By Pacific Island Times News Staff
The Pentagon’s missile defense plans for Guam do not guarantee protection for the island, the head of a Guam-based think tank said, citing a newly unclassified report, which identified "fundamental challenges" for the proposed defense system.
“This report, taken together with others, makes clear that in the event of conflict, the proposed system will not be a shield against hostile attacks,” said Robert Underwood, chairman of the Pacific Center for Island Security.
“In the meantime, the people in Guam are asked to deal with the real consequences of this development, including housing shortages and further environmental damage. And, with all the talk about ‘defense of Guam,’ there are still no plans for civilian shelters,” he added.
In his introduction to the report, Raymond D. O’Toole Jr., director of Operational Testing and Evaluation, noted that “test conditions that systems are exposed to in operational tests routinely reveal new vulnerabilities
and failure modes that should be remediated to avoid failure in combat.
To reflect the evolving battlefield, there is a critical need for modeling and simulation to undergo verification, validation and accreditation with live data.
Last December, the Missile Defense Agency launched its first flight experiment mission from Andersen Air Force Base, firing off an interceptor that headed off a surrogate missile target more than 200 nautical miles off the coast of northeast Guam.
Citing previous tests, the report said, "The rate at which the MDA’s models have been independently accredited has increased, but significant gaps remain."
" Validation of post-intercept debris models requires flight testing with targets that include threat-representative payloads. As threat and system model capabilities become more complex, the MDA has struggled to maintain a real-time test architecture that can handle this complexity," the report said.
"This issue will become critical as more complex capabilities are added to the MDS, such as the Next Generation Interceptor and the Glide Phase Interceptor,
and to support Guam Defense scenarios involving numerous simultaneous air
and missile threats," it added.
The MDA’s Aegis system experiment was the first in a series of missile defense tests on Guam, which would run twice a year for 10 years.
Citing observations from two years prior, the report noted that “the MDA often designs flight tests to demonstrate a specific new capability, but not for operational realism.”
The DoT&E conducts operational and live fire test and evaluation activities for the U.S. Department of Defense weapons systems and annually publishes its review. A classified version of the report is usually released late in the year of record.
Underwood noted that this marks the third year in a row that DOT&E has indicated that the test strategy for the proposed system “needs significant further development” to be adequate.
The technical report also noted that:
· Modeling systems needed to validate missile defense systems was removed from funding by the Missile Defense Agency in FY 2024, and that “operational effectiveness of the MDS cannot be fully assessed without such a tool.”
· The MDA has not modeled for the complexities of countering next generation missiles or complex attacks including hypersonic glide vehicles “and to support Guam Defense scenarios involving numerous simultaneous air and
missile threats.”
· The Army, Navy and MDA needed to coordinate their activities to “ensure the test strategy for the Guam Defense System incorporates multi-element interoperability.”
· The Army, Navy and MDA needed to “ensure comprehensive system-level suitability and cyber testing is planned, as recommended in the FY23
annual report.”
The DOT&E described the integrated air and missile defense of Guam
system as “made of both new and existing systems in close proximity and with overlapping areas of regard, with all components working together to defend against cruise, ballistic and hypersonic threats. This architecture presents a significant integration and test planning challenge.”
Underwood also noted that a technical report about the system’s architecture
and the impact of civilian housing conducted by MITs Lincoln Labs, remains unavailable to the public nine months after it was submitted to the Secretary of Defense.
“We need to be mindful of the difference between what some military officials say the system will do, and what the technical experts are saying about the system that is in development,” Underwood said.
“This report, and others like it, give us reason to be skeptical about the claims made by some military officials about this system,” he added.
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