Pentagon Opts for Sea-Based Missile Defense Radar
Shelving earlier Pentagon plans to build an advanced missile defense
radar on a remote Alaskan island, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA)
awarded a $31 million contract August 1 to Boeing to begin development
of a sea-based X-band radar for missile defense testing.
MDA wants the floating X-band radar, which is designed to track
and discriminate among warheads, decoys, and debris in outer space
with high precision, operational by September 2005. MDA estimates
that completing the project will total $900 million.
The August 1 contract only covers activities during the first phase
of a four-part program. During the initial phase, which lasts until
October of this year, Boeing will do preliminary design work and
reserve construction materials for building the sea-based platform.
Congress will need to authorize funding for the radar, which will
be done through reprogramming existing money rather than requesting
new funds. In other words, MDA is not planning to ask for additional
money to pay for the radar, but will take funds from other missile
defense projects.
MDA decided to pursue a sea-based version of the radar rather than
building it on land because the sea-based version’s mobility
would enable more varied testing of proposed missile defense systems,
according to an MDA spokesperson. The official explained that the
sea-based version would be capable of testing 13 different intercept
trajectories, whereas various land-based locations would be limited
to tracking objects in up to five scenarios at most.
The Pentagon might still build an X-band radar on land as part of
a deployed missile defense system, but no deployment decisions have
been made, the spokesperson said.
MDA will, however, upgrade the existing Cobra Dane radar, a less
precise radar than an X-band radar, on Shemya Island at the western
tip of the Aleutians for use in testing missile defense systems.
The upgrade is scheduled to be finished by September 2004.
During the Clinton administration, Pentagon plans called for building
an X-band radar on Shemya. Department of Defense officials pushed
President Bill Clinton to authorize starting construction at Shemya
before he left office, but he declined in September 2000.
Building a sea-based X-band radar was not part of the Clinton administration’s
missile defense plans. A sea-based radar would have violated the
1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which is now no longer
in force following the June 13 U.S. withdrawal. (See
ACT, July/August 2002.) The ABM Treaty ruled out, among
other things, development, testing, and deployment of sea-based
components for defenses against strategic ballistic missiles.
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