By Ann Roosevelt
The Army Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC) is taking a fresh look at missile defense and missile warning in light of the changing strategic environment, the commander says.
“We’re going to have to think anew about this,” Lt. Gen. Kevin Campbell, commander, Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command, said at an Institute for Land Warfare breakfast Nov. 8.
The issue is that “now missiles can start in one theater, cross somebody else’s theater and have effects in yet a third theater,” he said.
The missile defense capabilities being delivered today and those that will come into the inventory over the next four or five years “are causing a sea change in how we look at missile defense,” he said. Such systems would include U.S. Navy ships not only able to search and track an adversary’s missiles, but to intercept such missiles.
Typically, missile defense has been theater-focused, for example, during the first Gulf War, the focus was on Scud missile attacks from Iraq against U.S. and allied forces in theater.
Missile defense now needs to be globally integrated tying systems together beyond the regional or national focus, Campbell said.
For example, the 2006 North Korean missile launch over the July 4th weekend was a wake up call, he said. But changes have been made so now “processes are well worked out, those things not necessarily there in ’06.”
Somebody has to think about such things, and SMDC has been charged to examine the issues as part of its role under U.S. Strategic Command, he said.
“We serve as the global integrator for missile defense” as the Joint Functional Component Command for Integrated Missile Defense under U.S. Strategic Command, Campbell said– and it’s not easy. SMDC’s job is to work with the combatant commands, the Missile Defense Agency, integrating and coordinating global missile defense operations and support.
Campbell said the issue becomes more complicated as the United States negotiates for missile defense sites with the Czech Republic and Poland. As well, NATO is working out theater-ballistic missile-defense plans.
SMDC is also considering new ways of delivering warning of impending missile attack, Campbell said.
The Joint Tactical Ground System (JTAGS) now provides a satellite downlink that is distributed across theater to bring warning of impending attack to soldiers.
“It’s an old system,” he said. As new satellites come on line over the next few years, JTAGS will have to be modified.
But with today’s global information grid, advances in information technology such as the Internet, and communications, Campbell has asked for a new look over the next couple of years to see if there’s a way to deliver missile warning other than direct downlink.
However, combatant commanders say any new way of delivering missile warning has to have the assuredness and responsiveness of a direct satellite downlink. Warning is “a critical key performance parameter for them,” Campbell said.