoot the ABL. That's a heavy requirement of your chemicals. How much do you need for one shot? For two? For five minutes' worth? And how would the aircraft fly with that type of dangerous load on-board?

Missile Radar Still Adrift

CBS News took a peek last night at our favorite giant golf ball, er, missile defense radar.

With documents obtained by the Project on Government Oversight the CBS News Investigative Unit found a host of issues with the Sea-Based X-Band Radar — SBX for short — that still remain unresolved, just ahead of its activation in the waters off Adak Island, Alaska.

- Beyond questions raised in our CBS Evening News story about plans to stick it in some of the most unforgiving weather in the world, if the SBX has a single point of failure, according to sources within Missile Defense, it is The Dove. The Dove is the large support vessel, 279 feet long, which travels with the SBX, delivers personnel, supplies and fuel to the radar platform. Though the SBX has a helicopter platform, military and Coast Guard helicopters won’t land there. So the SBX uses a single crane to lift people and material off the Dove. According to the Coast Guard letter obtained by CBS News, there are regularly waves as high as 30 feet many days out of the year. There are concerns that the Dove will not be able to maneuver close enough to the SBX to re-supply without colliding or injuring crew men in those conditions.

Other potential problems include:

-Fuel spills: the Dove carries 600,000 gallons of diesel fuel and the SBX carries 1.2 million gallons. If both vessels spilled their fuel in the pristine waters off Adak Island, it would be the second largest fuel spill in Alaskan history. Second only to the Exxon Valdez. How likely is a fuel spill? According to incident reports obtained by the Investigative Unit, the Dove spilled 3-5 gallons of diesel during fueling operations on December 9th. It happened near Hawaii and the system was shut down when crewmembers saw a growing oil slick. That’s not a lot of fuel by Exxon Valdez standards but the spill occurred in ocean conditions with 12-foot swells, relatively calm compared to conditions in the Bering Sea.

-Security: As a source within the Missile Defense Agency said, “Trying to defend a billion dollar asset with rifles, shotguns and 50 cals is ridiculous.” The SBX will be protected around the clock by about a dozen lightly armed security contractors. Can the SBX defend itself from a direct attack by a bomb-laden boat?

Pentagon Plan: Hit Anywhere on Earth, in an Hour

I've had sources ask to meet me in some pretty odd places. But there was one meeting last year that had to be just about the strangest request yet. It wasn't just that this very-recently retired Defense Department strategist wanted to meet at the Pentagon City Mall -- that's a pretty common place to grab an off-the-record cup o' joe. It was where in the mall he had in mind: at the Nordstrom's coffee shop, tucked all the way in the far reaches of the store, just past the little kid's clothes section.

So I walk past the rows of toddlers' jumpers, past the blue-haired ladies ordering around their grandkids. I sit down with my source. And he begins to tell me about a Pentagon plan that's even odder that the place where we're meeting.

Here's the goal, as another source -- U.S. Strategic Command's deputy commander, Lt. Gen. C. Robert Kehler -- later told me on-the-record: "strike virtually anywhere on the face of the Earth within 60 minutes."

Sounds... ummm, ambitious, right? So how do you pull off that kind of mission, now known as "Prompt Global Strike?" Well, that's the subject of my cover story in this month's Popular Mechanics.

Now, of course, the American military has weapons that can destroy just about anything on the planet in a matter of minutes: nuclear missiles. Which might have been the right answer for containing our Soviet adversaries. But as the Cold War receded into memory, U.S. strategists began to worry that our nuclear threat was no longer credible. That we were too muscle-bound for our own good. Were we really prepared to wipe out Tehran in retribution for a single terrorist attack? Kill millions of Chinese for invading Taiwan? Of course not. The weaker our enemies grew, the less ominous our arsenal became. Military theorists called it "self-deterrence." "In today's environment, we've got zeros and ones. You can decide to engage with nuclear weapons, or not," Navy Capt. Terry Benedict told me. "The nation's leadership needs an intermediate step – to take the action required, without crossing to the one."

Benedict's option -- one of two I explore in the article -- is Trident ballistic missiles, armed with conventional warheads instead of nukes. For lots of good reasons (like the better-than-average chance the missiles could start World War III) Congress has negged the idea. But, in the military establishment, there's still a great deal of interest in using ballistic missiles for the hour-or-less mission. How exactly the nuclear holocaust issue is supposed to be resolved is, at this point, unclear.

Which brings us to option #2. It's a long-term play. And a long-shot, too. The military's research divisions are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into exotic, high-speed weapons like the X-51 hypersonic cruise missile, illustrated on the cover. If it works out as planned, the X-51 will go Mach 5 (roughly 3600 mph) -- much, much faster than any equivalent in the U.S. arsenal. Some Pentagon planners see the X-51 as part of a suite of futuristic weapons that can almost-instantly threaten American adversaries everywhere, without threatening the entire planet in the process. But it's way off in the distance; the X-51's first test flight isn't until 2008. I'm expecting several more trips to Nordstrom's Cafe before then.

UPDATE 11:40 AM: If you want to learn how the Prompt Global Strike concept got started -- and how it's being put into early development, today -- I strongly recommend this chronology, from the Federation of American Scientists' Hans Kristensen.

R.I.P.: Conventional Trident

This month's Proceedings magazine is chock-full of techy goodness, including an in-depth essay by naval expert Norman Polmar on the recently defunct plan to put conventional warheads atop Trident D5 Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles.

(For the record, Congress effectively killed the conventional Trident by zeroing funding in the FY 2007 budget.)

The most common criticism of this plan to arm each of the Navy's 14 boomer subs (SSBNs) with two conventional missiles -- alongside 22 nuclear missiles -- is that foreign powers might mistake the launch of a conventional missile for a nuclear one, and might respond with a nuke of their own. In short, the conventional Trident was a diplomatic nightmare.

But there are other flaws, as Polmar points out in his article, which is unfortunately not available online:

Following a Trident SLBM launch, the missile's third-stage booster, weighing several thousand pounds, will fall to earth. This concern could greatly inhibit conventional SLBM launch locations with trajectories over friendly or neutral territory.

There's more:

Perhaps one-half of the Navy's 14 Trident submarines are at sea at any given time -- about seven submarines world-wide. ... The number of SSBNs available to cover such terrorist-threat areas as the Middle East and North Africa with conventional Tridents would be limited.

Polmar proposes that outfitting the Navy's 100-plus attack subs, destroyers and cruisers with faster cruise missiles would more than take the place of conventional Tridents -- and do so with fewer diplomatic complications.

The Navy is already on it, moving ahead with its RATTLRS hypersonic cruise missile, which will also come in air-launched models.

--David Axe

Airport Defense: Lasers, Microwaves

Cheap, low-tech, easy-to-use, and utterly lethal, shoulder-fired missiles have become a terrorist weapon of choice, killing more than 640 people in 35 attacks on civilian jets. And so far, countermeasures have proven too finicky and too expensive to widely deploy. So the Department of Homeland Security is trying out instead a pair of new defenses, seemingly straight of science fiction: laser guns and microwave blasters.

The Department will spend $4.1 million to test out Raytheon's "Vigilant Eagle" system, which relies a series of microwave pulses to throw off a missile's guidance package. A series of passive infrared trackers, installed around an airport, would look out for missile exhaust. When these sensors detect a launch, data about the missile's trajectory is sent to a control center, which in turn tells a billboard-size microwave array where to blast.

How exactly this is done without disrupting a plane's avionics system has never been fully explained to me. Which may be why DHS is also sinking nearly $2 million into a study of Northrop Grumman's laser-based, "SkyGuard" defense, as well.

The system is a modification of the company's Tactical High Energy Laser, which successfully blasted dozens of Katyusha rockets and mortars out of the air during military testing. The laser, powered by vats of toxic chemicals, was considered too cumbersome for battlefield use. A permanent set-up an airport might be a different story, however.

DHS has spent nearly four years and $239 million to adapt the military's series of countermeasures to civilian jets. But most commercial carriers have been unwilling to pay for the systems, which could cost $50 billion over ten years to install and maintain. So far, Fedex is the only big flier to invest heavily in the defenses, agreeing to outfit 11 of its planes with the countermeasures.

Ground-based systems -- even ones based on ray guns -- might prove more palatable to the airline industry. Sure, the technology is less proven than the jet-based defenses. But eventually, the microwave and laser blasters could prove "more reliable," Daniel Goure, vice president of the Lexington Institute, tells Bloomberg News. "It is easier to be on the ground where you can have an infinite power supply. Aircraft are only vulnerable below a certain altitude, when they are taking off and landing. For most airports you can place them on towers where you can cover landing and takeoff routes."

Raytheon and Northrop have 18 months to prove their futuristic systems are ready to handle the job.

UPDATE 4:18 PM: In case you're wondering -- no, this is not the 300-oven death ray.

(Big ups: CP)

Eyeing China's Missileers

Hey all, Jeffrey Lewis from Arms Control Wonk.com here. After spending a couple of days crashing at Shachtman's place in NYC, I figured I needed a crosspost to say "Thanks."

ITAR TASS reports that China test fired a DF-31 ICBM from the Taiyuan Space Launch Center:

China has carried out a regular test launch of a Dongfeng-31 intercontinental ballistic missile. Itar-Tass was told at the Russian Defence Ministry on Tuesday that "the Chinese side had notified the Russian Defence Ministry in advance about the upcoming launching of the intercontinental missile".

"The Dongfeng-31 missile was fired from the Wuzhai launch site towards the Taklimakan desert at about midnight on Monday", a Russian ministry official said. The head section of the missile, he added, flew approximately 2.5 thousand kilometres. The Russian space control facilities had tracked the missile's start and flight.

The new Chinese intercontinental ballistic missiles will be put into
service already this year. Improved longer-range Dongfeng-31A missiles are expected to be commissioned in 2007. These two types of intercontinental silo-based ballistic missiles are compact systems, which can be moved by means of tractors along general-purpose roads.

FAS has a nice summary of the DF-31 program in relation to this, probably the sixth flight test since 1999.

The Taiyuan Space Launch Center is called the Wuzhai Space and Missile Test Center by the US intelligence community for reasons that I've never understood -- the facility is NOWHERE near Wuzhai. In fact, isn't all that close to Taiyuan -- 284 km from Taiyuan City either by train or bus.

Anyway, I found the Taiyuan facility in GoogleEarth a while back, checking it against the map on the China Great Wall Industry Corporation website. You can see most of the major areas of the center, including the technology center, telemetry station (I think) and launch complex. (Mark Wade has a very nice map, too.)

If you look a little further north of the launch complex, you can see an area that is not on the map -- a some buildings and big concrete launch pads that might be a candidate (and I stress might) for bthe DF-31 area.

Just a guess, though. The facility is huge, with something like 4 launch sites and more than a dozen support areas. I've posted a 1982 DIA report on the construction of a new assembly/checkout facility on the southeast edge of the facility -- unfortunately, that area is low resolution.

So, take a look at the site -- one aspect I would like to find is China's R&D silo for the DF-5, which is at what the intelligence community called Launch Site B. I may have to zip over to the National Archives to see if there are any reports on the facility with handy maps.

-- Jeffrey Lewis

Rattlrs Strikes Fast

Cruise missiles are about to get a lot more lethal, thanks to a Navy program called Revolutionary Approach to Time-Critical Long-Range Strike, or Rattlrs. Lockheed Martin and Rolls-Royce North America have a $120-million contract to build a hypersonic missile demonstrator "with trace-ability to an eventual tactical weapon," says Craig Johnston, the Lockheed Martin program manager. First flight is slated for November 2007.

Older cruise missiles such as the Navy's sea-launched Tomahawk and the Air Force's Air-Launched Cruise Missile putter along at subsonic speeds, too slow to hit fleeting targets such as terrorist convoys. Rattlrs, by contrast, is a "near hypersonic" vehicle capable of speeds up to Mach 4. The demonstrator is aiming for a five- to 15-minute flight time. "To put that in perspective, that's on the order of a 500-mile range," Johnston says. The production version might have even longer legs.

But getting to that level of capability won't be easy.

"The challenge is to fit all of the required techs -- engine, flow-path, airframe, avionics -- into a package that is the size of a cruise missile," Johnston says.

Mach 4 speed normally requires a two-stage vehicle with a scramjet second stage. But Rattlrs is aiming for a single-stage turbine engine in order to keep the vehicle small. That means some creative engineering and materials science.

"Temperature is what drives efficiency in turbine engines," says Bob Grude, the Rolls-Royce manager. "We have some special techniques using materials called 'LAM alloys' [as well as] existing high-temperature materials, with a cooling system that allows us to operate the burner at much higher temps than normal."

Affordability is one of Rattlrs' goals, according to Johnston. "The objective on Rattlrs is an integrated system that pulls all same elements of current cruise missiles at greater than three times the speed with no premium -- to put it all into the same cost. Much of tech that is being developed, specifically in the engine area, is a careful balance between a maximum degree of expendability and [adaptability] for reusable vehicles that want to have a long lifetime."

In other words, Rattlrs won't just produce a better cruise missile; it'll feed tech into other hypersonics programs too. "We're in a sense enabling the turbine side of an eventual hypersonic solution [to several problems]," Johnston says.

Rattlrs is just one in a billion-dollar portfolio of hypersonics programs that, in the next 20 years, might revolutionize air combat, commercial air travel and space ops. The most dramatic outgrowth of these programs is the Marine Corps' squad space transport. Much more on that and other hypersonics programs later ...

-- David Axe

Score One for Missile Defense

At long last, there's some good news for the most troubled part of the ballistic missile defense system. In testing this afternoon, an interceptor launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California caught up to a target warhead, and destroyed it.

"This was the first intercept of [an] operationally-configured warhead and booster, and the first intercept overall in nearly four years," Victoria Samson, the ordinarily uber-skeptical missile defense analyst, told Defense Tech. She called the test "progress" after repeated failures in previous tests of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system to get an interceptor off of the launch pad. (Other anti-missile systems, including the shorter-range Terminal High-Altitude Air Defense and the sea-based Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense, have been performing much better.)

Interestingly, an intercept wasn't even the main goal in this trial. Instead, it was designed to gauge the system's "ability to successfully detect, track, [and] discriminate... a target in space," a Raytheon statement observed.

The system appeared to do just that. "A key radar collected target information and shared it with an operationally configured interceptor, the interceptor used that data to zero in on a target in space, and battle managers oversaw this activity in real time from thousands of miles away," added a Boeing statement. "The team is energized."

The successful test was, not, however, the "full end-to-end" demonstration that Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld said he wanted to see of the system.

"It's missing key components - the sea-based X-band radar (which was used in the test, but only for the radar's calibrations), the satellite network system needed to track the missiles (STSS), [and] threat-representative countermeasures for the target missile." Samson noted.

Most importantly, the missile defenders knew where their target was going to fly before they shot off their interceptor. The real test will come when they don't get that info beforehand.

Missile Radar M.I.A.

When you're a kid in Little League, the first lesson your coach drills into you is to keep your eye on the ball. And what works on the sandlot goes double for missile defense: the better you can see the target, the higher your chances are of hitting it.

That's why the Missile Defense Agency has been so hyped about its Sea-Based X-Band Radar, or SBX. The $815 million, 28-story, orb-like contraption has the ability, in theory, to tell which way a baseball is spinning -- from 3,000 miles away. That's the kind of vision any hitter would kill for. No wonder the SBX quickly became one of the centerpieces of the Bush Administration's revamped anti-missile strategy, after it took office.

But there's catch. In order to spot the most incoming ICBMs, the radar's converted oil rig platform has to be positioned near Alaska's Aleutian Islands -- an "unforgiving [stretch] of the Bering Sea where winter weather can be so violent that the islands have been nicknamed 'the birthplace of winds,'" the Chicago Tribune tells us. And considering how bad the SBX was roughed up during "its first long ocean voyage," in the comparatively calm waters from the Gulf of Mexico to Hawaii, that isn't inspiring a lot of faith in the system's survivability. Scheduled to leave Hawaii after repairs eight months ago, the SBX won't head out to Alaska until "at least later this fall." Needless to say, the radar will miss the next round of missile defense testing, scheduled for this week.

"That radar is absolutely packed with sensitive electronics, and... salt water, wind and waves don't go well with sensitive electronics," said Philip Coyle, who as assistant secretary of defense from 1994 to 2001 was the Clinton administration's chief weapons evaluator.

He went on: "The bottom line is that the designers of this system didn't begin to contemplate the realistic conditions under which the X-Band would have to operate. When you look at all the facts, you really have to wonder what the people who designed this thing were thinking..."

[What's] more, a recent independent assessment obtained by the Tribune lists dozens of concerns from naval and defense experts about the design and administration of the radar vessel...

Among the findings:

- The sensitive radar... is mounted atop a vessel that might need to be towed to safety in the event of rugged Alaskan seas, but its one towing bridle likely would be underwater and impossible for a rescue ship to use anytime waves reached more than 8 feet.

- Although the SBX may be hundreds of miles away from support ships, it lacks a quickly deployable rescue boat in the event of a man overboard, does not have a helicopter landing pad certified for landing the most common U.S. Coast Guard and Navy rescue helicopters, and its crews have not been trained "for heavy weather or cold-weather operations."

- And, ironically, the X-Band, considered one of the nation's foremost technologies in defending against foreign missiles, has minimal security itself. Many critics speculate that it is vulnerable to attack by enemy nations or terrorist groups.

"This is no surprise and again demonstrates MDA's [Missile Defense Agency's] stubborn refusal to accept that engineering and logistical limitations can be just as damning as anything else the weapon systems can come up against," says missile guru Victoria Samson, with the Center for Defense Information. "What with Thursday's test of the GMD [Ground-based Midcourse Defense] system, it would've been nice to see how the SBX would play in there, which it would have done - probably - if it'd made it to Adak [Alaska] last year as planned. Instead, what we're getting from the GMD tests are conjectures because there are too many placeholders to make up for the actual components which are missing."

Star Wars: The Next Generation

Get ready for a new round of "Star Wars" stories.

Within the next couple of weeks, the Missile Defense Agency is scheduled to test its national missile defense system, again. If there's a successful intercept, expect the Bush administration and its backers to talk it up as another sign the system is ready to go. But if they miss, there's an out: It's not officially an intercept test, see, so while a hit would be nice, it's not officially what they're trying to do. Missing, in other words, is perfectly OK.

Regardless, you can be sure the results will lead to the usual spate of "will Star Wars work?" coverage.

It's been more than 20 years since Ronald Reagan made his so-called Star Wars speech, kicking off his grandiose plans for a global missile defense shield that came to naught. Yet we still can't shake the Star Wars moniker for missile defense of any kind, even the shorter-range programs that bear almost no resemblance to the old Strategic Defense Initiative.

Star Wars, the name, most often crops up in attacks on the system, as in here (to use just one recent example), but it still has mainstream media cachet, too. To wit: this Aug. 15 Reuters story.

Missile defense backers have long hated the name, feeling (quite correctly) that it is a derogatory dismissal of the whole premise behind missile defense, or at least the idea that ICBMs can be shot down effectively by other missiles. It's a science fiction movie; get it?

I also think the name's insulting. To the Star Wars movies, that is. (And I'm not even a fan.)

Think about it: Star Wars was a smash hit from day one, and remains the most popular movie franchise ever. But Reagan's SDI vision was roundly decried as too far-out and too costly from the start, and those criticisms proved accurate. And while reviews may be mixed on the current crop of missile defense systems, they haven't exactly been big hits in testing.

If critics and reporters need a dismissive science fiction movie handle for missile defense, maybe they should try Star Trek. Like SDI, the original Star Trek show had an inauspicious start -- canceled in just its third season and seemingly relegated to history. Only a hard-core band of supporters kept the flame alive until movies and, later, new TV shows made it a hit again.

And just like the Trekkies, a group of star warriors kept Reagan's Star Wars dream alive throughout the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Once George W. Bush took over the White House, he brought along with him quite a few of those diehards -- Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney, to name just three -- giving missile defense its best friends in power since Reagan. The next generation, if you will.

And while I don't want to belabor the analogy -- I'll leave that kind of thing to the Trekkies at The Corner -- let's not forget the nickname Bush's national security advisers picked for themselves during the 200 campaign: The Vulcans!

-- Dan Dupont

p.s. Can't resist: Go watch this.

THAAD's Right!

The Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system, better known as THAAD, has had a checkered past. Now, however, with a recent test success under its belt, its future appears increasingly rosy, according to today's Inside the Army:

At the request of combatant commanders, the Missile Defense Agency is expediting the testing and fielding of its Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system to get the capability into soldiers’ hands two years sooner than expected, according to Army Col. Charles Driessnack, the agency’s project manager.

Under the MDA’s previous THAAD schedule, the missile defense capability would be deployable worldwide in fiscal year 2012, Driessnack told reporters here Aug. 16 at the Army’s annual Space and Missile Defense conference.

However, when combatant commanders began “screaming” that they wanted to get the capability to the field as quickly as possible, the agency formulated a plan to run testing activities concurrently, to shave two years off the program -- placing the system in the field at the end of FY-09 or in early FY-10, Driessnack added.

Remind anyone of anything?

Back in the 1990s, the Pentagon tested THAAD many times, with results so poor the program was on death's door. Two late and highly tailored tests led to intercepts and a decision to move the program forward into its next phase, where the missile was essentially overhauled.

It was back then that the phrase "rush to failure" entered the national security lexicon via a much-ballyhooed report on missile defense. Led by a retired Air Force four-star, Gen. Larry Welch, the report had this to say on THAAD and a companion effort:

These programs are pursuing very aggressive schedules, but these schedules are not supported by the state of planning and testing.

Testing beginning next year in the Pacific will be the real gague of how far THAAD has come.

UPDATED 08/22/06: More missile defense news -- free! -- here.

UPDATED (AGAIN) 08/25/06: The Missile Defense Agency's director says "a congressional proposal to accelerate testing of ballistic missile defense assets would be counterintuitive and could cost taxpayers more in the long run." Full story here.

-- Dan Dupont

Packing up....

The annual Space and Missile Defense Conference is packing up around me. Just a quick note: five years ago this was a sleepy little gathering of mostly Huntsville-based companies and die-hard supporters, hoping to revive plans for a missile shield. Love or hate missile defense, in five years, they've managed to put together the rudiments of a system that can--at least theoretically--shoot something down.

--Sharon Weinberger

From Huntsville, with love and rockets

Funding for missile defense may not be quite what it used to be, but then again, it ain't exactly suffering by the looks of the very-packed annual conference I'm attending here in Huntsville, Alabama. Since there have been no recent tests to discuss, the most entertaining part of the conference has been reading The Eagle, the "authorized unofficial newspaper" published by U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command. The latest issue has some great descriptions of the Alaska National Guard rushing back to duty when the Ground-based Midcourse Defense System was declared operational last month during the North Korea crisis.

"Cruises left for exotic locations with family members aboard as the Soldiers reported back to headquarters for duty," reports The Eagle, which has a flair for the dramatic. The newspaper also describes one married couple whose vacation to Hawaii was interrupted by the call to duty in Alaska (just prior to the spouse's deployment to Iraq). That sucks, though probably more for the spouse off to Iraq than for the one sent back to Alaska.

But the stories of lost vacation point to an as-yet unresolved issue: proponents of missile defense have long argued that the U.S. should pursue concurrent testing and operations -- but there isn't really any way to do that yet, as officials here acknowledge. They can switch between testing and operations — but not do both simultaneously.

Currently, Army Space and Missile Defense Command operates the missile defense system (that is, when it's operational, and it isn't exactly clear what that means). During tests (and in preperations for tests), it's transferred over to the Missile Defense Agency, and the operators are effectively booted out. There's no way to, say, dedicate half your missiles to testing and half to operations — the systems aren't in place to do that yet, officials here say.

So, while Fearless Leader waited to the Fourth of July weekend to send a signal to America (and to mess up some soldiers' vacations), in fact, he got it all wrong. Since you can't test and operate, North Korea could have waited for the Missile Defense Agency to conduct a test, launched its missiles, and waited for the inevitable mayhem that would followed as the military tried to switch from "test" to "operations" mode.

Of course, as critics of the system point out, tests, particularly successful ones, are few and far between these days. There hasn't been a successful intercept test of the missile defense for four years.

- Sharon Weinberger

Classified Incompetence

Things are looking a bit scatterbrained in the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) these days, especially in light of a November 2005 internal memo recently obtained and published by the Federation of American Scientists. Regarding the status and location of foreign-deployed missile defense systems, the document penned by MDA Deputy Director Gen. Marvin K. McNamara reads:

There are many operational and political sensitivities that require varying levels of protection as we consider possible deployments. Therefore, I am requiring that potential host nations being studied or considered by MDA for operational deployments not be identified by country or city name on Unclassified computer systems or networks…

Political sensitivities? While you ponder that one, watch how the memo in the same breath declares:

The names of multiple foreign countries and/or cities undergoing study for consideration as a host nation are not classified. However, to ensure they are properly protected, they must now be e-mailed or documented ONLY on Classified computer systems or networks…

To recap: they’re classified, but they’re actually unclassified, therefore MDA must take measures to safeguard their unclassified secrets. As decoded by Victoria Samson of Center for Defense Information, "…when they claim that the new sites for missile defense deployment are not classified, they are actually classifying them by making the contractors etc only use classified networks when discussing them. So they are, in a sense, skipping around having to justify classifying the sites and yet getting to still do so. Very clever."

Issues of reclassification aside, the question remains as to why MDA is so hush-hush about its operational foreign deployments, that in context seems to indicate ground-based interceptors. As we pause to consider this paranoia, it may help to recreate a relevant sequence of events:

As far back as summer 2004, then-Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton stated that "we’re now engaged in discussions with Poland about the possibility of basing interceptors and radars here." This statement was followed by news reports of similar third-site prospects in the Czech Republic and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, to ostensibly counter an Iranian ballistic missile threat.

But months later in February 2005, the Bush administration suffered an embarrassing setback when, after months of trying to shove missile defense cooperation down Canada’s throat despite widespread domestic opposition, the Canadian Prime Minister abruptly and unequivocally pulled the plug on all such plans.

Fast-forwarding to November 2005, the administration and MDA may have learned from their Canadian missteps that when foreign missile defense deployments hinge on the outcome of democratic debate, it becomes much harder to impose less-than-popular policies upon informed electorates. That, in any case, is perhaps the most plausible explanation for the sudden classification – or "secretification"? – of what was previously public information.

But no sooner was the memo passed around than a PowerPoint presentation containing the supposedly classified material was used by MDA Director Lt. Gen. Trey Obering at an AIAA conference, and then circulated widely. Right there, on slide 35, the presentation gives a complete rundown of desired foreign deployments, listing Poland, Czech Republic, and even the United Kingdom as potential third site candidates. Related or not, public debate over missile defense has mushroomed in Eastern Europe this summer, with 82 percent of Czechs opposed to the idea while Warsaw sizes up missile defense with its national interests.

What’s the point of this exercise? Was MDA convinced that by classifying – sort of – facts that were already public knowledge, it could keep missile defense off the legislative floors in Prague and Warsaw? Did Gen. McNamara think this was the best way to avoid a repeat Canadian incident? Most befuddling, did anyone involved think they could hide something like this for more than ten minutes in Washington DC? It remains to be seen what their motives might have been, as does the fate of the third ground-based interceptor site in Europe. But one can be reasonably certain that deceiving allies and partners – and ineptly at that – may not be the best way to promote cooperative security.

- Scott Morrissey, CDI

UPDATE 3:41 PM Apparently the PowerPoint presentation was not leaked - it was shown at a quasi-public AIAA conference back in March. Thanks to the commenters for pointing this out!

Hez's 30-Mile Missile

Here's some more on those longer-range Hezbollah rockets mentioned in today's Rapid Fire:

Hezbollah called the rockets the Khaibar-1. They fell more than 30 miles south of the Lebanese border. A few other rockets have traveled this far, but it was still unusual, according to the Israeli military and police.

The rockets are capable of carrying more than 200 pounds of explosives, making them much more powerful than the Katyusha rockets that Hezbollah has been firing most of the time, Israeli authorities said.

American and Israeli officials believe that the rocket Hezbollah referred to as a "Khaibar-1" appears to be an upgraded version of the Fajr-3, a rocket that Iran has supplied to the terrorist network and that Hezbollah has used often during the conflict. The rocket fired today has an estimated range of 90 kilometers, which makes it the longest range rocket fired thus far. Officials said that it is still unclear whether the rocket is actually a Fajr-5 — which Iran has also given to Hezbollah — or a new model altogether. [The Jerusalem Post and Ynetnews both argue differently -- ed.] Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, said earlier in the week that his Shiite group would strike beyond Haifa, about 20 miles inside Israel, which has been the southernmost city to come under regular attack.

One thing the weapon was not, according to Israeli authorities, was "an Iranian-made 'Zilzal' rocket, which has a range of about 210 km (130 miles) and would have put the Israeli commercial capital Tel Aviv within reach."

That honeymoon is looking less and less likely, all of the time...

(Big ups: SOI)

Israeli Missile Defense: Not Katyusha-Ready

Israelis are used to missile attacks; they've spent tons of cash on missile defense systems. So why have their interceptors been silent, as a thousand Katyushas have slammed into their soil? Victoria Samson, the Center for Defense Information's resident missile defense sage, has the answer: the Israeli systems are built to stop longer-range missiles -- ones that fly for hundreds of miles, like those Iraqi Scuds that fell on Tel Aviv during the first Gulf War, or the missiles Iran might one day nuke-equip.) The shorter-range projectiles that Hezbollah is firing are are too quick, and too mobile, for these interceptors to catch.

Israel has a two-tiered missile defense system. The first, the Arrow Weapon System, is to intercept ballistic missiles in their final phase of flight. It would do so by shooting the U.S.-developed Arrow II interceptor at a threat. Once the Israel-developed Green Pine Fire Control Radar, Citron Tree Fire Control Center, and Hazel Nut Tree Launcher Center have sent the interceptor near the target, the Arrow II would blow up, with the hope that the fragments from the blast would either destroy the target or knock it sufficiently off course so that it would no longer remain a threat. There are two Arrow batteries deployed. One covers the center of Israel from its position in Palmahim, while the other in Ein Shemer is supposed to defend Israel’s northern territory...

Israel also has an early version of the U.S. Patriot missile defense system. The Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC)-2 is designed to defend against ballistic missile targets in their terminal phase as well; also, it would provide defense via a blast-fragmentation warhead... The Patriot differs from the Arrow in that it aims at targets which are at lower altitudes.

[But] neither missile defense system has been used is because they are not designed to intercept short-range rockets. It is estimated that of the 13,000 or so rockets and missiles in Hezbollah’s arsenal, 11,000 of them are of the Katyusha type. These rockets have a short range – maybe up to nine miles or so – and a small warhead of roughly 40 pounds. Based on vintage Soviet technology, these rockets can be rolled out of a hiding place, shot, and rolled back in before any detection can be made. Their flight is over in seconds, making tracking difficult, much less shooting anything down. A system would have to be in exactly the right place to detect the missile once it is launched, then the defensive system would have to make a nearly instantaneous decision to respond, after which the interceptor would have to get to the target quickly enough to destroy it. It is an exceedingly difficult proposition when the flight times are as short as those launched by Hezbollah.

That's one of the reasons why Israel spent year pursuing a speed-of-light rocket defense, the Tactical High Energy Laser -- and why some folks are trying to re-introduce an updated version of the system to the Sabras.

But even an updated THEL will take years to get ready. In the short term, Israel's plan seems to be to clear out as much of southern Lebanon as possible, the Times notes.

Homes in southern Lebanon received taped phone calls in Arabic warning that they needed to evacuate because strikes would hit house by house. The recording ended by saying it came from the Israeli Army. The Israelis also used a radio station near the border to broadcast warnings into southern Lebanon for residents to leave.

The radio warning also stressed that any truck, including pickups, traveling south of the Litani River would be suspected of transporting weapons or rockets, and could therefore be a target.

(Big ups: TP)

Hezbollah's Surprise Weapons

Wonder why the Israelis thought their ship had been hit by a drone last week -- when it turned out to be a radar-guided missile instead? Or why the crew of the Hanit corvette didn't use their countermeasures to protect themselves? Simple: the Sabras knew that Hezbollah had been playing with drones; they had no idea that the terrorist group had such a sophisticated missile in their arsenal. It's one of a number of ways that the "power and sophistication" of Hezbollah's arms "has caught the United States and Israel off guard," the Times reports. "Officials in both countries are just now learning the extent to which the militant group has succeeded in getting weapons from Iran and Syria."

The missile that hit the Hanit was a C-802, an Iranian-made variant of a stealthy, turbojet-powered, Chinese weapon. It's "considered along with the US 'Harpoon' as among the best anti-ship missiles" in the world, GlobalSecurity.org says.

"Iran began buying dozens of those sophisticated antiship missiles from the Chinese during the 1990’s," the Times notes. "Until Friday, however, Western intelligence services did not know that Iran had managed to ship C-802 missiles to Hezbollah."

Now that the Israelis know, it's influencing their choice of targets to hit. The C-802 was most likely "fired it from a truck-mounted launcher cued by a coastal radar installation," Situational Awareness says. So "Israel has stepped up its attacks against coastal radar sites, as any sort of surface-search set would be able to provide data for the initial launch."

After launch, the missile takes care of itself with its own inertial guidance system and onboard radar seeker. Since the launchers are mobile, the trucks carrying them could scoot after firing. And we all know how notoriously difficult it can be to locate mobile units, even when you have lots of reconnaissance assets.

The terrorists' more traditional weapons, like Katyusha rockets and Fajr-3 missiles, have contained surprises, too. "In the past, we’d see three, four, maybe eight launches at any given time if Hezbollah was feeling feisty," one unnammed official told the paper. "Now we see them arriving in large clusters, and with a range and even certain accuracy we have not seen in the past."

70 Katyushas were fired at Israel "within the space of an hour" on Wednesday afternoon, Ha'Aretz writes. Israel is responding by sending small group of ground troops into Lebanon, and by striking targets in Beruit -- including ones in the Christian part of town.

The Times says that "while Iranian missile supplies to Hezbollah, either by sea or overland via Syria, were well known, officials said the current conflict also indicated that some of the rockets in Hezbollah’s arsenal — including a 220-millimeter rocket used in a deadly attack on a railway site in Haifa on Sunday — were built in Syria."

Officials have since confirmed that the warhead on the Syrian rocket was filled with ball bearings — a method of destruction used frequently in suicide bombings but not in warhead technology.

"We’ve never seen anything like this," said one Western intelligence official, speaking about the warhead.

Conflicts Forum's Mark Perry, on the other hand, isn't as alarmed as most about Hezbollah's weaponry. {Joe Katzman says that's because the guy is a terrorist shill.} Perry declares that the militia only has a handful of sophisticated and long-range missiles. Check out his All Things Considered interview here.

UPDATE 1:43 PM: "Israeli military officials have warned that the next Palestinian uprising could be 'a ballistic intifada,'" the Washington Post reports.

(Big ups: Umansky)

UPDATE 7:13 PM: The Jerusalem Post is reporting that "IAF fighter jets dropped over 20 tons in bombs late Wednesday night on a Hizbullah bunker, possibly the hiding place of the group's leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, in the Bourj al-Barajneh refugee camp in southeast Beirut. It was still unclear who was in the bunker at the time and what their fate was, but IDF sources said the bunker was totally destroyed and that all that was left was a crater."

Hezbollah's Biggest Missile Yet

Watching the news over the last few years, we've grown accustomed to seeing terrorists as a low-tech threat -- guys who hijack airplanes with pocket knives and make bombs out of leftover parts. And that threat has been plenty scary, on its own.

But in recent days, we're starting to see what happens when Islamic extremists get their hands on the relatively sophisticated arsenal of a country like Iran. Talk about terror.

On Sunday, Hezbollah again struck Haifa -- a city untouched by the militia until a few days ago -- using its biggest and most powerful missile yet. It's one of 800 rockets Hezbollah has launched against Israel in the last five days.

The weapon "hit a busy railway maintenance building, destroying the roof, killing eight, wounding more than 20 and leaving congealing pools of blood on the platform," the Times reports. "Israel said [the missile] was a Syrian-produced model of a Iranian Fajr-3 model, [which Tehran claims can avoid radars and carry multiple warheads -- ed.]. [It] has a range of more than 30 miles and carries a warhead with about 100 pounds of high explosives, which includes antipersonnel shrapnel, a significant change from the smaller Katyushas that Hezbollah has mostly been using."

And there may be worse to come, Ha'Aretz warns.

The fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, has still not reached its zenith. The Israel Defense Forces' operational plans against the Shi'ite organizations have not yet been carried out. The next two days are the most critical and a lot depends on whether Tehran decides to take a chance and authorize Hezbollah to launch long-range missiles with more powerful warheads. This is a capability Hezbollah still retains, despite the heavy blows it has suffered in the IDF air strikes.

UPDATE 10:44 PM: Kathryn Cramner has worked some of her Google Earth magic, and come up with a fascinating picture of how far Hezbollah can now reach.

Iran Missile Drone Bomb Hits Israelis, U.A.V. Pioneers

UPDATE 07/15/06 11:19 AM: There's an old saw about war: that first reports are always wrong. Looks like that the case about this unmanned plane attack. "A missile fired by Hezbollah, not an unmanned drone laden with explosives, damaged an Israeli warship off Lebanon," Fox News reports.

The attack on Friday night had raised widespread concern in the Israeli military because initial information indicated that the guerrillas had used a drone for the first time to attack Israeli forces.

But the army's investigation into the attack, which left four Israeli sailors missing, showed that Hezbollah had fired an Iranian-made missile at the vessel from the shores of Lebanon, said Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan.

"We can confirm that it was hit by an Iranian-made missile launched by Hezbollah. We see this as very profound fingerprint of Iranian involvement in Hezbollah," Nehushtan said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Another Hezbollah missile also hit and sank a nearby civilian merchant ship at around the same time, Nehushtan said. He said that ship apparently was Egyptian, but he had no other information about it.

UPDATE 07/15/06 12:29 PM: Bill Roggio is now throwing cold water on the missile theory. "The use of a ground based anti-ship missile system in these attacks, while certainly a possibility, is unlikely as the characteristics of this system would certainly have been detected by the Israeli Defense Forces," he writes. "A UAV launched missile system, on the other hand, would be a more stealthy system. The UAVs are difficult to detect as they can fly in below radar, [and] can be flown by remote visual methods."

Stay tuned.

"An unmanned Hezbollah aircraft rigged with explosives slammed into an Israeli warship late Friday, causing heavy damage to the vessel," the AP reports. It's the first time the terrorist group -- any terrorist group -- has used a drone in combat, as far as I know.

Hezbollah has flown simple "Misrad-1" unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, twice before, in November 2004 and April 2005. But those were reconnaissance flights, last just a couple of minutes each. And the drones were spotted fairly quickly, both times.

But, as Defense Tech noted in the Spring, the UAV had the potential to be much, much worse -- "a suicide bomber on steroids, basically."

That's what seems to have happened around 8:30pm Friday night to a Saar 5 navy gunship, ten miles off of the Lebanese coast, according to Ynetnews.

It was reported that the stern of an Israeli navy war ship suffered a direct hit in an attack by Hizbullah, which damaged the helicopter landing pad area. The hit caused a conflagration, which was extinguished. No one was hurt in the fire.

Shortly afterwards, crewmembers assessed the damage to the ship and discovered the hit was more severe than originally thought, and had caused damage to the ship’s internal operating systems...

Four crewmembers are reported to be missing.

There's more than bit of irony in Israel being hit with drone attacks. For years, the Israeli military was the world's leader in unmanned aviation. During the first Gulf War, Iraqi troops surrendered to Israel-made, American-run Pioneer UAVs. U.S. Army drone mechanics had to learn Hebrew, to repair their Israeli drones.

But in recent years, the rest of the world has caught up. "Some 32 nations are developing or manufacturing more than 250 models" of UAVs, according to the Defense Department.

In response, Pentagon extreme science arm Darpa has launched a $5 million per year effort to build a drone-killing UAV. But the results of that effort are still years away. For now, more conventional methods will have to be used to guard against terrorists' robotic air force.

(Big ups: SMT)

Hezbollah's Deadly Arsenal

For years, the border towns and kibbutzim in the upper Golan section of Israel, near Lebanon and Syria, have been under threat from Katyusha missiles. Cities just a few miles further south -- like Haifa and Tsfat, the crumbling, quiet mountaintop home of Jewish mysticism -- were safe; relying on short-range Katyusha rockets, Lebanese militants had the ability to sew terror only twelve miles into Israel. That changed on Thursday, when Hezbollah launched a new weapon, the Ra'ad rocket, which hit Tsfat and, for the first time, Haifa, 20 miles from the border. 220,000 Israelis stayed in bomb shelters last night to avoid the missiles, Ha'Aretz reports.

The exact make-up and configuration of these weapons is unclear. Some sources call it a modified anti-tank rocket; others a cruise missile. Range estimates vary from 120 to 350 kilometers, or more. One report calls it a 122mm projectile. Hezbollah claims the Iranian-made "rocket is of 333 mm in diameter and has a warhead of 100 kilograms."

Hezbollah's arsenal is likely filled with even deadlier weapons. Israel believes the terrorist group "has missiles that can hit most of Israel, and which could even strike Be'er Sheva [deep in Israel's southern, Negev desert] under optimum conditions," Ha'Aretz notes.

Iran supplied Hezbollah with solid-fuel, Zelzal-2 missiles with a 200-km range, but these are not very accurate, since they do not have a self-guidance system.

The Zelzal-2 missiles, intended to strike broad targets such as communities and cities, are equipped with explosive warheads weighing up to 600 kilograms...

Hezbollah's original Katyusha rockets had a range of 12 kilometers to 22 kilometers. At a later stage, it obtained Iranian Fajar-3 and Fajar-5 rockets, with a range of 45 kilometers and 75 kilometers, respectively. Hezbollah did not use these rockets until the current conflict.

I was supposed to spend my honeymoon next month lounging around Haifa, hiking in the Golan, maybe spending the sabbath in Tsfat. Now, these Hezbollah weapons have introduced a new calculus: how much fear is my wife willing to take?

(Big ups: Roggio, Umansky)

Missile Defense Scores ... Finally

After several failed test shots and a seven-year flight hiatus, the Army's Terminal High-Altitude Air Defense missile system (THAAD) hit a Hera target this morning over the White Sands range in New Mexico.

A Lockheed Martin press release expounds:

Specific test objectives included demonstrating the integration of the radar, launcher, fire control and communications and interceptor operations; demonstrating kill vehicle control in response to in-flight uplinks; and target acquisition and tracking by the interceptor’s seeker.

“The entire THAAD team has been focused on proving THAAD’s ability to detect, track and engage a live target,” said Tom McGrath, program manager and vice president for THAAD at Lockheed Martin.

This is the third successful THAAD developmental flight test conducted since flight testing resumed for the program in November 2005. A successful controlled flight test was conducted last year, followed by a successful integrated test of the entire THAAD system in May of 2006.

THAAD is expected to complement the PAC-3 (Patriot) interceptor in providing terminal-phase defense against short- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles. In other words, it might take out Scuds and maybe even Taepodongs, but don't expect to knock down ICBMs. THAAD has a longer range and more energy than PAC-3, meaning it can hit targets much higher.

But don't get too excited. Today's test included just one non-maneuvering target with no decoys and no debris. So this was about as easy as a test can get. Now the $10-billion THAAD moves to a missile range off of Hawaii for several more test flights at longer and shorter ranges. Hopefully some of these tests will be more realistic.

If all goes well, THAAD will be operational in "a few years", according to McGrath.

Read more at Military.com.

--David Axe

UPDATE 4:37 PM: "MDA's accomplishment today is a real one," adds Victoria Samson, the resident missile guru at the Center for Defense Information -- and a frequent critic of the missile defense program.

THAAD was the first missile defense system to be called a "rush to failure" (but apparently not the last one to earn that moniker). THAAD has been reorganized, revamped, and basically renewed. However, today's test intercept is just one step among many - THAAD has a long way to go before it has proven itself to be reliable and worthy of ramping up production and deployment.

Also, note that an intercept was officially not the primary objective - seeker characterization of the target was. This could be seen as MDA trying to walk before it can run - a good thing. Or it can be what we're seeing in the GMD program: an attempt to downplay expectations so that any news is good news.

Missile Flop: Norks in Tight Spot

The New York Times and others are framing North Korea's busted missile test as a major problem for the U.S. -- especially with China and Russia refusing to take a hard line against Pyongyang, for now. "President Bush and his national security advisers found themselves on Wednesday facing what one close aide described as an array of 'familiar bad choices,'" the Times said.

That seems a little upside-down to me. Isn't Kim Jong-il the one with the bad choices here, now that his supposedly-intercontinental missile flopped less than a minute into its flight?

"Over these past few years, [Kim] has adroitly played his otherwise miserable hand because of two cards that everyone believes he holds—nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Yesterday's dud raises the possibility that the missile card's a bluff, that there may be (as Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland) 'no there there,'" says Slate's Fred Kaplan.

"Seems to me their ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] capability has gone no better than sideways the past eight years, if not down," retired Adm. Dennis Blair, a former chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, tells the Washington Post.

"Less threatening, because less capable," agreed Rep. Mark S. Kirk (R-Ill.), who tracks North Korea.

At the same time, South Korea -- which had been keeping the U.S. at arm's length -- is now drawing us in a little closer. Reunification talks with the Norks will continue. But the South is now looking to put some of our short- and intermediate-range anti-missile systems into place. Seoul's "Defense Ministry... announced it plans to introduce 48 Patriot missiles between 2008 and 2009," according to the Chosun Ilbo. "After 2009, it will introduce SM-2 Block-IV sea-to-air interceptor missiles to be carried on Aegis ships to counter the North Korean missile threat."

Japan, meanwhile, is barring North Korea ships and flights -- after agreeing to install new missile interceptors of its own, last month.

So: allies better defended, and adversaries shown to be weak. That's all good news, right?

UPDATE 11:14 AM: Unlike Phil Coyle, William Arkin thinks the American warning system did a good job of picking up on those Nork launches.

Within seconds of North Korean rocket engines igniting on their launch pads, infrared cameras aboard Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites detected the heat and transmitted an alert back to U.S. command centers in Colorado Springs, where the trajectory was calculated and the type of missile determined.

Those U.S. infrared satellites had been primed for over a month by activity at the launch sites, intelligence sources say. Movement was detected by spy satellites and U-2s, signals were intercepted by NSA. North Korea even reportedly issued a standard public "notice to mariners" announcing a military exercise and missile test.

UPDATE 11:39 AM: Plus, the Missile Defense Agency has to be psyched that it didn't have to fire off its ICBM interceptors, since they haven't been successfully tested in nearly four years. "The apparent failure of a North Korean long-range missile gives the Pentagon some breathing room as it prepares two critical tests for a U.S. missile shield," the Wall Street Journal notes.

To bolster military and political confidence in the shield, the Pentagon next month plans to launch an interceptor missile in California to counter a mock enemy missile fired from Alaska. The primary goal of the trial isn't to destroy the dummy warhead, said Rick Lehner, spokesman for the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency. Instead, it is to test the shield's command-and-control system and ensure that a key radar system tracks the warhead and transmits information to the interceptor.

Later this year, the agency plans a so-called hit-to-kill test that will aim to destroy a dummy warhead. Pentagon officials say the two tests, which will cost between $85 million and $100 million each, make 2006 the key year for validating the missile-shield concept. "We believe that we have demonstrated that the hit-to-kill technology works. What we're going to do is try to show that we can do it reliably and that we can sustain it," Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, director of the Missile Defense Agency, said in an interview earlier this year.

UPDATE 1:49 PM: One other nice thing about the North Korean launch is that it gives the U.S. military a whole lot of data about a missile it didn't know much about before. Thanks, Kim!

Ballistic Missiles: Not Just For Norks

While the world is focused on North Korea and its Taepodongs, the Chinese military has reportedly been refining its own ballistic missiles. But whereas the Nork missiles were really only intended as diplomatic leverage rather than for actual military operations, the Chinese missiles are designed to actually work against a specific set of military targets: U.S. ships, especially aircraft carriers.

"Since the mid-1990s, reports have indicated Chinese interest in modifying DF-15 tactical (600 kilometer) and DF-21 (2,500 kilometer) intermediate-range ballistic missiles as antiship weapons, using radar or infrared guidance," naval expert Norman Friedman writes in this month's Proceedings. (Not yet online.)

Friedman says that ballistic missiles are effective anti-ship weapons because they exploit a gap in the anti-air coverage of U.S. warships, which are optimized to defend against low-flying cruise missiles.

"The main effect of a tactical ballistic-missile threat would be to make anti-ballistic weapons such as the [Raytheon] SM-3 much more important for Fleet air defense."

In other words, those interceptors the Navy was planning to use to shoot down Nork terror weapons might be handier as a routine defense against Chinese anti-ship missiles.

But don't go investing in Raytheon stocks quite yet. The Chinese missiles rely on a sophisticated satellite targeting system that probably isn't in place ... and might never be.

This [missile] program, if indeed it exists, may be connected to an ongoing Chinese satellite surveillance program, which reportedly will consist of four radar and four electro-optical satellites.

[But] it is not ... clear whether the [potential] Chinese satellite system is intended primarily for ocean surveillance.

Remember that the Chinese military procurement system was initially modeled on that of the Soviet Union, and that probably it has changed a lot less than the rest of Chinese society. To what extent would the Chinese field an antiship ballistic missile even though the associated targeting system(s) were either not ready or would never enter service?

Moreover, Friedman adds, even if the satellites are pointed at the ocean, telling an aircraft carrier from a civilian tanker ship is difficult for all but the most sophisticated sensors. In the end, Friedman is skeptical that the Chinese can effectively target whatever ballistic anti-ship missiles they possess.

-- David Axe

Norks Launch Missile Barrage; ICBM Fails

"North Korea test-fired at least six missiles over the Sea of Japan on Wednesday morning, including an intercontinental ballistic missile that apparently failed or was aborted 42 seconds after it was launched," the Times is reporting.

Of the launchings, intelligence officials focused most of their attention on the intercontinental missile, called the Taepodong 2, which American spy satellites have been watching on a remote launching pad for more than a month.

It is designed to be capable of reaching Alaska, and perhaps the West Coast of the United States, but American officials who tracked its launching said it fell into the Sea of Japan before its first stage burned out.

"The Taepodong obviously was a failure — that tells you something about capabilities," Stephen Hadley, President Bush's national security adviser, told reporters in a phone call on Tuesday evening in Washington...

The other missiles that the North fired appeared to be a mix of short-range Scud-C missiles and intermediate-range Rodong missiles, of the kind that the North has sold to Iran, Pakistan and other nations. Those missiles also landed in the Sea of Japan...

Intelligence from American satellite photographs indicated in mid-June that the North was proceeding with the test-firing of the Taepodong 2 at a launching pad on North Korea's remote east coast. Satellite photographs showed that the North Koreans had taken steps to put fuel into the missile, but the missile sat there until Wednesday morning, leading to speculation [especially on this site -- ed.] that the North was simply staging the event in order to gain attention from the United States...

But the North contradicted expert opinion by launching its long-range missile in predawn darkness today.

The surprise launch is bad news for Pyongyang, Joe Cirincione says over at Arms Control Wonk HQ.

The North Koreans have now blown it by actually testing a system that was always worth much more as a bargaining chip than as a military capability. Continued attempts to hype the threat (by either the DPRK or the Missile Defense Agency) will now be much harder to make with a straight face... [And] all those reporters and analysts who have been talking about both the North Korean missiles and the US anti-missiles as if both were proven capabilities should slap themselves in the face and snap out of it.

UPDATE 07/05/06 12:26 AM: David here. Missile defense expert Philip Coyle from the Center for Defense Information just emailed me with this:

I'm sure you noticed that the press has been confused about how many missiles North Korea actually fired. At first it was three, then four or five, then six. But the Yonhap news agency in South Korea says North Korea fired 10 missiles, not six. At the time of Tony Snow's press briefing with National Security Advisor Steve Hadley, the White House thought only three had been fired.

And at this writing Northern Command will only confirm six. So maybe our military has been confused too.

This displays one of the vulnerabilities of missile defense. If you don't see all of the missiles an enemy fires, or if they fire too many, even the most futuristic missile defenses we can imagine will be overwhelmed.

And by coordinating its missile launches with the U.S. shuttle launch, North Korea showed that any country can aspire to have the capability to conduct peaceful space launches.

David again. Just to clarify on Phil's behalf, that last comment about "peaceful space launches" was intended as sarcasm.

UPDATE 08:03 AM: The Norks just fired off another one.

UPDATE 09:12 AM: For a completely different view, check out what Stratfor has to say: "A failed launch may ultimately offer North Korea greater choices than other scenarios might have."

Had Pyongyang succeeded, even Seoul might have thought twice about continued economic contacts with the North. And had the United States or Japan shot the missile down, Pyongyang would very quickly have been forced to decide whether to consider the move an act of war and launch a counterstrike, or just complain loudly and demonstrate its own impotence. A failed test, if a test was to be carried out, provides renewed avenues for negotiation.

China will be the first to offer its services in figuring out what next for North Korea. Pyongyang will be more beholden to Beijing following the test, as North Korea tries to gauge its options and how best to play down the failure. It has lost its missile leverage now, and will need its northern neighbor even more. For its part, China will take this added leverage with the North for its own negotiations with the United States.

The failed launch may bring Washington back into the six-party talks or to the informal six-party talks Beijing recently suggested as U.S. officials breathe a collective sigh of relief at not having been forced to decide whether to try to shoot down the North Korean missile. Thus, Washington can say it was ready for the launch without having had to prove its anti-missile system in a real-life situation. And the United States also enjoys the advantage of a North Korea weakened for now by the failed test.

The question now is what happens inside Pyongyang. A failure of a major economic, political and military expenditure could quickly lead to infighting as blame is assigned and passed and next steps are debated. While North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has shown himself quite adept at managing his place in power, the loss of a key political lever is sure to create at least a brief internal political crisis. While the North may have already thought through the implications of failure, thinking and facing reality are rather different. If Pyongyang makes quick, clear steps in the coming days, it will suggest it was either well-prepared for failure or aborted the launch itself. If not, expect to see the North close in on itself, and perhaps turn to neighbor China for advice and protection.

Either way, a major shift in North Korean behavior can be expected in the coming months.

Hoax Watch, Day 10: No Nork Launch, After All

Ten days ago, the New York Times and its sister paper, the International Herald Tribune, ran a pair of breathless stories, warning us that North Korea's long-range Taepodong-2 missile was being fueled for "take off." Worse, the weapon could have the ability to "deliver chemical, biological or perhaps nuclear warheads to targets as far away as the continental United States."

Worldwide hysteria followed. Condi Rice called it a "provocative act." The Japanese prime minister said they would "respond harshly" to a launch. The Pentagon shouted that its missile defense system was ready to go. A former SecDef and a former VP called for preemptive strikes on North Korea.

But cracks in the story appeared almost immediately. No one could really say what this Taepodong-2 really looked like, or what it could do. Responsible reporters recalled North Korea's history of saber-rattling stunts -- and its anemic track record for testing missiles.

And then there was the fuel and oxidizer supposedly being loaded into the missile. Corrosive stuff, it could eat through a missile's metal casing in two or three days. Which meant that the Norks had to launch quickly, or not at all. With every day this missile "crisis" dragged on, the less likely it became.

By the beginning of this week, it became clear that a world-class hoax had gone down. Either Pyongyang had hoodwinked the globe into thinking it was about to launch -- or the Times was once again hyping up a national security threat.

Today, finally, the Times admitted the obvious. Well, kinda sorta. And on page A9 -- not the font page, where the Taepodong "scoop" had been originally published.

On Monday and Tuesday, two officials said the intelligence could, at best, be interpreted as offering only a prudent assumption that the missile was fueled, and that intelligence analysts had described an already fueled missile as a worst-case scenario.

"It is impossible to know for certain whether or how much fuel is moving between a closed container through a closed line to another closed container," one official said.

Citing intelligence gathered by "overhead systems" photographing the missile, Senator Warner said, "We are not certain if it's fueled."

(Big ups: TP)

UPDATE 07/06/06 12:11 PM: Well, so much for hoaxes! See here for coverage of the Nork's actual launch.

Perry: Strike Korea Now, Get Intel Later (Updated)

Clinton defense secretary William Perry is ready to attack North Korea, now.

Should the United States allow a country openly hostile to it and armed with nuclear weapons to perfect an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering nuclear weapons to U.S. soil?... If North Korea persists in its launch preparations, the United States should immediately make clear its intention to strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it can be launched.

But there's a teeny-tiny fact Perry seems to have overlooked: We have no idea, really, whether North Korea is preparing a missile. Or what that missile is capable of doing.

The hype kicked into high gear when the New York Times claimed that the Norks "completed fueling a long-range ballistic missile" over the weekend. But the report is getting fishier by the second. The Norks generally rely on a highly corrosive gasoline-kerosene mix for their missile fuel, and an oxidizer containing nitric acid. It's nasty, metal-eating stuff. And once fueled up, the missile has to be launched quickly -- two or three days, I've been told -- or else the missile is basically ruined.

It's now been four days. And there's been no launch. Which means it's becoming increasingly unlikely that a missile has been fueled. So much for Perry's demand "to strike the [missile] if North Korea refuses to drain the fuel out."

And, of course, there may not be an ICBM at all. Remember, the North Koreans have launched exactly one intermediate-range ballistic missile, in 1998. The thing -- a combination of smaller, Nodong and Scud missiles -- went about 2,000 km or so. Now, U.S. intelligence assumes the Norks have been working on strapping together more Nodongs and Scuds (or, at least, their engines) for an ICBM -- something that can reach three to five times further, and hit the U.S. But no one has actually seen the weapon. Even how many the stages the mystery missile has in unknown; some folks say two, others say three.

Plus, as the Post mentioned a few days back, Pyongyang has a long history of staging elaborate hoaxes, in order to get the world's attention.

A year ago, the world was on edge after reports that North Korea might test a nuclear weapon -- and one report even suggested the evidence showed that viewing stands had been built. No test took place.

Now, what happens if we strike North Korea -- and there's no missile to hit? What does that do to American standing, then?

UPDATE 11:47 AM: "South Korea's defense minister said Thursday that Seoul believes North Korea's missile launch is not imminent despite concern in the region that the communist nation would test-fire a long-range missile." (AP, via FP Passport)

UPDATE 5:36 PM:Even Dick Cheney -- Dick Cheney, fer chrissakes! -- is pouring cold water on the Nork missile threat. Check out this interview with CNN's John King:

KING: Do we know what's on that missile? Is it a satellite? Is it a warhead? Is it a test?

CHENEY: We don't know. That's one of the concerns, that this is a regime that's not transparent that we believe has developed nuclear weapons and now has put a missile on a launch pad without telling anybody what it's all about -- as to put a satellite in orbit, or a simple test flight. They will, obviously, generate concern on the part of their neighbors and the United States to the extent that they continue to operate this way.

As the president's made clear, this is not the kind of behavior we'd like to see, given the fact the North Koreans do have a nuclear program and have refused to come clean about it.

KING: What do we know about their capabilities? Some have said this new longer range missile could reach Guam, perhaps Alaska. Others say, no, it might be able to reach Los Angeles. And there are some who think maybe even right here, Washington, D.C. What do we know?

CHENEY: We -- this is first test of this particular Taepo Dong II missile -- we believe it does have a third stage added to it now. But again, we don't know what the payload is. I think it's also fair to say that the North Korean missile capabilities are fairly rudimentary. They've been building Scuds and so forth over the years. But their test flights in the past haven't been notably successful. But we are watching it with interest and following it very closely. (emphasis mine)

National Security Adviser Steven Hadley says the same thing, basically: "In terms of North Korean intentions, you know this is a very opaque society, and very hard to read." Then he adds this little gem about our mighty missile defense system:

"We have a missile defense system ... what we call a long-range missile defense system that is basically a research, development, training, test kind of system," Hadley said. "It does ... have some limited operational capability. And the purpose, of course, of a missile defense system is to defend .... the territory of the United States from attack."

(big ups: RC)

Missile Defense Test Today

Talk about good timing. "A sea-based missile defense test flight will take place today off Kauai amid reports North Korea may be prepping to test-fire a long-range missile over the Pacific," the Honolulu Advertiser notes. "The Kauai test is part of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense Program and had been scheduled for months."

The test is for "for short- and medium-range ballistic missile intercepts," the Advertiser reports -- not intercontinental missiles, like the so-called Taepodong-2 that's got everybody's panties in a bunch. "It involves the Pearl Harbor-based cruiser Lake Erie, one of three such ships capable of shooting down ballistic missiles. A target will be launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands, and the cruiser Shiloh out of San Diego will detect and track the target with its SPY-1B radar and fire an SM-3 missile to intercept it."

Too bad the timing for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system -- the interceptors actually designed to shoot down ICBMs -- isn't as good. As Victoria notes over at Wonk HQ:

The radar system that is needed to help detect missile launches, the sea-based X-Band Radar (SBX), is still floating around and undergoing tests outside of 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.

Not that there's even going to be a missile to shoot down, I'm guessing. If the North Koreans really were fueling up a rocket with liquid fuel over the weekend, they probably would have launched the thing already -- that fuel is super corrosive, and starts to eat through metal after a couple of days. Plus, anyone notice how the Norks are stomping their feet for new talks, all of a sudden?

UPDATE 12:27 PM: The whole missile brouhaha has put us "right where [Kim Jong-il] wants us," says Chuck Downs in today's WSJ.

Pyongyang has created an opportunity to break out of the negotiating deadlock that has stymied the regime for years, dissolve the international consensus on how to deal with the regime's illicit smuggling and counterfeiting activities, and change politics in South Korea and the U.S. And perhaps most importantly, if Kim Jong Il plays his cards right, he will prove to his inner circle that he is the genius he claims to be, renewing his hold on power at a time when he was facing his most severe challenges.

(Big ups: Barnett)

UPDATE 12:43 PM: Vic and I will be on the "The World" this afternoon, to talk this whole mess over. And so will Sharon, to rap about Imaginary Weapons.

UPDATE 1:05 PM: Wanna know how hard it is to knock down an ICBM mid-flight? Read this Situational Awareness run-down.

UPDATE 06/22/06 11:55 AM: The test has been postponed until today. Meanwhile, the L.A. Times calls out "a little-noticed study by the Government Accountability Office issued in March."

[It] found that program officials were so concerned with potential flaws in the first nine interceptors now in operation that they considered taking them out of their silos and returning them to the manufacturer for "disassembly and remanufacture."

"Quality control procedures may not have been rigorous enough to ensure that unreliable parts, or parts that were inappropriate for space applications, would be removed from the manufacturing process," the report says.

Missile Defense Prepped; Kim Yawns

So the U.S. has decided to turn on its Alaska-based missile defense system, in response to North Korea's impending launch. Kim Jong-il ain't exactly quaking in his boots, I imagine.

The Ground-based Midcourse Defense system hasn't successfully intercepted a missile since October of 2002. Five of its last ten flight tests, it flunked. And the last two times it tried to hit an oncoming missile, the interceptor didn't even leave the ground. Things have gotten so bad that the Missile Defense Agency's independent review team concluded last year that more tests may only undermine the GMD's value as a deterrent. (Here's a comprehensive list of all of the GMD tests -- past, current, and future -- from the Center for Defense Information.)

Missile defense backers might point to a positive-sounding test run in April. But that was just a "data collection" flight. "No interceptor missiles were used," CDI notes.

UPDATE 01:42 PM: "This 'missile defense system initiated' shit is the biggest yawner of a story all day," says one knowledgeable source. "I'm exaggerating... but it takes approximately two seconds to flip those sorties to operational."

The source also wonders whether the North Koreans are really planning to launch a "missile," at all. What if it's a small satellite they're trying to get into orbit, instead? [The South Koreans seem to be asking the same question.]

Lastly, the source wonders whether the U.S. would even be willing to launch a missile interceptor, given the system's uneven track record. "What message do we send if we miss?" he asks.

UPDATE 5:38 PM: Joe Cirincione reminds us that the North Koreans ain't exactly master missileers. "The last time they fired a long-range missile was in 1998, it went about 1300 killometers and failed to put its tiny payload into orbit," he says.

UPDATE 5:58 PM: The Nelson Report thinks it's all a PR stunt. "if there’s one thing all analysts of N. Korea agree on, it’s that Dear Leader Kim Jong-il just loves being the center of attention. By that criteria, the so far big non-event of the week...an alleged Taepodong-2 ICBM test...is already a HUGE success."

UPDATE 6:13 PM: Some have suggested that if the GMD interceptors in Alaska aren't working, then U.S. forces will used the sea-based, Aegis system to knock down a Korean launch.

Not likely.

The Aegis is designed to "detect, track, intercept, and destroy Short Range Ballistic Missiles (SRBMs) to Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs)," according to the military. Long-range, intercontinental ballistic missiles -- which fly higher than SRBMs and IRBMs -- won't be touched by the Aegis, unfortunately. Besides, the Aegis' SM-3 interceptors don't have the oomph to take down an ICBM.

What the Aegis cruisers can do is track the bigger missiles, to help the interceptors in Alaska. But that's about it.

UPDATE 8:38 PM: If you're looking for an article that's either flat wrong or misleading on just about every aspect of missile defense -- from Airborne Lasers to so-called Taepodong-2s to Aegis interceptors, this right here would be your story.

North Korea: Missile Hype? (Updated)

What to make of the news that North Korea's "115-foot Taepodong-2 missile stands ready to take off from Musudan-Ri, a remote village on the northeast coast of North Korea, after engineers apparently completed loading liquid fuel into its rocket boosters"?

The International Herald-Tribune says that "a successful test would provide the strongest indication yet that North Korea was developing the capacity to deliver chemical, biological or perhaps nuclear warheads to targets as far away as the continental United States." The Times notes that it "could also ignite a political chain reaction in Japan, the United States and China, which have been trying to re-engage North Korea in stalled talks about its nuclear weapons program. The Bush administration might step up financing for missile defense; Japan might increase its missile defense efforts as well, while militant Japanese politicians might push to reconsider the nation's nuclear weapons options."

Center for Defense Information missile guru Victoria Samson takes the threat seriously, too. But she cautions us not to get too caught up in the hype.

This [move to test] probably is a combination of several factors: NK trying to press the United States into sitting down in one-on-one talks, which NK would love but the United States is unwilling to concede and instead obstinately sticks to the six-party talks formula, which clearly is doing so well; NK trying its old stand-by of ratcheting up pressure in order to get concessions (it's backed off in the past after having done so); and NK wanting to test new missile engines. I think that the whole hullabaloo about this now showing that NK can strike all of the United States is just that - a hullabaloo. (emphasis mine)

Arms Control Wonk Jeffrey Lewis reminds us that this "Taepodong-2" isn't North Korea's name for its missile; it's an American designation for a system we really don't know much about. How many stages the missile has, how it gets from point A to point B -- all of that remains a mystery. So these Drudge headlines about "A MISSILE THAT CAN REACH AMERICA" are a bit on the misleading side. The Wonk pulls this quote from General Burwell B. Bell, commander of U.S. Forces Korea:

I’ve looked at this in some detail. The Taepo Dong II and III missiles, as we call them, are of the kind that, at least in theory, could produce intercontinental capability. Up through the late ‘90s, there was a fairly active program in North Korea to develop that missile technology and potentially to test it. In the years since the late ‘90s, the last six, seven years, we have seen very little activity by the North Koreans to actively continue to develop and test long-range missile systems. There’s no doubt in my mind that they have the capability to begin more technological investigation and to begin a regiment to lead to testing and potentially to lead to fielding. But there’s no evidence of it right now.

There's a bunch more imagery and analysis at GlobalSecurity.org.

UPDATE 01:38 PM: Interesting take on the situation from Stratfor:

North Korea's perspective, another missile launch may not be a bad tactic. Washington and Tokyo are both suggesting they will issue strongly worded statements, enact further economic restrictions against the North (not that there is much more they can cut off) and maybe even take Pyongyang before the U.N. Security Council, where North Korean allies Russia and China sit waiting with a veto. In fact, if history is a guide, North Korea -- rather than being ostracized by the 1998 launch over Japan -- found itself just a few years later normalizing relations with Italy, Australia, the Philippines, Britain, Belgium, The Netherlands, Canada, Spain, Germany, New Zealand and Luxembourg. And in the midst of this diplomatic offensive, Pyongyang hosted the South Korean president in the first inter-Korean summit.

There is, however, another angle to the current posturing. China has been conspicuously quiet about all the hype of an imminent North Korean missile test.... Chinese officials, particularly those in the military, see a clear renewal of U.S. attention and pressure on the Chinese military.

Beijing's silence as its neighbor is posing for satellite flybys suggests a certain sense of complicity on China's part. North Korea remains a valuable asset for China in its dealings with the United States: So long as Washington is unwilling to strike militarily at North Korea, Beijing remains the central point of contact with the North Koreans and wields the most influence in Pyongyang. A North Korean missile test, or even a stand-down from a near-test, would give Beijing additional cards to play in Washington...

Beijing can subtly remind Washington that, should the United States wish to refrain from bringing too much pressure to bear on China, it in turn can "reason" with the North Koreans. But if Washington keeps the pressure up, the message would go, there is no telling what those crazy North Koreans are capable of.

UPDATE 06/20/06 7:58 AM: "Three senior U.S. officials" told the Washington Post "that reports that North Korea appeared to have completed fueling the missile are based on incomplete intelligence."

U.S. satellites have observed liquid fuel canisters being placed near the missile, but officials said there was no confirmation that fueling took place. "We can't say anything for sure," said one top official with access to the intelligence.

Loading fuel into the rocket boosters for the Taepodong-2 missile would almost certainly suggest a launch will take place, because it is difficult to siphon out the fuel. But North Korea has a long history of doing things simply for the benefit of American satellites -- and to bring the world's attention back to the Stalinist state.

A year ago, the world was on edge after reports that North Korea might test a nuclear weapon -- and one report even suggested the evidence showed that viewing stands had been built. No test took place.

(Big ups: TP)

UPDATE 06/20/06 10:43 AM: "I have a suspicion, a fairly strong one, that whatever's on the pad at Musudan-ri is considerably smaller than the canonical TD-2 [Taepodong-2] that people have been talking about, maybe just an improved version of the 1998 TD-1," sage reader AT writes. "It would be nice to know if the US or Japan actually have imagery that shows the dimensions of the present rocket."

AT points us to this report from South Korea's Chosun Ilbo:

South Korea's National Intelligence Service says North Korea is unlikely to have injected fuel into a missile it may be about to launch, according to a member of the National Assembly’s Intelligence Committee. Unnamed U.S. officials claimed Sunday the North had already fueled what they allege is an inter-continental ballistic missile at a launch pad in North Hamgyeong Province.

"At the National Assembly Intelligence Committee meeting, we were told the judgment of the NIS that it is difficult to determine whether the fuel has been loaded," Chung Hyung-keun, a Grand National Party member of the committee told reporters.

"In the area of the launch platform, there are 40 fuel containers, an amount insufficient, it would seem, to provide the 15 tons of kerosene and 45 tons of oxidizing agent needed to fill the missile up."

The lawmaker said the NIS pointed out that the North had on a prior occasion set up a missile and left it for 50 days without fueling it, only to clear it off the platform later. The NIS did not specify when that incident took place.

Red Phones vs. Tridents

It would be China's worst nightmare. Perhaps in the midst of some mutual sabre-rattling over Taiwan, a Chinese satellite detects a missile launch from the Pacific Ocean. A Trident missile is headed China's way. Computers race to determine the target while Chinese ICBMs go on high alert. The clock is ticking ... and millions of lives are in the balance.

This apocalyptic scenario is becoming increasingly plausible as the U.S. military considers arming some of its Trident D5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles with conventional warheads. A conventionally-armed Trident has certain advantages over bombers, cruise missiles, or Special Forces for taking out high-value targets. It's unmanned, extremely accurate for a missile and fast: a Trident can hit any spot on the globe around 30 minutes from launch.

But space sensors can't tell a TNT-tipped Trident from one carrying a 100-kiloton nuclear warhead. So every time the U.S. fired a conventional Trident at a terrorist camp, Russia, China and every other nuclear power would suffer a major freak-out. [Inside Defense has been all over this controversy for a while -- ed.]

In this month's Proceedings (not yet online), Navy Capt. Terry Benedict admits the diplomatic complications of using conventional Tridents. But he believes we can resolve them: "This change in our nation's strategic force will require that no stone be left unturned to improve the measures we have in place to prevent misunderstandings. Areas under investigation and review include existing hotlines and other communications with Russia and China, diplomacy, military dialogue, plus training, tests and exercises."

The only workable solution in Benedict's list is a hotline by which the U.S. would warn other nuclear powers before launching a conventional Trident. But the hotline would be just one link in a long chain of comms connecting national command authorities to strategic forces: this chain would have to function perfectly -- and quickly -- every time to avoid a major incident.

And consider this: to veto a strike, a Chinese leader would only have to refuse to pick up the buzzing red phone.

-- David Axe

UPDATE 3:45 PM: Noah here. Benedict's plan, of course, assumes that China isn't on the target list for these new, de-nuked ICBMs. Trust me, it is.

I spoke recently with one of the authors of the new "Global Strike" doctrine, which includes the conventional Tridents. And he talked about Global Strike largely in terms of deterring "potentially dangerous adversaries again" with "big land masses on the other side of globe." That don't sound like Al-Qaeda to me.

Cruise Missiles do Recon?

You can't blame 'em for trying, I guess. Defense contractors want to sell a bigger pile of their gear to the Pentagon. So, from time to time, they come up with all kinds of, shall we say, sub-optimal explanations why their hardware should be used more often. Like jamming IEDs with supersonic fighters. Or delivering commandos with 14,000-ton destroyers.

Here's the latest brainstorm, courtesy of Raytheon: Use Tomahawk cruise missiles to handle reconnaissance. That's right. $750,000-a-shot Tomahawks. Never mind the fact that a Predator drone can handle hundreds of spy missions, for a $4.5 million price tag. (For argument's sake, let's say it costs $45,000 per flight, when you throw in maintenance money and pilot pay.) The Pentagon should spend 750 large for a one-time, one-way unmanned flight.

Now, Tomahawks are certainly faster than Predators -- 528 miles per hour, as opposed to 135. But we've got plenty of fighter jets doing supersonic recon already. And the idea that, somehow, a Tomahawk could be a "cheaper... alternative to unmanned aerial vehicles," as National Defense magazine tries to argue this month? C'mon, guys. I know you've got sales targets to make. But this is taxpayer money here. You need a better explanation than that.

Russian Roots for Iran's "Underwater Missile"

In 1994, Russian military contractors were handing out brochures touting their "high-speed underwater missiles." This weapon, called the Shkval, had a "high kill capability," the contractors promised. Against it, "known anti-torpedo defense system[s]" were "not effective." Someone in Tehran liked what they read, apparently. Check out today's New York Times.

Iran said Sunday that it had test-fired what it described as a sonar-evading underwater missile [video of the test here]...

The new missile is among the world's fastest and can outpace an enemy warship, Gen. Ali Fadavi of the country's elite Revolutionary Guards told state television.

General Fadavi said only one other country, Russia, had a missile that moved underwater as fast as the Iranian one, which he said had a speed of about 225 miles per hour.

That's because this Iranian weapon -- called the "Hoot," or "whale" -- is based on the Russian Shkval, according to former Naval Intelligence Officer Edmond Pope. "I was informed in late 1990's by a Russian government official that they were working with Iran on this subject," he tells Defense Tech. "A cooperative demonstration/program had already been conducted with them at Lake Issy Kul in Kyrgyzstan."

The Shkval goes so fast because it creates an air bubble around itself, essentially. The process, known as supercavitation, keeps friction to a minimum. "Instead of being encased in water," New Scientist noted, the weapon "is simply surrounded by water vapour, which is less dense and has less resistance." (Pope has more about the technology on his website. The Airborne Combat Engineer blog rounds up supercavitation speculation here.)

As the AP notes, the Russian-Iranian cooperation could have major strategic consequences for the U.S. navy, possibly keeping American ships from operating freely in the Persian Gulf. "The U.S. and Iranian navies have had brush-ups during the past."

During the "Tanker War," when U.S. warships moved into the Gulf to guard oil tankers.

In 1988, the frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts was badly damaged by an Iranian mine. In response, the U.S. Navy launched its largest engagement of surface warships since World War II. Two Iranian ships were destroyed, and an American helicopter was shot down, killing the two pilots.

(Big ups: NH, RC, Kathryn)

UPDATE 12:22 PM: As Aaron and Hambling both note, Darpa has its own supercavitation project -- an ultra-fast torpedo for shooting SEALs through the seas. Defense Technology International has the scoop.

UPDATE 1:39 PM: Kathryn clues us into the fact that Iran is planning to test-fire another new torpedo later today.

"Because of its high speed, this torpedo is able to strike any type of submarine at any depth," Rear Admiral Mohammad Ibrahim Dehghani told the state-run news agency Fars.

"This torpedo will be fired from mini-warships to combat pretend enemy submarines in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz," Dehghani said.

Meanwhile, ACE digs through Ed Pope's site, and finds that "a concerted effort to develop an underwater supercavitating vehicle was begun here in the US and the Russians obtained key documents from us and reportedly bought at least one patent from a company in the US."

ACE also echoes a commenter below, who says that the Germans have "developed a supercavitation torpedo which is able to intercept and destroy a Shkval."

UPDATE 4:05 PM: Nick flags a quote from Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman, who reminds reporters, "Iranians have also been known to boast and exaggerate about their statements about greater technical and tactical capabilities."

Missile Shield: Hacker Heaven

It's bad enough that the $10 billion a year missile shield -- especially its ground-based interceptors -- routinely flunk their test runs.

But what's potentially worse is that the anti-missile system may have been left wide open to hackers, with "such serious security flaws that the agency and its contractor, Boeing, may not be able to prevent misuse of the system, according to a Defense Department Inspector General’s report.

The report, released late last month, said MDA [the Missile Defense Agency] and Boeing allowed the use of group passwords on the unencrypted portion of MDA’s Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) communications network.

The report said that neither MDA nor Boeing officials saw the need to install a system to conduct automated log audits on unencrypted communications and monitoring systems. Even though current DOD policies require such automated network monitoring, such a requirement “was not in the contract."

The network, which was also developed to conform to more than 20-year-old DOD security policies rather than more recent guidelines, lacks a comprehensive user account management process, the report said. Neither MDA nor Boeing conducted required Information Assurance (IA) training for users before they were granted access to the network, the report stated.

(Big ups: Jeff)

UPDATE 03/20/06 1:12 PM: You knew this was coming. The Pentagon has yanked the Inspector General's report off of its website. Luckily, Federal Computer Week saved itself a copy.

(Big ups: Vic)

Missile Defense Trifecta

The laser jet is on the skids... The missile test at sea was even better than you thought... The satellites still aren't working... And there's a complete wack-job sitting on the Defense Science Board.

I picked up more juicy tidbits about the missile defense program in the last three posts over at Arms Control Wonk than I had seen anywhere else in the last three months.

First off, the laser jet. That'd be the Airborne Laser, the modified 747 that's supposed to use a chemical-powered ray gun to zap enemy missiles before they get too far off of the ground. Begun in 1996, the Airborne Laser's $1 billion budget has grown to $7.3 billion. Flight tests, originally planned for 2002, then for 2005, are now scheduled for 2008. And then there's growing consensus in the military community that SUV-sized vats of toxic chemicals aren't really the best way to produce laser light. So, finally, some White House budget analysts are suggested that the program get axed, Arms Control Wonk guest-blogger Victoria Samson notes.

Another chronically late, ever-more-bloated program, the Space Tracking and Surveillance System, may also be heading for cuts, Victoria says.

That’s an incredibly important part of the missile defense infrastructure, as the decades-old Defense Support Program satellites, originally designed to see a swarm of Soviet ICBMs coming over the horizon, are nowhere near sensitive enough to provide an adequate early warning of missile launches...

So how serious is this administration at getting missile defense to work if it’s willing to take out the needed eyes in the sky for it to function at all? And how credible are assertions that missile defense has, at this very moment, achieved any sort of operational status if this major hole in its infrastructure exists today, tomorrow, and forever more?

But never mind all that, says Defense Science Board chair William Schneider, who became (in)famous in arms control circles a few years back for his suggestion that missile interceptors go nuclear. He's now asserting that, despite the, um, uneven test record, "that members of Congress need to include missile defense programs in their tactical planning when determining defense budgets," Victoria writes.

This would imply that missile defense programs have done such a stellar job in their developmental and operational testing that you can just order up, say, 100 PAC-3 interceptors and be certain that they’ll show up, be ready for deployment, and earn your complete and utter trust in their efficacy. Just like an aircraft carrier or any other regular cog in the American fighting machine.

And this guy is on the science board? Sheesh!

Anyway, there is some good news, ACW guest-blogger Michael Katz-Hyman notes. The Sea-Based Midcourse Intercept program -- by far the most succesful part of the whole missile defense effort -- continues to improve. Usually, in these tests, the interceptor just tries to hit an incoming missile. Which isn't fully realistic, because a warhead will usually separate off from the missile's main booster. But in its last test, on November 17th, the Sea-Based system hit a separating missile. And that's progress.

Russia's Sneaky Missile: Details Here

The Russians have been talking for a couple of years, now, about their new missile which can dodge American interceptors. According to Bill Gertz (and grab the usual handful of salt here), that weapon was tested earlier this month.

The Topol-M missile has a warhead-carrying reentry vehicle which "can change course and range while traveling at speeds estimated at about 3 miles per second," Gertz notes.

That's a serious problem for missile defenses, "because such countermeasures rely on sensors to project a [reentry vehicle's] flight path and impact point so that an interceptor missile can be guided to the right spot to knock [it] out."

Situational Awareness has details on the Topol-M. And if the site is right, the weapon is pretty hard to stop.

It "flies a faster, flatter trajectory and has more opportunities to change course in flight... [It] carr[ies] realistic decoys [that] have the same weight and radar cross section as the actual warhead... [And those] warheads and decoys are also equipped with active-deception jamming systems." Look out.

Inflatable Antenna Helps Ole Miss

Sure, this press release is a bit self-serving -- aren't they all? But since the Missile Defense Agency hasn't been able to pull off its main mission, the Agency might as well toot its horn about some of the ancillary benefits that come from its anti-missile research.

Technology developed for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) element of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has been leveraged to support relief operations in the wake of hurricane Katrina.

Paul Gierow, owner of Ground Antenna Transmit/Receive, a small business working on a contract under MDA’s Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program, has been developing and constructing lightweight, inflatable satellite antennas for possible use in GMD communication applications. The 2.5 meter antenna system can be set up rapidly by inserting four stakes into the ground, inflating the antenna ball, and pointing it at a satellite. Comparable conventional mobile satellite dish systems weigh tons and must be driven in on trucks.

Soon after it became apparent that Katrina would affect the Gulf Coast’s communication infrastructure, Gierow was contacted by the White House Communications Agency, where he had delivered a briefing on the antenna technology. That agency asked Gierow to provide 200 of the antennas for the recovery effort, but Gierow had only one working antenna at the time that could be delivered on such short notice. Working with Senator Jeff Sessions’ office, MDA authorized $50,000 of SBIR funding to initiate the effort to get the antenna to the storm-damaged area. Gierow volunteered his time to deliver the antenna and arrived with it in Woolmarket, Miss. soon after the storm hit.

(Big ups: Dan)

THERE'S MORE: The guerilla geeks are back in New Orleans, setting up comms for the locals there.

Microwaves Vs. Missiles

Security experts have been spooked since 2002, when terrorists tried to take down an Israeli passenger jet flying out of Kenya with a pair of Soviet-made, shoulder-fired missiles.

Defense contractor Raytheon may have found a futuristic answer to the throwback threat: a microwave blaster that confuses the weapons' guidance systems.

The Vigilant Eagle system uses a series of passive infrared trackers, surrounding an airport, that look out for missile exhaust. When these sensors detect a launch, data about the missile's trajectory is sent to a control center, which in turn tells a billboard-size microwave array where to blast.

My Popular Mechanics article has a few more details.

Anti-Missile Shotgun

Most missile defense systems are like handguns, trying to hit a target with a single bullet. But the Pentagon has a new weapon in the works that's more like a shotgun, spraying buckshot until it knocks a missile down. A prototype of the "Multiple Kill Vehicles" system could be flying by 2007. The Arms Control Wonk has details -- and pictures, too.

Jet Defense Gets Off Ground

It's taken nearly three years. But the Homeland Security Department is finally ready to start testing out missile countermeasures on commercial planes.

Back in November 2002, an Israeli 757 was attacked with two shoulder-fired MANPADS (man-portable air defense systems) over Kenya. Luckily, the missiles didn't connect. But many analysts think it's only a matter of time before an American jetliner is hit; MANPADS have killed hundreds of airline passengers since the 70's. And unless some kind of countermeasure is put in place, the planes will continue to be "almost like sitting ducks. Those aircraft are very slow... Everyone can [attack them]," an Israeli defense researcher told CNN.

Military planes are already equipped with "Directional InfraRed Counter-Measures," or DIRCMs, which use laser beams to confuse the missiles' guidance systems. But just slapping the military systems on commercial planes would cost a ton -- $11 billion, maybe, to install DIRCM on all 6,800 U.S. commercial jets, plus another $40 billion in maintenance over 10 years, according to a Rand study.

Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems have been working on cheaper, easier-to-maintain versions of the countermeasure. And Northrop says it should be ready to begin "operational testing and evaluation... aboard an MD-11 airliner later this month and a Boeing 747 later this year."

A company spokesperson says that the system "will cost airlines $0.003 to operate per available seat mile or about 70 cents per passenger on a 2,000-mi. trip. This is about the cost of a bag of peanuts," Aviation Week notes. "However, there is a weight penalty with the system. The Northrop Grumman installation weighs 500 lb., including 350 lb. for the pod, about the weight of two passengers and bags."

It's still a significant cost for already-troubled airline companies. But given the countless thousands of MANPADS floating around on the international market -- selling for as little as $5,000, according to Rand -- a bag of peanuts and two extra passengers seems like a price worth paying.

Block That Missile!

As a politico-turned-editor-turned-musician-turned-whatever-the-hell-I-do-now, I've got no beef with guys who switch careers. But former jocks who explain everything in terms of sports? They really make me laugh -- especially when what they're trying to explain is missile defense.

For example: Former San Francisco 49ers linebacker Riki Ellison, who now serves as Star Wars' chief cheerleader, in his role as the president of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance.

“The [missile] launcher is a quarterback. What’s the best way to stop the quarterback from throwing the ball?” he tells The Hill. “You use your defensive linemen. If you can tackle him before he launches the ball, there’s not a threat. That’s what we call our boost-phase defense.”

The San Jose Mercury-News -- which, apparently, isn't afraid to mangle a sports reference either -- assures us that Riki's "background, combined with more than two decades studying the issue, makes him a unique pitchman for missile defense. He attacks the issue with the same intensity that made him a favorite of teammates and fans during his playing days with the 49ers."

And what is that background, you ask?

Ellison earned a bachelor's degree in international relations, along with an honors certificate in defense and strategic studies in 1983... [When] his football career ended in 1992... Ellison went into marketing for the [now-defunct] United Missile Defense Co., a joint venture pursuing missile-defense contracts. He formed the MDAA in 2002.

"I think defense wins championships," Ellison says, displaying his years of sophisticated analysis of this complex issue. "A great defense gives you the ability to win, the ability to protect."

So true. And of course, as NFL.com noted, "when it comes to finding someone who knows more than his fair share about defense, Riki Ellison is your man. And we're not just talking DE-fense, but de-FENSE."

Brilliant Pebbles Returns

Long-time space-based missile defense advocate Lowell Wood, officially a scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has been talking up the Brilliant Pebbles concept that he pushed during the better part of my elementary school years.

Wood was at the Capitol Hill Club for an event sponsored by the American Foreign Policy Council and the Marshall Institute. Sharon Weinberger at Defense Daily summarizes Wood's talk (subscription only, I am afraid).

Wood's presentation was entitled "Ballistic Missile Defense in an Ideal World".

Wood's "ideal world" is one, presumably, where the laws of physics are substantially relaxed. One of his slides caught my eye:

“Total life-cycle cost to the Nation to own” the Brilliant Pebbles defensive system was $11 B $11 B (’89 $)

– CAIG-validated, DoD-certified-to-Congress cost estimate
• Tight consensus of 3 “from the bottom up” cost-estimation projects

– All RDT&E, all production-&-deployment; 2 decades ops

– Total deployed constellation of 2000 Pebbles
• Worst-case GPALS threat: Typhoon salvo-launching off Bermuda
• Clearly met Reagan’s “..impotent and obsolete..” spec for the SDI

– Higher “cost estimates” come from critics-&-opponents
• Manifestly, professional naïfs – “Will you believe this?!?

Whatever you think of the critics, the American Physical Society and Congressional Budget Office (1996, 2002 and 2004) are not staffed by "professional naïfs."

Of all people to hurl this charge, Dr. Wood is not the person with the most credibility.

His days pimping the X-Ray laser remain a source of controversy. Worse, in my view, the technically savy Dr. Wood encrypted his .pdf file -- something that took me three seconds to defeat with Elcomsoft.

Let's hope Brilliant Pebbles fares better than Wood's encryption when dealing with adversary countermeasures.

-- posted by Jeffrey Lewis.

Getting testy

Back in the mid-1990s, the Clinton Pentagon pursued a missile defense strategy that emphasized short-range or "theater" defensive systems much more than the national shield commonly known as "Star Wars." Theater systems, like the Patriot, are used to defend troops on the battlefield, cities and other targets. The much-debated performance of the Patriot system in the first Iraq war led to a push for more robust technologies like the Theater High Altitude Area Defense system, which began a series of flight tests beginning in 1995.

I covered missile defense pretty closely in those days, and I was often able to get THAAD test results before they were announced. My colleagues would eagerly await the news, but because the results were usually the same, I'd try to spice up the delivery: I'd ask one fellow scribe to pick up a pen and throw it in my direction; then I'd throw my pen at his. And, naturally, I'd miss. (Try it sometime; it's fun.)

THAAD had a lot of high-profile misses back then -- enough to put the program in serious jeopardy. It also became a kind of touchstone for general criticism of missile defense.

But after a couple of hits in 1999, the Pentagon essentially declared victory and put the program into its next phase, where the missile was basically redesigned. Not much has been heard since.

Now, though, THAAD -- renamed the "Terminal" High Altitude Area Defense system -- is on the cusp of returning to the test range for real-live intercept attempts.

This week, the Missile Defense Agency released a statement touting the success of a recent test involving only the THAAD radar and two target missiles -- no actual THAAD missile, no intercept attempt. (The test itself was held back in June -- MDA is not usually forthcoming about its test results, even when they're good.) MDA called it a "confidence-building milestone" on the way to intercept tests later this year.

The more interesting THAAD development in recent months, however, was the revelation (reported in May by Jason Sherman and yours truly of InsideDefense.com) that the Pentagon was mulling the use of advanced Patriot missiles, or THAADs, on fighter aircraft.

A Navy and Missile Defense Agency study of missile defense options includes a new, unorthodox alternative with ramifications beyond the Navy -- equipping fighter aircraft with interceptors like the most advanced version of the Patriot. “MDA is investigating launching various missiles off of aircraft, including THAAD and PAC-3,” said an industry source. Those missiles could be assisted by organic fighter radars or the Aegis radar in shooting down ballistic or cruise missiles, according to sources and Navy briefing charts describing the assessment. “In theory,” the source said, “you could put two THAADs on an F-15.”

THERE'S MORE: The AP broke some news on the status of the national missile defense testing program this week.

-- posted by Dan Dupont

Taiwan to give US missile defense a go

Taiwan has been living between a rock and hard place for quite some time. Ever fearful of an attack from China, they're going to receive early warning radars from the United States. China's military build-up continues, and they reportedly tested a cruise missile with a 1000km range.

In a move bound to anger Beijing, which views Taiwan as a renegade province, the system will let Taiwan’s air force detect and track long- and short-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, enemy aircraft and surface ships with “no doubt” reliability, said Raytheon, based in Waltham, MA.

The system includes an ultra-high frequency “phased array” radar to be integrated with Taiwan-supplied beacons that identify aircraft as friends or foes as well as two missile warning centers, a Defense Department contract announcement said.

The article notes that the radar system could eventually be linked to Patriot missile defense batteries, a system with great capability and a slightly checkered past.

Maybe they'd be interested in some R2-D2 units?

--posted by Murdoc

Agency: Anti-Missile Tests = Bad

The American missile defense system is so lame that more tests may only undermine its value as a deterrent.

That's the word from the Final Report of the Missile Defense Agency's Independent Review Team (IRT). The Washington Post first noted the report on Thursday. But Arms Control Wonk Jeffrey Lewis has combed through the document, and discovered its most controversial conclusions.

The IRT recommends five changes, the cumulative effect of which will be to make testing less likely:

1. Establish a More Rigorous Flight Readiness Certification Process

2. Strengthen Systems Engineering

3. Perform additional ground-based qualification testing as a requirement for flight testing

4. Hold contractor functional organizations accountable for supporting prime contract management

5. Assure that the GMD [ground-based midcourse defense] program is executable

The general effect of these recommendations is to create a presumption against conducting any scheduled flight test—what the IRT calls "Prove why should fly." For good measure, the IRT recommends making the next integrated flight test a "non-intercept" test.

Imagine that: First, MDA rushes a defense that won’t defend to meet a deadline that just happens to coincide with a Presidential election. Then, MDA scales way back on necessary testing, lest the bad guys figure out the damn thing doesn’t work.

THERE'S MORE: "IRT is totally going to deny this is their purpose," the Wonk adds in an e-mail. But the team's assertion, that "'successful flight testing is a strategic issue' is so damning." As IRT notes...

The dissuasion and deterrence value of these assets will be:
* Increased by successful flight tests
* Decreased by unsuccessful flight tests

'Nuff said.

Jet Defense Lifts Off

Finally...

In an airplane hangar north of Fort Worth, technicians are preparing to mount a fire-hydrant-shaped device onto the belly of an American Airlines Boeing 767. It is an effort that could soon turn into a more than $10 billion project to install a high-tech missile defense system on the nation's commercial planes.

The Boeing 767 - the same type of plane that terrorists flew into the World Trade Center - is one of three planes that, by the end of this year, will be used to test the infrared laser-based systems designed to find and disable shoulder-fired missiles. The missiles have long been popular among terrorists and rebel groups in war zones around the world; the concern now is that they could become a domestic threat.

The tests are being financed by the Department of Homeland Security, which has been directed by Congress to move rapidly to take technology designed for military aircraft and adapt it so it can protect the nation's 6,800 commercial jets. It has so far invested $120 million in the testing effort, which is expected to last through next year.

BEST OF ANTI-MISSILES AXED

The most successful part of the star-crossed missile defense system has been the one based at sea. So, naturally, the Pentagon has decided to cut the program's budget, Defense Daily reports.

Launched from cruisers off the Hawaiian coast, the Standard Missile-3 interceptors have managed to hit their targets in five out of six recent tests. Land-based anti-missiles, on the other hand, couldn't even make it into the air during two recent exercises over the winter.

But never mind all that. The sea-based interceptors have been slated for a $95 million cut. That could keep a key signal processor from coming on line, which might "set back the whole program at least a year," Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) complained in a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing. (Here's the transcript.) "Why are we setting aside such a successful program, where the outcome is almost predictable, and spending it on other, riskier programs?"

See if you can find the thread of logic in this answer from Missile Defense Agency chief Lt. Gen "Trey" Obering. Becasue I sure can't.

Well, let me get to the -- first of all, the program has been very successful in the testing that we have done to date.

Now, one of the things we have not done yet is fly against a separating [warhead – one that detaches from the main body of the missile]. And that is something that we do need to do because that represents the lion's share of the threats that we may be facing around the world.

And the reason that we haven't done that is because, if you recall, the one failure that we did have in the test program had to do with the [malfunction of the] divert attitude control system… that we would need for a separating warhead.

And we have not completely fixed that yet in the program. We're still going through the ground testing for a new design to validate that we do have a fix. We think we have identified the root cause of that and we've taken steps to address that.

But that's why we don't have a more robust profile, either in testing or in our production profile, because we haven't jumped all those technical hurdles yet. But we are in the process of doing that.

"Would it improve the program if you got your signal processor?" Inouye responds.

Obering replies, "Yes, sir, it would."

So Obering is worried his sea-based missiles can't hit separating warheads, therefore he's scaling the project back. But his land-based missiles can't hit anything at all -- so he's going full steam ahead with those. WTF?!?!?

THERE'S MORE: "Obering basically admitted that while the Aegis system may be progressing along its development path, it still cannot defend U.S. interests against the threat for which it was designed," says Center for Defense Information missile guru Victoria Samson.

Minus the SDACS (solid divert and attitude control system), which allows it more maneuverability, the Aegis BMD [sea-based ballistic missile defense] system cannot reliably intercept threat missiles with separating warheads, which, to Obering's own admission, represent "the lion's share of the threats that we may be facing around the world."

Which puts the so-called success of the Aegis BMD system in a different light.

AND MORE: Meanwhile, Defense Daily notes, one of missile defense' main cheerleaders in the Senate is calling for big changes in the interceptor effort. His suggestion: weapons in space that can knock down missiles in their "boost phase" – just as they take off. "We should begin the process of developing a space-based boost phase capability," Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) said.

There is no money in the current budget, or in next year’s request, for space-based systems, and Kyl bemoaned the fact that MDA is not expected to begin any development work on such programs until FY ’08. “Everyone knows that’s where we have to go,” Kyl said.

“It’s the political arguments that restrain us,” he said, adding that advocates must push the case for a space-based system.

In the 1980s, the Pentagon backed a space-based interceptor program known as “Brilliant Pebbles” that envisioned placing thousands of interceptors in outer space. Opponents ridiculed the concept, which became a lightning rod for criticism.

Obering also brought up space-based interceptors during his Senate testimony.

There are a lot of technical challenges that we need to address. And I think that while it is important to have the debate on the philosophical advantage and strategy of having space-based interceptors, it would be prudent to lay in a technical experimentation program to see if we can even do that.

"To my knowledge, that's the first time that someone from MDA has admitted that they may be breaking new ground with the SBI system and therefore should discuss the ramifications of doing so," Samson says. "Previously, Obering has been very careful to couch his remarks in the technical challenges to SBI, not the philosophical ones."

MISSILE MEN NEED WORK

What's with General Lance Lord looking for "alternative uses" for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles? Has "the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War have actually increased the importance of our Minuteman III ICBM," as he says? Or is the general just looking for something to keep his 9,000 misileers busy? The answer from Slate's Fred Kaplan: # 2.

THERE'S MORE: While Gen. Lord tries to keep his current crop of missile men engaged, the Pentagon is developing a next generation of hypersonic, intercontinental missiles. Here's what I wrote about project Falcon ("Force Application and Launch from the CONtinental United States") back in '03.

NEW RUSSIAN MISSILE FIGHTS PATRIOTS

Given the, um, uneven track record of the Patriot missile interceptor, you'd think such a weapon might not be necessary. But Russia has gone ahead and put together "the first ballistic missile ever to include built-in countermeasures against the West's growing range of deployed theatre missile defence systems," according to Jane's Defence Weekly.

The Iskander-E short-range ballistic missile is designed to defeat Western ballistic missile defence systems, particularly the Patriot air-defence system...

It appears to forego conventional chaff, flare and anti-radar signals and instead employs manoeuvring at both launch and attack phases, a low and direct trajectory and a low radar signature produced by what Russian reports called "a special composite"... These details will be [puzzling] to Western missile defence specialists.

The Iskander-E has a maximum range of 280 km and a payload of 480 kg to comply with the limits laid down by the Missile Technology Control Regime... In each case these missiles can be used to carry be nuclear, chemical or biological warheads.

Nations such as Syria (in 2004) and Iran (in 2001) were reported to have shown interest in purchasing this weapon - which is currently available to the market - however this seems an unlikely event and was denied in each case. Russia appears to be courting its market by revealing many of the missile details in a 21 February 2005 broadcast on Moscow's Channel 1 television news programme. "Missileers are usually wary of showing their hands regarding countermeasures," said Uzi Rubin, former director of Israel's Missile Defence Agency. "I can only interpret the Russians' bout of transparency as a marketing effort toward customers who face theatre missile defence systems."

MOONIE TIMES HEARTS MISSILE DEFENSE

Were these guys even on the same call? If you read the Moonie-owned Washington Times yesterday, you would have thought everything was just hunky-dory with the missile defense system -- never mind all those tests in which the interceptors couldn't get off of the ground.

U.S. defenses against enemy missiles are progressing toward full deployment and a new sea-based version hit a simulated Scud missile flight during a test last month, Pentagon officials said yesterday.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, director of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, told reporters that the basic system of interceptor missiles, sensors and tracking devices is working and is a critical national security weapon.

"Overall I'm very optimistic," Gen. Obering said during a telephone conference. "This is a critical capability and I think that people will realize over time that we absolutely need this for our security, and I think we'll look back and say thank goodness that we were able to develop this system when we did and get it into the field."

But now, check out what Defense Daily -- the military-industrial trade e-journal, not exactly regarded as a bastion of left-wing thought -- had to say about Obering's chat:

The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) director Air Force Lt. Gen. Trey Obering is disappointed with recent flight test problems in the ground- based midcourse defense arena.

"I'm very disappointed in this last test because of the simplicity of the failure," Obering said in a teleconference yesterday.

"The flight test interceptor aborted as designed," Obering said.

"We had a failure of one of the ground support equipment arms to adequately clear out of the way as it should have" within the silo.

Or how about this, from the Washington Post?

The general in charge of the Pentagon's faltering effort to develop a system for defending the United States against ballistic missile attack said yesterday that he has ordered a thorough review of all ground equipment used in testing and appointed a senior Navy officer to oversee future test preparations.

The moves by Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry A. "Trey" Obering III follow failed attempts in December and February to launch interceptor rockets in tests of the fledgling system. Both failures have been blamed on what defense officials say were minor glitches -- a flawed software code in December and a faulty silo retracting arm in February.

In a conference call with reporters, Obering expressed continued confidence in the system. He said that even without the launch of the rockets, the recent tests scored some successes by demonstrating the system's ability to track target missiles and generate intercept instructions. But he acknowledged frustration at the tendency of simple glitches to foil the tests.

"The hard things about missile defense we are accomplishing," Obering said. "The easy things are what we're having trouble with."

So here's my question: Did the Moonie Times' Bill Gertz actually sit down and think, "Hmmm, let me carry the Administration's water today"? Or is blind acceptance so pre-programmed into the paper's DNA that this kind of cheerleading becomes automatic?

(Thanks to Victoria for the catch.)

THERE'S MORE: On second thought, maybe this all has something to do with little piggies. Or with getting high on the job. Sneak a peek at Dr. A.C. Wonk's take on the missile defense hackery.

ANTI-MISSILE PASSES TEST AT SEA

We give the missile defense program a pretty hard time around here, especially when they don't even manage to pass their own dumbed-down tests. So give the Star Wars crowd some credit: one of their interceptors successfully downed a mock warhead on Thursday. It's "the fifth success in six such tests of the fledgling U.S. anti-missile shield's sea-based leg," according to Reuters. The ground-based component of the missile shield has, obviously, not performed nearly as well.

The target rocket was fired from the U.S. Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands, Kauai, and was hit a few minutes later from a Standard Missile-3 interceptor fired from the USS Lake Erie guided missile cruiser. The ship used the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense Weapon System to track the target. By year's end, the U.S. Navy wants 18 ships equipped with the system, Defense Daily notes.

"Last fall," Reuters observes, "the Japan-based Arleigh Burke-class destroyer Curtis Wilbur became the first component of the anti-missile shield to be put on patrol in the Sea of Japan to guard against North Korean attack."

Philip Coyle, the Pentagon's former chief of testing and evaluation and a normally vicious skeptic of the missile defense system, was muted in his reactions to yesterday's test. But he did have this to say:

I assume that the intercept took place so soon after interceptor launch - just two minutes - because they wanted to demonstrate the capability intercept a short range enemy missile, and at relatively close range from the launching Aegis ship. Depending on the actual geometry and conditions, such tests can be highly scripted to be successful on such a short time scale.

THERE'S MORE: Canada decided yesterday not to join in the American anti-missile effort. And that elicited a rather odd reponse from U.S. ambassador Paul Cellucci: "We simply cannot understand why Canada would in effect give up its sovereignty – its seat at the table – to decide what to do about a missile that might be coming towards Canada."

Right. Canada makes its own decisions about how best to spend its money and defend its citizens. And that means it's giving up its sovereignty. Whatever you say, Paul.

(thanks to RC for the pointer)

AND MORE: "What the U.S. Ambassador is saying is that the U.S. has arrogated to itself the right to invade Canada's airspace in order to fire at an incoming missile that may be aimed at Canada, the U.S., or Mexico, even if Canada objects to such an action," Defense Tech Dad Tom Shachtman says over on the forum. "This in effect negates Canadian sovereignty over its own airspace."

Jeff Quinton points out that a retired Canadian general has just made a similar point -- that, as Jeff puts it, "NORAD/Northern Command... are set up to provide security for the whole continent and that Canada could be shut out of the planning process."

"Canadians will not have any participation in the actual decision-making or the rules of engagement or anything to do with ballistic missile defence," lieutenant-general George MacDonald, the former vice-chief of defence staff and now a consultant, tells the National Post. "We will simply be feeding the system."

AND MORE: "Prime Minister Paul Martin said Canada must be consulted before the U.S. decides to fire on missiles that enter Canadian airspace, despite Ottawa's refusal to participate in America's missile defence program," the CBC reports.

"I don't think that anyone expected that there would be any other finger on a button than the Americans," Martin said Friday, a day after his decision not to join the program.

"But in terms of Canadian airspace, yes we would expect to be consulted. This is our airspace. We're a sovereign nation. And you don't intrude on a sovereign nation's airspace without seeking permission," Martin said.

MISSILE DEFENDER CAN'T GET IT UP

I love it when the Arms Control Wonk gets all bitchy. Especially when it's about missile defense.

In Sex and the City, Trey MacDougal, the husband of a principal character, has a little problem performing, um, performing under pressure.

The Missile Defense Agency's own Trey, Henry "Trey" Obering III, seems to be having a little trouble getting the old missile up and on course, himself.

For the second time in two months, a missile defense interceptor failed to launch from Kwajalein in the Pacific Ocean.

Again, the target, perhaps representing a North Korean ICBM hurtling toward a U.S. city, performed flawlessly.

MDA spokesman Rick Lehner said the early indications pointed to a malfunction with the ground support equipment, not the missile itself.

That's usually the excuse in these situations, huh?

THERE'S MORE: Remember, the last time Obering's missile malfunctioned, he blamed the whole thing on an itsy-bitsy software glitch that would never get in the way of the weapon's performance ever, ever, ever again.

But today's excuse -- that the ground support equipment was likely behind the fizzle -- sounds a whole lot like the initial reports from that never-to-be-repeated flop.

FLOPS, NEW THREATS BEHIND STAR WARS CUTS

Sure, the Bush Administration's missile defense system has flopped just about every test it's faced. But that's not the only reason the program is being cut by more than a billion dollars a year, says BusinessWeek.

"The war on terror and Iraq may have taken their toll on missile defense and changed the way Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld assesses potential threats," the magazine notes. Worries about incoming missiles have given way to 9/11-style terrorism fears, and the war in Iraq.

"The Rumsfeld vision of future warfare has had a severe collision with reality," says Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute, a conservative think tank in Arlington, Va. The problems facing missile defense, he says, are "the relatively weak case for the overall mission and the need to spend money in other ways.

Consider as well the difference between the 2000 election and last year's. Five years ago, missile defense was one of Bush's key issues... "America must build effective missile defenses based on the best available options at the earliest possible date," he declared during his first run for the White House.

Since then, despite the roughly $10 billion a year that has poured into the program, Rumsfeld has conceded the system doesn't have to be 100% effective. It just has to work well enough to change the calculation of an enemy thinking about lofting a missile at Los Angeles or New York. Problem is, it doesn't even seem capable of doing that, as [a botched] December test showed...

And as the American program struggles, other countries are making headway in pursuing new technologies. Scott Ritter, the former arms inspector in Iraq who correctly concluded Baghdad had no weapons of mass destruction, now says Russia has tested an SS-27 Topol-M mobile ballistic missile that would render the current Star Wars scheme useless. It is too fast to hit right after takeoff unless the interceptor is lucky enough to be really close to the launch pad.

Also, the SS-27 is hardened against lasers, so the Airborne Laser -- a program already way behind schedule -- wouldn't work. And because it's maneuverable and capable of releasing three warheads and four decoys, it would be much harder to defeat as it falls in the terminal stage of flight.

[Missile Defense Agency] spokesman Lehner says Ritter's objection misses the point of his agency's goal, which is to address "the more rudimentary missiles North Korea and Iran are developing." But what if Pyongyang or Tehran buys an SS-27? "I don't know about that," he told BusinessWeek Online.

THERE'S MORE: Despite a litany of broken budgets and shattered deadlines, it looks like the Airborne Laser (ABL) is returning to the forefront of missile defenders' minds.

The laser-firing 747 last year achieved "first light" -- successfully testing its ray gun. And now, "agency officials consider the program 'quite healthy,' and they are planning to attempt a target shoot-down in 2008," Inside Defense says. Just last month, an MDA official refused to give a date for when that test might go down.

"It is revolutionary, it is disruptive, meaning this required inventions and doing things that have never been done before," a Pentagon official told the AFP, likening the potential impact on warfare of the airborne laser to the advent of nuclear power. "And it has done so well, certainly in the last ten months that we really need to pursue this to a conclusion. We’re encouraged by everything we’ve seen."

The MDA has long been concerned about knocking a missile down right when it takes off, in its so-called "boost phase." But the task has been deemed all-but-impossible by a collection of leading physicists. And, one by one, the technologies the MDA to pursue this task have failed to deliver. Now, there's only a single "boost phase" option left for the MDA. And that's the laser jet.

MISSILE DEFENSE "GLITCH?" YEAH, RIGHT

Everything is working perfectly. There is nothing -- repeat, nothing -- to worry about. The reason the missile defense system flunked it's most recent $100 million test? Just a "very minor" software glitch, insisted Missile Defense Agency chief Lt. Gen. "Trey" Obering. It was inconceivable, Obering told the Washington Post, that such a problem could ever, ever happen again. The Ground-based Midcourse Defense system may have face-planted this time. But against a real missile, he promised, it was absolutely sure to work right.

Providing the first detailed account of what went wrong, Obering told reporters that the countdown was automatically aborted when a routine system check of internal electronic signals detected a potential problem. The check showed that too many electronic messages had been missed in the signal flow between the flight computer and the unit that controls the interceptor's thrusters.

In retrospect, Obering said, designers of the interceptor had imposed too tight a limit on the number of allowable missed messages.

"It turns out we had overly constrained the system," he said.

Obering called the chances of such a glitch occurring "very rare." If it had happened during an actual crisis, with an enemy missile heading toward the United States, the system would have simply bypassed the faulty interceptor and launched another one, Obering said.

Sounds reasonable. But Philip Coyle, the former head of the Pentagon's office of Operational Test and Evaluation, isn't buying it.

First of all, Coyle noted, the tests that the anti-missiles keep flunking are way, way over-simplified. In the December trial, called Integrated Flight Test (IFT)-13C, the target was fixed with a radar beacon and GPS locator, making it pretty damn easy to spot.

More importantly, perhaps, is the fact that there's only one target. If Kim Jong Il is ever steamed enough to lob missiles at us, you can be sure he ain't gonna shoot them off one at a time.

Secondly, that "minor" glitch? It turns out that it's in a very major part of the missile defense system -- one that's had a whole bunch of problems in the past. Click here to continue on, as Coyle looks at just how significant the anti-missile system's problems really are.

For more background than you could possibly want, rumor has it that the failure in IFT-13C was in the CLE. CLE is short for Command Launch Equipment. It's a big computer system and part of the Ground-based Interceptor (GBI) Support System. Lots of software is in the CLE system, and they've had significant problems with that software. Part of the CLE is on the ground and part is in the interceptor.

It's built by Northrop Grumman, and, according to their website, "controls the interceptor through launch, providing near real-time trajectory planning, commanding, and health and status monitoring."

Northrup says, "The CLE software was developed on a highly accelerated schedule and delivered in half the time of the shortest possible schedule predicted by standard software models," which could suggest they had to rush their work.

The CLE is used to perform a wide variety of command and communications functions, everything from:

1. Communication with the BMC3 system,

2. Interceptor launch guidance, control and reporting,

3. Interceptor flyout communications and monitoring,

4. Controlling and monitoring electrical power,

5. Environmental and health and safety monitoring and control.

It's a very important system. For example, among other things, it calculates the engagement geometry and solar angles, retrieves data about the target, generates discrimination data for the interceptor, and tells the GBI where to go and what to look for. The CLE is an important part of the brains of the overall system, and is a "system-of-systems" itself. It also takes the info from the C-band beacon - a targeting aid that no enemy would provide -on the target reentry vehicle to create the first Weapons Task Plan, defining the basket out in space where the interceptor is aimed.

Obering is implying that the failure was on the ground, and so the interceptors are OK and don't need to be pulled out of the ground and fixed. But that remains to be seen since the CLE is itself an interfacing system aboard the interceptors and with computers on the ground.

I also read Obering's comments about message drop out rates as suggesting that they also had a problem with the 1553 data bus on board the interceptor. Boeing and Northrup have had lots of problems with the CLE/1553 interface. Basically, the 1553 data bus is too slow and doesn't have the capacity to handle the tons of information the interceptor has to process. Orbital has been worried about it ever since they got into the competition with Lockheed for building interceptors, and wanted to start over with a brand new type of data bus on board the interceptor. Orbital got a "waiver" so they wouldn't have to use it on Boost Vehicle Test #6 (BV-6).

But MDA and Boeing, thinking short term rather than long term, have hung on to the old data bus, hoping they can make it work.

Originally designed for electrically noisy environments in military aircraft, in practice, the 1553 is simple - basically two shielded wires running the length of an aircraft with multiple taps. In practice the 1553 is a millisecond oriented data bus. This is because a 1553 bus can have tens of microseconds of timing unpredictability, or jitter, in how long a data or instruction "hand shake" can take or vary. The 1553 is a half-duplex protocol, meaning that it can transmit messages in one direction or the other, but not in both directions simultaneously. Sort of like the old radio transmissions where you had to say, "Over."

A millisecond oriented data bus is too slow when your talking about very high speed systems such as missiles going thousands of miles per hour.

If you're handling very high data rates in a system that is moving very fast, a 1553 data bus can simply be "too slow" or too uncertain, and some messages won't get through or will drop out.

The crude analogy is the difference between 3 mph, 30 mph, 300 mph and 3,000 mph. At 3 mph you need shoe leather. At 30 mph you need wheels. At 300 mph you need wings or airfoils, and at 3,000 mph you need rocket propellant. A 1553 data bus in a high-speed missile system can be like trying to go 3,000 mph on shoe leather.

THERE'S MORE: "The Pentagon may never publicly declare that its new missile defense system is fully ready to defend against long-range missiles aimed at the United States," according to the AP.

PERFORMANCE ANXIETY

MISSILE DEFENSE BOOSTER FAILS TO RISE TO THE OCCASSION

The Missile Defense Agency's Integrated Flight Test (IFT)-13C was aborted "after the interceptor missile experienced an anomaly shortly before it was to be launched." The target, perhaps representing a North Korean ICBM hurtling toward a U.S. city, performed flawlessly.

Let's be clear: This test was a big deal. Thomas Christie, the Pentagon' Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, told Congress in February that the test would be "significant exercise of the Test Bed infrastructure" and would address "a long-standing concern over target presentation that has not yet been tested."

Congress agreed: The FY 2005 Defense Appropriations Bill identifies the test by name, saying that "Integrated Flight Test-13C scheduled for August 200" represents an important milestone.

Accordingly, the conferees direct the Director of the Missile Defense Agency to provide a report to the congressional defense committees within 30 days of the conclusion of IFT-13C, in both classified and unclassified form, including a detailed assessment of the results of IFT-13C.

Can't wait for that report. Each test costs about 100 million bucks.

I've posted a slightly obscene op-ed I wrote about alternative uses for Missile Defense Agency funding over on Arms Control Wonk.com

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists weblog has a comment, with a couple of worthwhile links.

Finally, MDA is not without a sense of irony. Yesterday, MDA awarded Boeing a $928 million contract for FY 05-07 for "construction and non-construction efforts required to field the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) Block 2006 Capability Enhancement (CE) Program."

Ideally, the "enhancement" in mind includes a booster that works. Or not.

--Jeffrey Lewis

RUSSIAN ROCKETS: ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

If you were a cash-stripped missile force with a large number of missiles to decommission, how would you do it?

Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces, facing deactivation of the some SS-18 "Satan" ICBMs under the START I Treaty, have decided to use the silo-based missiles to launch commercial satellites, according to the Moscow Gazeta.ru website. The original article is in Russian, but a translation is available from the World News Connection (subscription required).

Eliminating a missile by launching it is permitted under the START Treaty's Protocol on Procedures Governing Conversion or Elimination. But the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces have reportedly not done so, in part because the exhaust from an ICBM launch is highly toxic.

First up, however, Russia will rattle the sabers, especially regarding missile defense, with a test launch. After that, though, it's all ringing cash registers.

Above right: Part of an SS-18 dismantled in the traditional manner (Defense Threat Reduction Agency).

--Jeffrey Lewis

RUSSIA WANTS NEW ICBM

Oh, super. Just super. Not only is a dictator now in charge of Russia. But the guy wants to develop new, nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, according to the AP.

Speaking at a meeting of the Armed Forces' leadership, Putin reportedly said that Russia is researching and successfully testing new nuclear missile systems.

``I am sure that ... they will be put in service within the next few years and, what is more, they will be developments of the kind that other nuclear powers do not and will not have,'' Putin was quoted as saying by the ITAR-Tass news agency.

Putin reportedly said: ``International terrorism is one of the major threats for Russia. We understand as soon as we ignore such components of our defense as a nuclear and missile shield, other threats may occur.''

No details were immediately available, but Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said earlier this month that Russia expected to test-fire a mobile version of its Topol-M ballistic missile this year and that production of the new weapon could be commissioned in 2005.

News reports have also said Russia is believed to be developing a next-generation heavy nuclear missile that could carry up to 10 nuclear warheads weighing a total of 4.4 tons, compared with the Topol-M's 1.32-ton combat payload.

Topol-Ms have been deployed in silos since 1998. The missiles have a range of about 6,000 miles and reportedly can maneuver in ways that are difficult to detect.

Anybody wanna bet how long it'll take for the White House or the Pentagon to say this proves the need for its missile defense array -- even though the system is so lame, it can't be tested?

THERE'S MORE: "This is not something that we look at as new," White House press secretary Scott McCllelan now says. "We are very well aware of their long-standing modernization efforts for their military. ... We are allies now in the global war on terrorism."

AND MORE: The Russian military has been working for a number of years, now, on missiles that can juke American interceptors, Jeffrey Lewis notes. In December 2003, "a source on the Russian General Staff told Interfax that every Topol-M [missile] will be outfitted with... the capability of launching decoys."

Last February, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists observes, the Russians successfully tested "a new hypersonic 'Crazy Ivan' warhead that follows a nonclassical scenario, changing flight altitude and course repeatedly, making it nearly impossible to track and target. Putin declared Russia able to penetrate any missile defense system with ease."

AND MORE: Putin refers to his new missile as some sort of anti-terrorist weapon. That's like calling TNT a cockroach fighter. As "Retired SSBN" mentions in the Defense Tech forum, ICBMs don't have a damn thing to do with fighting Al-Qaeda & Co.

AND MORE: "If you can't think of novel uses for ICBMs, you're not trying very hard," TM Lutas says over in the Defense Tech forum.

Steven Den Beste once noted that we could win 10 simultaneous wars with today's military. It's just that 8 of those wars would have to be nuclear. For example, An ICBM at Tora Bora would have settled matters quickly, removed a relatively remote bit of land from productive use and ensured that no urban area would tolerate terrorists active against the launching power, whether it's the US or Russia.

Apparently, some in the Pentagon agree -- sort of. About a year ago, Defense Department planners handed out contracts to 10 firms to start designing a hypersonic missile that can outrun the now-retired Concorde, and can hit a terrorist nest in Europe from the East Coast.

ANTI-MISSILE TESTS DELAYED AGAIN

If you had to pick just two sentences to capture the willful stupidity of the Bush administration's missile defense push, this pair from Global Security Newswire would do nicely:

The U.S. Defense Department has once again postponed flight-testing new elements of its missile defense system until the end of November.

Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Henry "Trey" Obering said, however, that the delay would not alter plans to begin operating the system in the next month or two.

Senator Jack Reed (D-R.I.), with the Armed Services Committee, asks the right question: "If you’re not confident enough to take a chance on a test, how can you say that this can engage successfully in a real operational mission?"

THERE'S MORE: "Keeping America safe from attack is the central theme of the president's re-election campaign. Why then — except for a rally last month at a Boeing plant where a piece of the program is manufactured — has he scarcely mentioned missile defense?" wonders Slate's Fred Kaplan. "Perhaps because the program is having serious problems — and because Bush knows it's having problems."

MISSILE SHIELD: CONFUSION REIGNS

"Despite U.S. President George W. Bush’s declaration that a nascent missile defense system is nearly ready, the military officials responsible for operating the system are far from clear about who will do what, when and how," reports Defense News.

"Parts of the system are still in development, rigorous tests have yet to be conducted, commanders are unclear about the rules of engagement, and operators have yet to be fully trained."

So many key tests of the system have been scrapped that "the command that is responsible for drawing up the ground-based system’s operating plans and procedures doesn’t yet know exactly what the missile shield can do," the magazine notes.

There are even questions about just what hardware will be part of these engagement sequences. The missile defense official said they could include the Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC)-3 and other weapons meant for tactical battlefield use, raising the possibility that military commanders may ask to deploy PAC-3 batteries on U.S. soil, which would be a first.

Nor does the military have a firm grasp on who is going to pull the trigger -- a decision that's "more difficult than with ordinary weapons because different services and commands will operate different parts of" the missile shield.

Overall, the ground-based system will be run by the Northern Command; the future Sea-based Missile Defense system will be run by Pacific Command. The Air Force will operate some sensors, radar and satellites, and the Army will run command-and-control systems and launch and maintain some interceptor rockets. When the sea-based shield comes online, the Navy’s role will grow...

Missile defense officials envision a system that is never finished.

JET DEFENSE ON THE RUNWAY

At last, there's a bit of good news about the shoulder-fired missiles that terrorists have found so irresistable. After years of taking its sweet time, the Department of Homeland Security yesterday handed out a pair of contracts to design and test a prototype missile defense for passenger planes.

BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman will each get about $45 million, to spend over the next 18 months, so they can get their systems ready to shoulder-fired threat. Both companies will likely use some variation of the "Directed InfraRed CounterMeasure," or DIRCM, which uses beams of light to jams missile guidance systems.

Despite the contracts, the Homeland Security Department still sounds less-than-thrilled about the infrared solution, however.

Current DIRCMs cannot be easily adapted to the U.S. commercial air fleet, and must be re-engineered. The current available DIRCMs have roughly 300 hours of life before they must be repaired or refurbished. While suitable for the military or special purpose aircraft, given their maintenance and logistical infrastructure, this is not suitable for U.S. commercial air fleet use. The cost of the training, ground support equipment, supplies and spares, and logistics trail that would need to be in place at every U.S. airport would be significant. Estimates put this cost at as much as $5 billion to $10 billion per year prior to the re-engineering efforts of this program.

Never mind that Israel is putting a similar system in place, Tom Ridge's people say. "El Al Airlines is able to use these technologies because they fly out of one airport where their maintenance personnel can all be centrally located. In the U.S., with more than 400 airports and more than 6,000 aircraft in the commercial fleet, the maintenance cost of [such] technology at current system costs would be staggering."

REAL MISSILE DEFENSE DELAYED

While the U.S. military rushes to switch on its ballistic missile defense system, the Pentagon's program for combating cruise missiles is in deep trouble, Aviation Week reports. And it may not get better for a long, long time to come.

China, Iran, and Syria are among the countries building up big arsenals of land-based cruise missiles, which are seen by some analysts as a bigger threat to American security than any ballistic danger. That's mostly because the missiles are so easy to obtain. "For the price of two fighters or four attack helicopters a country can buy about 40 cruise missiles," Aviation Week notes.

The Patriot missile defense system is supposed to provide some protection against the threat. But the Patriot's track record is iffy. And Patriots are expensive -- $2 to $3 million per shot.

So the Defense Department wants a smaller, more mobile, more accurate, cheaper solution. And it wants the system by the end of the decade.

But it ain't gonna happen, Aviation Week says. The Patriot's replacement, the Medium Extended Air Defense System, now isn't scheduled to come online until 2015.

It's one of a whole lot of hurdles the Pentagon is going to face as it tries to stop cruise missile attacks, says Victoria Samson, with the Center for Defense Information.

"I think what we are going to find out is that ballistic missile defense is a cakewalk compared to cruise missile defense," she tells Defense Tech. Tracking ballisitic missiles is hard. But "when you factor in something that is powered, can fly low to the ground, and has a much lower radar cross section, the job gets much more difficult. As we saw in [the Iraq war], when Iraq cobbled together old Seersucker cruise missiles and used them over land (instead of over the water, as they were designed) against Coalition troops, not only did we not engage them with the Patriot, but we flat-out failed to pick them up on our radar."

ANTI-MISSILE TEST SHORT-CIRCUITS

One of the big tests of the Alaska missile defense system -- originally pegged for December, 2003, and then rescheduled for this August -- has been delayed again. The booster for the anti-missile interceptor is having computer problems, Victoria Samson, an analyst with the Center for Defense Information, tells Defense Tech. "It's supposed to cause a 200 millisecond telemetry dropout from the flight computer. It isn't that much, but apparently is enough to warrant pulling out the computer and replacing it."

Word is that this test -- known as "Integrated Flight Test-13C" -- now won't happen until late-September, at the earliest. And that's more than a bit troubling, for two reasons. First, the Alaska anti-missile system is supposed to come on line just a few weeks later, in October. Second, missile and interceptor aren't even supposed to meet up during "IFT-13C," according to Samson.

"Officially, this test is slated to be a target 'fly-by,'" she says.

AND MORE: " Unfortunately, the Alaska missiles cannot defend America. And that's the least of their shortcomings.," says the L.A. Times' William Arkin.

The big problem is that missile defense focuses "on the wrong threat," he adds. "The December 2001 National Intelligence Estimate on ballistic missile threats, which advocates of the new system cite as their justification, predicted that several countries could use ships off the U.S. coast to launch missiles — cruise missiles, that is — that would sneak under the currently planned antimissile network. In fact, any homeland security expert will agree that U.S. ports and maritime approaches are the most vulnerable."

RUMMY HEARTS MISSILE DEFENSE

"Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Wednesday called a fledgling U.S. ballistic missile defense system in Alaska a triumph for the Bush administration 'over pessimism and skepticism,'" Reuters reports.

That's right, folks. The problem with the missile defense system isn't that it has flunked many of its rigged tests. The problem is that we're not cheering loud enough.

THERE'S MORE: Despite his unparalleled admiration for the anti-missile program, Rummy isn't quite ready to flip the switch on the system. "He is still working out the rules dictating when and under whose authority to fire a new system to protect the United States from missile attack, and is awaiting a final assessment about the system's readiness to begin operations," according to the Washington Post.

EX-PENTAGON BIG RIPS ANTI-MISSILES

President Bush's missile defense system, to put it plainly, "doesn't work." And tests of the program "so far have been more tightly scripted than a modern political convention."

That's not my opinion. It's the words of former Pentagon testing chief Phillip Coyle. In an e-mail to Defense Tech, he repeatedly rips the Bush administration over its anti-missile push, and breaks down the system's many, many problems:

On Thursday, July 22, 2004, the first ground-based missile interceptor was installed in a silo at Fort Greely, Alaska. In their press release on GMD [Ground-based Midcourse Defense] deployment, the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency hailed it as "the end of an era where we have not been able to defend our country against long-range ballistic missile attacks."

Is this true? Have we not been able to defend ourselves? And can this system defend us now?

To each of these questions the answer is No.

If North Korea began assembling an intercontinental ballistic missile, huge rockets that must be launched from fixed launch facilities, highly visible to U.S. spy satellites, our military would blow it up on the ground immediately. Our military would not wait to see if they could intercept the missile when it was going thousands of miles per hour in space. We would blow up the whole ICBM launch facility with the same weapons that we have seen work so effectively in Iraq and Afghanistan, satellite and laser guided bombs and missiles. With those weapons, we already have a missile defense.

But what if we didn't see North Korea preparing an ICBM? Suppose the launch surprised us? Would our missile defenses protect us then? The answer is still No. This is because if we didn't see it, our missile defenses wouldn't work either, since they depend on our seeing it first with satellites too.

Not that our missile defenses have demonstrated realistic operational capability with existing satellites; they haven't. And the intended, future satellite systems, the Space-Based Infra-Red System-High [SBIRS] and the Space Tracking and Surveillance System, are years behind schedule and billions over budget. The intended X-band radar systems for missile defense also are delayed and missing. With these major elements missing, the system being deployed has no demonstrated capability to defend against a real attack.

When asked in a NATO press conference if he would deploy a missile defense system that that didn't work and that had not been adequately tested, President Bush replied, "And for those who suggest my administration will deploy a system that doesn't work are dead-wrong. Of course, we're not going to deploy a system that doesn't work. What good will that do? We'll only deploy a system that does work in order to keep the peace."

Unfortunately, three years later, that's exactly what President Bush has done, deployed a system that doesn't work and hasn't been adequately tested.

All of the MDA flight intercept tests so far have been more tightly scripted than a modern political convention.

In these tests, the target launch time, the flight trajectory, the point of impact, what the target looks like, and the make-up of other objects in the target cluster have all been known in advance to guide the interceptor. No enemy would cooperate by providing all that information in advance.

And if that weren't enough, the target reentry vehicle has carried a radar beacon, showing the interceptor, "Here I am." That's not something a real enemy would do either.

Considering all the artificial targeting aids in these tests, what is surprising is not that some of these tests have succeeded. What's surprising is that some have failed, including the most recent test in December 2002. Just a week later President Bush announced his decision to deploy the ground-based midcourse missile defense system in Alaska!

The Missile Defense Agency says they can't test the system realistically until it has been deployed. This also is not true. The Missile Defense Agency was testing the system from Kwajalein and Vandenberg when I was in the Pentagon, well before the construction began at Fort Greely. And they could still be doing that without Fort Greely. But as soon as President Bush announced his decision to deploy the system the priority went to construction and deployment. and the bottom fell out of the test schedule.

As you know there hasn't been a flight intercept test since December 2002, now 20 months ago, one week before the President made his announcement. But not because they couldn't have continued the test program as planned.

And of course they won't actually use Fort Greely for missile test launches anyway because of safety concerns.

And they do not test what they are actually deploying, namely a system with no X-band radar (and no radar beacon) using Cobra Dane and Aegis ships instead, no SBIRS satellites using DSP instead, and interceptors that depend on prior information.

This is like deploying a new military jet fighter with no wings, no tail and no landing gear. And without testing it to see if it could work [first].

THERE'S MORE: "The most dangerous thing about having this system is that someone on our side might be tempted to behave in a crisis as if it were real," says Defense Tech reader MB. "Wth our current national leadership, it's hard for me to conceive of a scenario other than accidental launch where the US having a virtual but not actual missile defense system does not increase the probability and degree of brinksmanship that political leaders might engage in."

FAITH-BASED MISSILE DEFENSE

Early in his administration, President Bush put a whole lot of stock in "faith-based" initiatives to solve domestic problems. Now, the President seems to be taking the same approach to military matters.

Yesterday, President Bush campaigned at a Boeing plant, promoting his missile defense system, due to come on line shortly. "We say to those tyrants who believe they can blackmail America and the free world, 'You fire, we're going to shoot it down,'" he said.

But there's a teeny-tiny problem with this bold declaration: no one knows whether it's true or not. The anti-missile system's effectiveness is a matter of faith, not evidence. Because, in a rush to ready the system before the election, the Defense Department scrapped some of the $10 billion per year program's most important tests. And the results the Pentagon does have are murky, at best.

"Thomas P. Christie, director of the Pentagon's office of Operational Test and Evaluation, said a shortage of testing data would likely make it difficult for him to assess the system's effectiveness ahead of any deployment this year," the Washington Post noted earlier this year. "He expressed concern about the small number and relatively simple nature of flight tests, noting they have used the same course each time and have relied on surrogates and prototypes for key elements still under development."

Slate's Fred Kaplan translates:

In the past six years of flight tests, here is what the Pentagon's missile-defense agency has demonstrated: A missile can hit another missile in mid-air as long as a) the operators know exactly where the target missile has come from and where it's going; b) the target missile is flying at a slower-than-normal speed; c) it's transmitting a special beam that exaggerates its radar signature, thus making it easier to track; d) only one target missile has been launched; and e) the "attack" happens in daylight.

Phillip Coyle, Christie's predecessor, put it more succinctly: the system is "simply not up to the job," he said.

Now, some might argue that merely having some deterrent to, say, North Korean missiles -- no matter how half-assed -- is better than nothing. Which would be true. If Pyongyang was worried at all that the thing might work. But if the Pentagon's own testing chiefs aren't convinced, what are the chances that the North Koreans are?

The situation isn't likely to change any time soon. The next stages of the Pentagon's missile defense plan call for building defenses that can catch enemy rockets before they take off. But in a study last year, the American Physical Society said that couldn't be done with current or near-term American anti-missile technology.

So it's no surprise that when the Defense Department tried to show off its anti-missile training program to reporters earlier this year, the wargame had to be rigged in order for the good guys to win.

"HUNDREDS" OF PATRIOT FALSE ALARMS

Killing two British pilots and shooting down a U.S. Navy fighter was just the beginning. The Patriot missile defense system had a slew of problems during the Iraq invasion -- problems which are only now slowly coming to light.

"Spurious 'ghost' missile tracks showed up on Patriot Missile battery radars hundreds of times before and during the invasion, causing chaos and confusion as soldiers struggled to determine the real from the false," notes KTVT-TV reporter Robert Riggs, who's been leading the press' investigation of the anti-missile system. "Soldiers operating the multi-billion systems had only malfunctioning cell phones with which to communicate with other batteries in often-futile efforts to learn whether targets were real."

All that contrasts -- big time -- from official accounts of the Patriot's performance. The U.S. Army, in a recent report, claimed the system had a "perfect record." The British Ministry of Defence, in its run-down of a Patriot "friendly fire" incident, tried to pin the blame on poor American "firing doctrine and training," the Register notes. Human error, in other words.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, says Riggs.

Some 12 hours before the shoot down of the [British plane], according to logs of the air battle, one battery fired at a target that did not exist. The records state that on the third day of the war a missile battery "auto engaged a spurious track. Missile fired before they could override. Space command confirmed spurious..."

Victoria Samson, a spokeswoman for the Center For Defense Information, an independent defense department watchdog group, said the Army is trying to blame the friendly fire incidents on anything but the Patriot missile defense system.

"The technology seems to be sacrosanct. The people not so much," she said.

MISSILE DEFENSE DETAILED

The first phase of America's missile defense system is about to come online. And the New York Times' James Glanz travels to Delta Junction, Alaska to profile the emerging -- and controversial -- effort.

The first system will rely on interceptors in a handful of silos here at Fort Greeley, an Army base, and at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. In an attack, boosters would release the kill vehicle more than 100 miles above earth. With a heat-sensitive telescope, the vehicle would search the chill of space for the warhead, then maneuver with its thrusters and try to pulverize the weapon by simply ramming it at speeds faster than 20,000 miles an hour.

Even that description does little justice to the complexity of the system, which spans nine time zones and uses 13,000 miles of fiber optics to link sites as varied as a radar installation on the bleak island of Shemya in the Aleutians and in a secret command center at Cheyenne Mountain, Colo. If it works as planned, the system may take the honorary title of the biggest machine ever built from the nation's electrical grid.

As the nation discovered in the blackout last summer, of course, large machines can be unpredictable. The missile defense system, in fact, is so enormous and complex that it may never be fully tested unless an attack occurs.

PENTAGON CHEATS ANTI-MISSILE WARGAME

"Should I save Boise or Anchorage? We may not have enough interceptors for both."

That's the conundrum James Glanz, from the New York Times, finds himself in today. The Defense Department is eager to show off its new anti-missile training program. And so the Pentagon invited seven reporters, including Glanz and the Washington Post's Bradley Graham, to take its "Missile Defense Wargame and Analysis Resource" for a spin.

In the end, both Anchorage and Boise are saved. But only by cheating at the game.

Last summer, collection of top physicists concluded that it was essentially impossible to knock down a missile in its "boost phase," right after it launches. Using lasers do to the job was particularly unlikely, since the Pentagon's Airborne Laser -- an effort to put ray guns on a modified 747 -- is way, way over-budget and behind schedule.

So how did the two cities survive?

According to Glanz, "by a 'boost phase' interceptor — a laser that does not actually exist yet but that in the simulation is flying on an airplane."

ANTI-MISSILE SYSTEM BOMBED

Senators and independent experts piled on the President's missile defense program yesterday, calling the system unproven, politically driven, and over-the-top expensive. The New York Times has details.

THERE'S MORE: The Airborne Laser -- the Pentagon's star-crossed effort to but an anti-missile ray gun on board a 747 -- is in trouble, again. According to Aerospace Daily, Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-HI), with the Armed Services Committee, says the beam-firing jet is heading for a $2 billion cost over-run.

AND MORE: Slate's Fred Kaplan launches an anti-anti-missile sortie here.

PATRIOT = H.A.L.?

“This was like a bad science fiction movie in which the computer starts creating false targets. And you have the operators of the system wondering is this a figment of a computer's imagination or is this real.

"They were seeing what were called spurious targets that were identified as incoming tactical ballistic missiles. Sometimes, they didn't exist at all in time and space. Other times, they were identifying friendly U.S. aircraft as incoming TBMs."

That's how KTVT-TV reporter Robert Riggs describes his experience being embedded with a Patriot missile battery during Gulf War II. It's part of a larger examination by "60 Minutes" into the vaunted missile defense system, which attacked friendly targets three of the 12 times they were used during the Iraq conflict.

EARLY MISSILE DEFENSE

The Pentagon says it will start up its missile defense system early -- in the summer, rather than in the fall, as previously scheduled. But the Defense Department's testing chief thinks the program may be going too far, too fast.

"The accelerated schedule, if realized, would enable President Bush to claim fulfillment of a major 2000 campaign pledge earlier than officials had indicated," the Washington Post notes.

Disclosing the planned summer start, Pentagon officials insisted in interviews that politics played no part in revising the schedule. They said the change grew out of the realization that the system could begin providing some anti-missile protection before all 10 of the interceptors slated for fielding this year had been lowered into silos in Alaska and California...

Whether the Bush administration is moving too fast to deploy the anti-missile system was in dispute even before the latest shift, with the Pentagon's own top weapons evaluator recently raising a warning flag. In a status report last month on major new weapons programs, Thomas P. Christie, director of the Pentagon's office of Operational Test and Evaluation, said a shortage of testing data would likely make it difficult for him to assess the system's effectiveness ahead of any deployment this year.

He expressed concern about the small number and relatively simple nature of flight tests, noting they have used the same course each time and have relied on surrogates and prototypes for key elements still under development. Problems with a new booster, designed to carry the interceptor vehicle into space, prompted the Pentagon to suspend flight intercept attempts after the last test in December 2002.

The next flight tests are scheduled for May and July; thus, the Pentagon could end up activating the anti-missile system before results of the summer tests have been fully assessed. (emphasis mine)

THERE'S MORE: The anti-missile system "may not be perfected, or even in what one might consider a production configuration," writes Defense Tech reader JA. "But having *something* in the silos complicates the problem greatly for North Korea, perhaps to the point of making it too expensive to even attempt to develop hardware."

AND MORE: "I don't see how it complicates anything for North Korea," reader MB responds. "They know as well as the rest of us that the chances are near nil of the system being able to intercept even the most rudimentary ICBM."

AND MORE: "That would be true if the leadership of the DPRK believes everything they read about the failures of the BMD (Ballisitc Missile Defense)," retorts reader Wyatt Earp. "The fact is the leadership of the DPRK is an extra kind of paranoid, so the acceleration of BMD is going to have the possibility of pushing the DPRK into two possible directions: Give up on their ICBMs because they aren't going to accomplish anything in light of the American BMD, whose failure is a sinister cover-up by those crafty Imperialists. Or fly the birds either on more test flights or on a strike to knockout the BMD site in Alaska sooner rather than later, thus not being as effective as they could be since they've not finished their missiles either."

JET DEFENSE: WHAT'S THE HOLDUP?

Congressional critics and outside analysts are taking aim at the Department of Homeland Security's plan to defend passenger planes against shoulder-fired missiles.

On Monday, Dr. Charles McQueary, the department's undersecretary for science and technology, announced an "aggressive" two-year study to "determine if in fact there is a viable and effective technology we could deploy to protect commercial aircraft."

Under McQueary's plan, three defense contracting teams will have six months and $2 million each to put together road maps for adapting military antimissile systems to civilian jets. Then the department will decide whether to build and test a prototype. That process could take up to a year and a half.

But that's too few decisions in too much time, critics contend. In a little more than a year, so-called MANPADS (short for man-portable air defense systems) have been used to attack an Israeli jet over Kenya, a DHL cargo craft over Iraq, a U.S. Army Chinook helicopter, and an Air Force C-17 transport plane. More than half a million of the weapons have been made since the mid-'60s, and tens of thousands of them are unaccounted for. The military's planes already have MANPADS countermeasures on board, argues Sen. Charles Schumer (D-New York). Why wait to put them on passenger jets?

"Shoulder-fired missiles are probably the greatest danger commercial airliners face in today's world. While I'm glad DHS (Department of Homeland Security) is finally moving forward, it's at much too slow a pace. We can't afford to wait another two years to outfit planes -- it's already been 14 months since the Kenya attacks," Schumer said in a statement.

My Wired News article has details on the MANPADS debate.

THERE'S MORE: In September, the Bush Administration pledged $100 million towards jet defense -- and $60 million is budgeted this year towards these efforts. The month before, Northrop Grumman revealed a project to zap oncoming missiles with a chemical-powered laser.

AND MORE: In the Boston Globe, MIT's Theodore Postol and Geoffrey Forden argue that "foiling aircraft attacks isn't rocket science." They point to a number of relatively simple technologies which could help prevent jetliner hijackings.

"Multiple tiny video cameras could be placed throughout a plane's passenger compartment to record initial actions that might lead to a takeover," they suggest. "Wireless videocams could even be worn on the clothing of flight attendants."

AND MORE: On Thursday, an Air Mobility Command C-5 transport plane was hit by a missile, witnesses say. Luckily, the craft made it back safely to Baghdad airport. A Black Hawk helpicopter, struck near Fallujah, was not so lucky. Nine soldiers are dead.

ANTI-MISSILE "SUCCESS": NOT EXACTLY

At first glance, it looks like good news for the Star Wars crowd: the Defense Department crowed today that their latest missile defense test was a success.

A "step forward in the development (of) ... the 'layered' missile defense system designed to intercept and destroy all types of ballistic missiles," the Pentagon proclaimed, after the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system, aboard the USS Lake Erie, hit its target off the shores of Kauai.

But Victoria Samson, who tracks all things ballistic for the Center for Defense, is asking us to take a second look.

"I find it laughable that they're calling this test 'a step forward' when, by their own admissions, they dumbed down the test," she tells Defense Tech.

The Aegis system's last test, over the summer, flopped badly. And the reason why, many people think, is that the interceptor's "attitude control system" cracked after being used in "pulse" mode.

So, this time around, the Pentagon decided not to "pulse" the interceptor's control system at all -- even though that's how the anti-missile missile is supposed to work in the real world. A lower hurdle to jump, in other words.

D.I.Y. CRUISE MISSILE SHOT DOWN

The New Zealand web developer who was building a cruise missile in his garage -- and letting the online world know how he was doing it -- has abandoned the project, citing pressure from the Kiwi government.

Bruce Simpson, in an interview with the BBC, claims American authorities are to blame for the clamp-down. After a U.S. official called Simpson's efforts were "extremely unhelpful," the New Zealand government went after him for back taxes.

What's more, Simpson asserts on his website, the government has "even gone so far as to deliberatey scuttle a licensing deal I had arranged with a US company who was to begin manufacture of my X-Jet engine."

"The strange thing is that just a matter of months ago, they told me I could export the very same technology to Iran -- despite the fact that it is widely considered to be a terrorist sponsor and similar exports are prohibited in the USA," he continues.

The garage-made missile is basically complete, Simpson says. But, to ensure it's safety, he's given it away. It's now in the hands of a friend, he tells the BBC, "for safe keeping."

(via /.)

SPEED KILLS, MILITARY WANTS MORE

550 miles per hour is too slow. And a 1,500-mile range just isn't big enough.

The Tomahawk cruise missile may seem fast and far-reaching. But Pentagon planners want more. Late last week, they handed out contracts to 10 firms to start designing a hypersonic missile that can outrun the now-retired Concorde, and can hit a terrorist nest in Europe from the East Coast.

The Falcon, or Force Application and Launch from the Continental United States, project aims to fire a bunker-busting bomb into near-space, and then send it crashing into a target more than 3,000 miles away, at four times the speed of sound.

Speed is becoming an increasingly crucial component of how American forces fight. In the Gulf War, it took days for the U.S. military to identify a target and put a bomb on it. In recent engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq, that process was cut to as little as 20 minutes, in some cases.

But this quick response only happens when there are bombers and cruise missiles in the immediate neighborhood. If U.S. forces receive a tip that terrorists are in a part of the world where they don't have American planes in the sky, it can take hours, or days, to act on that information.

With its proposed speed and range, the Falcon project -- co-sponsored by the Air Force and Darpa, the Pentagon's research arm -- aims to make just about the whole world a dangerous place to be a bad guy.

"When Osama's bad brother Larry shows up suddenly in Niger, this is something we can target him with immediately," said Daniel Goure, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute, a think tank in Arlington, Virginia.

My Wired News article has details on the Falcon effort.

THERE'S MORE: A German missile systems company, Lenkflugkörpersysteme, "has for the first time conducted a test firing of a hypersonic missile surpassing Mach 7," says Jane's International Defence Review. "But the firing, on 23 October at Germany's Meppen proving range, may be the last in LFK's hypersonic missile development program now that the German defense ministry has withdrawn all funding as of January 2004, the company's new technologies and studies chief engineer Peter Gleich has told IDR." An LFK press release about the event is here.

AND MORE: In the 60's, Defense Tech pal Jim Lewis notes, the U.S. built a drone that could go Mach 3 -- and even flew it over China a few times.

AND MORE: Air Force forecasters predict that by 2015, America's foes will be able to keep most U.S. planes 250-300 nautical miles away. That's one of the reasons that Air Force is so keen on Falcon, according to a recent Inside the Air Force report.

ISRAELI MISSILE LAUNCH ON TAPE

A technician for Israel's Channel 10 has caught a secret Israeli missile launch on tape, Ha'Aretz is reporting.

PATRIOT HYPE, PATRIOT REALITY

A new picture of the Patriot missile's performance in Gulf War II is emerging -- and it's not the happy scene we were all shown on television last spring.

As recently as last week, the Army claimed that it had a perfect intercept record during Operation Iraqi Freedom. But that's "at best, a wild twisting of the facts," Victoria Samson, with the Center for Defense Information (CDI), says.

She's examined a new report from the Army's 32d Army Air and Missile Defense Command which looks at how the Patriots performed. And that study contradicts the military's ballistic boosterism.

"According to the Army's own report, 23 Iraqi missile launches are documented. Subtract the nine reported intercepts, and take away the one Iraqi missile that blew itself up shortly after launch and the four which were out of Patriot range, and that leaves nine missiles which should have been intercepted and were not. A 100% interception rate glosses over what actually happened in the battlefield," she writes. (emphasis mine)

CDI's analysis -- including a day-by-day breakdown of OIF's missile battles -- here.

PENTAGON: MISSILE DEFENSE EASY AS PLAYING BALL

Shooting down missiles only seems hard. But, really, it's as easy as throwing a ball in the air – at least, according to the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency.

"Imagine trying to hit a ball that has been thrown towards you with another ball in mid air," the Agency says on its website. "Better yet, TRY IT!"

What you need:
• Two, synthetic foam (or equivalent) soft-sided balls
• At least one friend to help

Directions:
1. Decide which of you will be the target missile and which will be the interceptor.
2. The person who is the target missile throws her or his ball into the air in an arch (as if it is a missile following the curve of the Earth) toward the other person with the interceptor ball.
3. The person with the interceptor ball then needs to try and hit the target ball with the interceptor ball, knocking it away before the target ball is able to hit him or her.

A five-launch test of the game by Global Security Newswire "resulted in four misses and one midcourse hit that failed to significantly alter the path of the target."

But that may not be such an unrealistic ratio. After all, recent anti-missile tests have flopped spectacularly. A former Pentagon testing director recently said the current missile defense plan was "simply not up to the job." And an American Physical Society report said that catching a missile as it was launching would be an extremely difficult task for America's current and near-future anti-missile technologies.

MDA spokesman Chris Taylor told Global Security Newswire that the ball game just a way to entertain "a younger audience and people that surf the Web."

If that's the case, consider John Pike, with GlobalSecurity.org, a fuddy-duddy. He says, "They've got too much time on their hands. I mean, it’s not even a good game."

THERE'S MORE: "Despite their attempt to make missile defense a hands-on physics experiment, what the Missile Defense Agency really shows is that missile defense is a losing game most of the time," Philip Coyle, the former Pentagon testing chief, writes.

It's not impossible to win; once in a while you may get lucky with your Nerf ball... (But) unlike Nerf balls, intercontinental ballistic missiles travel at thousands of miles per hour. Try the game by hurling golf balls or steel ball bearings, instead of Nerf balls, and you'll get the idea. And maybe a few broken windows. too.

Recently the American Physical Society, a group of U.S. professional physicists, reported why missile defense in the boost-phase is so difficult. You have to be very close and very fast, or you'll miss. Try it with Nerf balls and you'll see that the physicists are correct.

Also, unlike Nerf balls, ICBMs can dispense decoys and countermeasures in the middle of flight that look just like real warheads. Sort of like a Nerf ball cloning itself in mid flight. Try the game where the attacker throws a handful of Nerf balls, not just one. You won't be able to tell which one to go after.

In the terminal phase, the game gets even more interesting. If the attacker throws a ball close to the defender, the defender has a chance, although not a good one. But if the attacker throws Nerf balls at targets all over the back yard (think of the back yard as the United States), the poor defender can't cover the back yard with enough Nerf balls to do the job. The size of the "defended area" is critical in terminal defense.

Finally, try the game where the attacker just hurls his Nerf ball straight at the defender, not upward in a long looping arc. That's like a cruise missile. Cruise missiles fly at low altitude, skimming under the defender's radar. Saddam Hussein proved that this works during the war in Iraq. His cruise missiles were not even detected by the U.S. Patriot anti-missile system, and so they were not shot down. Fortunately, Saddam's cruise missiles didn't hit anyone, the result of lousy targeting and guidance systems on his cruise missiles.

AND MORE: Oh, dear God. There's not only a missile defense nerf game. There's a coloring book, too.

MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM "NOT UP TO THE JOB"

President Bush demanded that the military build him a missile defense system by next fall.

But Philip Coyle, the former head of the Pentagon's Operational Test and Evaluation office, says in the current Arms Contol Today that the anti-missile system Bush is getting is "simply not up to the job."

The ground-based midcourse defense system, as it is now called, has not shown that it can hit anything other than missiles whose trajectory and targets have been preprogrammed by missile defense contractors to eliminate the surprise or uncertainty of battle. Nor has it proven that it can hit a tumbling target, perform at night, or find ways to counter the decoys and countermeasures that a real enemy would use to throw a defense off track. Tests so far have all been conducted at unrealistically low speeds and altitudes, and it is not clear that the system will be able to track and identify the warhead it is supposed to destroy.

A key concept in the missile defense plan is to catch the rockets before they take off. But in a July study, the American Physical Society said that couldn't be done with current or near-term American anti-missile technology.

$100 MILLION FOR S.A.M. COUNTERMEASURES

The White House is committing "$100 million to the first phase of development of an antimissile system that could be installed in passenger airplanes," the New York Times reports.

That's tens of millions more than what had previously been proposed for the effort. But since the strikes on an Israeli passenger plane last year, administration officials have become inreasingly spooked by the possibility of terrorists using shoulder-fired, surface-to-air missiles to take down a commercial jet. Several of these missiles have been fired by Iraqi insurgents at planes attempting to land in Baghdad's airport.

The $100 million research program doesn't necessarily mean that passenger planes will be protected from these threats, the Times cautions.

"The Bush administration has suggested that a decision to outfit commercial planes may be years away," the paper says. "And in the proposal to defense contractors, the Homeland Security Department requested only that prototypes be manufactured. Defense industry officials say that it would cost $1 million to $2 million to outfit a commercial plane with the sort of antimissile technology now used in the Pentagon's fleet."

MISSILE ARREST FISHY

It sounded, at first, like a big break in the anti-terror fight: a British man, arrested in Newark for trying to sell a shoulder-fired, Russian SA-18 surafce-to-air missile.

But the arrest is not what it seems, Slate says.

The key figure in the plot never got his hands on a live missile. Instead, undercover police posed as both sellers of the missiles and as the intended final buyers: After the FBI heard from an informant that an aspiring arms dealer was trying to get ahold of Russian missiles and sell them to AQ (Al-Qaeda), the feds arranged to have Russian police sell the guy a disarmed missile. The missile was then shipped to the U.S, "with help from the federal authorities." At that point, feds posing as AQ operatives bought the dummy missile from the guy, then cuffed him.

THERE'S MORE: The missile-selling suspect, Hemant Lakhani, is being held without bail. He's been charged with "providing material support to terrorists and of acting as an arms broker without a license," according to the Times.

SENATORS SNOOKERED ON MISSILE DEFENSE

Two Democratic Senators thought they had a deal: they'd vote for the Bush Administration's missile defense program, and the Pentagon wouldn't deploy new anti-missile systems until they were properly tested.

Now, it seems, the Senators, Michigan's Carl Levin on Michigan and Rhode Island's Jack Reed, were snookered.

Global Security Newswire reports:

(Levin and Reed) said they were assured by administration officials the system would be declared "fielded" and not "deployed" until the missile interceptors are proven to work under realistic conditions through operational testing.

Days after gaining key House and Senate committee approval for the initiative, however, the White House on May 20 issued a policy statement declaring its intention to "deploy" the systems by the deadline. In addition, a recently leaked copy of the Dec. 16, 2002 order, "National Security Presidential Directive 23," showed that Bush had directed the Pentagon to "deploy" the systems all along...

“It’s clear to me that they’re trying to slip something past the Congress and the American people,” said Joseph Cirincione, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“There is certainly some deception going on,” said Lisbeth Gronlund, a missile defense analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Last week, a key element of the anti-missile program, the ship-mounted Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system, failed a test near Hawaii.

MISSILE DEFENSE TEST AT SEA FAILS

A crucial test of a sea-based missile defense system flopped yesterday. The USS Lake Erie was supposed to use the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) to knock down an Aries target missile over the Pacific Ocean, near Hawaii. But it missed, for the first time in four tries.

It's a setback for a program considered crucial by the Defense Department. With a sea-based system, there are no thorny issues about putting another American base on foreign soil, Victoria Samson, a missile expert at the Center for Defense Information, tells Defense Tech. And the defenses can be moved around to guard against whatever trouble spot happens to be inflamed at the moment.

The Aegis BMD is suppoed to take down short to intermediate-range missiles while they're taking off. But the system, as current configured, doesn't meet that goal, Samson says.

"It's not meant to intercept missiles during their boost phase - it's nowhere near fast enough," she adds. "To have a boost-phase capability, you'd have to build a whole new missile and reconfigure the ships to be able to carry them."

The problems faced by the Aegis BMD are to be expected, Samson continues. And they could be worked out over time -- if the Bush administration would allow it. Instead, the White House has insisted that 20 interceptors be added to three cruisers by the end of fiscal year 2004.

THERE'S MORE: Defense officials are already squabbling over why the test was a dud, reports the Washington Times' Bill Gertz.

AND MORE: Slate has a hilarious -- and disturbing -- send-up of the missile test, and the Pentagon flacks who are calling it a "success."

NORTH KOREA SENDING IRAN MISSILES?

AFP, quoting a South Korean paper, says that Pyongyang is using cargo planes to ship mid-range Rodong missiles to Tehran.

The report comes on the heels of the arrests last week of the president and four employees of a Tokyo manufacturing company, Seishin Enterprise Co. Ltd. The five are suspected of "illegally exporting to Iran equipment that could be used to develop solid fuel for missiles," according to AFP.

D.I.Y. CRUISE MISSILE

"A handyman with a passion for jet engines says he is building a cruise missile in his backyard using parts and technology freely available over the Internet," Reuters reports from Wellington, New Zealand.

"Bruce Simpson, a 49-year-old Internet site developer... says he was prompted to build the missile because so many people had told him it could not easily be done," the wire service continues.

On his web site, Simpson claims the missile can fly up to 100 miles, and carry a warhead of 22 pounds. He says the whole package costs less than $5,000 to put together. Step-by-step instructions on how to build the missile are coming soon, he promises.

SUPERFAST MISSILE FOR FUTURE SADDAMS

If the reports are right, two U.S. strikes during Gulf War II missed Saddam by minutes.

So it's no wonder that AFP is reporting a new Pentagon push for a faster version of the Tomahawk missile -- one that can go as much as 12 times the speed of sound.

The Defense Department is asking for an extra $150 million in research funds for this so-called "Fasthawk."

Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Michael Wynne told a Senate subcommittee recently that "we believe that demonstrations of Mach 12 by 2012 are within reach."

NEW TOOL FOR MISSILE DEFENSE: BLIMPS

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency wants to use blimps to track incoming rockets. And the agency has tapped three defense contractors to begin drawing up plans for the zeppelins, according to Global Security Newswire.

For the next four months, the companies will work on basic concepts for a solar-powered airship that can fly at 65,000 feet. A winner in the sweepstakes will be declared by 2004. And a prototype for this "High Altitude Airship Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration" is scheduled for 2006.

PATRIOT-PLANE POSTMORTEM

During Gulf War II, the Iraqis acknowledged coalition dominance of the skies, and put almost no planes in the air.

So why were Patriot missiles shooting at allied planes during the conflict?

It's one of several questions being asked about the Patriot system in the Iraq fight postmortem.

"We ruled the skies in Iraq, so almost by definition any aircraft up there was either ours or British," Philip Coyle, a former Pentagon testing director, tells the Los Angeles Times.

But, apparently, the system has trouble telling the difference between friendly aircraft and enemy missiles. The Patriots destroyed two coalition planes -- a British Tornado GR4 and a U.S. Navy F/A-18C Hornet -- and locked radar on a third, an F-16.

As noted a month ago, the new "PAC-3" Patriot system only destroyed its target twice in seven tries during operational testing. The missiles seemed to have a better hit rate against Iraqi rockets during Gulf War II.

PATRIOTS AIM AT FRIENDLY FORCES -- AGAIN

This news is a bit old, but important just the same: Patriot missiles have once again locked their sights on to coalition aircraft, the Washington Post reports.

"A Patriot system about 30 miles south of the Iraqi city of Najaf apparently 'locked on' to an Air Force F-16 fighter and prepared to fire. The F-16 responded by firing a high-speed anti-radiation HARM missile at the battery, destroying its radar dish," according to the paper. "No one was injured in the strike -- and the F-16's response might have saved the crew's lives. But it came a day after a Patriot missile shot down a British Royal Air Force Tornado GR4 fighter near the Kuwaiti border, killing both crew members."

My recent Wired News story has details on the "new and improved" Patriots.