Q&A: Lieutenant General Patrick J. O'Reilly
Written by Marty Kauchak
MSMF 2009 Volume: 2 Issue: 5 (October)
Overseeing Efforts to Defend
Against Ballistic Missile Attacks
Lieutanant General Patrick J. O'Reilly
Director
Missile Defense Agency
O’Reilly is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy and has master’s degrees in physics, national security and strategic studies and business. O’Reilly is a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and Staff College, the U.S. Naval War College of Command and Staff, and the U.S. Army War College.
O’Reilly was interviewed in his Arlington, Va., office by MSMF Editor Marty Kauchak.
Q: Are American taxpayers receiving a fair return on investment on tax dollars appropriated for U.S. ballistic missile defense programs?
A: Yes, I believe they are. Not only because of the performance of the system that we have developed to date, but also when you take into consideration the value of what we are trying to protect. The cost of the infrastructure of a city runs into the hundreds of billions [of dollars] and to protect that infrastructure, and our economy, our way of life, and our friends and deployed forces is critical. That is the true value of what we bring—to allow our citizens to operate in an environment that they don’t have a fear of threats from ballistic missiles.
Q: On September 17, President Obama announced he is restructuring plans for a missile defense system in Europe. How will MDA support the administration’s new direction?
A: During the course of the missile defense review, MDA provided analysis and technical data to decision-makers. As announced by the president and the secretary of defense, the new missile defense program for Europe will be a more powerful and capable missile defense system that will deploy at least 72 proven SM-3 interceptors in the first phase of deployment versus the 10 interceptors originally planned. This architecture will accelerate protection by several years--instead of the 2018 timeframe planned for the original program, we will be able to do it several years earlier, in 2011. We will also enhance defense of the U.S. by leveraging sensors in Europe and protect our forward-based forces in Europe while covering all of NATO versus only central and northern Europe. This new architecture will be distributed with multiple sensor and command and control nodes, and at least two interceptor sites. This will provide significantly increasing reliability while reducing vulnerabilities. MDA will be at the forefront of managing the development and testing of advanced versions of the SM-3 with increased capability, including a land-based version, as well as advanced sensor development. MDA will also continue to develop and test the long-range ground-based interceptor now deployed in Alaska and California, including testing of the two-stage variant originally proposed for European deployment.
Q: Considering developments of earlier this summer, including missile launches from North Korea, is DoD able to protect the U.S. homeland from current rogue nation threats?
A: Protecting the United States is clearly our mission. We have capability that we have demonstrated three times in tests for a missile shot that was analogous to a launch out of North Korea and our interceptors being launched out of Fort Greely [Alaska].
Q: On the topic of Fort Greely, some members of Congress have the perception that DoD is investing in theater missile defense at the expense of long-range missile defense. Your thoughts, please.
A: That is not the case. We have a charter from the secretary of defense to enhance our theater missile defense and our homeland defense, and have a hedge against the future.
In the area of the homeland defense, the discussion has come up, “Why are we proposing 30 missiles and silos versus the previous program that was 44 [ground-based interceptors]?” It has to do with taking into account our mission for the long term—protecting the homeland against a rogue nation threat. To have 44 missiles for a very large raid size of nuclear-tipped ICBMs—I don’t believe fits the definition of a rogue nation threat to 2030 and beyond. However, 30 silos that are highly available with a high reliability, give our combatant commanders a significant capability against any rogue nation threat against the United States we see for the foreseeable future.
Q: What are MDA’s top three “must-have” priorities in the president’s FY10 defense budget submission?
A: We have three areas we have been asked to focus on. First of all is our development and procurement of our theater ballistic capabilities. We are in a position to triple the number of Aegis interceptors [SM-2 Block IV and SM-3 Block 1A] we were planning to buy in the previous program, and triple the number of THAAD interceptors. We will increase the number of THAAD units from four units that was in the previous plan, to six units.
Almost an equal priority is to increase the readiness of our Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system. It was originally built as a test bed. It has many limited-life components and missile silos that need to be upgraded. All of those are within the current budget.
The third capability is the hedge against the future threat. What we would like to develop is capability to intercept threat missiles very early in their flight. The number-one enabler is to have sensors that can observe missiles after they have completed powered flight—post-burnout. So, we are pursuing space-based technologies to do that, and we are very excited about using unattended air vehicles.
Q: On using UASs and UAVs in support of missile defense, please tell us your expectations for using these vehicles.
A: When you use multiple UAVs together you gain a very precise track of the ballistic missile that has been launched. We appear to have the capability—it appears to us—to track missiles after they have burned out. To have that in theater and to have the flexibility and the relatively low operational cost of sustaining UAVs has made them extremely attractive.
Q: And your perspective on testing that has occurred to date with unattended vehicles?
A: Their normal mission gives the UAVs tremendous capability in order to meet those mission requirements. We have extrapolated those capabilities to our sensor accuracy and sensitivity needs, and they align with our requirements very closely. We have actually observed ballistic missile launches and intercepts using UAVs, and we’re very pleased with the post-flight reconstruction of that capability. We continue to test them at their sensor capability limit, and the results are extremely promising.
Q: Were those UAV tests with U.S. or foreign launched missiles?
A: Those were with U.S. missiles on U.S. Navy missions.
Q: Are you satisfied with the FY10 funding requested for MDA?
A: I was not given a budget limitation to work to. We were asked to meet the mission requirements I stated earlier—theater threats, homeland defense and a hedge against the future. We developed that requirement, and we were fully supported in what we saw was the requirement. There was a budget reduction, but there were several factors involved.. We terminated, at my recommendation, the Multiple Kill Vehicle program because it was focused on handling countermeasures after they had been deployed. Our interest is causing countermeasures to be deployed very early or even hitting missiles before they are released. The second termination was the Kinetic Energy Interceptor program. This was primarily terminated because of the attributes of the system we were developing. Instead of attaining a high burnout velocity by developing a bigger booster, we are pursuing building lighter vehicles on the front end so that we have higher burnout velocity with existing booster stacks.
Q: Please explain how MDA is increasing the fidelity and rigor of testing for various elements of the ballistic missile defense system.
A: Starting in late 2008, we began collaboration with the operational test agencies for Army, Navy and Air Force and Director, Operational Test & Evaluation on our test program. A review occurred in three phases. Phase one was to look at what was the data required to validate our models and simulations for our five major components of our ballistic missile defense system: GMD, Aegis, THAAD, battle management command and control, and our sensors. We agreed upon a model and simulation framework and then we determined what were the data sets that were necessary to compare our actual test results to predicted results from simulations. The second phase was to design tests that collected that information. The third phase was to lay out the resources, target and infrastructure support in order to accomplish those tests.
We have just completed that work. The testing program runs primarily between now and 2016, and we have a few tests that go out to 2019. It is a much more robust flight testing approach, with it a complementary ground test program, hardware-in-the-loop, and simulation verification.
Q: Please highlight how the Missile Defense Executive Board [MDEB] is changing the way MDA and other DoD offices conduct business across their portfolios.
A: It is an absolutely great forum and model to gain the guidance, oversight, resolve issues, and propose programs and so forth. It is chaired by the under secretary of defense, acquisition, technology and logistics, and has significant senior representation from three major processes that deliver military capability. The comptroller represents the planning, budgeting and programming process with program analysis and evaluation. We also have the joint chiefs representing the requirements process. The missile defense area is led by USSTRATCOM with participation of all of the combatant commanders and the services to provide a missile defense capability and prioritization process. And, finally, we have the acquisition process represented.
The service secretaries attend. It’s [also] a very senior forum for foreign policy—with the Department of State—because we have so much international collaboration in the nature of missile defense.
Q: We’re aware the MDEB met this morning. Please discuss several agenda issues to help us better understand the board’s workings.
A: We proposed the test program and the funding and resources required to execute that test program. We also reviewed the early intercept capability that we are pursuing—what technologies are involved and the scope of the efforts. It’s primarily a three-phase effort. Between now and 2012, we are going to demonstrate a significant capability. In compliance with the Weapons Acquisition Reform Act that was recently signed by the president, we are focusing on demonstrating prototype capability now, and then make a decision on the further development of it once we have better knowledge of cost, schedule and performance factors. Finally there will be a deployment phase.
Q: How is MDA intensifying its focus to intercept threat missiles early in their flight, in particular with ABL being returned to a technology demonstration project?
A: We are about to commence flight testing of the first airborne laser prototype to shoot down missiles during the next several months. The purpose of that was as a research and development platform [Tail #1]. We have learned so much from development of the first ABL that the engineers from the program themselves would want to go into a redesign phase before they would even begin to build a second one. It is well-suited to be a research and development platform, and that’s what we want to continue. This capability is so revolutionary that we must explore all of its capabilities and limitations so we can make an informed decision about a follow-on capability.
Q: As MDA continues to pursue ABL, might another ABL test bed in three to five years resemble Tail #1?
A: I would hope we would have learned enough to be able to have this capability on a smaller aircraft in the future and perhaps one that is within our inventory. That would give us tremendous logistical advantages. But again as a research platform, it [Tail #1] hasn’t completed its first test yet. We would like to make informed decisions in the future, and we have placed ourselves in a position where I believe we can.
Q: Please provide an overview of MDA’s planned FY10 cooperative missile defense efforts with allied and friendly nations.
A: First of all, we are continuing our development effort of an SM-3 IIA interceptor—next generation Aegis—with the Japanese. Second, we have our ongoing operational capability with our sensors such as Fylingdales in the U.K. that the Royal Air Force operates. And we have development efforts with the Israelis, including their David’s Sling program, their Arrow [II] program, and their Arrow III, which is their next-generation interceptor. We have 21 other countries involved in one way or another, either in analysis or developing planning, or producing products for us.
Q: Discuss the ballistic missile defense community’s top three technology challenges that you need industry and the academic community’s help to solve.
A: First would be remote sensing—all different media. Second of all would be very fast completion of fire control solutions—basically to launch interceptors. Third would be the development of lightweight kill vehicle interceptor payloads.
Q: Is there an order of magnitude for which you would like to improve fire control solutions?
A: One of our key measures of performance is the timeline from the moment a threat missile is launched to when we intercept it. We would like to reduce that time as [much] as possible. In the past we have been focusing on faster interceptors. But when you look at the rest of the architecture—very fast sensor tracking, communicating very securely and quickly, and developing very fast fire control solutions— we attain much greater capability than just having a faster interceptor. So, we are looking at architectural solutions. ♦