Guarding against Miscalculation

Dear Members and Friends,

This week, President Obama spoke on the topic of North Korea in an interview with NBC. In this conversation, the President brought up the importance of missile defense in respect to its ability to guard against any miscalculation and to help contain North Korea’s anticipated provocative action over the next several weeks. The President’s remarks are as follows:

“But, you know, we have to make sure that we are dealing with every contingency out there. And that’s why I’ve repositioned missile defense systems to guard against any miscalculation on their part.”

“I’m not a psychiatrist,” “This is the same kind of pattern that we saw his father engage in, and his grandfather before that. Since I came into office, the one thing I was clear about was, we’re not going to reward this kind of provocative behavior. You don’t get to bang your – your spoon on the table and somehow you get your way.”

President Obama further stated that he would “anticipate” that “North Korea will probably make more provocative moves over the next several weeks, but our hope is we can contain it and we can move into a different phase, in which they try to work through diplomatically some of these issues so they can get back on a path where they’re actually feeding their people.”

The United States missile defense platforms in the Pacific are in place, but as this mission continues it will require more inventory and more capacity. Missile defense is an invaluable tool for President Obama that allows him to prevent conflict, contain provocation, and guard against miscalculation. The President of the United States, with missile defense, plays a vital and global role in making our world safer.

President Obama released his Fiscal Year 2014 budget request for missile defense last week. The President’s request calls for 1.739 percent of the entire $526.6 Billion defense budget to be spent on providing inventory and capacity for our nation’s missile defense systems. This percentage is down from the 1.831 percent of the $530.5 Billion Fiscal Year 2013 defense budget spent on missile defense last year.

Yesterday, Representative Michael Turner sent a highly critical letter to the President of the United States in regards to his policies, positions, and actions on missile defense.

“At a time when our missile defense system is the only defense that we have to the threat from North Korea, and the emerging threats from Iran, I am greatly concerned that your missile defense strategy is languishing, resulting in increased risk to the United States, increased cost to the taxpayer and needless alienation of our allies. Our enemies around the world have sought nuclear weapons and missile technology, yet your Administration has consistently reduced missile defense funding, abandoned previous Bush Administration strategies that sought to respond to these emerging threats and has compromised the implementation of missile defense programs, while seeking elusive Russian approval of the right of the United States to defend itself.”
- Representative Michael Turner, April 17, 2013

A link to this letter is enclosed below.

Letter from Representative Michael Turner to President Obama:http://www.missiledefenseadvocacy.org/data/images/repturnerlettertopresidentonmissiledefense-apr172013(2).pdf

Our world and nation, today and for the foreseeable future, need to prevent conflicts and need at least two percent of our defense budget in order to provide the capacity and inventory of missile defense across the world and for our nation to ensure peace from nations that continue to proliferate ballistic missiles and nuclear missiles.

The President cannot have this critical defense without the necessary spending it requires let alone reducing it from a year ago.

United States Deploys THAAD Into Guam

Dear Members and Friends,

Our nation’s newest and most comprehensive missile defense system, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system is being deployed to the island of Guam in protection of the American territory’s citizens and all of the United States military forces deployed on there from North Korea’s ballistic missile threat as announced today by the Department of Defense. This best in the world capability is able to detect, target, discriminate, and destroy, with kinetic energy, multiple incoming ballistic missiles during their downward flight phase in lower space as well as in the upper atmosphere. Additionally, the heat and friction of reentry into the earth’s atmosphere is used to further discriminate incoming debris and missile warheads for successful THAAD intercepts.

THAAD relies on its own X-Band Radar to detect and target with its own interceptors similar to those forward based X band radars deployed today that protect the United States, Israel, Turkey, Europe, and Japan. The THAAD system fills the gap of interceptor battle space between the higher Aegis ship based interceptors that operate in space and the lower Patriot land-based systems operating in the lower atmosphere for regional ballistic missile threats. THAAD remains the most successfully tested Missile Defense system since 2003, with a 10 for 10 intercept flight record. The system’s last intercept test was October 24,2012, in the Kwajalein Island in the Pacific where it shot down ballistic missiles alongside the Patriot and Aegis Ship BMD systems. It is also of note that in April of 2008, THAAD was put in an operational status in Hawaii while still in development for a North Korean long range ballistic missile test.

This capability protects and enhances one of our military’s largest staging areas, located in Guam, to project and deploy forces including strategic aircraft throughout the Pacific region. Protecting Guam from ballistic missile threats would further deter North Korea’s rational or irrational decision of launching ballistic missiles as well as maintain their fear of offensive retaliation. It is a necessary strategic move by the United States to assure our allies in this region, specifically South Korea and Japan, that we have our best capabilities deployed so that they do not need to take pre-emptive or reactive action against North Korea.

We give great credit and sincere appreciation to our President, Department of Defense, Pacific Combatant Commander, and to the Commander of the U.S. Army’s 94th AAMDC for making the decision to deploy the Alpha Four THAAD Battery, out of Fort Bliss, Texas, forward into Guam and making our world, nation, our men and women of our armed forces, and our citizens of the American territory Guam safer. This decision to deploy THAAD will help prevent conflict and a potential war with North Korea.

Our government is doing the right thing for the right reasons at the right time.

We Got This Covered

Dear Members and Friends,

In the protection of Hawaii and the United States mainland, the Sea-Based X-Band radar (SBX) has been deployed from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii into the Pacific Ocean. The SBX is the world’s most capable X-Band Radar that is able to track 10s of thousands of small objects in space while following a ballistic missile in its moving cloud of debris to exactly pinpoint the re-entry vehicle or warhead of a ballistic missile amongst the countermeasures and decoys.

Simplistically put, the SBX, off the cost of California, could track the seam stich on a rotating baseball, pitched at Yankee Stadium, in New York, that is traveling 15,000 mph per hour and give you the exact spot and place to swing the bat and make contact with the ball, at the plate, before the ball’s arrival for a home run every time that you went to bat no matter what speed or type of pitch is thrown. It is an incredible capability that can exponentially increase the reliability of our 30 ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California that are protecting Hawaii and the United States homeland from a North Korean long range ballistic missile.

The SBX has been deployed out to the Pacific Ocean during previous North Korean ballistic missile tests and was the critical sensor in the 2008 successful intercept of a falling toxic satellite by a Ballistic Missile Defense Aegis ship, the USS Lake Erie (CG-70), and SM3-Block IA interceptor. A decision was made by our government and the previous Missile Defense Agency Director to put the SBX in partial mothball status at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii as it was previously planned to be in permanent placement at Adak, Alaska on the Aleutian Islands in order to provide increased capability for the protection of the United States homeland close a polar orbit flight that would be required to reach the United States mainland from North Korea. The SBX costs around 70 million dollars a year to operate and maintain and is an asset of the United States Navy but managed and crewed by the Missile Defense Agency.

It is of great appreciation and acknowledgement that we give to the Department of Defense, the Pacific Combatant Commander, and the Missile Defense Agency as they move forward with the deployment of the SBX in protection of our nation and its people from North Korea.
In addition to the SBX being deployed yesterday, the United States 7th Fleet, out of Yokosuka, Japan, which has five Aegis BMD ships attached to its overall fleet, has moved the USS John S. McCain Aegis BMD Destroyer out to sea for added protection against North Korea. The destroyer will provide both sensing and tracking data of incoming ballistic missiles as well as having the capability on board to intercept short and medium-range ballistic missiles from North Korea. The United States five Aegis BMD ships which includes the most modern BMD ship in the Navy, the USS Shiloh, a cruiser, join four Japanese Aegis BMD Kongo Class ships and three South Korea KDX ships in the ballistic missile defense of this region.

It is a true honor to have visited and recognized the men and women of the USS John S. McCain, the USS Fitzgerald, the USS Curtis Wilbur and its crew in Yokosuka, as well as the USS Shiloh at sea in the East China Sea this past year deployed in the waters protecting our allies, our troops, and the United States of America. MDAA was also honored to be on the SBX as it finished its construction in Brownsville, Texas and again a few times with its crew in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

For, in the end, it is the men and women of our joint missile defense force that make these great engineering capabilities and platforms perform the work to preserve peace and protect our lives. They indeed are the unheralded ones that represent the tip of the spear for the entire missile defense community and our nation protecting all of us and our allies in these critical times of uncertainty against a nuclear country and the leader of North Korea

Don’t Give Up the Ship

Dear Members and Friends,

MDAA recently had the opportunity to visit one of the United States Navy’s 23 Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) Aegis ships docked in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii:  The USS O’Kane (DDG-77).  

The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson Tech Column

Tucson-based Raytheon Missile Systems has enjoyed a virtual monopoly on a critical, and growing, element of the nation’s emerging missile defense system for years with its Standard Missile-3 interceptors.

Iran: Missile Defense Shield Target or Not?

Read the rest of this entry »

MDAA Defender of the Month, April 2011 – Captain Kirby Atwell

Dear Members and Friends,

On behalf of all of our members, we are proud to announce the April 2011 Defender of the Month, Captain Kirby Atwell, United States Army. CPT Atwell is currently the Commander, 10th Missile Defense Detachment, 100th Missile Defense Brigade (GMD) / 94th AAMDC (FWD) in Shariki, Japan. He is the first Commander of the forward-based AN/TPY-2 Radar stationed there.

Captain Atwell is the National Guard’s 1st Quarter selection for MDAA’s Defender of the Month.

Click Here to View Our One-on-One Interview with Captain Atwell

Click Here to View Past MDAA Defender of the Month Recipients

Respectfully,

Riki Ellison
Chairman & Founder
Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance

MDAA Alert: Love at First Site

Palace of the Parliament, Bucharest, Romania

Dear Members and Friends, 

Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher and Romanian President Traian Basescu announced in Bucharest today that Romania and the Deveselu Air Base near Caracal, 125 miles southwest of Bucharest, will be the site of the first deployed United States Aegis Ashore missile defense system. This system is scheduled to be deployed by 2015 and will play a pivotal role in defending Europe and deterring Middle Eastern countries, such as Iran, from using or threatening to use ballistic missiles against European populations, NATO and U.S. military forward operating bases.

MDAA Alert: U.S. European Missile Defense

 

Dear Members and Friends,

MDAA has released a one-page independent overview of our nation’s current missile defense posture in Europe to the members of the 112th Untied States Congress. This educational paper leverages MDAA’s recent visit to Europe. The United States military today has over 100,000 troops and civilian support deployed to forward operating bases in Europe.

There are many security challenges to Europe one of them being missile defense. The NATO Allies recognized this growing threat at the Lisbon Summit in November, declaring that they have “decided to develop a missile defense capability to protect all NATO European populations, territory and forces, and invited Russia to cooperate with us …”

The U.S. is moving forward with phase one of the four step Phased Adaptive Approach (PAA), their contribution to European missile defense. The U.S. Navy’s Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system is the foundation and primary capability of the European PAA.

Text of the paper is included after the break. A formatted version of the paper can be found here.

MDAA Alert: Transparency and Accountability

Dear Members and Friends,

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is the government agency that investigates, audits and evaluates programs for the United States Congress. Its mission is to support Congress in meeting its constitutional responsibilities, provide accountability and help improve the performance of the federal government for the American people. The GAO has recently released its report on missile defense for the past fiscal year.