And speaking of RTN & the defense stocks...
Just saw this lengthy tid bit. Clock is ticking AND on the side of "Iso's guns n' gold strategy" for the new millennium!
vny.com
"Missile defense major winner in Pentagon budget
Wednesday, 27 June 2001 16:48 (ET)
Missile defense major winner in Pentagon budget
By PAMELA HESS
WASHINGTON, June 27 (UPI) -- The Pentagon plans to spend $7 billion on missile defense next year -- $2.3 billion more than is being spent in 2001 -- to begin work on a many-layered missile defense system that goes far beyond what was already planned.
"It is a very significant increase," Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim said Wednesday at a news conference to detail the budget.
Building a missile defense is one of President Bush's top priorities, and this budget is a major down payment on the project and an attempt to accelerate various programs and tie them together under a single, overarching plan.
"We want to see what works, what doesn't work, what the threat is and derive the best architecture from that, as opposed to each of these systems being independent of each other," said a senior official from the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.
Missile defense constitutes the largest single increase in the Defense Department's $329 billion budget request for 2002, a $34 billion boost over the 2001 budget.
The money will go toward building a new missile defense test facility in Alaska, to augment the one at Vandenberg AFB, Calif.; toward the development of a new, alternative booster rocket for a ground-based missile interceptor;
the development of a new, extremely fast ground or sea-based missile, designed to hit enemy rockets within the first minute of their flight; and accelerate and improve a variety of tests. All of this would be part of determining a new "architecture" for missile defense beyond the 100
ground-based interceptor missiles contemplated by the Clinton administration.
It does not fund the building of a powerful "X-band" radar in Alaska, a construction project that would be considered an outright violation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Missile defense systems can be classified in three ways, based on what stage of flight they attack their target: during the boost phase, in midcourse, or in the terminal stage, as it closes in on the United States.
The BMDO and each of the military services are working on several systems -- the Air Force's airborne laser and space-based laser for the boost phase; the Navy Theater Wide and the Theater High Altitude Area Defense System for midcourse attack; and the terminal phase ground-based interceptor system known in the last administration as "national missile defense." There are also theater, or local systems, such as the Navy Area Wide, and the Army's Patriot PAC III system, a successor to the Patriot system used with only limited success in the Persian Gulf War.
Under the new budget, those systems would get significant increases, according to a senior BMDO official:
PAC III and MEADS, an international version of PAC III, would get $858 million to buy 72 missiles, 32 more than were purchased last year. Navy Area Wide would get $395 million, a $98 million boost to keep it on schedule.
The airborne laser, a fleet of 747s outfitted with chemical lasers, would get $410 million, almost twice what was expected, in order to keep it on schedule to test in 2003 and deploy in 2008 or 2009. The space-based laser, still many years from being feasible, will get $165 million, which is $28 million more than initially estimated for next year.
BMDO also wants to build a lightning-fast new ground-based and sea-based missile to attack targets during the boost phase, a project to which it has devoted $110 million.
A new satellite constellation designed to track enemy missiles in space, SBIRS LOW, would get $420 million, a $113 increase over what was originally budgeted for this year, in an attempt to develop and purchase 27 satellites
in 2011, rather than the 21 satellites initially planned.
The Pentagon is adding $827 million to the ground-based system formerly known as NMD, bringing that total from $2.5 billion to $3.3 billion.
Much of that money will be put towards a new test facility in Alaska.
The Pentagon's NMD test program has been repeatedly criticized for not being realistic or tough enough to be meaningful. The pace of testing will be increased and a new test radar will be built at a "forward" location, rather than relying on the radar at Vandenberg, thousands of miles from where the actual radar would be located.
The new facility will also be able to launch both intercept missiles and target missiles to vary the direction from which targets would come, and BMDO is planning to build an "air launched" target to mimic an enemy missile aimed at Alaska. The work would be done around 2004 or 2005.
The money will also go toward finding a second contractor to build a new booster rocket for the interceptors. Boeing is 18 months or more behind in delivering the rocket to the military, forcing it to rely on old Minuteman boosters, which won't actually be used in the system.
BMDO is also seeking an alternative exo-atmospheric kinetic kill vehicle to compete with the one built by Raytheon, that has failed twice to hit its target in two separate $100 million tests. NMD lead integrator Boeing has an
alternative design which failed to win a design competition against Raytheon.
"We've already identified companies that could do the work," said a BMDO official.
The new kill vehicle -- the spacecraft that seeks out and slams into an enemy warhead at blistering speeds -- would not get started until 2003, according to BMDO.
The Army's THAAD midcourse system would get $923 million, an increase of $224 million over the planned budget, to accelerate testing and deploy it in 2005 or 2006, ahead of the 2007 planned date." |
