Rise and Fall of a Navy Missile Interceptor, Hit by Delay and Cost Overruns, Was Grounded

The Washington Post ^ | 3/28/02 | Bradley Graham

[Paul Ross]

When the Bush administration canceled a decade-old program to launch missile interceptors from ships, the Navy and prime contractor Raytheon Co. were shocked. Rarely do major new weapons systems get eliminated after years of development.

Though still unproven and despite a history of delays and cost overruns, the sea-based system had several things going for it. The Pentagon had poured more than $2.4 billion into developing it. The project enjoyed strong congressional support. And most important of all, it was seen as a significant component in the administration's push to deploy weapons to defend the country against missile attack.

[Paul Ross]

Strangely silent from all of this discussion is how the Standard Mk II was, in essence, SABOTAGED for this duty by the Clinton administration, who forced re-speccing of everything in the middle of the process to DOWNGRADE performance so that IT COULD NOT BE A missile-interceptor. Now that the adults presumably are in charge, it is only logical that the numbers would have to go up ... just to undo the damage done to the system by Strobe Talbott and Madeline Allbright, and their DOD stooge.

[Paul Ross]

Nothing to say??

[Libertarianize the GOP]

Nothing to say??

I thought the article needed to be indexed to the bump list but I really had nothing to add, I see you didn't offer any comments.

[Paul Ross]

Navy authorities, bitter about the cancellation, complain about a Pentagon bias toward land-based interceptors. They contend the program always had to fight for funding and was ended just as it would have proven itself in flight tests that were due to start in February.

Methinks these unnamed authorities have the right of it. The TIMING of the cancellation reeks to heavan! It definitely suggests ulterior Pentagon politicking.

[ZOOKER]

Do you think PHALANX could be adapted or upgraded to do the job?

I know it was designed for horizontal attacks from subsonic missiles, but...

[Paul Ross]

In a word, no. A rail-gun might be useful, however. But the size of the ship that could deploy any such defense would be huge. That would rule all out most platforms other than carriers and battleships (which are retired).

[rbmillerjr]

What's all this stuff from the Post, I heard the test from a week or two ago went off great and the interceptor distinguished the decoy and avoided the decoy to kill the warhead........what all this?

[Zap Brannigan]

This is very unfortunate. At least the Navy system, which would have been able to intercept rising missiles in boost phase, might have worked. In contrast, the land-based system is designed for mid-course intercepts and the necesseary decoy discrimination technology is unproven and unlikely to work.

[AnnaZ]

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[DugwayDuke]

"This is very unfortunate. At least the Navy system, which would have been able to intercept rising missiles in boost phase, might have worked."

Not so unfortunate. About the only thing this system would have defended against was a North Korean launch. As you noted, this system intercepts rising missiles using a ship as a launch platform meaning you got to get the ship close to the launch point. Sure, Iraq and Iran are close to deep water but the missile trajectories go the wrong way.

Perhaps the best thing this system had going for it was that it was politically acceptable to the Clinton administration since it could not conceivably be seen as a viable defense against any launch from Soviet or Chinese soil.

[Zap Brannigan]

Good Points. However, I would assume that a land-based variant of the Navy system could have been developed relatively cheaply and installed in Eastern Turkey. I was also thinking that they should look again at the Brilliant Pebbles space-based concept from the late-80's. Although its architecture would have been far too expensive to counter a Soviet attack of 1,400 ICBMS. A system designed to cope with a dozen or so from Rogue nations may make economic sense.

[ZOOKER]

My mistake, I thought the system that was cancelled was for defending ships from antiship missiles.

I see now we're talking strategic, not tactical missiles.

[DugwayDuke]

One of the good things this systems had going for it was that the infrastructure was mostly paid for, the ship, personnel, and the radars. That was why the Navy said it would be so "cheap". Using just interceptor would have increased the "costs" drastically. Besides the interceptor would only have the performance to catch missiles on the rise. It would not have had the necessary velocity to have much footprint for descending missiles.

[Paul Ross]

You are right about the interceptor velocity, but that is only because Clinton's right hand, Strobe Talbott, and the deputy Sec. Defense who he conspired with, rushed in when the original specs would have made the interceptor CONSIDERABLY more robust velocity wise, a true hypersonic that just screamed. They put the ki-bosh on that. They ordered that the missile (whose plans were already set) be REDESIGNED to be MUCH SLOWER so that it could not catch missiles in midflight, which the original had a fair shot at doing. They purported to be afraid that such a system would 'violate the ABM Treaty.' And then the sky would fall. More pollyanish puke from the arms control cretins.

[DugwayDuke]

Paul, I really don't know about Clinton re-writing the performance limits on this system. While I am a "rocket scientists, I don't follow NMD all that much.

Still, I doubt there would be much one could do with the Standard Missile to enable it to do mid-course interceptions since mid-course is normally defined as that portion of the trajectory outside the atmosphere. That would take such a major redesign that it would be an entirely different missile. I do know Clinton did de-spec at least one missile system for the reasons you mentioned. Maybe it was a different system. I really don't know.