Nation Requires Multiple Missile Defense Systems, Lockheed Official Says

Lockheed Martin Corp. [LMT] faces a potential 78 ships in the U.S. Navy and allied forces that the company might be hired to upgrade with ballistic missile defense improvements, a Lockheed official told journalists in a briefing today.

Jim Sheridan, Lockheed director for the Aegis program, responded to a question from Space & Missile Defense Report. He said there are 100 ships equipped with Aegis weapon control and sensor systems in the fleets of six nations including the U.S. Navy, and of those, 18 American and four Japanese ships are receiving the Aegis upgrade.

That leaves 78 ships of Australia, Japan, Norway, Spain, South Korea and the United States with a potential for upgrade.

That doesn’t count another seven or eight of the Arleigh Burke (DDG 51) Class destroyers, which were designed originally in the 1980s, that might be built with improved Aegis systems built in at the start. The additional Burkes might be built if the Navy continues a plan to stop building the futuristic, stealthy DDG 1000 destroyers after three hulls are finished.

Separately, in another Lockheed briefing that was held last week, a company official said the nation requires multiple systems to defend against a growing ballistic missile threat.

He questioned the supposition by some political and military analysts that the election results that gave Democrats control of all three centers of power — the White House, Senate and House — necessarily would mean lessened support for missile defense programs.

“Missile defense in general has received bipartisan support,” John Holly, vice president of Lockheed operations in Huntsville, Ala., a center of missile and space programs, said in response to a question from Space & Missile Defense Report.

That is so, he said, because members of both parties, in both the executive and legislative branches, recognize the importance of defending the nation against enemy missiles, given the horrendous cost of losing just one U.S. city to an attack.

“There is a clear recognition of the consequences of failing to have a viable missile defense,” he said. And the United States does “have a very diversified portfolio” of missile defense systems, to take down missiles of various ranges in each of the three phases of enemy weapon trajectories: boost, midcourse and terminal.

While some lawmakers say missile defenses are expensive, Holly said, the germane question must be “can you afford to do less” than ensure an effective defense against enemy missiles tipped with weapons of mass destruction.

These are top-level policy decisions that elected leaders make, Holly said, adding that he is not in a position to make such decisions.

Still, it is clear that from a technology standpoint, “the best approach is to have a level of redundancy” in the multi-layered missile defense system, so that if one attempt to kill an incoming enemy weapon fails, another attempt may be executed.

President-elect Obama has said he supports missile defense, in general, but he wishes to see testing confirm that missile defense works.

Holly said that any questions which the Obama transition team has about missile defense systems such as Aegis or the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, involving Lockheed, the company is responding to through its government customer agency.

“The administration will review the programs” in the multi-layered shield, and “they will make the kind of [decisions] that need to be made,” Holly said.

He also said, responding to a question, that he believes Europeans do appreciate the missile threat they face.

The United States wishes to construct the European Missile Defense system in the Czech Republic (radar) and Poland (interceptors in ground silos) to guard against missiles incoming from Middle Eastern nations such as Iran.

“The European recognition is there,” Holly said.