'Kick Motor' Technology The Heart of Lockheed's Problems
By Paul Hoversten
Washington Bureau Chief
posted: 07:45 pm ET
06 April 2000
WASHINGTON - The State Department's case against Lockheed Martin involves data on how to fix potential problems with a Chinese-built "kick motor" used to position satellites in orbit.
The motor was to be used by Lockheed's client AsiaSat on its AsiaSat 2 satellite, launched atop a Chinese Long March rocket in 1995.
The State Department said any data on kick-motor technology is highly sensitive because it can be used to develop better guidance systems for clusters of nuclear warheads that are launched on a single missile.
Lockheed said it had obtained the necessary clearance and licenses from the Commerce Department to divulge the kick-motor data.
"The State Department is saying what we did should have been under a munitions license.but we did not do anything that affected national security," said Jim Fetig, a Lockheed spokesman in Bethesda, Maryland. "We have a very good reputation and we're very concerned about national security."
A General Accounting Office report that looked into the matter last year said that while Lockheed's action "represented a loss of technology, [it] did not significantly harm national security."
The kick motor in question "is basically a small solid-fuel rocket motor that fires once and is reasonably accurate, but not profoundly so," said John Pike, a space analyst with the Federation of American Scientists in Washington.
"Other insertion stages might use liquid propellant and are a lot closer to what you'd use for a post-boost missile-control system for multiple warheads. This was not anything like that," Pike said.
The case, as Pike sees it, hinges on two points. "One is whether Lockheed Martin broke the law, and I have no way of knowing that. The other is whether whatever they did would provide a significant military benefit to the Chinese missile program. Of that, I am somewhat skeptical."
China, after all, has a vigorous missile program staffed by hundreds of thousands of people, Pike said.
"The notion that the Chinese are sitting over there completely bewildered and are sort of running their program on the basis of news clips and trade show brochures is absurd. It's very difficult to believe that any one document could have such an impact on what is an enormous industry."
China's missile program today is about where the U.S. program was in the 1960s. It is making the transition from large liquid-fueled rockets to smaller ones with solid fuel, but "moving very leisurely to do so," Pike said.
Copyright ©2000 space.com, inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list
