The Ground-based Midcourse Defense system manufactured by Boeing [BA] is the Pentagon’s foremost missile defense priority, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said on May 19.
Because of fiscal constraints, the military can no longer afford to make large investments in all weapon systems, including in the area of missile defense, said Navy Adm. James Winnefeld. It must strategically prioritize how it spends its money.
Photo: Missile Defense Agency.
“The operative word here is prioritize, which is something this town hates to do because it means there are winners and losers,” he said during a Center for Strategic and International Studies event. The winner in this case is Boeing’s Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system, which would be vital to homeland defense in the event of an ICBM attack from North Korea or Iran.
“We have to take the Iranian and North Korean threats even though seriously, even though neither nation has a mature ICBM capability and both nations know full well that they would face an overwhelming U.S. response to any attack,” he said.
“That’s why the ground based midcourse defense program is going to remain our first priority in missile defense,” he added. “In a shrinking defense budget, this system will be accorded the highest priority within the missile defense share of our pie.”
The GMD system was built to shoot down ICBMs, including ones equipped with nuclear warheads. It comprises a variety of radar as well as interceptor missiles located at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg AFB, Calif. The Missile Defense Agency requested $1.76 billion for the system in its 2016 budget request.
The next GMD system flight will take place later this year, when the Missile Defense Agency conducts a non-intercept test of the new Capability Enhancement 2 (CE2) ground-based interceptor (GBI), Winnefeld said. The first intercept test of the CE2 GBI will occur by the end of 2016.
“That’s going to be our first intercept of a true ICBM-range target,” he said. If it’s successful, Boeing will deliver 10 new interceptors by the end of 2017, with a total 40 stationed at Fort Greely and four at Vandenberg.
There’s been no decision on whether to build another interceptor site on the East Coast, he said, adding that constructing and sustaining such a facility would tack on a significant cost to the defense budget.
“That site could eventually be necessary,” he said. But “in the near term, updating the kill vehicle on the GBI, improving our ability to discriminate and enhancing the homeland defense sensor network are higher priorities for us.”
Winnefeld characterized the Defense Department’s regional missile defense capability as “very healthy,” but said he is concerned by the enormous cost of U.S. systems, which often are pitted against much less expensive weapons.
“The simple fact is that a THAAD”—shorthand for Lockheed Martin’s [LMT] Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system that can shoot down missiles at about $12 million a pop —“could find itself being launched against a scud that only costs $3 million,” he said. “And that’s only if we launch one THAAD against that threat.”
Military officials would like to be able to drive down the price of interceptors by buying more of them, but are unlikely to be able to do so in the current fiscal climate, he said. So one area of focus is developing technologies to hit ballistic missiles and their launchers “left of launch,” or before they ever leave the ground.
“We’re optimistic about a number of initiatives in this area,” Winnefeld said. “We’re putting a lot of work into it, but we have a long way to go.”
The military is also funneling research-and-development dollars into capabilities that could knock down missiles in flight at a cheaper cost than interceptors, he said. Railguns and lasers—which require high amounts of energy, but can be fired for a fraction of the cost of a missile—are options that “may well bear fruit.”