National Missile Defense: The Myth of Success

As we have examined in some of my earlier diaries on the subject, the prospect of a National Missile Defense system to defend against ICBMs launched from abroad is as alluring as it is impossible. The cold, hard truth is simple: It is a real threat with no realistic solution.

But that hasn’t stopped the Bush adminsitration, and the Reagan-era neocons behind his administration, from promoting and fostering an atmosphere of safety behind the enigmatic spectre of a “missile defense shield.” And as we saw in yesterday’s piece, even the failures of the program were accelerated by Bush pushing the program ahead of schedule, sacrificing testing in the name of a ‘Fully Operational’ tagline attached to the program. I guess when you are spending eight billion dollars a year, you get itchy for results.

But the fact is, the results aren’t there. The testing that has been done so far could charitably be described as a mixed bag, but these tests have been nothing short of damning. Despite this, the Bush administration has wrapped themselves in rhetoric, and created the Myth of Success…something we will examine today.
Rather than look at the Reagan era program, which was in some ways an even more hilarious joke, I will concentrate on the most recent attempts to create the illusion of success and safety in regards to the National Missile Defense program.

In order to do this, we have to start at the end of the Clinton administration, and the testing of what is described as the Ground-based Midcourse System, a major part of the National Missile Defense program. Here is a breakdown of the testing schedule for the program, starting with its first operational test:

IFT-3: October 2, 1999

The test was originally scheduled for June 1999, but was postponed several times, reportedly due to a series of minor problems with the kill vehicle. A surrogate booster carried the prototype exoatmospheric kill vehicle from the Kwajalein Missile Range to intercept a target launched from Vandenburg AFB, California. The intercept reportedly occurred at about 140 miles (225 km) altitude at a closing speed of 15,000 miles per hour (6.7 km/s). The NMD ground-based radar observed the test but was not used to guide the kill vehicle — instead a global positioning system transmitter on the mock warhead (along with a backup C-band radar beacon) told the interceptor missile where to release the kill vehicle. In January 2000, the Pentagon acknowledged a series of anomalies in the test that led to the kill vehicle initially being unable to find the mock warhead. Eventually, the kill vehicle started to home instead on the bright balloon decoy that was included in the test. Fortuitously, the balloon and warhead were close enough together that the warhead then appeared in the field of view of the kill vehicle, which was then able to home on and intercept the warhead. According to the 1999 annual report by the Pentagon’s Director of Operational Testing and Evaluation, there is no basis to classify the test as either a success or a failure since it is unclear whether the intercept would have occurred if the brighter balloon had not been present.

IFT-4: January 18, 2000

This test differed from IFT-3 in that it incorporated other components of the system, including the Defense Support Program early warning satellites, the prototype ground-based radar on Kwajalein, and the battle-management system in Colorado. A failure of the two infrared sensors on the kill vehicle caused it to miss the mock warhead, reportedly by a distance of 100 feet. The failure of the sensors was attributed to a coolant leak.

IFT-5: July 8, 2000

The third intercept test failed when the kill vehicle did not separate from its Minuteman III surrogate booster rocket, dooming the test before it had the chance to attempt an intercept. NMD supporters wrote off the failure as a problem of engineering, and not of science. However, communication problems between the kill vehicle and booster showed that many problems in this area exist – and will become more obvious when the prototype booster is integrated into the testing. The prototype booster, which has seen numerous delays in production, accelerates at a much higher rate than the surrogate booster used in previous tests, and it has yet to be shown that the kill vehicle can withstand the stress of a higher acceleration. For the first time, IFT-5 used the In-Flight Interceptor Communications System (IFICS) — a ground-based station that is designed to allow the battle management center to communicate with the interceptor once the interceptor has flown out of the field of view. A secondary failure of the test occurred when the missile carrying the mock warhead failed to successfully deploy its balloon decoy.

IFT-6: July 14, 2001

After several months of delays, the fourth test of the ground-based NMD resulted in a successful intercept of a mock warhead 144 miles into outer space after two straight failures in similar tests. One 5.5-foot decoy balloon was used in the test, which again involved a ballistic missile launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and a kill vehicle launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

On July 27, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization acknowledged that the mock warhead, as in previous tests, carried a beacon or “transponder,” that allowed a radar on Hawaii to determine its location. This information was then used to calculate a predicted intercept point and launch the interceptor toward this point. Defense officials emphasized that the beacon is a surrogate for an early warning radar in the tests, and will no longer be used once the existing early warning radar at Beale, California (near Sacramento) is upgraded next year.

This artificiality appears to be on par with others in the tests so far; in particular, the defense is told in advance what the signature of the mock kill vehicle and balloon decoy will be to allow the radars and kill vehicle to distinguish one from the other.

It is after the July 14 test that the media began to run stories claiming that the tests up until this point, which as far as the American people were concerned were moving along smoothly, were rigged. When I say media, I don’t necessarily mean the mainstream news, and even if they did, they didn’t cover it well. From Salon:

There was only one thing that all the happy salesmen forgot to mention about their latest test drive. The rocket fired from Vandenberg was carrying a global positioning satellite beacon that guided the kill vehicle toward it. In other words, it would be fair to say that the $100 million test was rigged.

No wonder, then, that Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, the Air Force officer who oversees the NMD program, told the Washington Post on the eve of the test that he was “quietly confident” about the outcome. The general knew about the GPS beacon, while the reporters didn’t.

This rather significant aspect of the July 14 mission remained hidden in the fine print until a few days ago, when the Pentagon confirmed the role of the GPS device to a reporter for Defense Week magazine. But of course most Americans still don’t know why the test functioned so smoothly, because the Defense Week scoop was either buried or ignored by the mainstream media, which had so obediently celebrated the technological breakthrough two weeks earlier.

And as Kadish later acknowledged, each of the previous three tests — two of which failed anyway — had also involved the use of a guidance beacon. (To longtime observers of the missile-defense effort, this latest news recalled the notorious “Star Wars” scandal, when investigators discovered that a target had been secretly heated to ensure that it would be picked up by the interceptor’s infrared sensor.)

It appeared at the time that there might be some sort of organized uproar at the fact that billions of tax dollars were being devoted to a program that offered little or no security. On September 11 however, the rules changed completely.

Missile Defense fell off the radar, at least until Bush paraded it out in 2002 as not only an important part of our national security, but as a necessity for every American’s safety. Bush signed National Security Presidential Directive 23, which set about a highly accelerated timetable for missile defense deployment. From his release on the signing:

September 11, 2001 underscored that our Nation faces unprecedented threats, in a world that has changed greatly since the Cold War. To better protect our country against the threats of today and tomorrow, my Administration has developed a new national security strategy, and new supporting strategies for making our homeland more secure and for combating weapons of mass destruction. Throughout my Administration, I have made clear that the United States will take every necessary measure to protect our citizens against what is perhaps the gravest danger of all: the catastrophic harm that may result from hostile states or terrorist groups armed with weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them.

Missile defenses have an important role to play in this effort. The United States has moved beyond the doctrine of Cold War deterrence reflected in the 1972 ABM Treaty. At the same time we have established a positive relationship with Russia that includes partnership in counterterrorism and in other key areas of mutual concern. We have adopted a new concept of deterrence that recognizes that missile defenses will add to our ability to deter those who may contemplate attacking us with missiles. Our withdrawal from the ABM Treaty has made it possible to develop and test the full range of missile defense technologies, and to deploy defenses capable of protecting our territory and our cities.

Now, nevermind that we had just faced a terrorist threat that shook the existing national security doctrine to its core. Never mind that we were facing an extended, costly hunt for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. It was time for missile defense to take front and center stage.

But what has come since that point? What successes justify expanding the program’s already bloated budget?

Since 2002, there have been numerous tests, both successful and not. The Bush administration tells us that today, there is a “reasonable chance” that the system could shoot down an incoming missile. Unfortunately, the testing has never proven this to be true. In fact, we’ve never had a test that wasn’t scripted. How in the hell can you know something is going to work, if you haven’t even put it up against a realistic situation? The Union of Concerned Scientists examined the issue in their report of the 2004-2005 period of missile defense testing:

The Block 2004 missile defense will have no demonstrated capability to defend against a real attack since all flight intercept tests have been conducted under highly scripted conditions with the defense given advance information about the attack details.

None of the system components to be deployed as part of the Block 2004 system–including the interceptors and radars–has been flight tested in its deployed configuration. It is possible that the new three-stage interceptor with the deployment version of the kill vehicle will be flight tested once before September, but that test is not scheduled to be an intercept test.

According to the MDA, the Cobra Dane radar will be key to the operation of the Block 2004 system, but it will not take part in a flight or intercept test before 2007. Moreover, there will be no system-level flight or intercept test of the defense before its activation in September 2004.

Since 1997, the MDA has conducted 10 flight tests involving prototype or surrogate system components. Eight of these were intercept tests, five of Technical Realities xi

which resulted in intercepts. All the flight tests have been research and development tests, which provide information for design modifications but do not assess the system’s effectiveness under realistic operational conditions. In fact, the intercept tests to date have included many

artificialities and limitations, as the MDA acknowledges.

This is the crux of the problem: The tests have been rigged. This isn’t to say there isn’t a time and place for controlled simulations, but you can’t use those tests to state that a system is ‘operational,’ let alone tell the American people that it has a reasonable chance of working. It is irresponsable, and it is dangerous. Here is a brief look at the problems inherent in the current testing program:

First, the test conditions have not been varied: The test geometries and closing speed and angle have been nearly identical. The tests have occurred at the same time of day, even though the infrared signal of an object in space depends strongly on whether it is in sunlight or in shadow. And in each test the target cluster included the same or similar objects.

Second, the system’s ability to discriminate the warhead from other elements in the target cluster has not been realistically tested: The mock warhead and balloons have had very different radar and infrared signatures.

More important, the defense was provided with detailed a priori information about the characteristics and expected appearance of all the objects in the test. The radars that will be part of the Block 2004 system will not be able to discriminate warheads from other objects (decoys or debris), so discrimination will rely on the kill vehicle alone. Yet no tests in which the kill vehicle relies on its sensor to discriminate the warhead have been conducted, and none are planned through 2007.

The basic goal of these intercept tests has, according to the MDA, been to demonstrate hit to kill. But hit to kill was first demonstrated more than 20 years ago; the goal here should be to demonstrate hit to kill under conditions relevant to intercepting long-range missiles. These tests have not done so because the endgame conditions have been unrealistic. Since the tests used a prototype two-stage interceptor, the closing speed between the kill vehicle and mock warhead was artificially low by as much as a factor of two. The defense used information from either a GPS receiver or a C-band beacon on the mock warhead to determine its position, and this was used to provide the kill vehicle with very accurate tracking data.

The new Pacific test bed, coupled with the new three-stage interceptor, will allow the MDA to conduct tests under more realistic conditions.

However, the test bed alone will not address the lack of realism in flight testing, nor is it needed to address the key realism issues: testing without a priori information, under unscripted conditions, and against realistic countermeasures. The MDA flight test program through September 2007 will not include countermeasures that the Pentagon’s director of operational testing and evaluation has identified as simple for the enemy to implement.

In fact, the MDA has no current plans to conduct tests under unscripted conditions, nor is it clear that such  operationally realistic testing will ever be conducted.

This brings us to what we discussed yesterday. The Bush administration view National Missile Defense as a way to foster political and military instability in the world, helping to further the neocon agenda of increased military spending and American imperialism. They don’t care whether the system works, because that isn’t important to them. This is the myth of success, this is the myth of security, and this will be our downfall if we don’t start to work now toward real protection from terrorist threats.

*

Something that few have pointed out was that Condoleeza Rice was supposed to give a national security speech on September 11, 2001. She was to dictate the Bush policy for national security, and the text of that speech, since leaked to the press, reveals an administration with its priorities clearly worn in the open:

The text also implicitly challenged the Clinton administration’s policy, saying it did not do enough about the real threat — long-range missiles.

“We need to worry about the suitcase bomb, the car bomb and the vial of sarin released in the subway,” according to excerpts of the speech provided to The Washington Post. “[But] why put deadbolt locks on your doors and stock up on cans of mace and then decide to leave your windows open?”

The reply from the administration?

“The president’s commitment to fighting terrorism isn’t measured by the number of speeches, but by the concrete actions taken to fight the threat,” said James R. Wilkinson, deputy national security adviser for communications, when asked about the speech. “The first major foreign policy directive of this administration was the new strategy to eliminate al Qaeda that the White House ordered soon after taking office. It was eliminating al Qaeda, not missile defense, not Iraq, and not the [Anti-Ballistic Missile] Treaty,” he said.

The administration requested such a directive in May 2001, but it did not take shape until a week before Sept. 11, according to a staff report of the commission investigating attacks. Bush signed the final directive in October, weeks after the attack.

The Bush administration has proven itself completely inept at handling national security, and the reasons behind this are clear: Real security has never been a priority. Rather, the ideological concerns of Bush’s handlers put the National Missile Defense program at the front of his to do list, even from the beginning. Even the War in Iraq, under circumstances that made the hawks salivate with excitement, wasn’t enough to keep them from pushing missile defense into a horridly ineffective reality. But the truth is clear: We are not safe. The illusion of security cannot protect us from the real threats of the future, and the spectre of September 11 hangs like a dark cloud over our eyes. We must pressure our leaders to wake up and bring the truth to the American people. It will be only then that we can truly discuss securing the homeland from the future threats to the United States.

(Originally posted at Deny My Freedom)

Previous entries in the series:

GAO: Bush ruined already failing National Missile Defense