But Combatant Commanders Would Retain Power To Execute Missile Kills In Their Regions
Allied Nations Also Should Be Linked To BMD
The multi-layered global ballistic missile defense (BMD) shield should have better links, and those links should be automatic, “machine to machine,” rather than human to human, Lt. Gen. Kevin Campbell, commanding general of the Army Space and Missile Defense Command, said.
He spoke before a breakfast forum of the National Defense University Foundation at the Capitol Hill Club.
Campbell spoke at length in explaining his view.
“Having a centralized entity planning and coordinating missile defense is certainly important to the decision-makers of this country, that they can look to one person and get all the information they need and direction from that person of where we should go,” he said.
“Right now that has been U.S. Strategic Command. And I’m not advocating that they should become the imperial global ballistic missile defense headquarters. But at least now as we’re working on a multiple set of systems, and learning how to bring it together, I think it’s important that we can have a lead agent who can take the COCOMS, who can work with the developer, work with the services, in bringing this all together. It pays dividends, even though it is cultural … as soon as you take a combatant command such as the Strategic Command and you walk into the European Theater, or the Pacific Theater, or the Central Command Theater, the first question is, why are you here in my neighborhood?
“And after you have that discussion, you have to get through that, and try to show them that there are some seams and gaps that we really haven’t knit together.”
Campbell detailed what he means by gaps.
“We know as we look at this that there’s going to be operations occurring in multiple theaters at the same time,” he said. “I don’t think it will always be clean, and antiseptic, that just one country that we’re worrying about, or one class of missile. I don’t think an enemy is going to employ it that way. [He] would be disadvantaging himself if he did that.”
Which is why, with super-regional threats, it makes sense to have coordination among regions, he explained.
” The dispersion of the system — sensors all over the planet — we have to have a way of managing the sensors,” he said. “Today, [we may] have a number of different entities that manage different sensors, which is OK. I mean, you — again — we can make it work. But I think we need a more structured concept [of how to] condition these sensors and how we manage those sensors. And the Navy gets real nervous about this, when we start talking about managing sensors. And of course, the question is, does that mean Aegis? Are you going to manage Aegis from afar? And, generally, the answer to that is, no, we would not be managing Aegis. We’re looking at the more strategic … sensors, such as in England, in future in the Czech Republic, in the upgraded early warning radars that the Air Force has out in California and up in Alaska.”
The Aegis missile defense system is a weapon control asset mounted on Navy ships, using Standard Missile interceptors to take out enemy missiles. The European Missile Defense system would involve an advanced radar in the Czech Republic and intereceptors in ground silos in Poland, if those nations agree, to guard against missiles fired from Iran toward Europe or the United States. That European system would be a variant of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system now installed in Alaska and California. There also is a high- powered radar at Fylingdales, England.
Centralized Manager
“We think there are some efficiencies to be gained by having a centralized manager to get those sensors [in sync],” Campbell said. “And, again, today, it’s not machine to machine, it’s human to human, trying to manage that enterprise. So I think there are some efficiencies to be gained. Another issue we have with problems that stretch and become trans-regional, that, I mean, you have to have supported and supporting relationships across the combatant commanders. And we typically have grown up in the world in the joint business, you, as a combatant commander, Pacific Command, is an operation, you are designated as the … commander. So everybody else is behind you, helping you push. But in problems such as missile defense, or cyber, where things around the world in seconds cross boundaries, you could be supported one minute, but you’ve got to be supporting … to another combatant commander. So there are some lessons we have to learn, some procedures we have to put in place to make that all work.
“Just as important as operating the system, it’s important for us to be able to send a message to the developers, as we work this concept that shapes the activities they’re undertaking for the block approach to producing missile defense.”
Campbell suggested that others perhaps should have more input into the way in which the Missile Defense Agency structures BMD systems.
“Thus far, because of the way the United States determined that they wanted to field the systems, trail breaking … developed the system, pushed it into the field, and we saw it as the customer … and we got what we got. We showed up, and this is what it looks like — four wheels, a steering wheel, and two doors. Maybe we wanted four doors. But there was no time for that. We had to get a system in the field.
“But I think we’re at a point now, as we mature a little bit, and we begin to understand the behavior more of these systems, that we’re going to start shaping where the Missile Defense Agency is going, what they’re developing. And I think we’re in that phase right now, where we’ve presented particular options to [the] Missile Defense Agency that the users are interested in, it could affect [the MDA] program. And, of course, any good manager would not want [garble] in the program. They planned it and they budgeted for it, and they’re off and running. And I’m not being critical of the Missile Defense Agency. … I think they’ve done marvelous work. But there does come a point where the user should begin to define more appropriately the longer-range direction of where these systems are headed.”
Combatant Commanders
Campbell also said it is crucial that there be a concept of operations worked out, to help bring in combatant commanders to the overall picture.
“The other notion, with the concept, we’re frequently asked by our allies, well, how do we fit into this? So if we don’t have a concept ironed out completely, it’s hard to describe to them, here’s how you fit in. So in my view, it gives us a great advantage — particularly as we head into Europe — to show them how to fit in. Then, the other thing, if you don’t have a concept [of operations], it’s hard to bring the combatant commanders together and say, well, we need to train and exercise on this. If you don’t the construct and the procedures in place, well, how are you going to do that? It becomes ad hoc. And sometimes ad hoc is fine, and you have to do that, but you’d hope you’d have a more structured system in place, one that you can continually refine to work all these processes … across the combatant commanders. I think everybody recognizes that. There’s not a lot of resistance to it. We’ve just got to get on with defining that.
“As we do go global with the system, the notion that we have to share a common picture is very critical. And the same for the allies. That people have to understand not only the red forces, but the blue forces, and what’s taking place with our systems as we work to intercept missiles. So … getting at the data that’s produced by sensors, by weapons systems, we have to do a better job in making that data available to users. Whether it’s for situational awareness, all the way down the path [to] control quality data, that we need to be able to share that across the enterprise. When you look at these systems that are coming on board, the SM-3s and the THAADs, when you begin to combine these systems with other sensors, take a forward-based sensor and you’re able to cue and pass that data to an Aegis ship, you can significantly increase your defended area. [Benefits result] when you start to tie these systems together. So, in our view, the movement of that data and how we can use it is very critical. You don’t want to get into ownership. You want to get into just having access, and making it absolutely useable for all of the folks on the battlefield.”
Allied Participation
Campbell also discussed the need to bring allied nations into the missile defense picture, because the United States cannot perform the BMD mission alone.
“We have some of our allies here” in the audience, he noted. “We’ve been working hard over the past 15 months bringing our allies together in a series of exercises called Nimble Titan, where we look out 10 years and we take a look at architectures, systems, and really try to figure out how we can tie together the elements that are resident in an allied country with those elements in the U.S.
“Our approach has not been one that’s prescriptive, where we go in and say, well if you want to join in this coalition, then you need to have a missile that’s this large, fires this far. No. We’re looking at what they have, and trying to figure out, how do we plug that in. So, in our view, in years gone by, when we’ve looked at allies, we’ve said, Gee, we should invite them to participate in this. But it really isn’t that any more. We simply can’t do [the mission] without our allies. It’s not a question of inviting them. We have to have our allies with us to do this. This exercise we recently did had some 14 or 15 nations participating. We were out at Schriever Air Force Base [in Colorado Springs, Colo.]. A lot of interesting perspectives on how you bring it together. And I think when I walked away, and I was assessing, OK, what did you just hear? What did you just see? A lot of it goes back to situational awareness and understanding what is happening in the fight, both from the friendly perspective, as well as from the adversaries’ perspective. And what are the systems doing? Do they want to have visibility into that?
“So it goes back to information data sharing, that we have to work through that with our allies. And that can be a pretty [daunting] problem sometimes. Foreign disclosure and types of information. But it’s very workable. We’ve done it with shared early warning, with a number of nations, and we can work through this to ensure that they have the right amount of data available to them, fully understanding this is what’s going on with these systems, the condition they’re in, the engagements they’re about to make …
“We’re also in the fall going over [to] Europe. We have another exercise, called Joint Project … Alliance, focused [on] Europe about four years out, to again look at architecture. So this will be a gathering of the European allies with us, leading the effort, again, to look at how we bring the homeland defense piece together with the European piece. Because they’re working on their system … Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defense. We’re working with the folks … on how do we strap these systems together, in the near term as in the far term. So a lot of what we do with the allies is very important business to us, because, again, we simply, we simply cannot do this without them.”
Summing up, Campbell said his priorities are “first in the global concept of operations, we’ve got to nail that down. And again, it’s one of my more pleasant activities that I enjoy each day with the combatant commanders. (laughter in audience)
“We’re also working very hard — I did not mention this in my earlier remarks — but the system elements, that’s elements of fielding, whether it be a radar or ship, we’re working very hard with the services and the COCOMS so that they understand what it is you just got in that nice, shiny package [of missile defense systems]. What its capabilities are, what its limitations are, and how that fully integrates. We’ve developed a very good process of working through some of these problems on behalf of users, not for ourselves.”
And the other key priority is bringing in friendly nations to the system.
“Back to the allied integration: it remains an absolute priority with us to walk this path with our allies,” he said. “There is no way — period — there is no way [to execute the mission without allies]. I suppose we could put everything on ships, or in space. And then we wouldn’t have to worry about it. But that’s not the way we’re going. We’re looking for assistance. You’re going to have to put yourself down to the ground … In this case, Europe’s a great anchor, great friends.”
Campbell stressed that he isn’t proposing some master controlling agency or command that would control all the existing missile defense systems.
“I’ve got to be real careful here,” he said. This wouldn’t involve having “a command like STRATCOM directing all the traffic,” deciding which BMD system would be used to take out which incoming enemy missile. “You do need a lead agent planning, so that you close gaps. But let me make it absolutely clear, that, there’s a regional fight here that the combatant command is going to execute. So that’s Pacific Command or Central Command. They’re going to be the ones executing that fight. In deliberate planning, when you have multiple systems, some of which are not in his theater, then you’re trying to look across those systems and see how we can best integrate, to close a gap, or give another commander more capability.”
Explaining his point further, Campbell said that his take on the “Strategic Command is that they’re a planning and integrating agent, but they’re not the executing agent. Execution is clearly with NORTHCOM, EUCOM, PACOM.”
He also said that a study has been done on deployment of radars.
“We’ve actually completed the study on forward-based X-bands,” he said. “And we’ve identified certain regions I can’t get into the specifics. We’ve identified regions where we can best leverage the forward-based X-bands, both for regional applications as well as contributing to a broader defense.
“For example, it can contribute to the defense of Europe, it can contribute to the defense of the homeland. So that was part of the criteria, where can I best leverage the power of these radars. So that study has been completed. And there will have to be a decision made sometime in the future: approve it, No. 1, and then issue orders to move the radars in [that] direction.”