Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense(BMD) System

8/7/2019 Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense(BMD) System

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W A S H I N G T O N R O U N D T A B L EO N S C I E N C E & P U B L I C P O L I C Y

by Rear Admiral A. Brad Hicks

Washington, D.C.

Aegis Ballistic Missile

Defense (BMD) System


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Aegis Ballistic

Missile Defense System

by

Rear Admiral A. Brad HicksCommander & Program Director

Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD)

The George Marshall InstituteWashington, D.C.


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Rear Admiral A. Brad Hicks was appointed Commander and ProgramDirector in November 2005, relieving RADM Kathleen Paige. Previously,RADM Hicks served as commander of the Aegis cruiser USS CAPE ST.GEORGE (CG-71); Deputy Director for Combat Systems and Weapons inthe Surface Warfare Directorate of the Office of the Chief of Naval Opera-tions; Deputy Commander, Naval Sea Systems Commands Warfare Sys-tems Engineering; Head Surface Manpower/Training Requirements, Officeof the Chief of Naval Operations, and Joint Requirements, Joint Staff. A

native of Henderson, Kentucky, RADM Hicks graduated from the Univer-sity of Louisville with a degree in International Studies and Economics. Heearned his commission through the universitys NROTC program and wasdesignated a Surface Warfare Officer shortly thereafter. RADM Hicks wasselected to flag rank by the Fiscal Year 2002 Flag Selection Board.


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Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System*

Rear Admiral A. Brad HicksCommander & Program Director

Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD)

December 19th, 2005

Jeff Kueter: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you all for coming to-day. I am Jeff Kueter, the President of the George Marshall Institute, and itis my pleasure to welcome you all to the last in our series of WashingtonRoundtable on Science and Public Policy for 2005. Todays talk is quiteimportant and I am pleased to host it. The Aegis Ballistic Missile DefenseSystem (BMD) is truly a highlight of the nations effort to deploy a missiledefense system. Presently on alert status, able to provide protection to theAmerican people, our fielded forces and our allies, the Aegis BMD programclearly demonstrates that the construction and deployment of a ballisticmissile defense is an achievable goal. These have been exciting times for

the Aegis BMD program. On November 17, an Aegis BMD flight test suc-cessfully destroyed a separating target. This is a significant achievementand it marked the sixth successful intercept test. Five days later on Novem-ber 22, our guest today was appointed the Commander and Program Di-rector of the Aegis BMD program and just last week we heard news reportsof a billion dollar investment by Japan in the Aegis BMD program, whichfurther illustrates the interest and commitment in this system by our friendsand allies.

Rear Admiral Hicks is with us today to review the current status andfuture direction of the Aegis BMD program. Admiral Hicks served ascommander of the Aegis cruiser USS Cape St. George, the Deputy Direc-

tor for Combat Systems and Weapons in the Surface Warfare Directorateof the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, and as Deputy Commander,Naval Sea Systems Commands Warfare Systems Engineering among manyother assignments and he has earned many different accolades. Pleasejoin me in congratulating him on his new assignment and wishing him thebest of luck as he leads this critical program forward.

*The views expressed by the author are solely those of the author and may not represent

those of any institution with which he is affiliated.


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Rear Admiral Hicks: I will also say good afternoon. It is an honor tobe here with you today. I see some faces here that I have known over theyears. I will try to keep you awake after that great lunch. As a new guy, Ibrought a supporting cast here to defend me and answer any questions atthe end that I cant answer, if time allows. I also want everybody to knowthat as the new program director having his first significant speaking eventin the job, I passed the test; we have lasagna and as best I can tell, I am er-ror-free. So I am one for one on meals before speaking engagements.

A little bit about me to expand upon what Jeff said: I am not an ac-quisition professional, but I am considered one by many people because ofmy varied background. I am a combat systems geek, in Navy parlance. Ihave been in the combat systems business for a long time and I have alsobeen in the programmatic business in the DC area and the Pentagon formany years, so it was, as viewed by the Commander of Naval Operationsand General Obering, a good fit for me to relieve Rear Admiral Kate Paige.She left an incredible legacy here to follow in Aegis ballistic missile defensewith the team she has built and there is a good foundation laid by peoplewho have worked on this program that I have to build upon. I am honoredto describe to you where we are today and then to take your questions.

Yes, Missile Defense is a core Navy mission. If confirmed, Iwill ensure that the Navy continues to work with the MissileDefense Agency (MDA) to develop and field this important ca-pability aboard naval vessels.

Adm. Michel G. MullenNominated to be Chief of Naval Operations,

in response to questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee19 Apr 05

Now not only do I work for General Obering, but I am naval officerand I am producing this capability to deliver to the Navy warfighters. As Imentioned, I am an operator by background. It is Admiral Mullens historyas a surface warfare officer and a strong advocate of getting real capabilityto the fleet that keeps the fleet relevant. During his confirmation hearings,he made the statement above and I think it is important that we note thatmissile defense isa core mission of the Navy. In fact, the Navy is movingforward with next ship that it will deliver at the end of next decade inCG(X), which will have both ballistic and cruise missile defense as a primarymission focus, in addition to its traditional role of fleet peer defense. Now itwouldnt be enough to say that the Navy is committed to missile defense;


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you have to have some proof to the pudding, so we will have the video rollnow. We have brought you the video of the 17 November test, which, ifyou havent seen it to date, will help show what was accomplished in thismission against what I would consider a much more stressing medium-range target. Remember: we are talking about the geography of a ship, ifit were sitting in Washington DC and a target launched from Chicago. Thisvideo shows what this capability can do for the nation. [Video plays]

One of the things I like to point out in that video is that there is ahistory and a lineage that led us to where we are today and that we are go-ing to continue to build upon to deliver capability. The main point is thatthis is a capability that is available to the nation today. This summer, inAugust 2006, we should deliver a tactically certified capability, not a con-tingency capability, but a standard configuration to the fleet with deploy-ment rounds available for load-out, available whenever and however thenation needs to use it.

Figure 1 shows the missile defense architecture for the BMDS sys-tem. You see that the SM-3 missile has a midcourse capability; today, withits current capability, it is specifically targeted against a short-range (SRBM)

or medium-range ballistic missile threat (MRBM). The other important partof this tactical capability that has come into the fleet (the full out what wecall BMD 3.6 computer program this summer) is that it is multi-missioned,not single-missioned. This allows the fleet to operate far forward and do itsmission with a robust capability across a broad area. In fact, during thesetests on the USS Lake Erie, we simulate the counterstrike capability againsta launch site that had just launched the MRBM to see how much we candepress the timeline for a counterstrike with a Tomahawk. That is a verycredible capability that we have today.

So you see how we fit in the architecture; one of the goals we have

from General Cartwright at Strategic Command and General Obering aswe implement and deliver this capability is that we have to exercise it, towork out the bugs, to let the operators fully understand this incredible ca-pability, because it changes the battle space for decision-making. But weare there. We have actually achieved that goal and we can actually be thereto have those discussions with the operators.


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Figure 1


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Figure 2

There is a lineage that goes back here a long way. Figure 2 datesback to 1992, and shows how the Navy could defend the United Statesfrom the sea. Today we are on the foundation of delivering that capabilityto the nation as part of the overall ballistic missile defense architecture; thisis now a reality.

We would like to show the timeframe. On the right-hand side ofFigure 3 are listed the critical capabilities which the Director must get out to

the nation; on the left, as both General Kadish and now General Oberinghave often said to Congress, are our guide stars: all ranges, all phases, allregions. Flexibility to be where we need to be to meet the threat, whetherit is for homeland defense or defending our forces or our allies forward: thatis what we have to deliver. Right now, we have delivered the basic capabil-ity. Long-range surveillance and track (LRS&T) is in Japan with sevenships today. We have two engagement cruisers today. We have anotherone that will be on-line this summer, the USS Shiloh. There are missilesavailable today for emergency deployment and we will have the eleventhmissile receipted for by the end of this calendar year.


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Figure 3

Now we have to prove the sensors. In the budget that is approvedby Congress for the appropriations, we are going to move forward with theBMD signal processing improvement to Aegis radar (Figure 4). This willallow us also to put advanced signal processing in the missile to allow it todo other things I will talk about later. We will continue to stretch the enve-lope for launch on Tactical Digital Information Link (TADIL) capability so

we can support the ground-based missile defense and further enhancethose capabilities and the quality of the data we pass. We are also looking,to get an engage on remote capability in Block 12 so Aegis BMD canlaunch on a remote track provided by another sensor in the network. Wemust improve the missiles to continue that iteration of spiral capability astechnology and funding allow us to get increased capability in the missiles.


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Figure 4


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Figure 5

To get more specific, we have what is notionally known as theBlock capability that we deliver (Figure 5). Block 04 today is capability weare focused on in delivery capability that we are closing out here. Then aspart of this budget, we have Block 06 capability, which should be fully de-livered and proliferated in the fleet by the 08 timeframe. Block 08 shouldall be delivered by the Block 10 timeframe or partially in the 2011 time-frame. And it goes on and on, leading up through the 21-inch SM-3 de-

velopment program that I will talk about later.


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Figure 6

Now we will start talking about Japans role. The Japanese gov-ernment has committed to convert one ship, which will be the Kongo, toBMD capability, followed by three others. They are also purchasing BlockIA missiles and there will eventually be decisions on where they are going togo in the future (Figure 6). They have just announced with us that we aregoing to go down the Block IIA development path. Block II is what we callthe 21-inch missile development program that I will also talk about. But asyou see here, this delivers, as it grows, capability to defend the homeland inaddition to the forces forward.

You have to look at the Block 04 to draw down a little bit more de-tail. We have the radars that are sited there from California to Alaska. Weare soon going to have the SBX, which is in transit to go up to the NorthPacific. We are going to have another X-band radar in Japan to comple-ment the Aegis destroyer fleet and cruisers that are already in the Pacific.As I have mentioned, we will continue to enhance that capability. Myteams goal this summer is to deliver the 3.6 tactical program along withthe Block IA missiles.


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Now the USS Lake Erie was shooting with the BMD 3.0 computerprogram capability. This is our initial testing developmental configurationwhich is available for emergency deployment. These are the componentsthat make up that and show how it changes in depth the Aegis BMD sys-tem that we know so well today. When I talk to Admiral Meyers, who isconsidered the father of the Aegis system, he and I have very spirited dis-cussions about how this design has been so robust that the anti-air warfarecapability can now do ballistic missile defense. It is because the engineering

behind that capability is so robust that it gives us above what we were look-ing for in capability and that we have been able to leverage. Even thoughthe first one delivered in the early 1980s, I would contend that this capabil-ity, with the further investments we are making in this radar, will be rele-vant even in 2020.

Thats the SM-3 configuration I have talked about. Block 0 with theinitial testing, Block I is what is currently we are flying today and testing.As I mentioned, Block IA we will fly this summer and that is our goal to flywith the BMD 3.6 computer program baseline in development. What weare going to get out of the Block IA is increased processing in the missile.We are going to get more divert capability in its warhead to give us more

definitive footprint, to stretch that envelope and we are also get to takecare of some obsolescence issues that we have in the earlier missiles, be-cause we have been working on this design for a while. But all of thesegive us capability that further builds upon the Block I capability.

Now I am going to step you through this, because it is importantthat you understand exactly what I can tell you we are delivering in real tac-tical terms. If you have an Aegis ship stationed off North Korea to detect alaunch, that ship can cue the ground-based missile defense sitting in Alaskaor in California. But even more importantly for theater and our allies andour forces, think of what it does for Japan. With cuing from an Aegis ship

and three ships with the Block IA capability, we can in fact defend our allyJapan and the US forces there. Additionally, if we station a ship off theHawaiian Islands with a ship forward, we can in fact defend Hawaii. Like-wise, we can defend Guam by moving the detection ship forward. We haverun many of these scenarios, but I want to give you this as an example ofwhat we can do: the power of the ship forward for detection, mirrored withthe correct placement of ships with engagement capability gives you thiskind of capability today.


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Figure 7

Figure 8


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Where are we on installations in the Aegis BMD program? Rightnow you can see we have seven LRS&T ships forward (Figure 7), but whatis more important here is that by the end of calendar year 08, we will haveeighteen ships available. Also please note that we will also have those twoships in Japan on line. We will also have a very good engagement capabil-ity starting to proliferate in the fleet to go along with the LRS&T ships. Iwould also highlight that all the cruisers there are engagement-capablecruisers.

Eleven missiles in the Block I configuration will be delivered, the lastone will be delivered this month, it is on track, in fact this week, should bereceived by the Navy this week (Figure 8). We shot two of those as part ofthe test program. Now why would we shoot those missiles for testing?One of the test criteria we have with the test community is to take a missileright out of the magazine without it going over anything special and shootit. This is further validation that it is an operational, real capability. Sothere will be nine missiles available at the end of this month for the nationto use. We will start seeing the phasing in of the Block IA developmentand also the Japanese purchases, for their capability. All in all, this is agood news story.

Figure 9


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Figure 9 shows the specific ships we have that are fielded and hereare the initial capabilities we are seeing here. These are real ships and realcrews, trained up, certified and ready to go to implement and use this ca-pability the nation has delivered.

Figure 10

Figure 10 shows, again, lineage. We have an expression in theNavy and the Aegis BMD program, test a little, learn a lot. Test moreand more and more. This is evidence of that. More importantly, the Navy

has chosen to work with the Test and Evaluation community to get themost operationally relevant scenarios we can. The USS Lake Erie, on ourlast few shots, was on a simulated patrol mission. It had a window of vul-nerability read hours that they could launch. That was all the pre-alertthey had, with the exception that the captain was notified of the launchtime for safety. Only the ships crews man the consoles; there are no tech-nicians there from outside to help the crew. The forward deployed shipsare operating with this capability.


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Figure 11


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Figure 12


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Figure 13


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Block IA we talked about in great detail; it is processors. Block IB isour 08 missile, so in calendar year 08 we will start flying Block IB. Whatsdifferent? It gives us a two-color seeker with the new advanced signal proc-essor in the missile and it gives us, at some point in this Block IB, a newdivert-out to control system called Throttleable Divert Attitude Control Sys-tem (TDACS), which is a further design over our current Solid Divert Atti-tude Control System (SDACS) (Figure 13). Again, we get more capabilityand we will assert that one when we need to. But the initial effort is to get

the new signal processor with new color seeker and that gives us muchgreater discrimination against the targets that we will be up against at thattimeframe. But I will highlight to you that we meet our current requirementfor our threat set that we were tasked to go up against.

Next is a Block II development program which we are co-developing with Japan. We are going to start firing that missile in 2012timeframe. We will have the Block IB seeker, the two-color seeker, butwhat will be different is that we will have a 21-inch second and third stagemotor. What does that do for us? It gives us a much faster missile. Ishowed you the earlier pictures of the defense of the homeland and thisenhanced capability now enters into what it buys us in battle space. But

more importantly, instead of having three ships defend Japan, it is oneship. Two ships with 21-inch SM-3 missiles can defend Australia. Again, ittakes time, a lot of engineering, a lot of investment by the American tax-payers and in this case Japanese taxpayers, but delivers a very quantifiable,understood capability that we can implement.

Lets talk about the Japanese cooperative development program(Figure 14). I will preface this by saying that we are early on in the discus-sions for this. The design is not done yet on this missile. But because weare building on the known SM-3 program, we have pretty good fidelity onit. We have entered it into the cost model that we use for oversight within

government and the normal cost analysis improvement group to get a goodsense of costs as we know the design today. But it is a preliminary effort;we do not have a detailed design, so issues of where we are going on thisare still to be worked out. We are going into management developmentdiscussions which will conclude this summer and then we will go to the nextstage of these discussions. Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, we have to getthis right. A lot of taxpayer dollars and a lot of Japans dollars are involvedand we must get it right because I do not know of anything in co-development of this complexity or cost that has been undertaken to date.We have talked about the increased expenditures and showed howAustra-lia and Japan can be defended. We have a notional cost here of 50 per-


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cent. But again, until we get through the discussions, we dont have specif-ics yet; it would be premature for me to say. But I will tell you that the en-thusiasm which Japan to get on with this program is very impressive andthe joint cooperative research programs in radar and with missile androcket motors has laid a foundation to start this work.

Figure 14

Figure 15 shows potential naval coalition contributions and I high-light to you potential. The only country there that has committed physi-

cal dollars to a program record is Japan. But if you look where the naviesof the world are going today and what capability they are bringing withtheir radars and their launcher systems, there are opportunities and in somecases, there are memoranda going on to understand how and what we arefielding and the technical implications of such. We will continue to leveragethose opportunities to make our friends and allies aware of where we areheaded on a more detailed basis so that they can make decisions for them-selves and take advantage of these potential options.


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Figure 15

In summary, the capability the nation has built is at sea today,manned by Navy sailors and is available for us. And it is going to become alot more capable. What we have today is pretty darn impressive, but it isnot where I want to go as a war fighter; it is not enough. I want moreflexibility and I want to be able to handle even more potential threats, but itis pretty impressive. It is built on very sound engineering-level systems andthe engineering across the spectrum is very solid. We are leveraging theexisting teams in place to get the capability fielded. I think for Japan tomake the commitment they made is incredibly significant. I had the good

fortune to have been in the Pacific back in October. I visited Korea, China,Indonesia, the Philippines and Japan and I have to tell you, this systemsends a message over there. It sends a message that it discourages peoplewho might be interested in proliferating ballistic missile defense. In fact,there is movement forward preventing these kinds of actions. It sends amessage that we dont want to take the risk of some mistake being madeand the loss of life that could be incurred. I think the interest is growing.

As this capability becomes more real, I believe there will be moreinterest in having it. I was up in Elkton, Maryland last Friday and we had atest of part of our divert attitude control system (DACS), which was very,


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very successful. There was great work by the Raytheon, Honeywell and theATK teams up there overcoming some technical issues and they overcamethem with flying colors. As I was talking to the workforce, somebody askedme why this was so important and emotional to me. As someone who wasin the Pentagon on 9/11, I want to be part of something that says we didour best, so if somebody considers doing something so horrible, so totallyillogical, so horrible again, that we will at least have a capability to give thewarfighters a shot at preventing something like that. So with that, I will be

glad to take your questions, if I can.

Questions and answers.

Question: Admiral Hicks, thank you very much for an excellent over-view. Your last comment was that last Friday the SDACS fired successfullyor burned successfully, but earlier you said there was going to be a switch toTDACS in Block II, if not 1B.

Hicks: And you are asking why? I will put it simply like this. SDACS isvery good, but it has a 1992 design, where we were first going. I think theteam has taken that particular design as far as it can go. So to go wherewe want to go in the future, for the capability what I call divert capability,having the missile be able to adapt to more complex threats we need togo to a more robust design. To be very blunt, I am concerned about thecost of the missiles. I need more of these missiles, not fewer, and we areworking with the industry team to get that cost down. But we need theSDACS because it gives us an incredibly good capability, it is attainable andit is real today, whereas any future capability is still a work in progress. Asthe program sponsor for all the Navy combat systems, we are really goodabout starting something, then wanting to jump to the next solution. I ama Kentucky farm boy by nature and I like the bird-in-the-hand concept. Wewill keep pressing the SDAC as far as it can take us and then we will go to

the next iteration. But it was gratifying to see how hard the team workedto pull that off, on the missile side, and to see how emotional the workforce was, down to the secretary, on the success of that test. It was reallygreat to be part of. I felt like I was on ship again, almost, except withoutsalt air.

Question: Do you plan to co-produce the 21-inch design with Japan?And do you have any plans in the near term to address the sea-based ter-minal again?


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Hicks: I will take the first one. As far as work share, it is pre-decisional.We have to get the design down to get that. But we have some prettygood stretch goals on co-development where both nations are very com-fortable with the initial airing framework. In my first week in the job, I hadmy first high-level discussion with the Japanese governments representa-tives here in Washington and General Obering. They are enthusiastic and Ithink we have a very good understanding of where we want to go and whatwe have to do to accomplish it. I followed that visit up with some of the

team here in front of you. We go back to Japan in January for further dis-cussions. It will be a frenetic pace between now and next summer to getthis locked down.

On your second question on sea-based terminal, when I was still onthe Navy staff, we initiated a study effort with the Missile Defense Agency.I was co-lead for the Navy along with Mr. Keith Englander from the MissileDefense Agency and we did a very good analysis of the requirements forsea-based terminal capability that dates back to the lineage I discussed.When the original Navy area SM-2 Block 4 program was cancelled early inthe first part of the Bush Administration, there was a tasker out about whatwere we going to do now that this had been cancelled. This study went to

great lengths to answer where we needed to go and while it is somewhatpredetermined, we revalidated the requirement for a sea-based terminal ca-pability. Pre-decision was used to say how we are going to achieve that,but I would suspect that it is going to be an FY08 budget issue for the Navyand the Missile Defense Agency. But the level of cooperation between theAgency and the Navy to get the answers and get the analysis done behindthe requirement to complement the other piece of the architecture and thealready existing capabilities out there was very good.

Question: You talked a lot about the SM-3 interceptor. That was veryinteresting and I thank you for that. Could you talk a little about the target

vehicles? Could you talk about any research plans on that over the sametime period as your plans on the SM-3?

Hicks: Do you mean did they evolve the target vehicles? I am a little bitout of my depth here on that one. We have good targets set for SRBMand medium-range and short-range. We can dictate requirements of howwe want to modify it to stretch the envelope and we in fact done that. Icant disclose the details, obviously, but we can stretch it pretty well. All Iwill say is that we stretch the limit pretty well this last test and we are ec-static about it. For future capabilities in the path on a Ground-based Mid-course Defense (GMD) system, they have a fairly robust target set for the


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Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) that GMD responds to. As the SM-3 program evolves, we will continue to leverage that target set. It is inter-esting: we are trying to build a target. We want to simulate what the poten-tial enemy could have, but we dont want to pay much for it. Everybodywants a cheap, reproducible target, but then they are shocked when itdoesnt do the robust profile. So it is not cheap. When we looked at theFTM 04-3 test, I must admit part of my recommendation was based on costconsiderations. I said, General, I love to fly the missile, but you know we

have already learned what we need to learn. We are stewards of taxpayersdollars, too, and we need to move on. And it was the right decision tomake. You saw one on the video there. There is a target called the AegisReadiness Assessment Vehicle (ARAV). It is not something I would tradi-tionally target a missile against, but for tracking and fleshing out the systemagainst a lower-cost target, it has been very effective for us and we are go-ing to continue to leverage that capability. Because once the Navy getsmore ships with this capability, we occasionally need something to fly outthere that the crews can exercise against that really replicates that profile.

Question: Would you address Aegis BMD capabilities against other po-tential threat nations Iranian missiles against Israel or Western Europe and

Chinese ballistic missile capabilities?

Hicks: As long as the threat set is similar to what we see in the currentknown life and public domain, SRBM, MRBM, the capability is the same.Geography plays a role, depending on where you do it. The Mediterra-nean and the Black Sea offer, against some threat sets, some good capabil-ity; obviously freedom of movement is important in the South China Sea.One of the reasons I am excited beyond words about BMD 3.6 computerprogram is that it gives you the multi-mission capability so you can operatepretty far forward and still operate the ship in a fully tactical mode and doballistic missile defense. You still have a radar resourcing issue. If you are

doing a lot of targets, you have to manage your radar so you dont over-utilize resources in one sector. But it gives you a lot more operational flexi-bility for multi-mission areas. In fact, one of the things we will doing in theFTM 06-1 test is full multi-mission engagements. So the same lay-downsyou see here can be applied to other geographic areas of the world, againstthose threat sets.

Question: I am curious: given the great successes that you have describedabout the Aegis BMD system, and especially in comparison with other mis-sile defense systems and their success rates, is there much collaboration onkey sensor technologies with the people flying the other missile defense


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systems, and particularly the ones in California and Alaska, but also withfuture space-based systems? I mean, is there enough sharing of the sensortechnology, is there sharing of the sensor technology, as it seems therewould be an advantage to this?

Hicks: I am ready to answer your question, but it would help if I could goback to Figure 3. That is a great question, actually. Lets look at the totalcapability and all the other pieces that we have today. Right now we have

fielded Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3), the Patriot system, and wehave the Aegis BMD system. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense(THAAD) is still undergoing testing. It just flew, but it is still a ways awayfrom what I call tactical delivery to the war fighter. GMD is available in anemergency mode, but it is still going through testing. The airborne laser(ABL) had a successful test, but it is now being torn down and a ground-based version going in the airplanes, so its next test wont be until 08. Soin answer, right now and through 2010, this is what I have today. I have tohave it. I need it. Because if not, I have nothing. If we look forward to2010, what will be viable and technically delivered? Well, we should haveGMD full up. We should have THAAD operationally delivered, Aegis BMDand Patriot. Now if you look at where the world is and where we need to

be operationally deployed, we will be lucky at that point to have one battal-ion of THAAD available to set up. So it gives us a limited sense of wherewe can deploy. We want maximum flexibility. One of the previous ques-tions is, where are we going to be against what threat sets? If I want opera-tional flexibility, then I need more of the other. So the idea is to maintain,as General Obering would say, a balanced investment approach to give us anear-term capability while not buying too much of one thing, so we under-stand the finite amount of dollars to get us there from here. So if we lookat the timeframe to deliver capability, it is a matter of having somethingnow and building upon it; as other pieces come in, we help make the wholearchitecture more robust for ballistic missile defense to handle the full re-

gime of threat sets. Because remember, we could be defending ourselveswith a ship forward, we could be defending a carrier strike group or an am-phibious strike group. We could be defending a port of a friendly nationthat is being blackmailed. We could be defending a nation where we have acommitment to defend, an ally. Or we could be contributing forward in afirst stage of an engagement of a threat that is heading toward the conti-nental United States or Hawaii or Guam or Alaska. So that is how I wouldanswer your question.

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RECENT WASHINGTON ROUNDTABLESON SCIENCE AND PUBLIC POLICY

Sally Satel, Fred Rieff, Richard Belzer, Risk in Public Policy Mak-ing:Evaluating the Use and Misuse (December 2005)

Pat Michaels, Shattered Consensus: Pat Michaels Discusses a NewBook on Climate Science (December 2005)

Terry Pudas, Space Assets & Force Transformation (November2005)

Richard Van Atta, Energy and Climate Change Research and theDARPA Model (November 2005)

James OBrien, Atlantic Hurricanes: The True Story (October2005)

Gary Payton, Advanced Concepts in Missile Defense (September2005)

Roger Bate, Lee Lane, Marlo Lewis - Climate Change Policy AfterThe G-8 Summit, (August 2005)

Lowell Wood Ballistic Missile Defense in an Ideal World (July2005)

George Taylor Ice, Hockey Sticks, and Fish (June 2005)

Stephen McIntyre, Ross McKitrick The Hockey Stick Debate: Les-sons in Disclosure and Due Diligence (May 2005)

David Montgomery Creating Technologies to Reduce GreenhouseGas Intensity: Policy Options and Opportunities (March 2005)

The Marshall Institute Science for Better Public Policy


30/30

Board of Directors

Will Happer, ChairmanPrinceton University

Robert Jastrow, Chairman Emeritus

Mount Wilson Institute (ret.)

Frederick Seitz, Chairman Emeritus

Rockefeller University

William OKeefe, CEO

Solutions Consulting

Jeff Kueter, President

Bruce N. AmesUniversity of California at Berkeley

Gregory Canavan

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Thomas L. Clancy, Jr.

Author

Bernadine HealyU.S. News & World Report

John H. Moore

President Emeritus, Grove City CollegeRobert L. Sproull

University of Rochester (ret.)

Chauncey Starr

Electric Power Research Institute

Documents

Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense(BMD) System