The Navy’s ballistic missile defense priorities are on intercepting an adversary’s ballistic missiles in the midcourse or terminal phase–exactly where the most recent assessment of missile defense programs recommends putting federal funds.
Since thinking about ballistic missile defense in the 1990s to first deployments aboard Aegis cruisers and destroyers equipped with the Aegis BMD capability, the Navy has viewed itself as complementary to the ballistic missile defense system (BMDS), said Capt. James Kilby, deputy for BMD and Aegis for Rear Adm. Tom Rowden, director Surface Warfare (N96) on the Navy staff.
The report assessing ballistic missile defense systems, released recently by a committee of the National Research Council (NRC), calls on the government to stop investing in boost phase intercept programs because of the cost and the uncertainty of having missile defense assets in proximity to an adversary’s launch sites at the right time.
The Navy’s BMD effort is based on the ship-borne Aegis Weapon System, something the Navy and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) have invested $16.9 billion in from 1964 through 2009, expressed in 2010 dollars, according to a chart in the prepublication NRC committee report.
In BMD, Kilby said the Navy feels it has a great opportunity to contribute to the national defense because of its “mobility, sustainability, ability to move quickly and reposition its ships, and the increased cadre of sailors and officers” with BMD experience and understanding and thus can do repeat tours.
In some ways, he said the Navy’s position in BMD now is analogous to where it was with Tomahawk missiles 20 years ago.
The BMD capability in the Navy rides on the Aegis backbone, an adaptive system designed in the late 1960s with enough built in margin and flexibility to continue using it today for the BMD mission, Kilby said. BMD missions first came in 2004, and the initial ships were focused on the Pacific.
Today, the Navy has 26 ships that are capable of BMD missions. MDA partners with the Navy in creating and installing BMD capability; the Navy certifies ships and trains sailors to go to sea and perform the missions mandated by Combatant Commanders.
Since 2004, the BMD effort has “exploded,” Kilby said. There have been 24 successful ballistic missile intercepts in live fire testing, an 85 percent success rate for the program.
Since 2005, sailors have been conducting the “no notice” firing tests done in part to see how crews respond to such threats. Each test is successively more difficult.
The “bread and butter” 26-ship BMD fleet has 24 ships using BMD combat system baseline 3.6.1, and Standard Missile-2 Block IA missiles. The other two ships use baseline 4.0.1, and SM-3 Block IB missiles.
Baseline 4.01, offers increased capability for the two ships–USS Shiloh (CG-67) and USS Lake Erie (CG-70)–that use it. This baseline brings the radar a greater ability to discrimination among objects in space to find the lethal target. Combined with the SM-3 1B missile with its two-color seeker, baseline 4.0.1 has an ability to take on a “greater and more complicated threat set,” Kilby said.
For the future, BMD Baseline 9, with its open architecture, is coming, “a true integrated air and missile defense capability,” Kilby said that will allow a destroyer to “dynamically adjust its radar resources and meet air and missile threats simultaneously.”
The Baseline 9 computer program allows the allocation of radar resources between BMD and classic air defense and would also be able to use more capable missiles no under development by MDA.
Baseline 9 will be installed starting this month on the USS John Paul Jones (DDG-53) in San Diego, he said. The work will take about a year then the ship goes for certification and firing missions before it is installed on other ships.
In the future, MDA is creating increased missile capability. SM-3 Block IB heads into its final flight test mission in November. If successful, it will go to production and start deployment.
Also cooperative development on a new SM-3 Block IIA missile with Japan will add a more robust capability with greater range allowing single ships to cover a greater area.
The Navy, in partnership with MDA, continues to proceed with sequencing programs and building roadmaps for the future of BMD and surface warfare ships.
All the BMD ships, when certified to conduct BMD missions are certified to “go anywhere,” Kilby said. No matter where they are located, they are capable of responding to national strategy through a Combatant Commander’s requirements.