April 30, 2009 -- An influential Pentagon advisory board is recommending a $14 billion initiative to field a set of new capabilities designed to give the president options for how to quickly strike a fleeting target that presents a strategic threat to the nation, long considered a vexing national security challenge.
A Defense Science Board task force, in a report made public today, recommends new investments to field a covert, loitering strike system that -- when paired with intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems as well as new identification and technology -- could be used as a deterrent for both terrorist organizations and more traditional enemies.
The 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review called for the military services to develop a wider range of conventional and non-kinetic deterrent options, calling on the Navy to convert a small number of Trident submarine-launched ballistic missiles to be used for conventional prompt global strike. Also, the Air Force this spring began design work on a Prompt Global Strike Payload Delivery Vehicle.
But the Pentagon's current focus on higher-warhead velocities is misplaced, the new report states, arguing that “the solution to 'time critical' strike is not necessarily weapon speed.
“In fact, weapon fly-out time is but one component of the entire response time to an event,” the task force argues in an unclassified summary of it report, dated March. Activities required to ensure confidence about the reliability of the target, the report argues, “can often dwarf the impact of weapon delivery time.”
Effective preplanning and exercising can reduce activities that can be time-consuming, such as strike planning and moving resources into position.
The task force examined five scenarios that were designed to embody “all of the driving issues associated with the remote rapid strike problem,” none of which exposed “a need for 'one hour, global range deliver.'”
Because U.S. forces are widely dispersed around the world, “intercontinental delivery is usually unnecessary,” the report argues.
Moreover, the task force finds that the “deployment of global range, conventional ballistic missiles capable of striking fixed coordinates will neither be a watershed capability for the U.S., nor it is likely to provide any lasting asymmetric capability for us.”
Instead, the panel recommends investment in capabilities that adversaries will have difficulty replicating “and that will provide multi-mission effectiveness against a wide range of situations, both fixed and transient.”
To that end, the task force recommends a capability not currently programmed by the Defense Department or the intelligence community, according to the report: “Covert, loitering strike systems enabled by robust target ISR, [identification] and tracking, [command, control communications] and fire control capabilities would revolutionize global strike for both the Long War and for deterrence of rogue and near-peer nations.”
The unclassified summary recommends $14 billion in spending but does not break out specific investment recommendations. It does note that $7 billion is necessary to “modernize certain aspects of the legacy force” -- improving the ability of munitions to hit targets with precision, for example, or improving capabilities to insert and extract special operations forces.
An additional $7 billion is required, according to the task force, to add new strike delivery platforms that “can penetrate hostile environment and rapidly strike relocatable or moving targets.” -- Jason Sherman
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