Salvaging missile defense

Reuters:

U.S. missile-defense contractors and their allies are pushing to salvage what they can of prized, multibillion-dollar programs that Defense Secretary Robert Gates is seeking to scrap or cut back.

Amid mounting concern over nuclear and missile programs in North Korea and Iran, Northrop Grumman Corp, for instance, is calling on the Defense Department to rescind a stop work order and carry out a major flight test of its Kinetic Energy Interceptor.

Once valued at $6 billion, KEI is intended to shoot down enemy missiles soon after they are launched. Its "booster flight test" had been scheduled for September. But Gates said the system had very limited capability, cost too much and would have to be fired from what he suggested was perilously close to the target.

Northrop argues it had completed 90 percent of everything needed to do the test when the Pentagon pulled the plug on May 11, part of a restructuring of missile-defense efforts that have cost taxpayers more than $100 billion overall.

"Taxpayers have invested some $1.1 billion in KEI over the last five-plus years," said Bob Bishop, a Northrop spokesman.

"It would be a shame to spend that money without a test to prove whether the technology works and forego an opportunity to gather valuable data on this first-of-a-kind, high-acceleration agile missile."

The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency is going ahead with plans to launch this summer two Northrop-built prototype satellites designed to track missiles in all phases of flight. Known as the Space Tracking and Surveillance System, it would add a space-based sensor to the layered missile defense system deployed by then-President George W. Bush in 2004.

For the 2010 budget year that starts October 1, President Barack Obama has asked Congress for roughly $7.8 billion to fund ballistic missile defense, a cut of about $1.2 billion from 2009.

The spending plan calls for greater focus on "rogue state" and "theater" ballistic missile threats in line with requests from top U.S. military commanders.

Gates also would terminate Lockheed Martin Corp's Multiple Kill Vehicle, or MKV, on the grounds it was not needed for the limited threat posed by countries such as Iran and North Korea "for the next 10 to 15 years." Under Bush administration plans, the 2010 outlay for MKV was to have been $441 million.

Lockheed spokesman Jeffery Adams, in an email response to a query from Reuters about how the company might leverage the know-how it had gained, said Lockheed "developed some very promising kill vehicle technologies for the Missile Defense Agency to include battle management algorithms, the MKV infrared sensor, and divert and attitude control systems; we would hope that these could apply to next generation kill vehicles."

With an MKV aboard, a land- or sea-based U.S. interceptor would have been meant to destroy not only an enemy warhead but any decoys or other countermeasures deployed to spoof U.S. defenses.

"It was designed to deal with a more complex threat that would have come potentially from either China or Russia," Gates told the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee on May 13.

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The money set aside for ACORN type projects is more than was needed to fund the missile defense cuts. Think about those priorities. The Democrats would rather give money to an organization engaged in voter registration fraud than fund our national defense and protect liberal cities on the West Coast from attacks by the North Koreans. We also need to be investing in boost phase missile defense which will do away with concerns about decoy war heads.

Meanwhile North Korea is threatening a "merciless offensive." That must be why they are testing nuclear bombs and missiles to deliver them.