Arizona Daily Star November 26, 2008
Raytheon works to counter multiple-warhead missiles
By Dan Sullivan
It's one thing to hit a single missile hurtling through space — a bigger problem is when that missile launches multiple warheads in a scattershot attack.
Raytheon Missile Systems is working to solve that problem under a $54 million contract to develop a system that will counter multiple enemy warheads with its own barrage of projectiles.
The contract from the U.S. Missile Defense Agency will build on Raytheon's experience manufacturing the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle — a non-explosive, guided "kill vehicle" designed to track and smash into enemy threats outside the Earth's atmosphere — for the emerging ground-based Ballistic Missile Defense System.
With the aspirations of countries such as North Korea and Iran to develop their own ballistic-missile systems, the United States and its allies are looking to develop new ways to counter missiles with multiple warheads.
"As we have been looking out toward the future, we see a need for multiple kill vehicles," said Kathrin Kjos, Raytheon program manager for kill vehicles.
Some missiles that could be launched by rogue nations could contain multiple warheads or decoys that look like warheads, Kjos said. Raytheon's Multiple Kill Vehicle system, known as "MKV-R," could boost the chances of eliminating multiple warheads and decoys, she said.
Because warheads may hold nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, they must be destroyed before they detonate in the atmosphere, where they pose the greatest threat to life.
"Hitting a rocket's booster is not that exciting for us — except that it will create a fireball — but unless it hits the payload, we haven't done our job," Kjos said. "That's the beauty of exoatmospheric intercepts."
A military analyst said that with the growing threat of multiple warheads, it has become apparent that a single kill vehicle won't always do the job.
"What they have done is take a hopeless situation and make it merely a difficult situation," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Virginia-based defense research firm.
Meanwhile, Raytheon is not the only company developing a multiple kill vehicle.
In 2004, Lockheed Martin won a competition to develop a multiple kill vehicle. Raytheon also competed. Lockheed is currently developing its system, called MKV-L.
Raytheon was brought back into the project in 2007 and awarded the $54 million contract earlier this month.
Under a "dual-path" development plan, the Missile Defense Agency may select one, or both, of the two companies' designs, Kjos said.
But what really makes Raytheon's system unique is that the multiple kill vehicles can all operate independently, Kjos said.
She describes the system as being similar to a football team. When the vehicles are looking for a target, they communicate with each other but also can act independently.
There will be a designated leader, or "quarterback," that Kjos said will call the shots and direct the other vehicles.
However, if the lead vehicle is destroyed, any of the other vehicles can act as leader.
The system uses a "scalable" approach so that each carrier can carry a varied amount of kill vehicles, she added.
The MKV-R project is in the design and hardware-development stage. It will have a preliminary design review in early 2010. The system's first test flight is scheduled to occur in 2012 or 2013.
Kjos said the system could be operational and deployed between 2015 and 2017.
"What we provide is a shield, and this is the next generation of that shield," Raytheon spokesman John Patterson said.
© Copyright 2008, Arizona Daily Star
