Proposal For More Targets Seen This Summer; MDA Seeks New Sources Of Target Missiles

The U.S. missile defense program has a cost problem, not so much with the high-speed interceptors that can obliterate an enemy missile, but with the price tags on target missiles used to test the interceptors.

What the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) needs is a large number of low-cost, mass produced target missiles, said Army Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly, the MDA director.

He said MDA in the summer will issue a proposal for contractors to supply additional target missiles. "We’re looking for new sources of targets," he added.

"Right now I’m shooting $10 million interceptors at $65 million targets," and that eye-popping figure doesn’t even include the cost of target launch services, O’Reilly said.

The cost of a single target can soar to $90 million, he explained.

Such a disconnect in the cost of targets "is not an operationally effective way to move forward," he said.

Other problems with targets include the need sometimes to obtain hazard waivers on a missile range, and a waiver was denied on an environmental impact statement problem, hampering a planned Aegis missile defense system test this year, he said. To get the waiver, the target will have to be altered.

He spoke on the record at a conference on the changing nature of ballistic missile defense presented by the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C.

MDA needs target missiles that are mass produced in bulk, not hand-built systems, he said, to prepare for six more years of testing U.S. missile defense systems, which will include missiles that emit countermeasures.

As well, an aide said later that MDA at times has encountered problems in using decades-old missiles as targets, only to have those targets fail, meaning a missile defense system test is scrubbed. New targets would provide greater reliability, the aide said.

Further, having many targets in inventory, ready for use, would mean that any given missile defense test wouldn’t have to be delayed, waiting for a target to be provided, O’Reilly said.

He seeks "inventories of targets, so they are not the pacing item," he said.

His concerns about targets are set against a background of extensive tests that MDA will conduct, running over the next six years, he said.

Within the next several years, it will be possible for U.S. forces to launch hundreds of interceptors at a time to take down a massive salvo of incoming enemy missiles, O’Reilly predicted.

He said the existing Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system "likely" can take down long-range missile threats, adding that 30 interceptors are sufficient to protect the United States. The GMD system is the only U.S. shield able to counter intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs.

President Obama has proposed placing just 30 GMD interceptors in ground silos at Fort Greely Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. He would defer placing another 14 silos in the ground until some later time.

Overall, Obama would cut the missile defense budget by $1.2 billion, to $7.8 billion in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2010. Some members of Congress would cut it even further.

While the GMD has taken down the target missile in each of three tests, the MDA nonetheless is moving to make the system even better, he said. "We have made adjustments to give ourselves even higher confidence," he said, so that U.S. forces now can select precisely which part of an incoming enemy missile or warhead will be hit with a U.S. interceptor. To be sure, he said, a collision with any part of an incoming missile traveling 17,500 miles an hour will destroy it. Destruction must be ensured whether the hit is head-on or from the side, he said.

In assessing the GMD system, "We’ve seen no indicator why it wouldn’t work" to kill an enemy missile, he said. "None whatsoever."

O’Reilly said if you think missile defense is expensive, with large costs, consider the costs of not having missile defense, if enemy missiles therefore obliterate U.S. cities.

"I understand that missile defense is expensive," O’Reilly said. "But the cost of mission failure is much higher."