[NYTr] Advanced Tests Set for US "Missile Interceptor" System

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

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Defense News - Oct 5, 2007
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=3087167&C=america

Tougher Tests Planned for U.S. Missile Defense Programs

By GAYLE S. PUTRICH

Following a successful late-September missile defense test, U.S.
generals say the system is ready to be pushed even further in testing
and could conceivably defend the United States from attack as it
currently stands. 

Gen. Victor Renuart, head of the U.S. Northern Command and North
American Aerospace Defense (NORAD) Command, said with six of the nine
most recent ballistic missile defense tests counted as successful, he
feels the system is ready to do the job. 

“Should a threat develop, I’m fully confident that we have all of the
pieces in place that, if the nation needed to, we could respond,”
Renuart said at an Oct. 2 briefing. 

In the Sept. 28 test, an interceptor missile launched from Vandenberg
Air Force Base in California tracked a mock warhead from an incoming
target missile launched from the Kodiak Launch Complex in Alaska. The
interceptor deployed the kill vehicle into the target’s path and, using
infrared sensors, steered itself into a collision in space with the
warhead. In addition to the airborne segments of the missile defense,
the test also put the ground components and personnel through their
paces. 

“It really turned out to be a very good exercise for us and allowed us
to validate that the procedures we built up over time are in fact
appropriate for the kinds of threats that this system is designed to
defeat,” Renuart said. “So from the operational perspective, the
soldiers in the field, the system, the command-and-control capability,
the integration of those information systems, it was also a very
positive event for us as well.”

It was the seventh test of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD)
system, but only the second since Boeing added the operationally
configured interceptor last September. 

“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 GMD program
director. 

Other elements in the ballistic missile defense program also took part
in the tests, said Gen. Henry Obering, director of the Missile Defense
Agency (MDA). The elements included the Upgraded Early Warning Radar at
Beale Air Force Base, Calif., the Sea-Based X-Band radar and the Aegis
destroyer USS Russell, using its SPY-1D radar, all of which
successfully detected and tracked the target missile, Obering said. 

Though there were multiple targets being tracked in this test, generals
said the system correctly identified and destroyed the mock warhead.
The next round of tests, expected in the spring of 2008, will include
countermeasures to gauge the interceptor’s ability to differentiate
between the real warhead and decoys, Obering said. “

The countermeasures that we will use will be similar to the ones that
have been used before in the program, but we try to estimate what a
threat nation would use to try to hide the warhead or to try to fool
the system. ... I can’t go into a lot of detail there because it gets
sensitive very quickly,” Obering said. 

The MDA is expecting an influx of more than $49 billion over the next
five years, though some projects remain contentious. In development
since 1996, the Airborne Laser (ABL) ended up in the middle of a
congressional funding tug-of-war this year, with authorizing committees
cutting into the budget by hundreds of millions, but appropriators
ultimately expected to restore fiscal 2008 funding to the requested
level of $549 million. By 2012, ABL funding is still expected to be up
to $1 billion. 

Through all the funding questions, the ABL program continues to
steadily move ahead, aerospace executives said at the annual Air Force
Association conference Sept. 24-26 in Washington. The program, which
brings together Northrop Grumman’s laser technology and Lockheed
Martin’s beam and fire control systems on a heavily modified Boeing
747, would have been delayed two years by the proposed cuts, said Greg
Hyslop, ABL vice president and project manager at Boeing Missile
Defense, Huntsville, Ala. 

The ABL will use a megawatt-class, high-energy Chemical Oxygen Iodine
Laser to detect, track and destroy ballistic missiles in their boost
phase of flight. The laser, which has undergone extensive ground
testing, is now being taken apart and reassembled on the 747. 

Ground tests of the fully integrated system are expected in late 2008
with a “very methodical flight test program” in August 2009, said Guy
Renard, Northrop Grumman’s ABL program manager.

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