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Obering would welcome missile defense race

A key American general said Wednesday the U.S. should not shy from a global “missile defense race,” because the shield Washington is pursuing — composed of sophisticated interceptors, radars and satellites — will be difficult to penetrate.

In fact, Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, head of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), told Senate appropriators that because “access is easier” to certain kinds of offensive missile systems, “there is already a missile race spreading across the world.”

Still, he told the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, the kind of “layered” missile defense apparatus being pursued by the U.S. military, the Bush administration and key allies should deter potential enemies from building large arsenals of offensive missiles.

During a hearing on the agency’s 2009 budget request, Obering told the appropriators that if Washington, its NATO allies and countries like Russia band together to develop and field missile shields around the globe, hostile regimes in Tehran and Pyongyang “will think twice about [fielding] offensive missiles … because history shows” such defensive systems “are hard to defeat.”

Obering’s confidence comes as Pentagon and administration officials continue talks with European allies and Warsaw as they attempt to reach a pact over a proposal to place about a dozen missile interceptors on Polish soil. Washington already has secured a preliminary deal with the Czech Republic to place an advanced radar suite there.

The negotiations with Polish officials paused earlier this year when a new government took over in Warsaw and quickly made clear that more American military and security assistance would be needed before the new government would agree to host the interceptors. U.S. officials in recent weeks have sounded upbeat about the prospects of inking a deal soon with the Poles, a feeling reaffirmed by Obering.

He told the Senate appropriators he is “optimistic” an accord will be struck “by the end of the year.” Such a move, Obering told Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, the subcommittee’s ranking member, would allow MDA to begin the competition for the European shield work.

The agency’s goal is to select a prime contractor soon enough to begin construction in Europe “by the end of next year,” he said.

In the meantime, during questioning about the Pentagon’s missile defense budget plan, Obering said the Airborne Laser (ABL) effort, which aims to install a laser weapon on board a Boeing 747 jet, is on pace for a missile shoot-down test in the middle of 2009.

From there, he said, agency officials plan to take lessons learned and apply them during a subsequent “transition period,” during which “we will try to figure out how to make the third and fourth planes as affordable as possible.”

Some critics of the program have said the operational costs for the production versions of the ABL jets could prove astronomical.

As the ABL program moves forward, Army Lt. Gen. Kevin Campbell, chief of the Army Space and Missile Defense and Army Strategic Forces commands, said the ground force is talking with Air Force officials about the latter’s Advanced Hypersonic Weapon (AHW) effort. The two services are deliberating on how certain AHW technologies might fit into the Air Force’s Prompt Global Strike program, which aims to field a next-generation weapon capable of striking fleeting targets around the globe faster than today’s munitions, Campbell said.

In addition, MDA is working to double the size of its planned SM-3 missile fleet over the next half-decade, said the Army three-star, who also heads U.S. Strategic Command’s Joint Functional Component Command for Integrated Missile Defense.

The Pentagon’s recently completed “Joint Capability Mix II Study” was intended to examine the cocktail of missile defense weapons and sensors to deal with threats in the 2015 time frame, according to an Army document. The assessment concluded more SM-3s would be needed, the document states.

Campbell said MDA will scatter the doubled SM-3 buy across the “out years” of the future years defense plan.

Key members of the defense appropriations subcommittee, including Chairman Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, indicated they intend to fund much of the agency’s 2009 budget blueprint. To that end, the handful of subcommittee members who attended asked no critical questions.