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In February 2007, Gazeta Wyborcza reported that four sites were under consideration for the US interceptor site in Poland: Zegrze Pomorskie, Debrzno, and Slupsk-Redzikowo.

Since then, Redzikowo — a now defunct Polish airbase — has been looking like the place. At least that is what the Polish press claims. Oh, and MDA released this slide, which puts a notional interceptor site, oh, right about where Redzikowo is located. Click on the image for a GoogleEarth (.kmz) file, though there isn’t much to see.

Now, Allen Thomson sends along a note pointing to this article about Polish Defense Minister Aleksander Szczyglo meeting Slupsk governor Slawomir Ziemianowicz on Thursday to discuss the possibility of his region hosting a U.S. missile defense site.

So, we’ve got our candidate. Now, how do the locals feel about it?

The press coverage of local reaction to the missile shield is spectacular. The US press goes with a simplistic “The Czechs don’t want missile defense, but the Poles do …” Judy Dempsey in the International Herald Tribune reports that “public opinion, at least in the areas considered as possible sites for the 10 interceptors, is strongly behind the United States. For the locals, it is about jobs, not the environment.”

Reuters’ Barbara Sladkowska does better, but the prize goes to PAP, the Polish news agency.

PAP has a balanced story about local reaction (full text in the comments) with some, uh, local color:

Redzikowo (Pomorskie), lying only four kilometres from the centre of Slupsk, was brought into the centre of attention by Zycie Warszawy, which reported just before US Assistant Secretary of State John Rood’s visit to Poland that the Americans want to build their anti-missile installations precisely here. That report was repeated by other media sources, and journalists began to arrive in Redzikowo. Some residents are already fed up. Beer-sipping youths curtly told one television crew to “get the f… out of our neighbourhood.”

Oi.

Comment [1]

In the last few days, Presidents Bush and Putin were meeting, talking about their wives, fishing and playing with dogs. Oh, but there is more:

As a gift, Bush gave Putin a Segway transporter, and he reportedly gave it a try. The former president and first lady own three Segways and regularly zip around their sprawling property on them.

A sign at the entrance to Walker’s Point reads: “Caution. President on Segway. Slow Down.”

There just has to be a photo of this Putin on Segway moment. If you find it, serious brownie points.

On missile defense, the theme at Kennebunkport seems to be anything but Europe. Putin offered to upgrade the Azerbaijan radar or even built a new one in Russia. Just as long as the US gives up this interceptors in Europe business. Bush said, hey Vladmir, good idea, but I still want Poland and Czech Republic.

(Maybe it’s just me, but does anyone else notice how both Presidents really make a point of calling each other by their first names? Damn, just look at what great buddies we are!)

So in general, news out of the weekend getaway sounds like more of the same. I don’t think anyone expected anything groundbreaking anyway. Apart from the Segway news, there was this Joint Statement by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov. At 102 words this statement really clears things up for those of us who have been wondering as to what will happen after START. Russia and the U.S. agree on the “development of a post-START arrangement to provide continuity and predictability regarding strategic offensive forces.” The word “verified” feels missing from that sentence.

Comment [2]

I want to follow up on a few issues on President Putin’s Gabala radar proposal. First, U.S. and Russia are currently talking about rather different conceptions of the plan, and second, both high level Russian officials and the press are gearing up for the plan to be rejected.

My Plan, Your Plan

Russia intends the proposal to be instead of missile defense deployments in Poland and the Czech Republic. Putin’s proposal, officials say, make the U.S. plans in Europe unnecessary. The U.S. however is talking about the Gabala radar as in addition to the currently planned interceptor and radar sites.

(I’ve also heard some questions about whether Azerbaijan itself is approving of this use of a radar on its territory. As far as I’ve read, they are game. Also, Putin did tell the G8 that he agreed on the proposal with Azerbaijan’s president. Somehow I doubt Azerbaijan would contradict that.)

Chief of the Russian Army’s General Staff General Baluevsky said yesterday (more here in Russian) that if the U.S. does not give a direct answer to Putin’s proposal by the start of the meeting in Kennebunkport (July 1-2), Russia will know that Washington has made its choice to reject the proposal. Russian press called it an ultimatum, but it kind of seems like they just wanted to use the “U” word. “Yeah, we’ll like totally know what’s up if you don’t say anything!” Umm, ok.

Current reports on Russia’s possible response are along the lines of pre-G8 summit missile pointing. Baluevsky noted the “Iskander missile and other systems.” (Iskander has a declared range which is within INF limits, but its actual maximum range may exceed that.)

What about INF?

However, what I am keeping an eye out for is whether threat to withdraw from the INF treaty starts to come up again. Russian officials talked up a storm about INF withdrawal a few months ago, calling it an asymmetric response to the U.S. Now the response appears to focus on existing missiles and where they are targeted.

What happened to the INF threats? At least two possibilities: 1) Russia noticed that the U.S. did not seem to care about their INF withdrawal while targeting missile talk gets everyone all riled up, or 2) there is a sense that Russia itself may have something to lose from INF withdrawal (eg. they have enough trouble with developing the currently planned missiles, so maybe opening competition with the U.S. on more is not the best plan), while existing missiles can threaten Europe too.

Russia did successful test the Bulava missile on Thursday. The last failed test was in December.

Comment [4]

As we all know, Russia and the U.S. have been in a tiff over the U.S. proposal to put missile defense installations in Europe (Ten interceptors in Poland and an x-band radar in the Czech Republic.)

Ok, more than a tiff. Putin said Russia can’t accept such things so close to its borders. Bush said it’s not about you; it’s about the evil states. Putin threatened to point missiles at Europe. The whole thing looked to be going rapidly downhill right in the middle of the G8 Summit.

Then Putin proposed the U.S. and Russia cooperate on missile defense by using an existing early warning radar in Azerbaijan. Seems like everyone – U.S. government, American and U.S. experts, press – was taken by surprise.

It is a very clever proposal. The terms are far from clear, but its political implications are currently more significant than the technical ones. Russia gets to step away gracefully, avoiding getting stuck in a corner; the U.S. was not conceeding to Russia’s very public kicking and screaming, while Russia’s own position had started to appear impractically rigid. Now, Russia looks good, creative, cooperative. And it’s the U.S. which will look lousy if they just reject the proposal. Don’t you want to talk?!

Oh and what if the proposal is crappy to begin with? Well, it will take a little while to figure that out. In the mean time, let’s all just calm down, have a cup of tea, and spend a long long time negotiating. You have to hand it to Putin; very impressive stalling tactic.

Speaking at a hearing at the European Parliament in Brussels earlier this week, CDI’s Victoria Samson took the analysis on missile defense cooperation in an interesting direction, noting that while cooperation on such systems sounds like a good idea, so far the U.S. has not been very good at it:

At any rate, the United States has had great difficulty in peer-to-peer cooperation on missile defense before. Right now, it is working on the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) with Germany and Italy. Perhaps “working” is too strong a word for the progress of this program, which wobbles along as the country partners bicker about funding. In fact, originally there was to be a new interceptor developed for this program. But a few years ago, the United States rather peremptorily decided that instead they would be using the PAC-3 interceptor and told its two other partners as such – not an encouraging signal for how well the United States can give and take.

In fact, the United States and Russia have tried in the past to cooperate on missile defense. The Russian American Observation Satellite or RAMOS program illustrates how much distrust remains between the two countries when it comes to defense issues. RAMOS began in 1997 with the goal of having each country create an earth-observing satellite that could detect and track missiles. Within one year, the United States military began to try to unilaterally change the program so that it would be more of an “operational benefit” to U.S. satellites, as opposed to a cooperative effort with Russia that could be a confidence building measure. Arguments ensued over funding and the direction of the program, causing suspicion and eroding support on both sides. Finally, the situation devolved so that funding for RAMOS disappeared in the 2005 budget request released in February 2004, an omission that effectively killed the program.

In addition, Victoria points out that cooperation on missile defense may have complicated implications on states’ involvement in the weaponization of space:

But this discussion does ignore one very crucial consequence of collaborating on the U.S. missile defense system: that this will eventually lead to collaborating on the weaponization of space. The United States intends to create a space-based layer of missile defense that would have interceptors on orbit with the goal of using them to shoot down enemy missiles during their boost or initial phase of flight.

[snip]

The United States of course wouldn’t expect another country to collaborate on building or launching space-based interceptors. However, the early warning data that it would collect for its overall missile defense networks – i.e., the radars that already exist in Fylingdales and Thule or the new one proposed for Eastern Europe – would very likely be used by the United States for aiming space-based weapons, seeing as it wouldn’t make sense for the United States to build an entirely new network specifically for its space weapons. This would in effect make those countries who agree to work with the United States on missile defense in general collaborationists on the weaponization of space. This line of reasoning has already been demonstrated. In February 2005, Canada preemptively told the United States that it did not want to cooperate on its missile defense system because the Canadian population considered it a first step to the weaponization of space.

It is also interesting to look at the Azerbaijan proposal in light of Russia-Iran relations. Putin’s proposal is yet another indicator of increasing distance between the two countries. Azerbaijan and Iran are next door after all, and Putin has also mentioned the possibility of interceptor cites in Turkey and Iraq. In commenting on the proposal last week, one Russian defense expert (who makes the Godfather quote reference in his article) noted how quickly Putin seemed to sell out Ahmadinejad.

See more on Putin’s Azerbaijan proposal at Danger Room and RussianForces.org.

Comment [3]

I attended the Arms Control Association’s Avoiding Renewed U.S.-Russian Strategic Competition panel (remarks online transcript coming) yesterday.

During the question and answer session, Representative Ellen Tauscher mentioned that a viable alternative to the European GMD site is a combination of mobile midcourse (Aegis SM-3) and terminal defenses (PAC-3, THAAD) to defend Europe.

Tauscher has been proposing mobile assets as an alternative to the fixed site in Poland, including a talk at the Atlantic Council and during a budget hearing with MDA Director General Obering. Obering was obviously aware of the proposal, because his prepared statement included a long dismissal of the mobile systems that asserted the Navy would need 40 Aegis ships to defend Europe:

There has been some discussion that the defense of all of Europe from ballistic missile attack would be more cost-effective if we were to replace the fixed missile field, midcourse radar and forward-deployed radar currently planned for Europe with mobile missile defenses. By our calculations, this is clearly not the case. There are serious drawbacks to planning an architecture of mobile systems in lieu of the currently planned fixed architecture.

First, the current configurations of Aegis BMD and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense do not have the ability to counter intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) without extensive and costly modifications. Likewise, mobile system sensors for Aegis BMD and THAAD cannot provide equivalent radar coverage of Europe. They are designed to be augmented with other sensors, like the European Midcourse Radar, and their interceptors are designed to engage slower short- to medium-range ballistic missiles systems. Without sensor augmentation, Aegis BMD ships, using the SM-3 Block IIA (currently under development and not available until after 2015), would protect approximately only half of Europe against longer-range missiles. Furthermore, the THAAD interceptor would require extensive redesign to be able to intercept long- range threat missiles. Importantly, if these mobile short-range systems achieved an intercept, the intercept would occur in the lower parts of the atmosphere where post-engagement effects, such as chemical, biological, or nuclear weapon fallout and electro- magnetic pulse effects would be of great concern to cities and other civilian areas.

Second, the protection of Europe with mobile systems such as Aegis BMD and THAAD would come at a cost that is more than five times greater to field and sustain when compared to the fixed BMD site plan. It will require 10 Aegis ships on station with SM-3 Block IIA interceptors to provide 40 to 60% coverage of Europe (central Europe would not be protected). To provide this persistent partial coverage, it would require four rotations for a total of 40 ships dedicated to the European defense. Assuming 20 interceptors per ship, we would need 200 SM-3 interceptors for the ships on station and 200 SM-3 interceptors for rotation. This mobile system alternative will initially cost $17 billion, with recurring costs around $600 million per year. The command and control infrastructure required to support this mobile alternative would make this approach even more cost-prohibitive. Of note, we did not consider the significant impact on our Aegis ship force levels in this calculation.

The cost for deploying 80 THAAD batteries (the minimum estimate to protect key assets Europe) would be approximately $40 billion with recurring costs at roughly $2.4 billion per year. The cost to field this additional force structure and the need to negotiate with each host nation also makes this option prohibitively expensive and not viable. I believe our current proposed architecture will provide the best, most cost effective protection for our European allies, and it can be deployed beginning in 2011. It would protect all European nations threatened by longer-range weapons from Iran. The cost of our European Missile Defense component proposal of $3.5 billion non-recurring, and $250 million per year to operate and maintain, is far less expensive and more effective than the $16 billion, or more, and the $600 million per year required for a less effective mobile ballistic missile defense architecture for Europe. The mobile alternative also would not provide any additional protection for the United States.

When I read this, I though 40?

As in FOUR ZERO? Is this like the biblical 40? As in “We don’t know how many, because we only have eyes for ground-based midcourse”?

The Aegis defended area or footprint is supposed to be much, much bigger than Obering’s remarks would suggest. Early on, when the Navy anticipated an interceptor with 4.5 km/s burnout velocity, DOD was releasing defended area charts that looked like this.

That’s a single Aegis cruiser covering all of Japan and Hawaii in a 25,000 square kilometer shadow. Don’t tell me you need 10 of these suckers to “to provide 40 to 60% coverage of Europe.”

(I think General Obering means “our NATO allies” rather than the cultural concept or the political enterprise of integration. Picture chain-smoking Parisians sipping espresso with one snickering “The threat to Europe is not from missiles, but ennui” and the other adding, “Not from Iran, but Turkey.”)

Admittedly, the current SM-3, with a 13.5” diameter, has a burnout velocity of only 3.0-3.5 m/s, resulting in a much smaller defended area as you can see from this Raytheon fact sheet (right).

But the 21” version—which the United States is already cooperatively developing with Japan—is supposed to have 40-60 percent better burnout velocity, between 4.5-5.0 m/s.

Such an interceptor—supplemented with the appropriate terminal defenses—ought to be able to defend most of Europe with much fewer than ten ships. I would think 2-4 ships based in some combination of the Mediterranean, Black and North Seas would do it. Of course, that’s a guesstimate, from looking at the geography.

Feel free to imagine your own operational concepts.

My sense is that Obering is cooking the books, with at least two assumptions designed to skew the results.

1. Lame Radars: Obering compares the European interceptor site with a radar, to a network of Aegis ships without a radar.

Guess what that does? Decreases the size of the defended area for each ship, increasing the number required. This is how the National Academies explained the effect in a study of the old Navy Theater Wide architecture:

The weakest link … is the detection capability the Navy will obtain by evolutionary improvement of Aegis’s SPY-1 radar. In geographic situations where the NTW ship can be placed near the TBM launch point, the protected region can be very large. However, in situations where the NTW ship is near the TBM aim point, the protected region can be very small, limited as it is by SPY-1’s detection capability.

If I had to guess, Obering is also assuming that he wants multiple shots from ships in different locations. But let’s just assume, in the mobile scenario, that the US either builds the radar in the Czech Republic or takes Putin up on his offer to put the X-band radar in Azerbaijan, so we compare a fixed site in Poland with mobile assets.

2. 24 Hour Alerts Obering assumes that one needs to keep all ten ships at sea at all times (thus quadrupling the ship requirements), rather than simply deploying them during a crisis.

Why?

The ground-based interceptors aren’t going to be kept on alert at all times. (See: “Deployed GMD System May Not Be Operational Around the Clock,” Inside Missile Defense, Feb. 5, 2003.) Aegis could operate like the Airborne Laser, heading out out to sea in times of a crisis or conflict.

***

Reducing the number of ships required by an order of magnitude from forty to four would make the mobile option much, much more attractive.

Of course, all of this assumes the interceptors work—an important assumption. Although I have my doubts about both systems, on this score again, the Raytheon SM-3 has the superior test record.

I don’t get it. The Aegis system is clearly the most functional of our missile defense assets, yet the MDA seems to hate it. Why?

Comment [2]

Thanks for Marc and Matt for holding down the fort while I was away.

The FAA issued three “notices to airman” (NOTAMs) that indicate that the Air Force is taking the Airborne Laser (ABL) out for a little spin this week:

7/3701 – .. SPECIAL NOTICE.. EFFECTIVE 0706101700 UTC UNTIL 0706102300 UTC. AIRBORNE LASER OPERATIONS WILL BE CONDUCTED WITHIN 25 NM FROM ANY POINT ALONG A LINE STARTING AT 401212N/1003542W OR THE MC COOK (MCK) VOR/DME AND ENDING AT 362036N/0995248W OR THE GAGE (GAG) VORTAC, NOT EXTENDING BELOW FL180. THIS AREA WILL BE MONITORED BY OBSERVERS AND THE LASER BEAM WILL BE TERMINATED IF NON-PARTICIPATING AIRCRAFT ARE DETECTED THAT MAY ENTER THE AFFECTED AREA. OTHER VISUAL EFFECTS E.G. FLASH BLINDNESS, AFTER IMAGE, GLARE, AND DISTRACTION MAY OCCUR AT GREATER DISTANCES. THE DOMESTIC EVENTS NETWORK /DEN/ AT 202-493-5107,IS THE FAA COORDINATION FACILITY. WIE UNTIL UFN

7/3506 – .. SPECIAL NOTICE.. EFFECTIVE FROM 0706101300 UTC UNTIL 0706102200 UTC, AIRBORNE LASER OPERATIONS WILL BE CONDUCTED WITHIN 200 NM RADIUS OF 352130N/0973636W OR THE IRW VORTAC, FROM FL180 TO FL280. THE LASER BEAM MAY BE INJURIOUS TO PILOTS/AIRCREWS AND PASSENGERS EYES FOR A DISTANCE OF 6000 FEET BELOW THE AIRCRAFT, NOT EXTENDING BELOW FL180. THIS AREA WILL BE MONITORED BY OBSERVERS AND THE LASER BEAM WILL BE TERMINATED IF NON-PARTICIPATING AIRCRAFT ARE DETECTED THAT MAY ENTER THE AFFECTED AREA. OTHER VISUAL EFFECTS E.G. FLASH BLINDNESS, AFTER IMAGE, GLARE, AND DISTRACTION MAY OCCUR AT GREATER DISTANCES. THE DOMESTIC EVENTS NETWORK /DEN/ AT 202-493-5107,IS THE FAA COORDINATION FACILITY. WIE UNTIL UFN

7/3818 – SPECIAL NOTICE EFFECTIVE 0706121700 UTC UNTIL 0706122300 UTC. AIRBORNE LASER OPERATIONS WILL BE CONDUCTED WITHIN 20 NM FROM ANY POINT ALONG A LINE STARTING AT 422812N/0984112W OR THE O’NEILL (ONL) VORTAC AND ENDING AT 385530N/0973718W OR THE SALINA (SLN) VORTAC, NOT EXTENDING BELOW FL180. THIS AREA WILL BE MONITORED BY OBSERVERS AND THE LASER BEAM WILL BE TERMINATED IF NON-PARTICIPATING AIRCRAFT ARE DETECTED THAT MAY ENTER THE AFFECTED AREA. OTHER VISUAL EFFECTS E.G. FLASH BLINDNESS, AFTER IMAGE, GLARE, AND DISTRACTION MAY OCCUR AT GREATER DISTANCES. THE DOMESTIC EVENTS NETWORK /DEN/ AT 202-493-5107,IS THE FAA COORDINATION FACILITY. WIE UNTIL UFN

Reading these is a little tough, but basically—as you can see from the map—they’ve set up three ranges, two on June 10 and one on June 12.

Two of the test ranges are linear, each running a couple hundred kilometers between navigation beacons and within a short flight from the Boeing ABL facility in Wichita. The third is a circle with a 200 nm radius centered on a beacon in Oklahoma.

Boeing & MDA recently completed the first in-flight “firing” during a flight out of at Edwards Air Force Base in CA—I enclose “firing” in quotes because they used a laser to track an airborne target.

The “firing” part—in the common sense of the word—is yet to come. The tests this week are for the “surrogate high energy laser” that is, well, a surrogate for the actual laser called the Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser or COIL.

Here is how General Obering previewed these tests:

I will tell you that what I have seen since November 2004 is a steady progression. There has been some minor delays here and there as they work through—mainly these are integration issues now. The actual functioning of the components, the laser modules themselves, the optical train and everything else, they have pretty much knocked down the technical issues.

That is not to say that they’re out of the woods. There’s still work to be done. As I said, we should have some significant knowledge points on the program in the coming weeks, especially by the end of June, if they stay on the schedule that they’re on.

We should be able, by that time, to know whether the tracking laser works properly. As I said, we’ve tracked targets 75 kilometers away and closed that fire control loop. We should know if the beam illumination laser, the atmospheric compensation laser, is working properly and feeding that information into the system. And we actually have a surrogate of the high-energy laser on the aircraft as well. So we should know if the entire system is working the way that it is designed by the end of June. That’ll be a significant look ahead.

And then if all of that is successful, we will dismantle—we will put the aircraft back on the ground, we’ll open it up, and we’ll reassemble the high-energy laser on board the aircraft and get that back in the air next year, so that we can attempt to shoot down a boosting missile in the mid-part of 2009.

Michael Fabey with Aviation Week has a nice summary of what MDA and Boeing hope to achieve with these tests.

2009, you say? That’s close, right?

Well, the thing is this is the fourth test date that MDA has identified for the “lethal shoot down.” The schedule slippage—and a very tough GAO report entirled entitled Actions Needed to Improve Information for Supporting Future Key Decisions for Boost and Ascent Phase Element—led the House Armed Services Committee to express “little confidence that this date will not slip into 2010 or possibly later” and cut $250 million from the program, leaving a demonstration program that may or may not include a lethal demonstration in the event MDA can pull it off.

The Senate also whacked the ABL program ($200 million, I think … not sure), but Boeing is gearing up a major effort to save the program that will undoubtedly include any good news from these tests of the surrogate laser.

“What ABL needs to do to stay viable is to make its milestones,” the ABL program officer told Aviation Week.

Stay tuned.

Comment [4]

I had some long-winded post somewhere inside me, but reading the papers about all this missile defense brouhaha in Europe reminds me of an amusing anectdote that was meted out over cocktails the other day.

“Ahmadine… Ahmed…
whatever. Yes, I’ll hold.”

Halfway through our wide ranging rants and raves, my friend (for the purposes of the blog, I’ll be kind enough to leave his name out of it) is beside himself with disbelief and is convinced he can solve the whole thing.

Said friend proceeds to regale me with his not-so-elaborate plan to prevent an Encore Cold War—which I will relay via a hastily assembled one act play:

“Waiting for Vlad”

Characters:

Vladimir Putin, President of Russian Federation and founder of the international order of hard pipe hittin’ muthas

American Fellow

SCENE: Kremlin office of Russian President Vladimir Putin

(Phone Rings)

Vladimir: “Hello”

American: “Vlad, what’s up. Joe here. You got a sec?”

V: “Who.. How’d you get this number?”

A: (Ignores question) “Look, I know you’re all freaked out and stuff over there – I can’t say I blame you. And Lord knows you got your ways of dealing with these things – you KGB guys keep it on the real. But I just wanted to tell you to chillax with all that pointing missiles noise. Polonium is one thing, but come on.”

V: “Listen, look at a map lately? We’re surrounded here.. NATO’s moving into the neighborhood, I got uppity Baltic states that are giving me heartburn and now you Imperialist swine want to put interceptors in Europe! Iranian missiles!? Man, we made those things and let me tell you..

A: “Look, I know.. I know.. but Vlad, you gotta believe me. This really isn’t about you. These people..”

V: “Whatever. Naked aggression.”

A: “They really believe it.”

V: (Pause) “Come on. Seriously?”

A: “Deadly.”

V: “BWAAAHAHAHAHAH! (sound of hoarse cackling) Ah ha.. ha..oooh boy. That is completely illogical, and defies any strategic sense in the loosest possible definition. You expect me to believe that?”

A: (Long Pause)

V: “Mm.. come to think of it..”

A: “See?”

V: ”..I..I… what do you people put in your water?”

A: “You know it’s true.”

V: “Allright. I’ll think about it. I gotta go fix… I mean talk to some people.”

A: “Cool.”

V: “And check your sushi.”

A: “Not funny.”

(END SCENE)

Comment [3]

Hello, my name is Volodya.
I am looking for work.

A Grandy Jury indicted [the labor recruiting companies hired by] Keppel AmFELS for hiring 41 illegal aliens to work on the SBX platform:

The three-year investigation leading to this indictment was initiated in September 2004 with a comprehensive sweep of the day shift employees working on the SBX project for possible document fraud in September 2004 by special agents of the Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) with the assistance of the Social Security Administration Office of Inspector General, Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, Texas Department of Public Safety and Customs and Border Protection.

That sweep resulted in the identification of 41 illegal aliens working on the SBX platform. Of the forty-one, twenty-three were employed through the labor lease contracts with Port Fabricators.

Now, I dunno about you, but it seems to me that a “critical national asset” that must be crewed by licensed merchant mariners with security clearances probably should not have had undocumented workers crawling over it.

Sorry about sticking Keppel AmFels in the first draft of this.

Comment [2]

We have discussed quite a few times now the possibility of Russia’s withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, as well as a related issue of Russia’s response to proposed U.S. missile interceptors in Europe. (Feb 26, 2007, Feb 14, 2007 March 12, 2006 and March 10, 2006 Also, Pavel Podvig has more at russianforces.org)

To continue updates on this issue, I wanted to call attention to Rose Gottemoeller’s op-ed in the New York Times and IHT on May 4, discussing Putin’s annual address to parliament. Noting Putin’s omissions during the speech, Gottemoeller argues that the threat of Russia’s INF withdrawal appears to be abating:

Another issue [Mr. Putin] left unaddressed was the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Russian military spokesmen have been threatening to withdraw from this treaty, often as a response to United States missile defenses but sometimes to bring Russian missile deployments in line with those of neighboring countries.

Mr. Putin might have launched another attack on the missile treaty; he might even have announced Russia’s full withdrawal. Instead, he took a swipe at the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty but left the door open for talks to solve a long standoff with NATO, which wants Russia to withdraw its troops from Georgia and Moldova. This can be resolved without dealing a major blow to security in Europe. Not so withdrawal from the missile treaty: here Russia would begin a slide toward ruining the nuclear arms control system put in place in the closing decade of the cold war. This outcome would encourage countries eager to break out of the nuclear nonproliferation regime. It would also ensure that Russia could post no claim to leadership in the world of international law and diplomacy.

Mr. Putin had good reason to stay silent on the matter, and the backing to do so. The Russian debate on the treaty is subtly shifting, with new attention to the missiles Russia will really need. Some Russians are arguing that the newest Russian intercontinental ballistic missile, the Topol, is already in production and could easily handle intermediate-range missile tasks as a kind of “universal missile,” while retooling defense plants to produce intermediate-range missiles would be expensive and the missiles could do only limited tasks. Other experts are arguing in favor of modern supersonic cruise missiles, claiming they are cheaper to produce and perfectly capable of responding to intermediate-range threats.

Administration officials (John C. Rood and Daniel Fried) testifying last week on the missile interceptors issue noted “Russian concerns,” but in a rather limited way. Both officials pointed out that the 10 planned interceptors would be no match against Russia’s nuclear forces. Yes, and the Russians understand this. It is not what they are worried about. The concerns voiced here are broader. For example: U.S. missile bases so close to Russia’s borders may be limited now, but what about later when they may serve as a start for further, more threatening installations?

However, as Gottemoeller notes in the op-ed, the administration does seem to be making a good effort at engaging Russia. In the last month, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, as well as Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation John Rood, traveled to Moscow for discussions on missile defense. Most recently, U.S. and Russia have agreed to hold high-level talks on the missile defense plans. U.S. and Russian foreign and defense ministers are tentatively planning to meet in September.

***

On a related note, I was looking into the history of the INF, and came across a great 1987 article by Strobe Talbott, The Road to Zero, in Time. It is a fascinating account of the lead up and the blow by blow of negotiations. I highly recommend taking a break from today’s news, blog surfing, and whatever it is that we do at work, to take a look back 20 years.

Comment [1]

Aegis BMD is probably the one well-run missile defense program, one with both a feasible mission and a reasonable amount of technical risk.

So, after a little trouble with their last flight test, I am happy to see that the boys and girls at Raytheon managed a pair of simultaneous intercepts, including the first intercept by the SM-3 Block IA with “a full-capability solid divert and attitude control system”—or SDACS—the system that maneuvers the missile’s kinetic warhead to its target.

SDACS, as Vic has pointed out on this blog, is kind of a big deal.

About the same time the test was being conducted, GAO warned that “performance of the Block 2006 configuration of the Aegis BMD missile is unproven because design changes in the missile’s solid attitude and divert system and one burn pattern of the third stage rocket motor were not flight-tested before they were cut into the production line.”

So, you know, nice that it does work.

***

As an aside, work is described in two year “Blocks” (i.e. Block 2006) that do not necessarily correspond to the “Blocks” of missiles (i.e. Block IA).

So, I think that by “Block 2006 configuration”, GAO means the SM-3 IA with improvements conducted during FY 2006-2007.

It is worth noting that the SM-3 Block IB, during budget Block 2010, will include “improvements to the Divert and Attitude Control System (DACS) and the Advanced Signal Processor (ASP) to support new discrimination algorithms. Other improvements include the integration of a two-color seeker and the development of an improved Throttleable Divert and Attitude Control System.”

Vic’s busy lately, but maybe she will help me make a hot little chart of the budget blocks, missile blocks and improvements to the divert and altitude control systems that could complement her rundown of the all the SM-3 tests.

***

Anyway, congratulations, Raytheon.

Anybody want to take over a small project in Alaska?

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