Naval Ballistic Missile Defense Looking Forward

This week the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) will be conducting FTM-13, an Aegis ballistic missile defense test involving the USS Lake Erie (CG 70) near the Pacific Missile Range Facility near the island of Kauai, Hawaii. Also participating in the test will be JDS Kongo (DDG 173). In the upcoming test, according to the MDA worksheets the USS Lake Erie (CG 70) will fire 2 SM-3 IA interceptors against two separate medium range ballistic missiles simultaneously. At the same time, the JDS Kongo (DDG 173) will conduct tracking and a simulated intercept of both ballistic missiles in order to test its recent Aegis BMD software upgrade as it prepares for its live fire test this upcoming December.

We have covered the details of the AEGIS Ballistic Missile Defense program in the past, highlighting the US Navy noncommittal approach to BMD, allowing the Missile Defense Agency to fund Aegis BMD on its own time schedule. Sometime before the end of the year, one of the DDG-51s (yet publicly named) on the east coast will be upgraded to version 3.6 LRS&T Aegis BMD, with a second east coast DDG-51 being converted sometime in the first 3 months in 2008. To date, the MDA and the Navy has chosen to consolidate costs by deploying Aegis BMD on the West coast.

Under current plans, Lockheed Martin is expected to complete the new Aegis BMD 4.0.1 by 2010, and also intends to have completed the new BMD Signal Processor (BSP). While the new version of the BMD software is important, the BSP is the technology to watch, because it changes the capability of Aegis BMD.

The technology hurdles of Aegis BMD can be divided into different categories, but mainly they revolve around available power supply for the radar system, the evolution of the technology itself as it integrates into the network, and interoperability between legacy and modern systems.

The first problem, power, is why the Navy is discussing the possibility of a large nuclear powered CG(X) for ballistic missile defense. Expect further explanation on this point in the upcoming Analysis of Alternatives that will be released in a few weeks, but basically power limitations on existing Aegis ships make it difficult for the fleet to track both ballistic missiles and low flying cruise missiles simultaneously, but additionally the power requirements for future systems leveraging next generation BPS will be higher in dealing with multiple reentry vehicles close together from multi-stage ballistic missiles sure to be difficult to track due to debris and decoys.

Second, observing the development of Aegis BMD offers insights into the challenges of putting the capability into service. The first version of Aegis BMD, 3.0 LRS&T, offered the Navy the ability to use the Aegis system to track ballistic missiles. Unfortunately, the system requires a reboot of the Aegis system into BMD mode, and when in BMD mode the ship was only able to track ballistic missiles. By the end of 2007, 8 DDG-51s in the Pacific will still be using Aegis BMD 3.0 LRS&T, and at the current rate 1 DDG-51 will still be using 3.0 at the end of 2008.

Another technical problem has been the limitations of CEC. Early versions of CEC are suffering from limitations similar to how early versions of NTDS suffered from its own limitations. Specifically, each platform in a current CEC network only communicates with the two platforms nearest to it, passing on all plots it receives. Because none of the plots passing through the sending platform are edited out, the data load on the system rises as the square of the number of participants. As a result, in order to keep the data current, today’s CEC networks are currently limited to only 19 participants. New technologies are emerging to solve these problems, but until these new technologies expand into the fleet, the size of interconnected ballistic missile defense networks is limited, and can result in requirements for several networks to cover larger areas.

Finally, there is a problem with interoperability of legacy and modern hardware and software systems. The CG/DDG modernization process provides the Navy a unique opportunity to capitalize on the existing 22 CGs and 62 DDG-51s with a baseline process of streamlining open architecture systems throughout the fleet. One would think the Navy plans to do this, but think again. In the end, visions of a large scale modernization process for both CGs and DDG-51s falls well short of taking advantage of the 2000+ years of remaining service in these 84 vessels represent to the Navy should they go their full length of service. Believe it or not, the Navy is cutting short the opportunity to streamline the modernizations of those 84 ships to insure the 7 DDG-1000s, which should they serve their full service length at best represent a combined 245 years of service.

However, the Navy is now operating under a new Maritime Strategy which specifically mentions ballistic missile defense. While many probably assume the Navy has been active in ballistic missile defense, you would be only technically correct. For the most part, the Navy has only paid for new SM-3 interceptors with its own budget, not really investing in ballistic missile defense in any meaningful way to date spending only what MDA contributes instead. To put it another way, if you think the Navy has a fairly substantial ballistic missile defense with its Aegis BMD capability of 18 ships by 2010, as a taxpayer take pride in the fact the MDA and Navy will have spent less than 15 billion dollars total through FY13 on AEGIS BMD by current plans, and that includes costs contributed to the SBX on the old Russian oil platform.

That could change though, Rear Adm. Alan Hicks, the admiral who runs the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense program for the Missile Defense Agency is asking to expand the upgrade effort — even before the large-scale Aegis upgrade planned to start in 2012.

Hicks approached Adm. Mike Mullen when Mullen was the chief of naval operations about adding more BMD ships to handle simultaneous missile threats from North Korea and Iran. Mullen agreed to a series of discussions as the Navy builds its portion of the 2009 White House budget request.

Fifteen of the 18 ships in the current Aegis BMD plan are destroyers, and so the obvious option is to add more cruisers. “Right now, we have three BMD cruisers,” Hicks said. “Will [Navy officials] make a decision to upgrade any more of the cruisers? That’s what they’ll be discussing.”

These ships are a stopgap, or “pre-modernization,” measure until Navy and Pentagon officials decide how to incorporate ballistic missile defense into the massive Aegis modernization program scheduled to start in 2012. At that time, all 62 destroyers and 22 cruisers in the Aegis fleet will begin rotating into port for 40-week computer modernization programs. How many of those modernized ships will be equipped to fire missile interceptors is another topic for talks, Hicks said.

With the LCS program having cost problems, the FFG-7s showing their age, the DDG-1000 sure to go over budget given recent trends, and the CG(X) now becoming a requirement creep in its own right the modernization of the existing CGs and DDGs represents the single most important program in the US Navy over the next decade in my opinion. If we lose with what we have, game over.