By Marina Malenic
The manufacturer of a U.S. theater ballistic missile defense system has agreed to assume additional financial liability to open a production line for the system’s interceptor missiles, the head of the Missile Defense Agency said yesterday.
Lockheed Martin [LMT] will be responsible for any cost increases related to production delays involving interceptors for its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), said Army Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly. He added that the company offered to assume liability if the line must be closed due to problems with a fail-safe switch produced by its subcontractor Moog [MOG.A]. “So I’m very open to do that with Lockheed,” O’Reilly told reporters at a Defense Writers’ Group breakfast in Washington.
The component in question is designed to prevent an accidental launch. It is in the process of qualification testing, according to officials.
Pentagon officials have recently taken contractors to task for producing poor-quality missile-defense products. O’Reilly earlier this year decried lack of quality control on the part of industry and has withheld funding for several contracts (Defense Daily, March 23). For example, the agency halted work for a time with Coleman Aerospace after one of that company’s target missiles malfunctioned and fell into the Pacific Ocean last December during a failed THAAD test (Defense Daily, June 10).
O’Reilly has said that MDA is reviewing over $37 billion worth of contracts and plans to make changes, including changing cost-plus deals to fixed-price arrangements and opening up some contracts for competition. The general also said the review will weigh adding “defect clauses”–like the one Lockheed Martin is assuming for the THAAD line–to contracts that run into technical difficulties (Defense Daily, April 21).
THAAD, along with the Navy’s sea-based SM-3 interceptors on Aegis-class destroyers and cruisers, is at the core of the new regional missile defenses that the Obama administration plans to deploy in the Middle East.
O’Reilly said yesterday that he had discussed the delay with officials from the United Arab Emirates. The UAE is seeking to become the first international customer for the line by purchasing approximately $7 billion worth of batteries and interceptors.
“They understand that we’re not going to sell them a product at any lower standard than what we would accept ourselves and they’re very appreciative of that fact,” O’Reilly said.
THAAD interceptor deliveries to the U.S. Army were to have begun in March of this year under a $419 million production deal. The contract with Lockheed Martin is for 26 missiles and two THAAD batteries. It includes an option for another 22 interceptors, according to budget documents.
If Lockheed Martin manages to achieve initial qualification of the faulty component in the next 30 days, O’Reilly said he would give the green light for production.
“I am holding their feet to the fire,” O’Reilly added. “I will not move forward until they satisfy all the quality requirements and all the production start-up requirements.”
Lockheed Martin spokeswoman Cheryl Amerine said the company “is working closely with the MDA to complete qualification testing of an optical block switch for the THAAD interceptor. We are confident a solution is in place that will allow production to begin next month.”
O’Reilly said THAAD is readily deployable via airlift and can shoot down missiles with four hours’ notice.
“If the missile fails, you have very little time to put a second missile up there,” he said. “Because of that, quality has to be extremely high.”
Meanwhile, O’Reilly said the agency was planning a test last night of the Airborne Laser (ABL) test platform. That experimental system consists of a chemical laser aboard a modified Boeing [BA] 747. Earlier this year, it successfully shot down a short-range missile (Defense Daily, Feb. 16).
However, the general said ABL has twice the expected range.
“We learned so much from that first test that our conclusion was we can operate at twice the range we thought,” he said.
O’Reilly declined to specify a distance, other than to say that the originally expected range was greater than 50 miles.