|
Date:
March 1, 2007
Lieutenant General Henry A. "Trey" Obering III, Director Missile
Defense Agency, briefing in Brussels, Belgium
LTG OBERING: I have just a few slides that
would I think provide good context for what I’m describing and it will
obviously spark some questions on your part so I’d like to go through
those if they’re available and ready.
[Discussion about slides.]
I’ll tell you what, let me start and then when they
catch up we’ll do that.
Why are we doing this? Obvious question. Why are
we doing this? It’s very straightforward.
First of all we have seen an evolving threat from
ballistic missiles that has occurred over the last several years,
primarily focused from North Korea and from Iran. Those are the two
countries that we are the most concerned about. And we have seen a very
aggressive program, particularly on the part of Iran, in a ballistic
missile defense development as well as a flight test program.
Unfortunately, missile defense is such that you cannot wait until a
country has exhibited this capability and then start to do something
about it because it’s way too late at that point. It takes time to
build these missile defenses. It takes time to develop this
capability. So we think it’s prudent to try to stay ahead of this
threat. Let me give you an example.
Back in 1998 there were many experts around the
world that said that the North Koreans were years away from developing
any missile that could have any type of range at all, other than just
short range missiles. The next month they launched the Taepo Dong I and
demonstrated all of the key technologies for an ICBM. That is staging,
being able to control a missile through staging, and the type of
guidance that you need to be able to do that. So it surprised us and
surprised most of the experts around the world.
We know there’s been ongoing collaboration between
North Korea and Iran. We know that. And so it’s hard to predict. When
somebody states well, there’s not a threat today from Iran, that is
correct. There is not a threat to the majority of European nations or
to the United States from Iran today. Can that change tomorrow? Yes.
Is it going to change in the near future? You can almost count on it
based on what we see happening in that country and what they themselves
are stating in terms of being able to establish a space launch
capability and they demonstrate all of the building blocks that you need
for an intercontinental ballistic missile as well.
The United States has been developing and is now
fielding a ballistic missile system that is not just a single component
system. You don’t have just one interceptor and one sensor. We have a
multiple layer of capabilities that is focused on North Korea. That’s
where we initially were concerned about, and we work very closely with
our allies in Japan to take steps to move against that. That’s what we
have been doing since 2004 when we began the initial deployments of
interceptors in Alaska and in California. We placed a radar capable of
tracking both long range as well as short range missiles in Japan. They
were gracious enough to host that for the United States, and to provide
security for themselves as well.
We have modified ten Aegis ships to be able to
provide tracking capability against ballistic missiles. I'm sorry, 16
of those ships. Seven of those are also capable of launching a
sea-based interceptor which can handle the shorter range missiles but
not the very long range missiles.
We have 14 interceptors today in Alaska. We have
two in California, for a total of 16, to be able to address the long
range threat. That again is primarily concern from North Korea.
We’ve modified a radar in Alaska. We’ve modified a
radar in California to do the tracking as well, and we have put command
and control suites in Hawaii, in Colorado, in Nebraska, in Washington
and in Alaska.
We have a very powerful sea-based radar, we call it
the Sea-Based X-Band Radar. That has been successfully transited from
Hawaii up to Alaska. It had a very successful move and we tracked,
during the move, tracked satellites. It encountered some very harsh
conditions and it performed beautifully in those harsh conditions so
we’re very pleased with that.
Now we’re turning our attention, and the reason
we’re here is we’re turning our attention to the Iranian threat that we
see proceeding. The first step in that, of course, is to modify the
radar in Fatingdales, United Kingdom, which we have been doing for
several years and are in the final stages of testing that and
integrating that into a system. And we are beginning work on a radar in
Thule, Greenland with the help of the Danish government and the home
rule government there that has been very cooperative in that work.
But that does not help the Europeans because that
protects the United States but it does not offer protection to the
Europeans. To do that we have to place interceptors in the European
region because of range needed by the interceptors. We also need to
place a radar here because we need more precise tracking information
than we can get to provide the coverage area that we have for that.
So the primary purpose of this site is to extend
our coverage to our European allies and our friends and at the same time
it does provide redundant coverage to the United States, not all of the
United States but a portion of the United States. So we consider this
to be a win/win situation when you have the overlap of U.S. interest and
our allies’ interest in the same vein.
You have heard and it’s been reported that the
system doesn’t work. I am telling you that is outdated and ill-informed
information.
If you look back, let me explain our test program.
First of all, we have now had 24 successful hit to kill intercepts since
2001. Twenty-four. That is with our short range, our medium range, and
the long range system.
With the long range system we had successful
intercepts, four of five attempts in 2000 and 2001. That’s why -- It
was so successful, by the way, that we decided to stop that test program
and to go into what we call the operational configuration of the
vehicle. We had a prototype of the kill vehicle we were flying that was
very successful and we had a booster that we used for the test program
only. We decided to stop that program because it was so successful, and
go into the operational configuration. That means to take the kill
vehicle and make it more producible, more manufacturable, and to put it
on a more powerful booster.
We flew that booster in 2003 successfully. Then we
put that together and began to deploy those because of the urgency that
we saw emerging from North Korea, and thank God we did because last
summer what we saw happening was the North Korean activities, and we
actually had a system that we could turn on that I can tell you with
confidence we believe would have been able to protect the United States
from that threat.
Since that time we’ve now conducted 14 or 16 tests
successfully in the last, since the last 12 to 14 months, and that
includes a period last summer in which we had a successful Patriot test
in the low atmosphere, a successful intercept in the upper atmosphere by
our Terminal High Altitude Area Defense or THAAD system, with our
sea-based system in space and with the long range interceptor in space
as well. That was all done in a 90 day period.
The test that we conducted on the 1st of
September was as close as you can get to realistic in terms of we
launched a target out of Kodiak, Alaska; we launched an interceptor out
of Vandenberg. That was an operational interceptor, it was an
operational radar that we flew across California at Beale. We used
operational fire control software and hardware. We had soldiers manning
all the positions on the console and we affected the intercept.
So this system does work and what we are doing is
just doing it differently. We are testing as we need to and move along,
and we are continuing to expand and improve it over time.
If I look at the key components for a European
[system] there are three. We are planning to put up to ten interceptors
in a missile field in Poland, and that is the request that we made with
the Polish government that we are starting to begin discussions with.
Let me give you an idea of size. You could put all ten of these
interceptors in a soccer field, in a football field. So that gives you
an idea of the size of this.
The radar that we proposed to put in the Czech
Republic is currently operating, or has been operating in the South
Pacific in the Quadulane Islands and it has been operating successfully
for many years. What we’re going to do is dismantle that radar, we’re
going to refurbish it and upgrade the components and the processors, et
cetera, and then we will move that into the Czech Republic.
The final piece of it is a radar that is very
similar if not exactly identical to the radar we’ve deployed in Japan
that we would propose be moved closer forward into the Caucasus region .
That would give us an early acquisition track to pass that into the
system so that the radar in the Czech Republic could pick that up, could
focus in and do much more precise tracking and then pass that
information off to the interceptor field.
So we see this as a major step in protection in
establishing a stronger security environment for Europe, for our
European allies. That’s the purpose of my trip here this week is to
explain this system. I briefed the NATO Council, the North Atlantic
Council back in November. I briefed the NATO-Russia Council back in
November. I have briefed the NATO-Russia Council this week. And I have
continued to have discussions with many of our partners and allies to
answer their questions and to explain more and more of the system so
that we can try to dissipate some of the misinformation that’s been out
there recently.
Let me show you just a couple of things then we’ll
answer questions.
I’ve covered most of this. One thing I want to
note. When we signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 1972 with the
Soviet Union there were only eight countries around the world that had
ballistic missiles or their technologies and most of those countries
were friendly to the United States and were allies. Today that number’s
grown to more than 20 and many of those countries are hostile to the
United States or our allies. So when we were in the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union this proliferation was going on
around the world and nations such as North Korea and Iran were building
up their capabilities, so we had to do something to address that.
I’ve talked about the rogue nations being North
Korea and Iran that we’re worried about. One key point here is that
they don’t have to even use these missiles for them to be effective. If
they can take these missiles and threaten our allies and try to hold
nations hostage or cities hostage, they can change geopolitical interest
and geopolitical relationships. So we have to be able to take that
away. We want to make sure that if they threaten the use of these
missiles there’s a concrete step we can take to prevent them from using
that threat in an effective manner. We have seen the North Koreans
proliferate these missiles, both the North Koreans and the Iranians, and
in the case of the Iranians, to non-state actors as well.
Next slide, please.
We’ve had surprises in the past. Many of you know
this. One thing I want to point out here is what was really, I think
one of the big lessons learned from September 11th, it was a
terrible tragedy and loss of life but what that showed more than
anything was the will of a group of people to slaughter thousands of
innocent people. That is something that means they will try to achieve
whatever means they can at their disposal to achieve that. So I think
that was the big take-away from September 11th.
Of course we saw the Taepo Dong one that I
mentioned in 1998, the North Korean missile launches last summer.
We saw what happened in Lebanon, in Israel this
summer when you had a nation like Israel that was unprepared for those
rocket attacks. There were thousands of rockets launched into northern
Israel and a very effective Israeli Defense Force could not do anything
about that. Once those rockets were launched they were launched and
they made impact. So that’s an example of what happens when nations are
not prepared for the threats they may face. What we don’t want to
happen is for that to happen on a European scale and not be prepared for
that threat.
Next slide.
These are some of the ranges of missiles coming out
of Iran. In many cases with demonstrated flight capabilities like the
Shahab-3 that they’ve demonstrated in a video. They can already reach
some of our NATO partners. We know they’re looking for a space-launched
vehicle for the future. And the consensus of most of the intelligence
community is they’re going to have something before 2015 that could
threaten the United States or the farther reaches of Europe with a long
range, intermediate, or intercontinental ballistic missile capability.
Next slide.
This is a video taken right off of the Iranian
television. This shows the Shahab-1, short range ballistic missile being
launched. This is a Shahab-3, a medium range ballistic missile there.
The next one is a salvo launching of their Zilza class missiles, short
range missiles. And from obviously a different perspective. They are
clearly interested in continuing this development and expanding this
development
Next slide.
This is the policy and the direction and the
mission that I’ve been given. Again, this goes back to 2002. It says,
“Missile defense cooperation will be a key feature of our relations with
our close and long-standing allies and it will protect not only the
United States and our deployed forces but our friends and allies.” That
was taken directly from the direction that we got from the President.
And we’re to develop a single program that integrates and layers this
capability to again defend not just the United States and our deployed
forces but our allies and friends from ballistic missiles of all ranges
and in all phases of their flight.
Very quickly, the next slide.
This is the program of record. So we are building
capabilities. Whenever you have an enemy missile launch it has three
distinct phases -- a boost phase, a mid-course phase, and a terminal
phase. Today, and I was asked this question by the Russians earlier, by
the Russian television. Today they said why don’t you put these
interceptors in Turkey or put these interceptors closer? We don’t have
that capability. I wish we did. But the only capabilities we have to
intercept in the boost phase are still in development. The airborne
laser we’re developing has been a successful program so far but that’s
years away from being available operationally. And a kinetic energy
interceptor is also years and years away from being available
operationally.
The two programs we do have, the ground-based
mid-course defense that we deployed to Alaska and California and the
Aegis sea-based, this is for the longer range threats. These are for
the shorter range threats. Are the ones capable of intercepting in the
mid course.
One other thing to note here, except for the very
short-range rockets that were fired, for example, at Israel last summer,
almost all other threat missiles, the Shahab-3 and others, this
mid-course segment is spent in space. It’s in outer space. So we have
to go up there to be able to intercept and defeat those missiles.
The Patriot capability, the PAC-3 and the THAAD,
the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense that I’ve talked about. This
operates in the low atmosphere, this operates in the upper atmosphere.
These operate in space, as I said. So you see how we layer this
capability. These again address the shorter range threats. The only
capability we have today against the long range threats are the
interceptors that we would propose to put in Poland, for example.
All of these are supported by a family of radars
and sensors, upgrading existing radars as well as developing new ones.
That’s our program.
Next slide.
This is a very complicated slide. All I want to do
is tell you this. This is what we mean by integration. We’re taking
forward deployed radars and tying them into the system such as in this
case the ground-based mid-course in Alaska. We’re doing the same thing
by being able to tie forward deployed radars into ship-based
interceptors. So what this does it expands the detection and the
engagement capabilities of these systems. So instead of just developing
a loose formation of programs we’re actually developing the ability to
tie all of these together to give us an integrated capability. We think
this is necessary to defeat a possible attack, for example, from North
Korea that could be launching short-range missiles, medium range
missiles and long range missiles all at the same time and we’d have to
be able to defeat those.
Next slide.
This is the system today. I walked through all of
this with you just a few minutes ago. We’ve been very aggressive in
trying to roll this out because we do believe there’s an urgency to the
threat. We began this in the summer of ’04 in putting the first
interceptor in the ground in Alaska and beginning the first modification
of the ships, and we will continue to move this out to the point where
we have 24 interceptors by the end of this year and about 21 of the
sea-based interceptors to support the overall system.
Next slide.
These are just some photographs. This is Fort
Greely, Alaska. This is an interceptor similar to the ones that would
go in the ground in Poland. This is about 60 feet long, about 56 inches
wide. This is the control facility there at Fort Greely.
This is a good shot of the interceptor. That’s
another thing. These are not threatening missiles. These are not
offensive missiles. These are defensive missiles. There’s no
explosives on these missiles. There’s no warhead on these missiles.
What the kill vehicle consists of is about right here forward. If you
see that, just past the white tanks. This is basically seeker and
propellant tanks. That’s it. That’s all there is to it. That’s all it
needs to be. Because when we actually hit these warheads we’re
colliding at speeds of up to eight to ten kilometers a second or higher
so it totally destroys this.
You’ll see in some of the video clips the warhead.
It stands about, the kill vehicle itself stands about that high. It’s
about that big around. It’s not very big.
One other point, it’s not designed to reenter the
atmosphere. So if for some reason you miss, most of that burns up in
re-entering the atmosphere. It’s not designed for reentry like the
shuttle is.
Next slide.
This is our Aegis destroyers that we’ve modified
for engagement and track. There’s an example of one of the cruisers.
In this case that’s a Shiloh firing one of the missiles in our test
flight and you’ll see that.
Next slide.
This is the radar that we’ve located in Japan.
This was a snapshot taken in California while it was being tested.
That’s a snapshot taken in Japan on the ground there. Again, we’ve been
very pleased with the cooperation of our Japanese allies and partners.
By the way, they are investing more than a billion
dollars a year in missile defense because they also see the urgency,
being as close as they are to North Korea and seeing what the North
Koreans have been doing.
Next slide.
These are the radars in [Culperdane], Alaska;
Beale, California; Bollingdale, United Kingdom; and Thule, Greenland.
Again, some of the existing radars that we are modifying and upgrading.
Next slide.
This is the sea-based X-Band radar I talked about.
To give you an example of size, this is a self-propelled platform. It
has two pontoons that are self propelled. Each one of these pontoons is
the size of a Trident submarine. That’s how big it is. It’s 30 stories
high. The radar itself, as you see here, weighs 4.5 million pounds.
This is when it’s underway. It operates at about
the speed of a World War II submarine. This is when it’s ballasted down
in position, for example, and partially submerged.
To give you an idea of the sensitivity of this
radar, it operates out of Alaska and we can move it around. In fact
it’s being moved now from Alaska down to off the coast of California.
But if we were to put this in the Thames River we could track and
discriminate a baseball size object over Tehran. That’s the type of
power that we think we need when we start looking to the future with
respect to complex threats that could be coming out of North Korea or
Iran.
Next slide.
Our test program. I’ve talked about the four of
five long-range intercepts that we did in 2000, 2001 timeframe. We had
three successful Aegis. We had one of two Aegis short-range intercepts
in that timeframe. We had one failure. And we learned from that. We
now have repeated many many successes since then.
We had successful Patriot intercepts during Iraqi
Freedom and we had the long-range booster launches that were failures
back in December of ’04 and February of ’05, were nothing but technical
glitches. So when you talk about a glitch-plagued program, all it meant
was those two launches were failures because of very simple problems
that we went to fix that had, in one case, has nothing to do with the
operational configuration of the booster. It had to do with a test
configuration of the actual silo. We’re beyond that now. We’ve had
successful launches since then, and as I said, the successful intercept.
Next slide.
I said 14 of 15. The one no-test we had was a
failure of a target in one of our THAAD tests. It was not a failure of
the interceptor.
Coming up, and also this past year we’ve had, in
November of ’05 and June of ’06 we had successful intercepts with
Aegis. We had successful intercepts with THAAD in July and January, and
successful intercepts of the long-range system in September. We’ve got
a total of nine tests coming up in 2007 to include two more intercept
tests of the long-range system and as I said, 24 successful hit to kills
in 2001.
Let me show you some of those. This is the PAC-3
test in ’05, September of ’05. Here you’ll see a ripple fire of the
interceptors. This is a unit that’s out at White Sands, New Mexico. We
used soldiers as part of this, they’re part of the test. They control
and operate the machinery. There’s the radar face and the launch tube.
Next you’ll see the fly-out of the interceptor from
the tubes. There’s the first launch and there’s the second launch.
Then you’ll see both of the interceptors at target.
Over the desert floor. We like the desert floor
because we can recover pieces, we can measure pieces, see what has been
the result of that. There’s a target, there’s the intercept. And
there’s another perspective here of the target and the intercept.
The next one is our Aegis sea-based. This one’s a
little harder to see, but this is -- In this case what we do is we
actually are able to see what the kill vehicle is seeing. So we can
look out the kill vehicle and we can see as it’s coming in where exactly
it hits the target. In this case it was a separating target meaning
there was a warhead that separate from the booster and we went after the
warhead. You’ll see that.
Go ahead.
First of all you’ll see the target launch from
Hawaii. This is a medium-ranged target that we launched from Hawaii.
It’s a little grainy, I apologize for that. This is the camera mounted
on the target looking aft. We also use infrared so we can measure what
we call the chuffing of the propeller.
Here’s the interceptor coming out of the ship and
you’ll see a break-away, far-away shot of the ship, of the intercept
being launched from the Shiloh. We had third stage rocket motor pulsing
here. It’s jus a way that we can adjust the pulse that we need.
Here’s the RV, the reentry vehicle, and the kinetic
warhead. There’s the intercept. Again, there’s no explosives in this
at all. That’s all pure kinetic energy. There’s the destruction of the
target.
Now what you’re going to see is what I just said.
The kill vehicle is going to get the target here, bring it into the
center of the seeker. So we’re seeing what the kill vehicle is seeing
in real time, and I’ll tell you, there’s got to be a better way to make
a living because that would drive you crazy in the middle of the control
room as you’re watching this in real time in terms of the testing. That
is the warhead. In this case it was spinning as we were closing in on
the target.
It takes a little while to develop here but you can
see, you can get an evaluation for how far away we acquire the target as
we are driving the interceptor into it. It’s a little fuzzy, but you
can see the warhead just before we hit it.
Next.
This next one, this is a THAAD. This is at White
Sands. This was done in Hawaii, the first time we had taken this system
to Hawaii. The first thing you’ll see here is a snapshot of what the
interceptor looked like. There’s the interceptor launch from the tube.
Next you’ll see a high speed, slow motion. There’s the interceptor
exiting the tube. This operates in the upper reaches of the atmosphere
as well as just outside. Here’s a far-away shot coming off the beach
there in Hawaii, going up for the target.
The next thing you’ll see, you see a camera from
the ground that’s focused on the kill vehicle, so you’ll see the rocket
firings from the kill vehicle that’s making the adjustments just before
the intercept. The target’s going to be coming in from the left hand
side. It was a SCUD-like target for this intercept test and you’ll be
able to clearly see that.
There’s the kill vehicle. You can see the rocket
firings and it’s making the adjustment just before the intercept.
There’s the target coming in. This was an offset angle kill. Again the
infrared, you can see the energy released from this kill.
Next.
Last but not least, this is the long-range test
that we did in September. This is an example of what we hope to put in
the ground in Poland.
Here’s the target launched form Hawaii, a very
threat realistic target in terms of times of flight, altitude and
velocity of the target. Next you’ll see California, an interceptor
coming out of the silo. There’s the silo. We have clam shell doors
over the silo just like we have in Alaska. You’ll see the exit of the
interceptor from the silo. For those of you that have been to
California in this time of year, September, right into a fog bank.
We pick it up above the fog bank with a high flying
aircraft. You begin to see this pick up. The next thing you’ll see is
the staging of the booster.
This occurs very very high in space in terms of the
intercept and that’s important because the higher you can get these
warheads you minimize any affects on the ground. That’s why it’s
important to have also a long-range interceptor that’s capable of doing
that.
The terminal phase is okay when you’re talking
about deployed forces and you’re talking about a last chance effort, but
what you want to do, there’s the staging of the first stage. You want
to get it as high as you can and get it as far forward as you possibly
can.
Next you’ll see we have a Gulfstream-5 flying at
45,000 feet to show the intercept. The first perspective is the normal
perspective through the camera on that aircraft. So you’ll see an arrow
come up. You look at the arrow, you’ll see the intercept there. WE
also have a closeup of that that we show first of all in real time.
There’s the in real time, and the destruction, and then we show it again
in slow motion.
Next slide, please.
This is where we’re headed for 2011. Forty-four
interceptors in the United States. By that time we’ll have hopefully
three of the ten interceptors in place in Europe. We will have moved in
place the X-Band radar in the Czech Republic. We’ll be filling out more
of our shorter range defenses with the Aegis destroyers and the THAAD
system along with a Navy sea-based terminal capability that gives you a
very small footprint but protects the fleet. Then we’ll have three more
radars available like the one we have in Japan for deployment.
Next slide.
As I said, we do not have the capability for
long-range protection of the European theater. That’s why we’re moving
here. That’s why it’s important. And as I said, the lead times for
doing this are significant. So we can’t wait until Iran shows the
capability, we have to do it before time otherwise we’ll be caught
unprotected.
Next slide.
These are the elements of a European defense as I
mentioned to you before.
Next slide.
This is the coverage that that would provide. Like
I said, we can cover the United States without this. What this does is
it adds this layer of protection. For those countries here that would
not be protected against Iran, they’re too close for a long-range threat
missile anyway. So you can handle those threats with a Patriot or a
sea-based Aegis or something like that, or something NATO may develop as
part of their active layered theater ballistic missile defense program.
So it shows you how this can layer together between the long-range
protection and the shorter-range protection for those nations.
Next slide.
I think I’ve talked about why Poland and the Czech
Republic. What we did is we took a look at all possible trajectories
from Iran into Europe and from Iran into the United States. We went
through an analysis that said what would give us the best radar
coverage, what would give us the best interceptor coverage of those
trajectories, and that’s how we came up with Poland and the Czech
Republic. It was an analysis based on the physics and the geography.
The Russian reaction and engagement. We were very
surprised by the Russian reaction because we have been engaged with them
for over a year in this. We told them of our plans to do this and I
can’t speculate on their thinking or their motives, but I can tell you
that we did engage with them over a year ago. I have personally been to
Moscow and talked to General Baluyevsky their
Chief of General Staff, and I’ve talked to Defense Minister Ivanov. We
will continue those discussions. I will go back hopefully in the coming
months. We are scheduling additional meetings that were going to follow
through with. We want to be very open and transparent.
We have told the
Russians that they have a standing invitation to any of our missile
defense sites in Alaska, in California. They’re more than welcome to
come see that and see for themselves what we’re doing.
Another topic we get a
lot of is debris. Wait a minute. You’re going to be raining debris
down on Europe just to protect the United States. That is absolutely
wrong.
First of all, as I said
before, we can protect the United States without having these
installations. But let me give you an example of why you might want to
think about having a protection here.
Let’s assume we don’t
have a missile defense site. Let’s assume we don’t do that. Let’s
assume that Europe opts out, they don’t want this. They don’t want to
be involved in United States relations. And God forbid, let’s say that
there is a conflict that develops between Iran and the United States and
Iran starts launching missiles at the United States. You know what?
Not all those missiles are going to make it to the United States. That’s
one of the other lessons learned from the experience last summer. A
certain percentage of those rockets fired at Israel fell way short.
You’re going to have the same thing happen here. You could have missile
falling on European territory or on Russian territory for that matter
that were not intended to fall there and you can’t do anything about it
so you have to just suffer the impact of that warhead on your
territory. That’s not a good position to be in.
You should have the
ability to protect yourself even against an accidental or a failure of a
missile that is intended for somebody else. So we think it’s prudent to
go ahead and build this.
In terms of debris, you
saw some of the videos. We know from the very precise radars that we use
in some of our testing, what we call the range radars, that very very
small pieces are left out of these interceptors. Very small. The
probability of any casualty on the ground from these intercepts is very
low. It’s like one in a thousand to one in 2.4 million, depending on
the population density in the area of where the debris may come down in,
and it is a very small footprint, only tiny dots in terms of that
coverage. So debris is not a major issue with respect to these
intercepts. What is more of an issue is if you have a warhead impact
you’re going to have thousands of lives lost potentially and billions if
not trillions of dollars in terms of damage. That’s what we’re concerned
about.
I’ve gotten asked about
the relationship between NATO and the missile defense efforts. We
thought it would be prudent to move out on this because we have been
given the direction of the mission to do so. In the classic sense we
know that NATO member nations always, or historically, have developed
the physical capability and contributed that to a NATO response or a
NATO capability. This could be viewed as a U.S., a Polish and a Czech
Republic contribution to a missile defense capability for NATO in
general and it certainly complements what could be coming out of a NATO
missile defense program on its own.
Finally, we have seen
tremendous international involvement in missile defense. We co-host a
conference, an international conference every year. We’ve been doing
this for the past 14 or 15 years. It’s been hosted in Japan, it’s been
hosted in Germany, in England, Italy, et cetera, and in the
Netherlands. We have seen a tremendous up-turn in interest. We have
seen, for example the last conference that we held in London there were
more than 1,000 delegates to the conference from more than 24
countries. We’re getting a very broad spectrum of interest.
Next slide.
This gives you an
example. We have agreements that we signed with framework partners
here. All of these we have existing agreements in place, what we call a
framework memorandum of understanding that we’re moving out on. We have
continuing activity with the Israelis, with the Germans, with the
Netherlands and with NATO. We supply, the U.S. supplies the program
management for the active layer, theater missile defense. We provide
the Deputy Program Manager to that office. We also provide some of the
oversight personnel that are involved in the committee that manages
that.
We have new relations
with Spain, Poland, the Czech Republic obviously. Ukraine, India. We
have an ongoing theater missile defense exercise program with Russia.
We’re exploring interest with France with respect to some type of
potential collaboration there.
So we have a strong
international interest in what we’re doing and I think people around the
world increasingly, governments around the world are increasingly
understanding that we do need this.
That’s it, I think.
My summary slide. I
think I’ve said most of that.
I’d be happy to answer
any questions that you may have.
|
