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Pentagon Briefing on National Missile Defense Program:
Experts Describe NMD Technology, Mission |
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(Source : US State Department ; issued June 21, 2000)
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The proposed National Missile Defense (NMD) system is very complex"
and on a high-risk schedule, two Defense Department experts
acknowledged June 20 at a Pentagon news briefing.
However, Jacques Gansler, undersecretary of defense for acquisition,
technology and logistics, said he believes the schedule to deploy by
2005 is necessary because the United States anticipates "seeing ICBM
(Intercontinental Ballistic Missile)-type ranges from North Korea,
possibly even Iran, in the 2005 time period."
The threats from the proliferation of this type of weapon, both in
terms of delivery and in terms of the kill mechanism vehicles -- the
weapons of mass destruction -- "seem to be quite realistic in my
personal opinion," Gansler said.
Also, he added, Congress passed a law "which says we shall deploy the
system as soon as it is technically feasible."
The key to making the NMD system work, Gansler said, "is the battle
management system that integrates all of this -- the multiple sensors
and the discrimination capability."
General Ronald Kadish, director of the Ballistic Missile Defense
Organization, said the BMDO has scheduled the third NMD intercept
flight test for July 7, 2000 (July 8 on the Kwajalein Missile Range in
the Pacific Ocean).
He said the NMD's "complex system of ground-based radars and kill
vehicle and interceptors" are "hooked together by a communications and
computer system that controls it all."
The test is especially important, Kadish added, in that "we want all
these elements to work together in an integrated whole so we can
accomplish the intercept."
During the previous flight test, many of the elements were already
operating "with the exception of the in-flight communications system,"
he said, adding "this system is important to us because it's the
system that actually tells the kill vehicle what the other radars in
the system are finding out from the target complex through the battle
management system."
During the last test the kill vehicle experienced a cooling problem
that is now believed to have been corrected.
Gansler detailed the NMD's basic system, from space-based warning
through early warning radars to track targets as they approach, to
X-band radars that discriminate between decoys and the warhead, to the
kill vehicle.
Examining the advantages and disadvantages of various technical
options, Gansler said DOD has selected the "mid-course" system, which,
in the event of missiles heading toward the continental United States,
will permit "a multiple launch against them so that we will have a
multiple probability of being able to hit the target; and if we are
unable to discriminate between, say, a decoy and the warhead, we'll
shoot them both down."
Click here for full transcript of briefing (US Department of Defense)
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