By Carlo Munoz
The Navy’s overreliance on the Raytheon [RTN]-built SM-3 system as the backbone for its ballistic missile defense strategy in Europe could delay White House plans to have a viable BMD presence in the region by 2015, a former high-ranking military official said yesterday.
Technical difficulties found in elements of the Block IA version of the SM-3 would likely find their way into the new Block IB variant of the weapon, former Missile Defense Agency (MDA) director Lt. Gen. Trey Obering said in an Aerospace Industry Association-sponsored event on Capitol Hill yesterday. Obering, currently an executive with Booz Allen Hamilton [BAH], served as director of MDA from 2004-2009.
Raytheon’s block development approach on the SM-3, he added, would also make it likely that such problems would “tend to cycle through” all current and future variants of the weapon, he said.
Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, echoed the same sentiments over the SM-3 at the same event, noting subcommittee members were concerned over the “considerable technical risks” in the development of both blocks.
The SM-3 Block 1A is currently deployed as part of the Navy’s sea-based Aegis BMD system. Raytheon program officials plan to field the Block 1B missile on a land-based version of the Aegis system in Eastern Europe. Both systems are key to the Pentagon’s European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA) for missile defense.
Based on recommendations by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen, President Obama approved the plan in September 2009.
Navy and industry program officials completed the system requirements review for Aegis Ashore late last year, with system design review for the program slated for February. Program officials plan to conduct the critical design review for the weapons system in the following fiscal quarter, Lisa Callahan, vice president of maritime BMD programs for Lockheed Martin [LMT], said in a Jan. 5 teleconference.
“All of that will culminate in a test system for Aegis Ashore that will be in Hawaii in 2013 and the first Aegis Ashore capability in Romania in 2015,” according to Callahan (Defense Daily, Jan. 17).
Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor for both the sea and land versions of the Aegis BMD system.
But those deployment plans could be thrown off course, should the new SM-3 variants be plagued with the same problems experienced on the Block IA weapon, Obering warned, noting that initial flight tests for the Block IB system were originally slated to begin in 2009. Those tests are now set for summer of this year.
The former Air Force three-star general went even further, saying technical delays “are likely” on the Block IB and the next-generation Block IIA and IIB, which could push any SM-3 deployments supporting BMD operations in Eastern Europe to the right.
“I expect we are going to see delays in there,” he said, adding the Navy and the Pentagon would be well served “to have alternative options” to the SM-3 system. The former MDA chief did not go into specifics on what alternatives could be explored.
However, Raytheon has undergone an “unmatched test process” on the Block IA system and has worked through the development issues and delivered the system to the Navy on time, in support of the first phase of the EPAA strategy Frank Wyatt, vice president of Raytheon Air and Missile Defense Systems, said in an interview with Defense Daily that same day.
On the postponement of Block IB flight testing, the delay was prompted mainly by development challenges with the integration of a new warhead propulsion and maneuvering system- -known as the Throttling Divert and Attitude Control System (TDACS)–which allows the weapon to engage “more complex threats,” Wyatt said.
Along with the TDACS, the major changes between Block IA and IB were focused on improvements to the sensor and processing capabilities on the missile, the Raytheon executive added.
However, after a recent successful system integration test of the Block IB version of the SM-3, Wyatt was confident any TDACS problems have been corrected and the company will meet the 2015 deployment timeline for the IB missile, as outlined by the EPAA.
Aside from concerns over the SM-3’s viability, Obering also said he was “disturbed” over the manner in which Raytheon downplayed the potential development difficulties for the Block IB version, noting the program possessed “a higher technical risk than it was painted out to be.”
While acknowledging that he did not see any “fatal” problems with the Block IA or IB, and that any technical risk in the weapon’s development would be no different than those experienced on other new start programs. However, Raytheon’s decision to pitch the Block IB system as mere follow-on to the IA missile implied that the Block IB’s development would not suffer many of those new start challenges seen on other programs.
In response, Wyatt said the company was not dismissing any potential challenges that could arise with the SM-3 Block IB development, but added that using a follow-on, spiral strategy was the lowest risk approach to the weapon’s development while meeting the Pentagon’s time lines.
‘We would not be meeting the [EPAA] timelines with an approach that begins with a brand-new interceptor,” he said. “Clearly, if you can spiral develop from an existing program that is clearly a lower-risk position.”