WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Missile Defense Agency says it experienced significant gains and no real setbacks from its decision to proceed last month with a Ground-based Midcourse Defense system test without an interceptor, an assertion that some critics dispute (see GSN, July 21).
The agency decided to cancel the intercept portion of the July 18 exercise when a defect was discovered in a device that measures the interceptor's test performance (see GSN, July 16).
Instead of scrapping the entire event, MDA officials opted to go forward with other aspects of the test at a cost of slightly more than $130 million, according to data the agency provided to Global Security Newswire.
The new main focus for the exercise became the use of four different sensors to track the launch of a target missile. As part of the test, officials simulated on computer how the interceptor might have reacted to these sensor feeds.
The next opportunity for an actual test intercept will be in December, according to the missile defense organization. Meanwhile, 20 interceptors are deployed on alert at Fort Greely, Alaska, and three at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., as part of the GMD system.
In proceeding with the experiment last month despite the interceptor's absence, "MDA was able to accomplish nearly all test objectives without incurring a delay to the overall test schedule," said agency spokesman Rick Lehner.
"This was the most challenging flight test of the missile defense system's command and control software to date," he added, referring to the ability to manage many components simultaneously. "It was also the first flight test where the [Ballistic Missile Defense System] was activated with all four operational sensors connected online" to command and control systems during a live target launch, Lehner said.
Sensors involved in the test were the Aegis Long-Range Surveillance and Track system; the Sea-Based X-band radar; the transportable AN/TPY-2 X-band radar in Juneau, Alaska; and the Upgraded Early Warning Radar at Beale Air Force Base, Calif. The management architecture comprised a Ground-based Midcourse Defense Fire Control system and a Command, Control, Battle Management and Communications system.
The flight test "required the system to process complex data from multiple sources simultaneously and develop an engagement solution necessary to intercept a threat-representative, long-range ballistic missile target," Lehner said. Findings from the test verified the missile defense system's "capability in this operational realistic configuration," he said.
Yet, at least one prominent critic is questioning whether the test actually achieved these results.
Philip Coyle, a former operational test and evaluation director at the Defense Department, called the MDA claim of an online link between the sensor and command systems "misleading."
"What you and I are meant to believe is that it's hooked up and would operate as it has to in a real war," he said. "The term online' makes you think that it's more than it really is."
In Coyle's view, the July test also did not validate the system's capacity to intercept a threat-representative target. "They haven't demonstrated that capability and couldn't have without an actual interceptor," Coyle told GSN this week.
Now a senior adviser at the Center for Defense Information, Coyle told a House panel in April that missile defense officials have "never demonstrated in a flight intercept test that they can redirect or steer the [Ground-Based Interceptor's] Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle with successive in-flight target updates to the correct target, despite other confusing objects or decoys in the target cluster.
"To discriminate between similar-looking or confusing objects," he added, "the system will have to be able to redirect the EKV in real time to focus on a new object different from another object the EKV may have picked out incorrectly. This has never been demonstrated in a GMD flight intercept test."
Just prior to last month's test, Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, who directs the Missile Defense Agency, told reporters that the July and December tests would involve countermeasures. However, Coyle said Tuesday that the MDA exercise last month again failed to challenge the system with an operationally realistic scenario.
"The priority should be on getting as many intercept attempts done as possible," agreed another missile defense expert, speaking on condition of anonymity. "A hundred and thirty million dollars is a lot of money to spend to exercise sensors and command and control."
Despite potential gains made in integrating sensors with battle management systems, "I hadn't heard that was a real issue," added this source, a former military officer who specialized in flight-test programs. "And if what you're trying to do is exercise sensors and command and control, you could have launched a much less expensive target."
Of the total bill, nearly $28 million was spent to buy a STARS launch vehicle and mock target warhead, according to MDA data. The cost to integrate and fly the target on a test range added another $25 million.
Had it flown, a three-stage Ground-Based Interceptor would have increased the cost by $53 million, Lehner said.
Obering "deliberated for several weeks before making a decision to go forward with the test," Lehner said. "He considered it eminently worthwhile to conduct the test with a simulated intercept in order to exercise the four radars and the command and control element operated by operational crews."
"We're not saying that this is the type of test we want to conduct, in lieu of the interceptor," Obering said last month. "But the other option would be to delay the entire test till December and not collect this data. And we didn't think that that was a very good thing to do."
Intercept test objectives were deferred to the next exercise and "will be accomplished before the end of 2008," Lehner said. That would be the case whether or not MDA officials had gone forward with the limited sensor and command-and-control test last month, Lehner noted.
Another GBI intercept test is slated for spring of next year. After that, the first flight test of a two-stage Ground-Based Interceptor planned for deployment in Poland is to be carried out by October 2009, Lehner said. Another "two or three" intercept tests are set to follow in 2010, he said.
However, a singular focus on intercepts would be misplaced, he asserted.
Going back to October 1999, "we have had seven successful intercepts and have a great deal of confidence in interceptor performance," Lehner told GSN. "At this point, the primary emphasis during a test is the integration and interoperability of the radars with the Command, Control, Battle Management and Communication element in operationally realistic conditions, rather than just achieving an intercept."
Critics counter that a dearth of successful intercept tests might raise questions about the system's viability and could harm its deterrence value. Would-be adversaries might conclude their offensive missiles run little chance of interception unless they see the capability demonstrated successfully every few months, the thinking goes.
Over the past five years, the Missile Defense Agency has carried out just five Ground-Based Interceptor flight-intercept tests and three of those have failed, Coyle pointed out. While MDA leaders have stressed that the failures were for disparate reasons and relatively easy to correct, critics nonetheless find the rate of intercepts troubling.
"They would probably need to demonstrate two to three intercepts a year to make people confident in their intercept capability," said the former officer who asked not to be identified. The best way to reduce errors is to "repeat tests more often until everybody has got it down," this source said.
"MDA still must carry out successfully about 20 more flight intercept tests of different types before the system might be ready for realistic operational testing," according to Coyle. "If they do not improve their rate of success, it could take them 50 years to achieve."
Having conducted the most recent intercept in September of last year, "MDA is being awfully blasé" about what will amount to more than a year's delay in such tests, the former officer said.
Coyle suspects that the ever-present risk of another intercept failure might make a test focused instead on sensors, such as the one last month, somewhat attractive to MDA officials.
"The reason why a nonintercept test is better from the perspective of the MDA is that it can't fail," he said, noting that the agency has not released detailed test data for independent analysis. "They can say we did another successful test and it appears to Congress that they're making progress."
Lehner portrayed the test, though, as significantly advancing the agency's understanding of the system and laying the groundwork for the December event.
Results from the July exercise "will assist greatly in preparing an almost identical scenario for an intercept test late this year, and that was one of the driving forces behind the decision to go forward," the spokesman said.
In the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill, lawmakers said no funds could be spent to deploy the proposed European system until, among other things, the defense secretary certifies that it "has demonstrated, through successful, operational realistic flight testing, a high probability of working in an operationally effective manner."
Coyle argues that this legislation might also have contributed to Obering's decision to go forward with a truncated exercise last month. Had the entire test been postponed, rescheduling it likely would have pushed all subsequent flight tests later on the calendar. The Bush administration wants to avoid cascading delays that could set back tests of the European system, Coyle said.
That installation is principally aimed at defending the United States and its allies from potential missile strikes from Iran.
The Pentagon's current director of operational test and evaluation, Charles McQueary, declared in October 2007 that the European system could be "minimally" accredited following three flight tests of successively increased difficulty. As the schedule stands, only the first of those three might be completed before President George W. Bush leaves office next January.
Both 2008 presidential candidates, Senators Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), have demanded that any such missile defense deployments be proven "effective" in flight tests.