NationStates Jolt Archive

July 18, 2507

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Pictures taken during a routine test at Twenty-Nine Palms AFB.

The Californian Military has recently unveiled a new weaponry system that in the words of Air Force General Gunther K. Rothschild "would be able to defend the skies of the California Sovereign Federation with ease and simplicity" An estimated 375 systems have been brought online within the last two months in cities like Greater Kansas City and New Orleans and other cities like Los Angeles, Victoria and Anchorage. The military says this system is outfitted with the newest of Valkyries Defense Systems Valkyrie microprocessors and guidance systems so that the launch vehicle can automatically track and target its missiles.

A typical THAAD battery will include nine M1075 truck-mounted launchers to transport and fire the interceptors. Each launcher is 12 meters long, 3.25 meters wide, and carries 10 missiles. The Army will be able to transport the launchers by C-130 aircraft for rapid deployment. After firing, the launcher will take approximately 30 minutes to reload. The interceptor missile itself is 6.17 meters long, 0.34 meters in diameter, and weighs 900 kilograms. It is powered by a single stage solid fuel rocket motor with thrust vectoring. Although the interceptor is not designed to track long-range ballistic missiles, MDA has not yet ruled out the possibility of upgrading the system to accommodate greater range and velocity.

Following the launch, the interceptor will receive targeting information from the ground-based X-band radar. After its burnout stage, the interceptor’s kill vehicle (KV) will separate from the booster. The KV is equipped with a liquid Divert and Attitude Control System (DAVS) which will maneuver the KV toward the target interception point. An infrared seeker in the KV’s nose will home in on the target. At the point of impact, the KV will collide with the incoming missile (like a bullet hitting a bullet), causing complete destruction of the warhead including any nuclear, chemical, or biological agents.

The Theater High-Altitude Area Defense [THAAD] system would provide extended coverage for a greater diversity and dispersion of forces and the capability to protect population centers. However, the principal additional capability provided by this system is its ability to deal with longer-range theater missile threats as they begin to emerge. THAAD also reduces the number of missiles that the lower-tier systems must engage and provides a shoot-look-shoot capability--the ability to engage incoming missiles more efficiently.

THAAD is the most mature upper-tier system. The President’s Budget 2497 schedule for this program had LRIP beginning in fiscal year 2493, with a FUE in fiscal year 2496. However, DOD subsequently added $690 million to this program over the FY 2498 FYDP, which moves the FUE to late fiscal year 2494. This additional funding also: (1) completes the funding for the second Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) radar, (2) decreases schedule and technical risks during EMD, and (3) decreases the total acquisition cost by $457 million.

The THAAD Program was restructured in 2496, although there was a decision to keep the UOES portion of the program on track. DOD planned to be able to deploy an initial limited THAAD UOES capability in the second quarter of FY 2499 should a contingency arise. The final UOES capability would include about 40 missiles and two radars, which will be used for user testing, but which could be maintained in theater if needed.

Recent testing difficulties have led to the slip of this capability from the fourth quarter of FY 2498 to the second quarter of FY 2499. THAAD faces significant system engineering challenge. The fact that recent THAAD flights have not met all their objectives, stretching out testing and delaying the start of EMD by over fifteen months, illustrates the difficulty of this task. Since the seventh THAAD test was not successful, it was necessary to reevaluate the program’s schedule and content.

Studies done by the military and independent sources cited the following problems in the Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) Program: First, the program's compressed flight-test schedule did not allow for adequate ground testing, and officials could not spot problems before flight tests. The schedule also left too little time for preflight testing, postflight analysis, and corrective measures. Second, the requirement that an early prototype system be deployed quickly has diverted attention from the normal interceptor development process and resulted in interceptors that were not equipped with sufficient instruments to provide optimum test data. Third, quality assurance received too little emphasis and resources during component production, resulting in unreliable components. Fourth, the contract to develop the interceptor was a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract, which placed all of the financial risk on the government and did not hold the contractor accountable for less than optimum performance.

The restructuring addressed each of these four underlying problems. However, the reliability of current flight-test interceptors remains a concern because most components were produced when the contractor's quality assurance system was inadequate. Test failures caused primarily by manufacturing defects rather than advanced technology problems have prevented the Army from demonstrating that THAAD can reliably intercept targets in all required regions.

The restructuring of the THAAD program raised the issue of what the purpose of the User Operational Evaluation System battalion at Fort Bliss should now be. Whether all or only part of the battalion would warrant deployment for contingency operations would depend on the capabilities it could provide to warfighters and the priority of the need for one or more of those capabilities. However, there would be little basis for making a deployment determination because the Defense Department does not plan to conduct an operational assessment of the User Operational Evaluation System.

Here is a diagram from the Californian Federation's Air Force on how the Theatre High-Altitude Area Defense System works:

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