ALASKA MISSILE DEFENSE EARLY BIRD WEEKLY

MDA LAYS OUT PHASED PLAN TO GET NEW RADAR INTO TESTING IN 2005, Defense Daily. August 7, 2002. The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) plans to integrate its new sea-based X-band test radar into the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) testbed test program by September 2005, MDA officials said. Last week MDA awarded Boeing [BA] a $31 million contract to begin design of a sea-based test X-band radar (Defense Daily, Aug. 5). This first phase of the contract, for which the majority of the work will go to Raytheon [RTN], will center on the preliminary design of the sea-based test X-band radar. MDA officials yesterday outlined the full-phased approach for the new program, with the intention to integrate the radar in the test program in September 2005. This first phase of the radar program will run until October, said MDA spokesman Air Force Lt. Col. Rick Lehner. Then, a contract modification will be awarded for the November and June 2003 time frame when work will concentrate on completion of the radar design and platform and start of radar hardware fabrication, he said. The third phase, running July 2003 to October 2003, will center on completion of the environmental analysis necessary to proceed with the radar program, he said. Then, the final phase will stretch between November 2003 and September 2005. During that phase, modifications will be installed on the platform, all hardware assembly will be completed and the system will be integrated into the GMD testbed, Lehner said. "It should be ready for testbed use in September 2005," he said.

The total value of the contract is estimated to be about $900 million. During an MDA radar review, the review team considered the use of radars for monitoring 14 different flight test trajectories, including the launch of interceptors out of Kodiak, Alaska, and Vandenberg AFB, Calif., and target shots from airborne platforms. The review team concluded that the sea-based radar could meet 13 of those 14 trajectory scenarios, while a land-based radar could only meet five of the 14, Lehner said. "Having a moveable radar on a sea-based platform increases our flexibility to do more operationally realistic testing," Lehner said. However, MDA plans to proceed with the radar in a "phased approach," in which decisions will be made at the end of each phase to make sure the system should proceed, he said. Essentially, MDA will not put all the money upfront until the system is proven to perform, according to Lehner. In addition, the radar will be built with flexibility for land-basing options and to be upgraded if tasked to become an operationally deployed system, he said. For example, the radar is being designed specifically for testbed uses against more rudimentary threat representative targets for this phase of the program, Lehner said. The radar only will be "half populated," with only half of the radar modules placed on the face of the radar, he said.

Those radar modules could be increased if the president made a decision to deploy an operational radar. And, he added, the radar could be based anywhere, including on land. Meanwhile, as this new sea-based radar effort progresses, MDA will continue to upgrade the Cobra Dane radar at Shemya, Lehner noted. This latest program decision is expected to be the first of several efforts on the part of MDA to beef up its sensor options for the GMD program now that the United States is no longer a party to the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. MDA had been eyeing several opportunities for expanded use of ground-, sea- and space-based sensors. For example, MDA plans to incorporate an Aegis cruiser in the next GMD flight test slated for this month (Defense Daily, April 24).

The ABM treaty, among a range of restrictions, had prohibited use of mobile radars such as the Aegis system in tests to date. During the next flight test, the Aegis cruiser will be used in an "off-mode" role to the GMD system to collect target track data. And, the radars will be more fully incorporated into following tests, MDA officials said. Lockheed Martin [LMT] currently provides the Aegis weapons system for the Navy. The treaty had prohibited use of sea-based mobile radars for a missile defense system.

FORT GREELY ARTICLE, Cox Washington Bureau, August 7, 2002. Fort Greely, Alaska --- They are just five giant holes, surrounded by massive construction equipment that elsewhere might signal the start of some suburban shopping center or downtown parking lot. But here at the most remote U.S. Army post in the country, where caribou and moose outnumber men and women, the five holes signify the long-anticipated start of the most controversial military program in recent history. Contractors started digging the 80-foot-deep, 16-foot-wide holes last month. Within two years, the federal Missile Defense Agency plans to fill
the five holes with five missiles --- the foundation of a national missile defense shield. If another country launches a missile at the United States, the rockets at Fort Greely can shoot it down in outer space, the system's architects say. If ongoing tests are successful, 50 to 200 more missiles could be added at Fort Greely, along with more in other parts of the world. Some in Congress and even the Pentagon question whether such a system, which could ultimately cost $238 billion by some estimates, will work --- just as they
have since the program was hatched from the Reagan era Star Wars space defense program more than a decade ago.

"So far all I see with this missile defense program is a bunch of baloney," Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) said at a recent congressional hearing. Controversy aside, the missile silos under construction here leave little doubt that the program is well under way. Officially, the installation is just a testing ground, although the military says it could be operational in case of emergency by September 2004, and there are few doubts it will become the center of a national missile defense system. The base is the most important part of a $64 billion Alaska "test bed" that also includes a launch complex on Kodiak Island and radar stations in
the Aleutian Islands. "We're the real game in town," Army Col. Steve Davis, director of site activation command at Fort Greely, said recently as giant drilling equipment probed deep into the Alaska ground. The military has awarded a $31 million contract to Boeing Co. in Anaheim, Calif., to develop a sea-based radar system by September 2005 for testing. Davis, a gung-ho second-generation career soldier, says he has no doubt the missile defense system he's building will work --- and that it's necessary. "Why would we even be setting ourselves up for failure if we didn't think this would work?" he said. "I know we need more testing . . . but I'm a
professional soldier. I wouldn't be working on something if I didn't think it would work."

Except for the 420 acres on Fort Greely where the missile silos are being built, there's little indication this 1,000-square-mile base could be the center of space age defense. Its roots reach back as far as 1904, when it was an Army telegraph station. Beginning in 1948, it was the primary spot for the military's cold weather training exercises and experimentation, but last year it was officially mothballed as part of a round of base closings approved by Congress. Today, only a handful of soldiers are stationed at the base, along with a cadre of civilian contractors. Their primary task is upkeep on the aging World War II era barracks and office buildings that stand like a military ghost town. "It's a throwback in time," said Chris Nelson, a former Army officer who as Alaska's official missile defense coordinator is working with the federal government on the Fort Greely program. "You almost expect to see Beetle Bailey walking out of one of those old barracks."

Despite the age of the base, several factors make it a good location for the missile defense system. First, Alaska is the only place in America where all 50 states can be protected by land-based missiles. Radar can "see" missiles coming over the North Pole, considered the most likely flight path for any attack. North Dakota is more centrally located, but only Alaska can launch a missile fast enough to hit an incoming missile that might be headed to Hawaii or Alaska itself, according to Nelson and others. Then there is the remoteness and the terrain. Attacking the missile system wouldn't be easy. Also, the water table is at least 400 feet down, far below where the missiles will be stored underground. "It's just ideal," Davis said. The only town near Fort Greely is Delta Junction, a small community two miles away that was devastated by the base closure last year. Also known as the terminus of the Alaska Highway --- another project that got its start with the military --- the town is generally conservative, patriotic and filled with veterans.

Many locals say they are more concerned with the country's defense --- and the 150 or more soldiers the reactivation of the base might bring --- than with the possible threats that might come with being the center of the nation's missile defense program. "People lost their jobs, lost their homes when that base closed," said Pat Resch, who has lived in Delta Junction for 40 years. "We're still
hurting." At the Buffalo Center diner, missile defense has been the talk of the coffee klatch for months, said regular Hank Dube, who moved here in 1959, the year Alaska became the 49th state. Like others in conservative Alaska, Dube sees a missile defense program as necessary, even if unproven so far. "There's been a lot of guesswork, there's been a lot of problems with it," said Dube, 75, a World War II veteran. "Who knows whether it will work or not?"

Backers of missile defense say even though no ballistic missiles were used Sept. 11, the attacks show the United States is vulnerable. The threat of nuclear war between India and Pakistan earlier this year, along with the growing number of nations with long-range ballistics capabilities, have expedited the need for a missile defense system even more, they say. "Critics of the missile defense system argue that the . . . chances of [a missile strike against the United States] are remote," Rep. Benjamin Gilman (R-N.Y.) said recently. "I contend that last year at this time, it seemed equally far-fetched that someone could organize the concentrated effort to fly airplanes into large buildings." The flurry of activity since Sept. 11, after so many years of inaction, caught many critics of the program off-guard. A hastily planned protest last month during a groundbreaking ceremony at Fort Greely attracted only a small group of pickets --- although the remoteness of the base, 100 miles southeast of Fairbanks, also factored in the scant turnout.
"It has certainly been going extremely fast, under pressure and, I think, under the radar, basically since the Bush administration came into office and certainly since Sept. 11," said Stacy Fritz, founder of No Nukes North, the most vocal of protest groups in Alaska.

Critics see many flaws in the program. First, basically using a bullet to hit another bullet traveling at 5 miles per second is something that until recently was generally considered impossible. Critics say the tests so far are flawed because the target rockets had beacons on them and interceptor missile controllers knew exactly when the targets were launched and where they were going. Critics say that even if the technology is made to work, an attacker would simply have to throw up several missiles and some decoys, and some weapons would likely get through. And then there's the question of need. Why, critics say, should the country spend billions of dollars on an unproven system, especially when the Sept. 11 attacks showed that the bigger threat to the country is terrorists acting as suicide bombers? "Instead of spending those hundreds of billions of dollars on things that could actually make our country more secure, we're spending it on something that doesn't work," Fritz said.

At t