Category: Missile Defense

Sanity Hits Missile Defense Plans

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Click Pictures for full size images
Tehran to DC


Masshad to Washington, DC


Masshad to San Francisco


Masshad to Rome


Masshad to Madrid


Masshad to Istambul


Masshad to Athens


Masshad to Chicago

Obama has canceled plans for missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. Basically, they determined that the threat is not there, and the Russians find it provocative, so they are dropping it.

The Russian response is positive, if somewhat muted, probably because they have been aware that the signals that Obama has sent on this issue for some time, and do now want to stir the pot.

Notably, they mention cost a number of times in their official statement.

I think that this is a combination of a number of things:

  • Recognition that there were no real benefits to the system beyond playing to the right wing in Eastern Europe, and to upset the Russians, because it was thought that a hostile Russia would play well for Republicans in domestic politics.
  • The fact that there are technologies that allow for non-permanent installations to serve the same purpose, most notably THAAD and a potentially larger derivative, and various flavor of interceptors based on the Navy Standard, which won’t have the effect of leaving Turkey, Italy and Spain, as shown in my analysis from earlier this year.

In the case of a diplomatic crisis, you can have a THAAD or a ground based Standard interceptor battery in place in less than 72 hours in northeast Europe, and have an Aegis destroyer off deployed near Cyprus, or possibly in the Black sea, in order to protect the southern tier of NATO in less time than that.

This is a remarkably sensible and sane decision, and it appears that SecDef Gates is fully behind this, so I expect Republicans to start screaming “Munich
if they haven’t already.

I think that we will see more support from the Russians on a number of issues as a result.

Sanity Brakes Out in Missile Defense

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We now have a report that the US will abandon plans to station missile interceptors in Eastern Europe

Washington will scrap plans to put anti-missile bases in Poland and the Czech Republic and is looking at alternatives including Israel and Turkey, a Polish newspaper reported Aug. 27, citing U.S. officials.

The U.S. plan, intended for defense against attacks from Iran, has met with fierce objections from Russia, which regarded the eastern European bases as a threat to its own security.

…

This is good news. Not only was Eastern Europe a piss poor location for missile defense, because it leaves allies on the southern tier of NATO unprotected, but it is located so as to be a direct threat, and a means of surveillance of, all of the European territory of Russia.

I continue to maintain that the real goal of the missile system was to create hostility, which would, in the perception of the Dick Cheneys of the world, bolster the Republican Party.

Industry, MDA Buoyed By New Thaad Flight-Test Data

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THAAD Launch


Image of Target (l) and Debris Intercepts

It appears that the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is beginning to get a handle on the problems that have plagued the Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) program, (paid subscription required) with the latest test having two interceptors fired in salvo.

The 1st missile hit the target, and the 2nd missile struck the largest piece of debris remaining.

A lot of the problem has been the hand off between the radar and the missile’s own IIR seeker:

“Things look different to an X-band sensor than they do to an IR sensor. Something that really has a lot of sharp edges . . . will look big and bright to an RF [sensor], but it might be real, real cold,” says McGrath. “So, it doesn’t look that way to an IR [sensor]. I like to think of this as our two-color approach to life.”

Additionally, it looks like they are working at integrating the system with the Navy’s Aegis fire control system, which implies that the the reports that the MDA is looking at a larger 21, up from 14½ in diameter booster, (paid subscription required) the size of the standard Navy torpedo, cruise missile, and Standard missile, are about possibly mounting the missile on board a ship, as well as improving the missile kinematics.

Still, I am dubious of reports that
the MDA is looking at moving to deployment on any of its systems. (paid subscription required)

Simply put, the record, even if improved lately is just not there, and the technology remains ruinously expensive.

Boeings Airborne Laser Takes Shots

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I would note, however that these were nowhere near full power, and the program has been dropped from the 2010 budget anyway.

During the test, the modified Boeing 747-400F aircraft took off from Edwards Air Force Base and used its infrared sensors to find a target missile launched from San Nicholas Island, Calif. The Boeing-developed battle management system aboard ABL then issued engagement and target location instructions to the beam control/fire control system, which acquired the target and fired its two solid-state illuminator lasers to track the target and measure atmospheric conditions. ABL then fired a surrogate high-energy laser at the target, simulating a missile intercept. Instrumentation on the target verified that the surrogate high-energy laser hit the target.

(emphasis mine)

I think that this program is a dead end for a number of reasons, the defense draw-down, the rise of the UAV, and the fact that there have been significant advances in high energy solid-state lasers, which makes the chemical technology used by the ABL an expensive, and highly toxic, relic.

FCS Active Protection System is Not Working

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The Active Protection System (APS) is designed to intercept RPGs, ATGMs, and long rod penetrators, to protect the smaller and lighter manned vehicles of the Future Combat System (FCS), and it now seems that it simply does not work, according to the latest GAO report.

The interesting thing is that the Israelis have a system that does work, Trophy, though it is less ambitious than the APS, but it was rejected and hundreds of millions of dollars directed towards Raytheon.†

One of the interesting bits about FCS is that is as much an industrial base preservation system as anything else, with bizarre separations of work to ensure that various contractors get sufficient workshare.

I believe that the high technology band tracks are the responsibility of the BAE Systems†, and the suspension is the responsibility of General Dynamics, for example, which makes no sense whatsoever.


Army Rejects Trophy


Trophy Promotional Video

*Full Disclosure, I worked for Raytheon a number of times, both in Texas and in Maryland over the past 15 years or so.
†Full disclosure, I worked on the Future Recovery and Maintenance Vehicle, FRMV, “wrecker” variant of the FCS-MGV from 2003-2006 at United Defense (later BAE Systems after the Carlyle Group sold me to buy Dunkin Donuts).‡
‡Yes, I have worked everywhere. Maybe I can’t hold down a job, but more likely this has been my role as “technical hit man”, where you are parachuted in to take care of a specific need.

Obama Starts Dialog With Medvedev on BMD

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Barack Obama dispatched a letter to Dmitri Medvedev suggesting that the installations in the Czech Republic and Poland are not a done deal, and that if they can come to a meeting of the minds on Iran, this could be called off.

The installations have always been wrong headed, improperly located, and provocative,* so this is a bit of good news.

*I’ve always said that the provocative bit was a feature, not a bug. A bellicose and militaristic Russia benefits the ‘Phants and their defense contractor friends.

Fear and Loathing in Euro Missile Defense

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Click Pictures for full size images
Tehran to DC


Masshad to Washington, DC


Masshad to San Francisco


Masshad to Rome


Masshad to Madrid


Masshad to Istambul


Masshad to Athens


Masshad to Chicago

I’m thoroughly skeptical of BMD systems to begin with, particularly the current Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system.

The technology for decoys is simply too easy, it’s basically the same as the shiny metalized children’s balloons you can get at party city, and striking a reentry vehicle when closing speeds are in excess of a mile per second seems to me to involve awfully long odds.

I call it “faith based missile defense,” and one of the earliest goals of the Bush administration was to ensure that it be deployed into service come hell or high water, on the theory that once it was there, it would be politically costly to remove it.

OK, so we all know the game, scary Persians are going to lob an IRBM at Europe, so we have to put an Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system into Poland, so as to protect everyone.

Thing is, Poland is a pretty crappy place to put a BMD system to protect our NATO allies, and this installation, along with the associated radar at Brdy in the Czech Republic* and it’s gotten the Russians absolutely batsh$# insane.

If you figure out the trajectory of a Ballistic missile,† and the tools to the this can be found in a number of places on the web, the location does not make sense.

It does not protect Turkey, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, or southern France.

I’ve had discussions with people sho have suggested that it would protect the eastern seaboard, and it would, if you launched the missiles from downtown Tehran, but just like our ballistic missiles are not located on Washington DC or Crystal City, it’s unlikely that they would put their installation there.

They would want to locate it as far away from a potential aircraft carrier, NATO airbases in Turkey, and the US base at Diego Garcia.

This would put a missile base in the North East corner of the country about 500 miles east of Tehran, in the general vicinity of Masshad, the 2nd largest city in Iran.

Suddenly that interceptor in poland does not do such a good job protecting the east coast.

For an attack on the West Coast, it’s path is too far from either Poland, or the base at Fort Greely, and the installation at Vandenberg seems iffy for covering San Francisco and points north.

Now, the folks the Missile defense agency claim that the installation in Poland is unable to intercept Russian ICBMs (bottom picture), but unsurprisingly the Russians do not believe them.

The Russians did offer a site at Qabala, which they rent from Azerbaijan, if the US dropped the Polish installation, but the respons, at least by Bush and His Evil Minions™ was to go pound sand.

In any case, it’s clear that Azerbaijan, Turkmenestan, Uzbekistan, and Georgia would be prime locations for such a site, though there are serious political issues there, but sites in Turkey, Romania, or Bulgaria would provide better coverage of Europe, and might have a shot at intercepting something headed for Chicagoland, which none of the current installations do.

*In fact, the radar, which can surveil all the airspace in European Russia, may be more of a sticking point than the missile base in Poland.
†I used Google Maps. Go there, then click “my maps”, and then click on “browse the directory”, and click on the distance measurement tool, and it will compute great circle‡ distances, which is what modern aircraft, and ballistic missiles, do .
‡It’s the shortest distance between two points on a sphere. The straight line on a Mercator projection is actually longer. It’s what you would get if you used a globe, and a tight string between two points on that globe.

Some Sanity in Missile Defense

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It’s only a one paragraph blurb (paid subscription required), but it appears that Robert Gates is moving toward more cooperation with Russia on missile defense, “In his first appearance before Congress as a member of President Barack Obama’s cabinet, he says mutual missile defense projects with Moscow are not as far-fetched as recent events would suggest.”

When this is juxtaposed with the fact that the Czech parliament has placed an indefinite delay on a on a vote approving the missile defense radar, it would appear that using BMD to poke Russia in the with a stick is no longer the order of the day.

U.S. in Talks with India to Sell Star Wars Systems

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The US and India are in talks regarding the purchase of missile defense systems.

From a purely technical perspective, India’s defense needs are less challenging, the speed of an incoming missile increases with the distance with which it travels and Pakistan and China both share a border.

It’s unclear from the article whether this is a real attempt to sell systems to India, or a PR attempt intended by missile defense advocates on both sides to boost the government support for their respective systems.

Russia Strategic Missile Forces Update

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We are now hearing rumblings that Russia may be putting a nuclear missile installation in Belarus, specifically, the mobile strategic missile the Topol, though it’s unclear from the report as to whether it is the RT-2PM Topol (SS-25 Sickle), or the more advanced RT-2UTTH (SS-27 Sickle B).

In either case, I’m not sure whether this intended to make the strategic missiles targeting the US less vulnerable to the interceptors, or to imply that these could be launched on a depressed trajectory against the European BMD sites, though I would lean toward the latter.

Belarus borders Poland, and so I would think that interception of missiles launched toward the US would be relatively straightforward, though the kinematics of the missiles in question and the intercept solutions are above my pay grade.

Also, we have reports that the Russian military is looking at commissioning 70 new nuclear missiles over the next 3 years, though reports of a failure in the most recent test of the Bulava SLBM (see also here) might throw a monkey wrench into what seems to be a very aggressive timetable.

Another Illustration of How Broken the Weapons Development System Is

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So, we have a fairly run of the mill article Aviation Week article about delays on integrating new weapons into the Eurofighter Typhoon. (paid subscription required)

It appears that there will now be a 2 year delay in qualifying the Meteor rocket-ramjet long range AAM for the platform:

Fielding of the rocket/ramjet-powered Meteor air-to-air missile on the Eurofighter Typhoon is being pushed back two years. The move is part of a wider rescoping of weapon-integration plans.

…

… It had intended to introduce the missile in 2013, although this date was in itself a shift from the previous in-service date (ISD) of 2012. The delay came to light following this cryptic comment from the Defense Ministry: “When the missile is integrated on Typhoon is being deferred until a time in keeping more with when the threat may materialize.”

The Meteor is a key element of the Typhoon’s air-to-air capability, providing the aircraft with a weapon with an engagement envelope, and no escape zone, substantially greater than the Raytheon AIM-120 Amraam family of weapons. The revised ISD is also understood to reflect a threshold for some of the Typhoon partners beyond which their present Amraam inventory would require refurbishment. France and Sweden are also Meteor partners; the weapon is intended for the Rafale and Gripen, respectively.

The translation into English here is that while the Typhoon is already flying, and that the Meteor is largely on schedule, at least its current schedule, it’s outrageously expensive to qualify the Meteor for as a weapon on the Typhoon, and since the most likely competitor, a rocket/ram jet upgrade of the Vympel R-77 (AA-12 Adder) is on the back burner, it’s simply unaffordable to take a system ready for deployment, and make sure that it can be used by a system in deployment.

This is nuts. It’slike saying that the cost of getting a new sound system for your car is $50,000.00.

Russia to Offers to Cancel Some Strategic Weapons Systems Over Euro Star Wars

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The commander of Russia’s Strategic Missile forces, Colonel-General Nikolai Solovtsov is saying that many of the systems currently in development would not be necessary if the US backs off its missile defense installation in Poland:

“If Americans give up plans to deploy the third positioning region and other elements of the strategic missile defense system then certainly we will adequately respond to it,” Colonel-General Nikolai Solovtsov said.

“We will simply not need a number of expensive programs,” he added echoing earlier Kremlin overtures to the new U.S. administration.

This has generally been the knock on various BMD efforts since Reagan’s “Star Wars,” and the installations in Europe, which appeared to be located to challenge Russia more than Iran, just further complicate the matter.

IDF Develops New Counter-Battery Radar

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The IDF has started deploying a new radar geared toward counter-battery fire.

The Elta’s EL/M-2084 Multi-Mission Radar (MMR) phased array radar can pick up artillery and rocket rounds at launch, and determing both the launch point and impact point.

It will be integrated with Israeli rocket interception systems, though I wonder if it might also be incorporated into counter-battery fire control too, as it appears that this would allow the IDF Artillery Corps to have rounds on a target firing at them in less than something less than 2 minutes.

And The Arms Race Continues

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We now have reports that Russia is designing and building missiles with the direct goal of foiling US missile defense systems.

This was foreseeable, and it’s not hard.

The technology for decoys is basically the same as you see for the shiny silver aluminized Mylar balloons, and about 20 years ago, an SDI opponent noted that there was nothing to prevent an opposing power from putting its reentry vehicles in said decoys, making detection nigh impossible until it enters the upper reaches of the atmosphere.

Once it reaches the atmosphere, the use of MaRVs (maneuverable reentry vehicles) to evade interception can come into play, and that technology actually saw deployment with the Pershing II IRBMs in the 1980s.

The last line of the article reveals the folly here:

That month Russia and China proposed a new treaty banning the use of weapons in space, but the idea was rejected by the White House.

I’ll be so glad when grown ups start going to work at the White House.