Building a better BMD

From Navy Times

Building a better BMD

Admiral seeks an expanded upgrade for anti-missile ships

By Ben Iannotta - Special to the Times

Posted : Sunday Nov 4, 2007 8:46:19 EST

North Korea was hot on everyone’s minds when the Navy decided to rush missile-defense software and interceptors onto 18 of its 84 ships equipped with the Aegis computerized weapon systems. But now, with Iran increasingly on the minds of U.S. strategists, the admiral who runs the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense program for the Missile Defense Agency is asking to expand the upgrade effort — even before the large-scale Aegis upgrade planned to start in 2012.

“The question right now is: With 18 ships, is that an adequate number? I’m not sure it is,” said Rear Adm. Alan Hicks, who noted that Navy plans call for basing all but two of the BMD ships in the Pacific. “One of the concerns I have today is that if we had to surge for both a North Korean and Iranian scenario, you would end up taking ships [that would be used for] defense against North Korea. You have to augment the two Atlantic fleet ships to do anything in either the [Persian] Gulf or Mediterranean if there was an Iranian threat.”

Hicks approached Adm. Mike Mullen when Mullen was the chief of naval operations about adding more BMD ships to handle simultaneous missile threats from North Korea and Iran. Mullen agreed to a series of discussions as the Navy builds its portion of the 2009 White House budget request.

Fifteen of the 18 ships in the current Aegis BMD plan are destroyers, and so the obvious option is to add more cruisers. “Right now, we have three BMD cruisers,” Hicks said. “Will [Navy officials] make a decision to upgrade any more of the cruisers? That’s what they’ll be discussing.”

So far, Lockheed Martin reports it has completed 16 Aegis BMD ships, with the final two scheduled to be ready by mid-2008. Hicks said the full contingent must be ready for fielding by early 2009.

These ships are a stopgap, or “pre-modernization,” measure until Navy and Pentagon officials decide how to incorporate ballistic missile defense into the massive Aegis modernization program scheduled to start in 2012. At that time, all 62 destroyers and 22 cruisers in the Aegis fleet will begin rotating into port for 40-week computer modernization programs. How many of those modernized ships will be equipped to fire missile interceptors is another topic for talks, Hicks said.

Under the pre-modernization program, the initial 18 ships will retain their original computers, which were built to military specifications exclusively for the Aegis program. New processors and software will be added to modify the core combat system, including the weapon control system and visual displays. Lockheed Martin calls this system the Aegis BMD 3.6 Weapons System. A new system, Aegis BMD 4.0.1, is scheduled to be ready by 2010.

The Aegis BMD system “focuses the radar and takes energy waveforms from the radar in such a way that it more effectively uses the SPY radar to do optical space tracking,” Hicks said. The work will not, however, amount to a complete modernization.

“The 18 ships are kind of in a hybrid configuration with some mil-standard equipment in the computing infrastructure, and then some adjunct processors,” said Jim Sheridan, the director of Aegis programs at Lockheed Martin Maritime Systems and Sensors.

Rewiring the Aegis ships

By contrast, the 2012 modernization program will update the entire Aegis fleet with commercial, off-the-shelf computers, which can be updated more easily. The modernized ships will be capable of receiving the newest missile defense system. The Navy must decide how many of the modernized ships should carry the systems and how many should continue to focus primarily on anti-aircraft warfare.

“Think of it along the lines as you’ve got an older home, but you want to put a Viking range in,” Sheridan said. “You’ve got to rewire your home. That’s what this modernization does.”

In developing Aegis BMD, Lockheed Martin engineers had to figure out how to track objects hurtling on the fringes of space at thousands of kilometers per hour without ruining Aegis’ ability to see low-flying aircraft or cruise missiles. The fear was that while Aegis was staring off into space, an enemy could sneak low-flying cruise missiles or aircraft under its radar. It proved a balancing act.

“There is no free lunch here,” Hicks said. “If you’re going to use a lot of radar resources, which are finite, for ballistic missile defense, then you’re going to give up something for air defense. So in this case, what we’ve tried to do is balance what we need to do with a BMD mission while retaining a robust air-defense capability.”

Missile defense officials know that in the real world, warheads are likely to come in messy clouds of rocket debris and decoys such as balloons and chaff. The trick for Aegis BMD will be to find the warhead and destroy it. Lockheed Martin officials are working on an improved computer, called the BMD Signal Processor. Starting in 2010, the new processor could help the Aegis ships do a better job of discriminating targets.

“I don’t want to get into too much detail, but it essentially improves the resolution of the radar, the ability to see two objects very close together,” said Nick Bucci, Lockheed Martin’s director of Aegis BMD development programs. “It can better tell which object is which in a missile complex.“