There have been at least as many acronyms and designations assigned to current, past and future kill vehicles of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) national missile defense system as there have been successful intercept tests of such kill vehicles.  Below I summarize the most important of these kill vehicle designations.

EKV CE-0: This designation covers the kill vehicles used in the first seven GMD intercept tests, from 1999 to 2002, as well as the IFT-1a and IFT-2 fly-by tests in 1998-99.  The first, and so far only, place I have seen this designation is on the slides used by MDA Director Admiral Syring during his August 13 presentation at the 2014 Space and Missile Defense Conference.  (These slides were obtained via FOIA by Laura Grego of the Union of Concerned Scientists.)  These kill vehicles are sometimes referred to as “prototypes” although this term is sometimes also used for the later CE-I and CE-II kill vehicles as well.  The “CE” stands for Capability Enhancement, so the CE-0 designation seems to be both a retroactive designation as well as a catch-all for all the early GMD kill vehicles, as indicated by its use for both the fly-by tests, which used two completely different competing kill vehicle designs.

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It appears likely that the Ground-Based Midcourse (GMD) Defense’s new Long Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) will operate at S-band instead of at X-band. This raises the question of whether the better range resolution that would have been available at X-band is being sacrificed in order to keep the initial cost of the LRDR down to about $1 billion. Or is there some other reason?

Although the current Ground-Based Midcourse (GMD) national missile defense system nominally provides coverage of all 50 states from limited intercontinental ballistic missile attack, it is well known that the system is severely lacking in its discrimination capabilities. In particular, the primary sensor infrastructure (aside from the infrared seekers on interceptor kill vehicles) for the GMD system consists of five radars — seven within a few years — in the United States, Greenland and Britain that were originally built for ballistic missile early warning purposes.[1] These radars date to the 1970s-1980s, but have subsequently received (or will soon receive) relatively minor upgrades that allow them to detect and track incoming missiles as part of the GMD system.[2] However, the relatively low operating frequency of these radars (about 440 MHz, corresponding to a wavelength of about 0.68 m) limits their bandwidth, resulting in a minimum range resolution of no less than about 5 meters.[3] This low resolution limits these radars to at best being able to only classify objects as potentially threatening (warheads, decoys, booster stages, etc…) or non-threatening (small pieces of debris).[4]

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An updated description of planned GMD flight tests (last update was post of April 17, 2013) as best as I can figure them out:

FY 2016: GM CTV-02+ (1Q FY 2016). This test replaces FTG-09, which was previously planned as an intercept test with a CE-II kill vehicle. The “+” indicates that the kill vehicle has the fix to the vibration problem that was demonstrated in the June 2014 FTG-06b test.[1] One purpose of the test is to “demonstrate the performance of alternate divert thrusters” that might be used in future kill vehicles.[2] One reason for developing the new thrusters is to reduce further the vibration problem involved in the failure of test FTG-06a in December 2010. The test is also intended to demonstrate “the end-to-end discrimination of a complex target scene including countermeasures.”[3] Although officially not an intercept test, the presence of a target raises the prospect that the interceptor might actually hit the target, as happened in FTG-02 in 2006, without running the risk of failing an intercept test.

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The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has begun holding a series of required public meetings as part of the Environmental Impact Review process for the proposed eastern U.S. Ground Based Midcourse (GMD) defense system interceptor site. The first meeting was held on Tuesday (August 5) in Ravenna Ohio. Apparently it was sparsely attended. You can read a description of the meeting here.

A number of other meetings will be held through August. The full list is here.

The MDA has posted its informational handout from the meeting here,

Two points from the handout struck me as noteworthy. First as the slide below suggests, MDA apparently believes that a few 10,000 km ICBMs now exist in the third world.

Second, the sites are being sized for up to 60 interceptors per site (3 x 20 launch silos). Given calls for expanding missile field 1 at Fort Greely Alaska from six to twenty silos, (which would bring the total in Alaska and California to 58 launch silos silos), this could indicate that we are headed for a total deployment of roughly 120 GBI interceptors in the not-too-distant future.

According to the Israeli Government, Iron Dome has been 85% effective (or perhaps a bit more) in destroying threatening rockets fired at its territory. However, each Iron Dome interceptor costs roughly $50,000-100,000, which adds up fast when there are a lot of rockets coming in. Moreover, a recent article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists by Theodore Postol challenges this claim, arguing that the evidence indicates that Iron Dome’s success rate in destroying the rockets is actually quite low.

On Sunday (July 20), another perspective on the threat posed by these rockets came out in the course of a hearing before the Israeli Supreme Court. The Court was ruling on a petition from several Bedouin and human rights organizations requesting that the Israeli government provide mobile bomb shelters to Bedouin villages in the Negev Desert. The court rejected the request, saying that the number of mobile bomb shelters was limited and that the government had prioritize where these were deployed.

A key argument made by the Israeli state attorney at the hearing was: “Bomb shelters are a last resort from a security perspective. Lying on the ground reduces danger by 80%.”

Imagine how effective an actual shelter would be.

(Actually, it is not clear how much either bomb shelters or lying down on the ground would actually help the Bedouins, since the warning sirens telling people to seek shelter apparently cannot be heard in many of the Bedouin villages.)

The Congressional Budget Office has just released a very short report on the Missile Defense Agency’s future spending plans for its Ground-Based Midcourse (GMD) national missile defense system.[1] This Report, titled “Historical and Planned Future Budgets for the Missile Defense Agency’s Ground-Based Midcourse Defense Program” was released as a letter to Senator Jeff Sessions and is based on MDA’s budget request projections out through fiscal year 2019. It compares these GMD budget projections with actual GMD spending going back to FY 2008.

The main conclusions people seem likely to draw from the Report are that spending on the GMD system is expected to decline by more than a factor of two from its 2008 level and that by FY 2019 it will fall below $1 billion.[2] Specifically, the Report shows that GMD Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) and GMD Procurement spending will total $789 million in FY 2019. Another $169 million for Operations and Maintenance (O&M) will bring the total FY 2019 GMD spending to $958 million. For comparison, the Report shows that in FY 2008 the total GMD spending was $2,093 million. (None of the $ figures in the Report have been adjusted for inflation.)

Several points should be made:

First the GMD budget falling below $1 billion is not a particularly significant benchmark (nor does the CBO Report say it is). According to the Report’s figures, actual FY 2013 spending on the GMD system was only $923 million.

Second, the actual planned spending on the GMD system will be significantly higher than shown in the CBO Report.[3] To illustrate this, I will focus on the planned GMD spending for FY 2019, the last year considered by the Report. As noted above, the Report says the currently planned GMD spending for FY 2019 is $958 million. However, if we look in more detail at the MDA’s planned budget we see that there are some significant omissions in what the CBO includes. For example, neither the Sea-Based X-Band (SBX) Radar ($63.0 million in FY 2019) nor the Long Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) ($189 million in FY 2019) is included.[4] The FY 2019 GMD Test line item (Project MT08) included in the CBO cost figure is only $61.6 million.[5] Since each GMD test now costs $200 million or more, this suggests that roughly another $100-150 million for GMD testing should be included in the CBO’s FY 2019 GMD cost estimate figure.[6] A number of other projects that are intended to at least partially to contribute to the GMD system, such as the Common Kill Vehicle Technology Project ($54.3 million in FY 2019) are also not accounted for in the CBO figures.  Taken together, these omissions suggest MDA’s total planned spending for FY 2019 is much closer to $1.5 billion than the $958 million in the CBO Report.

Third, the numbers in the CBO Report are based on MDA plans that do not include a third interceptor site in the eastern United States. If this third site is not built, then by FY 2019, if everything proceeds according to plan, the GMD system would be nearly complete. All 44 planned GBI interceptors would be deployed, the Clear and Cape Cod radars would have been upgraded and incorporated into the system, and the LRDR would be nearly complete (with about $910 million spent on it through FY 2019). While there would certainly be significant ongoing costs, such as for operations, for testing (including buying new interceptors for this purpose) and for technology development and upgrades, one would certainly expect the GMD annual funding to be significantly less that it was FY 2008, when the system was in the midst of being built.

On the other hand, if a decision was made to proceed with a third interceptor site, the future GMD spending situation could look quite different.  The environmental impact statement for the proposed third site location will assess the deployment of between twenty and sixty interceptors at potential sites. If each interceptor cost the same as a current GBI interceptor, about $75 million, then the total cost just for the additional interceptors would be about $1.5-4.5 billion, which would require a large increase in GMD funding over current plans.

[1] Congressional Budget Office, “Historical and Planned Future Budgets for the Missile Defense Agency’s Ground-Based Midcourse Defense Program, letter to Senator Jeff Sessions, July 12, 2014. Available at: http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/45546-GMD_Program.pdf.

[2] See for example, Jason Sherman, “CBO Traces Decline in GMD Spending From FY-08 To FY-19,” Inside Defense SITREP, July 23, 2014.

[3] The CBO Report (footnote a) states that the Report only includes funding in the Midcourse Defense program element and does not include “funding for other support activities that are contained in other program elements.”

[4] MDA’s planned budget can be found on pages 2a-xxi to 2a-xxiv of http://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/fy2015/budget_justification/pdfs/03_RDT_and_E/2_RDTE_MasterJustificationBook_Missile_Defense_Agency_PB_2015_Vol_2.pdf.

[5] This is not just an FY 2019 budget anomaly, as the FY 2015-2019 five year average for the GMD Test line item is $67.4 million.

[6] Most of this other GMD testing funding is likely in the Ballistic Missile Defense Test ($413 million in FY 2019) and the Ballistic Missile Defense Targets ($429.8 in FY 2019) program elements, which are not included in the CBO GMD cost figures.

It appears that the next intercept test for the Ground-Based Midcourse national missile defense system is planned for Sunday, June 22 between 9:00 am and 1:00 pm U.S. east coast time. The target will be launched from Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands and the interceptor from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California

On Wednesday (June 4), Reuters cited two anonymous sources that the test, designated FTG-06b, would be held on June 22.[1]

However, today (June 6), the Pacific Islands News Association reported that, according to a warning issued by the U.S. Army, the planned test time was Monday June 23 between 4:00 am and 8:00 pm. The backup dates are June 24 and 25.

These two announced dates are not inconsistent because the of the 19 hour time difference between California and Kwajalein. Thus 4:00 am to 8:00 am on the 23^rd at Kwajalein corresponds to 9:00 am to 1:00 pm on the 22^nd in California. MDA usually specifies the date and time of a test using the time zone of the interceptor launch location. On the other hand, the U.S. Army warning was presumably intended for the local population near the target launch location, and thus likely uses Kwajalein time.

Thus from a U.S east coast perspective, the planned interceptor launch time is Sunday June 22 between 9:00 am and 1:00 pm.

This test is the third intercept test of the new CE-II version of the GBI interceptor’s kill vehicle. The previous two CE-II intercept tests failed, although a successful flight test not using a target was successfully conducted about a year ago.

If this upcoming test is successful, MDA will likely be able to almost immediately resume production of the 14 additional GBI interceptors it plans to deploy in Alaska by the end of 2017. A failure, depending on its cause, would likely impose significant delays on any future deployments of CE-II interceptors and may make the end of 2017 deadline impossible to achieve. It is now over 41 months since the most recent CE-II intercept test attempt, which failed.

[1] Andrea Shalal, “U.S. Missile Defense Test Could Shift Timing to Add Interceptors,” Reuters.Com, June 4, 2014

The Missile Defense Agency announced today that it had conducted its first test launch of an Aegis SM-3 missile defense interceptor from an Aegis Ashore facility similar to the one planned to be operational in Romania by the end of next year. The test, using an SM-3 Block IB version of the interceptor, was conducted at the newly completed Aegis Ashore test facility in Hawaii and was described as successful. No target missile was used, and thus there was no intercept attempt.