Business Week January 7, 2003
Star Wars by '04? Forget It
Too many pieces are still far too underdeveloped to have any chance of being operational so soon. By 2010? Maybe
On Dec. 17, President George W. Bush outlined his plans to get a "modest" missile-defense system in place in 2004. But whatever so-called Star Wars capability is built could possibly be counterproductive. The only thing it's likely to protect is the President's right political flank. After making good on his pledge to the GOP right wing to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Bush wants to go a step further and actually christen a system that the ABM Treaty barred. But not a single part of the planned system is likely to be operational or reliable by 2004. Many components won't even be ready by the end of a second Bush term, if he has one.
Yet some analysts say the scheme is already having an impact -- just not the intended one. The idea was to dissuade a potential enemy from developing weapons of mass destruction because America's defensive shield would render them useless. Instead, along with the Administration's bellicose rhetoric, the Star Wars scheme may be prompting the North Koreans to speed up and expand their development of nuclear weapons.
"They want to make sure, regardless of what the U.S. does on missile defense, that they can still nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki," says John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a nonprofit group that advocates military innovation. "If you were Kim Jong Il, wouldn't that make sense to you?"
"TEST, FIX." With Pyongyang expected to be able to make new weapons within a year or so, the North is on a much faster track than America's missile-defense system. What the Bush Administration plans to do starting in 2004 is turn the current "test beds" on land and sea into operational systems. The Pentagon hopes by the end of 2005 to have 20 ground-based interceptors, to start upgrading Aegis-class destroyers, and to begin fielding as many as 20 sea-based interceptors, which could handle only short- and medium-range missiles -- not ICBMs.
In effect, the Defense Dept. will be putting a research and development program into operation, hoping to work out the kinks along the way. "Test, fix. Test, fix. Test, fix is what we're doing," admits Lieutenant General Ronald Kadish, director of the Missile Defense Agency. That's not the most inspiring description of a program meant to deter hostile adversaries.
Let's look at the elements of a ground-based, mid-course, intercept system, which is the furthest along in development. The first piece is the launch vehicle -- and the Pentagon hasn't even selected the contractor and design yet.
CLOSE TO NIL. In tests so far, the military has cobbled together a bunch of old systems, including Minutemen missiles as surrogates for the eventual booster. Boeing (BA
), which as "systems integrator" is in charge of knitting together all of the components for missile defense, originally had the contract for the booster. But after one launch succeeded and one failed, it transferred the contract last year to Lockheed Martin (LMT
). At the same time, Boeing up the booster competition to Orbital Sciences (ORB
) -- not a sign of great confidence.
Their offerings aren't slated to fly for the first time until late spring or summer, and a winner will be picked after that. The first attempted intercept won't come until the fall. That's if the schedule doesn't slip further, never a good working assumption for weapons programs. All of this makes the odds that a well-tested booster will be up and running in 2004 pretty close to nil.
On top of the booster sits the "kill vehicle," the payload that collides with and destroys incoming missiles. Raytheon (RTN
) actually has made some progress on this. Of the seven attempts to intercept a target, four were successful, though one reported a miss when it was a hit. And the most recent test on Dec. 11 failed when the payload didn't separate from the booster -- the same problem that led to a failure in July, 2000.
If the system continues to hit its targets, it could be ready for operational testing in four or five years and be deployed by the end of the decade or -- if things go really smoothly -- as early as 2008, according to an analysis of the various Star Wars systems by Philip Coyle, a top weapons tester at the Pentagon during the Clinton Administration. 2004? Forget it.
MINIMAL COVERAGE. Other key parts of Star Wars are two sets of space-based infrared sensors (SBIRS). One, known as SBIRS High, would detect the launch of a hostile missile, while the other, SBIRS Low, would track its trajectory and distinguish the live warhead from decoys. SBIRS High was so far behind schedule and overbudget that the Pentagon needed to issue a special waiver or the program would have been killed. Coyle doubts the system could be fully deployed this decade. SBIRS Low, which also is experiencing serious technical glitches, isn't likely to be launched until 2008 at the earliest.
Other missile-defense systems, which would protect troops in the battle theater, are having lots of problems, too. The most advanced, the Patriot Advanced Capability-3, could be deployed as early as 2005, but the territory it could defend is so small that a version that could be useful for national missile defense is probably a decade away.
The Theater High Altitude Air Defense, which could shoot down medium-range missiles in their terminal phase, probably won't be deployed before 2010. The Navy's Sea-Based Mid-Course system, which was designed to counter medium-range missiles, has had three straight intercepts. But to convert it to handle ICBMs would require a faster version of the current Standard Missile, a revamped launch structure on ships to handle the new missile, an upgraded Aegis radar system to track targets, and new ships. Deployment before decade's end is thus unlikely.
TOUGH STUFF. Lasers also are supposed to be part of the "layered" blueprint for missile defense. The airborne laser's plane, a modified 747-400F, made its maiden voyage (minus the laser) in July, 2002, but its firing schedule keeps slipping. Back in 1998, the first attempt to shoot down a missile was scheduled for 2001. In 2001, it was scheduled for 2003. Now it's slated for end of 2004, and the cost has ballooned from $500 million a plane to more than $1 billion, according to Coyle. The space-based laser? It has been 10 years away for 25 years.
Why is all this stuff taking so long? One reason is that it's difficult. Another is that the industry never put its "A" teams on the projects. Given the slim likelihood of success, the smart folks shun these projects.
In a little-noticed move intended to change that environment, the Missile Defense Agency has increased its incentive awards for meeting performance objectives to as much as 20%. With costs already covered under these contracts, such fees could make the profit margins on this work -- which now gobbles up $8 billion a year of the defense budget -- substantially higher than other defense work. As a result, the agency "is getting better resources, a better response" from contractors, says Dave Thompson, President and CEO of SpectrumAstro, a privately held Gilbert (Ariz.) defense contractor.
How much better remains to be seen. What's certain at this point, however, is that any missile-defense system in 2004 will be a far cry from what the Bush team has envisioned. It will be a Rube Goldberg combination of decades-old gear and a few new baubles. Missile defense will work just fine -- as long as there isn't a war. As GlobalSecurity.org's Pike puts it: "It intercepts money -- and very little else."
By Stan Crock in Washington
Copyright © 2003
