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2016-09-08
Time to push forward
Modernisation of Intercontinental Ballistic Missile System
The United States Defense Department has undertaken the first modernisation of the United States Intercontinental Ballistic Missile System (ICBM) in nearly 25 years, aiming to recapitalize the system to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
The ICBM has protected the nation against the possibility of nuclear attack by adversaries for six decades. Located on United States Air Force bases, missiles such as Atlas, Thor, Titan, Peacekeeper and Minuteman I, II and III have maintained a constant state of readiness as the ground-based leg of the nuclear triad.
Although the complex system has been updated and enhanced over the years, the critical parts are now coming to the end of their useful life.
The military’s current objective is to incorporate emerging strategic missile technologies into a follow-on system that will increase accuracy, security, nuclear safety and surety, reduce life cycle costs and modernize the infrastructure.
Following an analysis of alternatives, the government decided to develop a follow-on system called the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), for which timing is critical. Historic adversaries are continuing to modernize their strategic weapons; some emerging nations have acquired nuclear capabilities while others are actively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.
Nearly every element of the ICBM system will be modernized under the GBSD - new missiles, command and control, infrastructure and launch systems will be developed to bring improved capacity, accuracy, performance and affordability through 2075. Only the existing silos and re-entry vehicles will remain as is.
For the GBSD program, the Air Force plans to award up to two 36-month technology maturation and risk reduction contracts by the end of fiscal 2017. After downselecting to a single bidder, it would then deploy the ballistic missile system in the late 2020s.
The service envisions GBSD as an integrated system that includes launch and command and control capability. It also wants the system to be flexible and adaptable to future threats, as well as effective in an anti-access, area-denied (A2/AD) environment — a task the aging Minuteman III ICBMs have trouble standing up to.
The US Air Force is also moving ahead with two critical nuclear modernization programs, requesting for proposals for its intercontinental ballistic missile replacement and nuclear cruise missiles.
However, both programs have come under fire by critics who assert that the weapons are too costly, and they could add to global instability.
Recent reductions and current modernization programs
The Obama Administration completed a review of the size and structure of the US nuclear force, and a review of US nuclear employment policy, in June 2013.
This review has advised the force structure that the US will deploy under the New STAR Treaty, which is currently being implemented, with the reductions due to be completed by 2018.
Previously, during the Cold War, the US nuclear arsenal contained many types of delivery vehicles for nuclear weapons.
The longer-range systems, which included long-range missiles based on US territory, long-range missiles based on submarines, and heavy bombers that could threaten Soviet targets from their bases in the United States, are known as strategic nuclear delivery vehicles.
At the end of the Cold War, in 1991, the US deployed more than 10,000 warheads on these delivery vehicles. That number has declined to less than 1,600 warheads today, and is slated to decline to 1,550 warheads by 2018, after the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) completes implementation.
At the present time, the US land-based ballistic missile force (ICBMs) consists of 440 Minuteman III ICBMs, each deployed with one warhead. The fleet will decline to 400 deployed missiles, while retaining 450 launchers, to meet the terms of the New START.
The Air Force is also modernizing the Minuteman missiles, replacing and upgrading their rocket motors, guidance systems, and other components, so that they can remain in the force through 2030. It plans to replace the missiles with a new Ground-based Strategic Deterrent around 2030.
The US ballistic missile submarine fleet currently consists of 14 Trident submarines; each carries 24 Trident II (D-5) missiles. The Navy converted 4 of the original 18 Trident submarines to carry non-nuclear cruise missiles. The remaining carry around 1,000 warheads in total; that number will decline as the United States implements the New START.
The Navy has shifted the basing of the submarines, so that nine are deployed in the Pacific Ocean and five are in the Atlantic, to better cover targets in and around Asia. It also has undertaken efforts to extend the life of the missiles and warheads so that they and the submarines can remain in the fleet past 2020. It is designing a new submarine and will replace the existing fleet beginning in 2031.
The US fleet of heavy bombers includes 20 B-2 bombers and 76 B-52 bombers. The B-1 bomber is no longer equipped for nuclear missions. The fleet will decline to around 60 aircraft in coming years, as the United States implements New START.
The Air Force has also begun to retire the nuclear-armed cruise missiles carried by B-52 bombers, leaving only about half the B- 52 fleet equipped to carry nuclear weapons.
The US Air Force plans to procure both a new long-range bomber and a new cruise missile during the 2020s. DOE is also modifying and extending the life of the B61 bomb carried on B-2 bombers and fighter aircraft and the W80 warhead for cruise missiles.
Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) Peacekeeper (MX)
In the late 1980s, the United States deployed 50 Peacekeeper ICBMs, each with 10 warheads, at silos that had held Minuteman missiles at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming.
The 1993 START II Treaty would have banned multiple warhead ICBMs, so the United States would have had to eliminate these missiles while implementing the treaty.
Therefore, the Pentagon began planning for their elimination, and the Air Force added funds to its budget for this purpose in 1994.
However, beginning in FY1998, Congress prohibited the Clinton Administration from spending any money on the deactivation or retirement of these missiles until START II entered into force. The Bush Administration requested $14 million in FY2002 to begin the missiles’ retirement; Congress lifted the restriction and authorized the funding.
The Air Force began to deactivate the missiles in October 2002, and completed the process, having removed all the missiles from their silos, in September 2005.
The MK21 reentry vehicles and W87 warheads from these missiles have been placed in storage.
As is noted below, the Air Force plans to redeploy some of these warheads and reentry vehicles on Minuteman III missiles, under the Safety Enhanced Reentry Vehicle (SERV) program.
Under the terms of the original, 1991 STAR Treaty, the United States would have had to eliminate the Peacekeeper missile silos to remove the warheads on the missiles from accountability under the treaty limits. However, the Air Force retained the silos as it deactivated the missiles. Therefore, the warheads that were deployed on the Peacekeeper missiles still counted under START, even though the missiles were no longer operational, until START expired in December 2009.
The United States did not, however, count any of these warheads under the limits in the Moscow Treaty. They also will not count under the limits in the New STAR Treaty, if the United States eliminates the silos.
It will not, however, have to blow up or excavate the silos, as it would have had to do under the original START.
The new START indicates that the parties can use whatever method they choose to eliminate the silos, as long as they demonstrate that the silos can no longer launch missiles. The Air Force filled the silos with gravel to eliminate them, and completed the process in February 2015.
Force structure changes
In the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), the Pentagon indicated that it planned to “reduce the number of deployed Minuteman III ballistic missiles from 500 to 450, beginning in Fiscal Year 2007.”
The Air Force deactivated the missiles in Malmstrom’s 564th Missile Squadron, which was known as the “odd squad.”
According to Air Force Space Command, the drawdown began on July 1, 2007. All of the reentry vehicles were removed from the missiles in early 2008, the missiles were all removed from their silos by the end of July 2008, and the squadron was deactivated by the end of August 2008.
With the test assets available before this decision, the test program would begin to run short around 2017 or 2018. The added test assets would support the program through 2025 or longer. This time line, however, raised questions about why the Air Force pressed to begin retiring the missiles in FY2007, 10 years before it would run out of test assets.
Some speculated that the elimination of the 50 missiles was intended to reduce the long-term operations and maintenance costs for the fleet, particularly since the 564th Squadron used different ground control technologies and training systems than the remainder of the fleet. This option was not likely, however, to produce budgetary savings in the near term as the added cost of deactivating the missiles could exceed the reductions in operations and maintenance expenses.
In addition, to use these missiles as test assets, the Air Force has had to include them in the modernization programs. This has further limited the budgetary savings. When the Air Force decided to retire 50 ICBMs at Malmstrom, it indicated that it would retain the silos and would not destroy or eliminate them. However, with the signing of the New STAR Treaty in 2010, these silos added to the U.S. total of non-deployed ICBM launchers. The Air Force eliminated them in 2014, by filling them with gravel, so that the United States can comply with the New START limits by 2018.
Minuteman modernization programs
Over the past 15 years, the Air Force pursued several programs that are designed to improve the accuracy and reliability of the Minuteman fleet and to “support the operational capability of the Minuteman ICBM through 2030.”
According to some estimates, this effort will likely cost $6 billion-$7 billion.
In 2002, the Air Force began to explore its options for a new missile to replace the Minuteman III, with the intent to begin deploying a new missile in 2018. It reportedly produced a “mission needs statement” at that time, and then began an Analysis of Alternatives (AOA) in 2004.51
In June 2006, General Frank Klotz indicated that, after completing the AOA, Air Force Space Command had decided to recommend “an evolutionary approach to the replacement of the Minuteman III capability,” which would continue to modernize the components of the existing missiles rather than begin from scratch to develop and produce new missiles. He indicated that Space Command supported this approach because it would be less costly than designing a new system “from scratch.” With this plan in place, the Air Force began examining the investments that might be needed to sustain the Minuteman force through 2030.
According to General Robert Kehler, then Commander-in-Chief of STRATCOM, the missile should be viable throughout that time. In addition, according to DOD officials, flight tests and surveillance programs should provide the Air Force with “better estimates for component age-out and system end-of-life timelines.” At the same time, the Air Force has begun to consider what a follow-on system to the Minuteman III might look like for the timeframe after 2030. The Air Force began a capabilities-based assessment of its land-based deterrent in early 2011 and began a new Analysis of Alternatives (AOA) for the ICBM force in 2012 which completed in mid-2014.
According to the Air Force, it requested $2.6 million to begin the study in the FY2012 budget. The FY2013 budget request included $11.7 million for a new project area known as Ground-based Strategic Deterrence (GBSD). According to the Air Force, this effort, which was previously funded under Long-Range Planning, included funding to begin the Analysis of Alternatives (AOA).
The FY2014 budget request included $9.4 million to continue this study. In early January 2013, the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center issued a “Broad Agency Announcement (BAA)” seeking white papers for concepts “that address modernization or replacement of the ground-based leg of the nuclear triad.” The papers produced as a part of this study served as an early evaluation of alternatives for the future of the ICBM force, and may have helped select those concepts that will be included in the formal Analysis of Alternatives.
According to the BAA, the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center created five possible paths for further analysis. These include one that would continue to use the current Minuteman III baseline until 2075 without seeking to close gaps in the missiles’ capabilities, one that would incorporate incremental changes into the current Minuteman III system to close gaps in capabilities, one that would design a new, fixed ICBM system to replace the Minuteman III, one that would design a new mobile ICBM system, and one that would design a new tunnel-based system.
The path forward
The first phase of GBSD is a three-year Technical Maturation and Risk Reduction (TMRR) contract, during which contractors will develop a preliminary design and functional baseline. An Engineering, Manufacturing and Development (EMD) contract will be awarded in 2020 and production will start in the 2020s, with initial operational capability scheduled to be achieved late in the decade. The program will continue through 2075.
For the cruise missile competition, the Air Force plans on awarding up to two contract awards for LRSO technology maturation and risk reduction by the fourth quarter of fiscal 2017. By the end of this 54-month stage, contractors will have developed a preliminary design “with demonstrated reliability and manufacturability,” the service said in a news release.
After a competition, the Air Force will downselect a single vendor, with fielding scheduled to kick off by 2030. Air Force leaders have argued that it needs a wnuclear-armed cruise missile for its bomber fleet to have standoff capability against enemies with more sophisticated air defenses.
The legacy ALCM, which was fielded in the 1980s, is still performing well considering its 10-year design life, but is becoming less effective as threats advance.
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