WASHINGTON ROUNDTABLE

ON SCIENCE & PUBLIC POLICY

Aegis Ballistic Missile

Defense (BMD) System

by Rear Admiral A. Brad Hicks

Washington, D.C.
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 Aegis Ballistic
Missile Defense System

by

Rear Admiral A. Brad Hicks

Commander & Program Director
Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD)

The George Marshall Institute

Washington, D.C.
Rear Admiral A. Brad Hicks was appointed Commander and Program
Director in November 2005, relieving RADM Kathleen Paige. Previously,
RADM Hicks served as commander of the Aegis cruiser USS CAPE ST.
GEORGE (CG-71); Deputy Director for Combat Systems and Weapons in
the Surface Warfare Directorate of the Office of the Chief of Naval Opera-
tions; Deputy Commander, Naval Sea Systems Command’s Warfare Sys-
tems Engineering; Head Surface Manpower/Training Requirements, Office
of the Chief of Naval Operations, and Joint Requirements, Joint Staff. A
native of Henderson, Kentucky, RADM Hicks graduated from the Univer-
sity of Louisville with a degree in International Studies and Economics. He
earned his commission through the university’s NROTC program and was
designated a Surface Warfare Officer shortly thereafter. RADM Hicks was
selected to flag rank by the Fiscal Year 2002 Flag Selection Board.
 Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System*
Rear Admiral A. Brad Hicks
Commander & Program Director
Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD)

December 19th, 2005

Jeff Kueter: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you all for coming to-
day. I am Jeff Kueter, the President of the George Marshall Institute, and it
is my pleasure to welcome you all to the last in our series of Washington
Roundtable on Science and Public Policy for 2005. Today’s talk is quite
important and I am pleased to host it. The Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense
System (BMD) is truly a highlight of the nation’s effort to deploy a missile
defense system. Presently on alert status, able to provide protection to the
American people, our fielded forces and our allies, the Aegis BMD program
clearly demonstrates that the construction and deployment of a ballistic
missile defense is an achievable goal. These have been exciting times for
the Aegis BMD program. On November 17, an Aegis BMD flight test suc-
cessfully destroyed a separating target. This is a significant achievement
and it marked the sixth successful intercept test. Five days later on Novem-
ber 22, our guest today was appointed the Commander and Program Di-
rector of the Aegis BMD program and just last week we heard news reports
of a billion dollar investment by Japan in the Aegis BMD program, which
further illustrates the interest and commitment in this system by our friends
and allies.

Rear Admiral Hicks is with us today to review the current status and
future direction of the Aegis BMD program. Admiral Hicks served as
commander of the Aegis cruiser USS Cape St. George, the Deputy Direc-
tor for Combat Systems and Weapons in the Surface Warfare Directorate
of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, and as Deputy Commander,
Naval Sea Systems Command’s Warfare Systems Engineering among many
other assignments and he has earned many different accolades. Please
join me in congratulating him on his new assignment and wishing him the
best of luck as he leads this critical program forward.

*
The views expressed by the author are solely those of the author and may not represent
those of any institution with which he is affiliated.
1
Rear Admiral Hicks: I will also say good afternoon. It is an honor to
be here with you today. I see some faces here that I have known over the
years. I will try to keep you awake after that great lunch. As a new guy, I
brought a supporting cast here to defend me and answer any questions at
the end that I can’t answer, if time allows. I also want everybody to know
that as the new program director having his first significant speaking event
in the job, I passed the test; we have lasagna and as best I can tell, I am er-
ror-free. So I am one for one on meals before speaking engagements.

A little bit about me to expand upon what Jeff said: I am not an ac-
quisition professional, but I am considered one by many people because of
my varied background. I am a combat systems geek, in Navy parlance. I
have been in the combat systems business for a long time and I have also
been in the programmatic business in the DC area and the Pentagon for
many years, so it was, as viewed by the Commander of Naval Operations
and General Obering, a good fit for me to relieve Rear Admiral Kate Paige.
She left an incredible legacy here to follow in Aegis ballistic missile defense
with the team she has built and there is a good foundation laid by people
who have worked on this program that I have to build upon. I am honored
to describe to you where we are today and then to take your questions.

“Yes, Missile Defense is a core Navy mission. If confirmed, I

will ensure that the Navy continues to work with the Missile
Defense Agency (MDA) to develop and field this important ca-
pability aboard naval vessels.”

Adm. Michel G. Mullen

Nominated to be Chief of Naval Operations,
in response to questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee
19 Apr 05

Now not only do I work for General Obering, but I am naval officer
and I am producing this capability to deliver to the Navy warfighters. As I
mentioned, I am an operator by background. It is Admiral Mullen’s history
as a surface warfare officer and a strong advocate of getting real capability
to the fleet that keeps the fleet relevant. During his confirmation hearings,
he made the statement above and I think it is important that we note that
missile defense is a core mission of the Navy. In fact, the Navy is moving
forward with next ship that it will deliver at the end of next decade in
CG(X), which will have both ballistic and cruise missile defense as a primary
mission focus, in addition to its traditional role of fleet peer defense. Now it
wouldn’t be enough to say that the Navy is committed to missile defense;

2
you have to have some proof to the pudding, so we will have the video roll
now. We have brought you the video of the 17 November test, which, if
you haven’t seen it to date, will help show what was accomplished in this
mission against what I would consider a much more stressing medium-
range target. Remember: we are talking about the geography of a ship, if
it were sitting in Washington DC and a target launched from Chicago. This
video shows what this capability can do for the nation. [Video plays]

One of the things I like to point out in that video is that there is a
history and a lineage that led us to where we are today and that we are go-
ing to continue to build upon to deliver capability. The main point is that
this is a capability that is available to the nation today. This summer, in
August 2006, we should deliver a tactically certified capability, not a con-
tingency capability, but a standard configuration to the fleet with deploy-
ment rounds available for load-out, available whenever and however the
nation needs to use it.

Figure 1 shows the missile defense architecture for the BMDS sys-
tem. You see that the SM-3 missile has a midcourse capability; today, with
its current capability, it is specifically targeted against a short-range (SRBM)
or medium-range ballistic missile threat (MRBM). The other important part
of this tactical capability that has come into the fleet (the full out what we
call BMD 3.6 computer program this summer) is that it is multi-missioned,
not single-missioned. This allows the fleet to operate far forward and do its
mission with a robust capability across a broad area. In fact, during these
tests on the USS Lake Erie, we simulate the counterstrike capability against
a launch site that had just launched the MRBM to see how much we can
depress the timeline for a counterstrike with a Tomahawk. That is a very
credible capability that we have today.

So you see how we fit in the architecture; one of the goals we have
from General Cartwright at Strategic Command and General Obering as
we implement and deliver this capability is that we have to exercise it, to
work out the bugs, to let the operators fully understand this incredible ca-
pability, because it changes the battle space for decision-making. But we
are there. We have actually achieved that goal and we can actually be there
to have those discussions with the operators.

3
Figure 1

4
 Figure 2

There is a lineage that goes back here a long way. Figure 2 dates
back to 1992, and shows how the Navy could defend the United States
from the sea. Today we are on the foundation of delivering that capability
to the nation as part of the overall ballistic missile defense architecture; this
is now a reality.

We would like to show the timeframe. On the right-hand side of

Figure 3 are listed the critical capabilities which the Director must get out to
the nation; on the left, as both General Kadish and now General Obering
have often said to Congress, are our guide stars: all ranges, all phases, all
regions. Flexibility to be where we need to be to meet the threat, whether
it is for homeland defense or defending our forces or our allies forward: that
is what we have to deliver. Right now, we have delivered the basic capabil-
ity. Long-range surveillance and track (LRS&T) is in Japan with seven
ships today. We have two engagement cruisers today. We have another
one that will be on-line this summer, the USS Shiloh. There are missiles
available today for emergency deployment and we will have the eleventh
missile receipted for by the end of this calendar year.

5
 Figure 3

Now we have to prove the sensors. In the budget that is approved

by Congress for the appropriations, we are going to move forward with the
BMD signal processing improvement to Aegis radar (Figure 4). This will
allow us also to put advanced signal processing in the missile to allow it to
do other things I will talk about later. We will continue to stretch the enve-
lope for launch on Tactical Digital Information Link (TADIL) capability so
we can support the ground-based missile defense and further enhance
those capabilities and the quality of the data we pass. We are also looking,
to get an engage on remote capability in Block 12 so Aegis BMD can
launch on a remote track provided by another sensor in the network. We
must improve the missiles to continue that iteration of spiral capability as
technology and funding allow us to get increased capability in the missiles.

6
Figure 4

7
 Figure 5

To get more specific, we have what is notionally known as the

Block capability that we deliver (Figure 5). Block 04 today is capability we
are focused on in delivery capability that we are closing out here. Then as
part of this budget, we have Block 06 capability, which should be fully de-
livered and proliferated in the fleet by the 08 timeframe. Block 08 should
all be delivered by the Block 10 timeframe or partially in the 2011 time-
frame. And it goes on and on, leading up through the 21-inch SM-3 de-
velopment program that I will talk about later.

8
 Figure 6

Now we will start talking about Japan’s role. The Japanese gov-
ernment has committed to convert one ship, which will be the Kongo, to
BMD capability, followed by three others. They are also purchasing Block
IA missiles and there will eventually be decisions on where they are going to
go in the future (Figure 6). They have just announced with us that we are
going to go down the Block IIA development path. Block II is what we call
the 21-inch missile development program that I will also talk about. But as
you see here, this delivers, as it grows, capability to defend the homeland in
addition to the forces forward.

You have to look at the Block 04 to draw down a little bit more de-
tail. We have the radars that are sited there from California to Alaska. We
are soon going to have the SBX, which is in transit to go up to the North
Pacific. We are going to have another X-band radar in Japan to comple-
ment the Aegis destroyer fleet and cruisers that are already in the Pacific.
As I have mentioned, we will continue to enhance that capability. My
team’s goal this summer is to deliver the 3.6 tactical program along with
the Block IA missiles.

9
 Now the USS Lake Erie was shooting with the BMD 3.0 computer
program capability. This is our initial testing developmental configuration
which is available for emergency deployment. These are the components
that make up that and show how it changes in depth the Aegis BMD sys-
tem that we know so well today. When I talk to Admiral Meyers, who is
considered the father of the Aegis system, he and I have very spirited dis-
cussions about how this design has been so robust that the anti-air warfare
capability can now do ballistic missile defense. It is because the engineering
behind that capability is so robust that it gives us above what we were look-
ing for in capability and that we have been able to leverage. Even though
the first one delivered in the early 1980s, I would contend that this capabil-
ity, with the further investments we are making in this radar, will be rele-
vant even in 2020.

That’s the SM-3 configuration I have talked about. Block 0 with the
initial testing, Block I is what is currently we are flying today and testing.
As I mentioned, Block IA we will fly this summer and that is our goal to fly
with the BMD 3.6 computer program baseline in development. What we
are going to get out of the Block IA is increased processing in the missile.
We are going to get more divert capability in its warhead to give us more
definitive footprint, to stretch that envelope and we are also get to take
care of some obsolescence issues that we have in the earlier missiles, be-
cause we have been working on this design for a while. But all of these
give us capability that further builds upon the Block I capability.

Now I am going to step you through this, because it is important

that you understand exactly what I can tell you we are delivering in real tac-
tical terms. If you have an Aegis ship stationed off North Korea to detect a
launch, that ship can cue the ground-based missile defense sitting in Alaska
or in California. But even more importantly for theater and our allies and
our forces, think of what it does for Japan. With cuing from an Aegis ship
and three ships with the Block IA capability, we can in fact defend our ally
Japan and the US forces there. Additionally, if we station a ship off the
Hawaiian Islands with a ship forward, we can in fact defend Hawaii. Like-
wise, we can defend Guam by moving the detection ship forward. We have
run many of these scenarios, but I want to give you this as an example of
what we can do: the power of the ship forward for detection, mirrored with
the correct placement of ships with engagement capability gives you this
kind of capability today.

10
Figure 7

Figure 8
11
 Where are we on installations in the Aegis BMD program? Right
now you can see we have seven LRS&T ships forward (Figure 7), but what
is more important here is that by the end of calendar year 08, we will have
eighteen ships available. Also please note that we will also have those two
ships in Japan on line. We will also have a very good engagement capabil-
ity starting to proliferate in the fleet to go along with the LRS&T ships. I
would also highlight that all the cruisers there are engagement-capable
cruisers.

Eleven missiles in the Block I configuration will be delivered, the last

one will be delivered this month, it is on track, in fact this week, should be
received by the Navy this week (Figure 8). We shot two of those as part of
the test program. Now why would we shoot those missiles for testing?
One of the test criteria we have with the test community is to take a missile
right out of the magazine without it going over anything special and shoot
it. This is further validation that it is an operational, real capability. So
there will be nine missiles available at the end of this month for the nation
to use. We will start seeing the phasing in of the Block IA development
and also the Japanese purchases, for their capability. All in all, this is a
good news story.

Figure 9
12
 Figure 9 shows the specific ships we have that are fielded and here
are the initial capabilities we are seeing here. These are real ships and real
crews, trained up, certified and ready to go to implement and use this ca-
pability the nation has delivered.

Figure 10

Figure 10 shows, again, lineage. We have an expression in the

Navy and the Aegis BMD program, “test a little, learn a lot.” Test more
and more and more. This is evidence of that. More importantly, the Navy
has chosen to work with the Test and Evaluation community to get the
most operationally relevant scenarios we can. The USS Lake Erie, on our
last few shots, was on a simulated patrol mission. It had a window of vul-
nerability – read hours – that they could launch. That was all the pre-alert
they had, with the exception that the captain was notified of the launch
time for safety. Only the ships’ crews man the consoles; there are no tech-
nicians there from outside to help the crew. The forward deployed ships
are operating with this capability.

13
Figure 11

14
 We had the great test in 2004, the Stellar Valkyrie. As you see in
Figure 11, we are heading to another test in March with another shot off
the Lake Erie in Hawaii. This will not be against a target. This test will be
a culmination of an effort with the Japanese government, part of the joint
cooperative research program where we are testing a new design of a
nosecone which could, hopefully, feed the development of the new 21-inch
SM-3 missile. We are looking forward to that test and shooting that missile
in March. The next test is the first firing of the Block IA configuration in
production mode, which we will do in the summer timeframe off the USS
Shiloh, which will be our first Aegis BMD 3.6 computer program tactically
certified. If all goes well in that test, and we are on a path to do so, we will
then certify the program shortly after and then that will become the first
tactically delivered baseline for standard fleet use on those ships so config-
ured.

We had been scheduled to do a test in February, which was Flight

Test Mission (FTM) 04-3, the last of the Block 04 tests. I am going to tell
you what we have done here and I am probably going to tip the hand a lit-
tle bit. We have goals in the missile flight test, primary and secondary, that
we have not talked about. But the long and short of this one is, we met all
of our primary and secondary missions and so when we look at FTM 04-3,
it was redundant. So frankly we made a recommendation to the Director
and we are in the process of Congressional notification that we are going
to forgo that test and go straight to FTM 06-1. The test team is fully fo-
cused on the Japanese test and the summer test and frankly it is a prudent
use of taxpayer dollars to go ahead and defer it. That was how successful
the November test was for us.

What I want to show here is another part of the spiral. If we hadn’t

met all of our objectives, we would have done that FTM 04-3 shot to meet
them. But if you look at the bottom left of Figure 12, with the launch on
TADIL capability, we will continue to enhance that capability in its accu-
racy, in what it feeds the whole ballistic missile defense architecture with the
radar capability, and in what it feeds back to Aegis BMD from the other
sensors, to buy us more battle space and more operational flexibility. We
will continue to press the envelope with the command-and-control technical
architecture with the battle manager for ballistic missile defense to wring
out the bugs, if you will, from everything from national command authority
down to the tactical shift forward, to make sure we get it right. At the end
of the day it will all culminate with a Block II development, post 2012, leav-
ing Block IIA in the 2014 timeframe, which really gives an eye-watering
capability for the nation from the naval fleet.
15
Figure 12
16
Figure 13

17
 Block IA we talked about in great detail; it is processors. Block IB is
our 08 missile, so in calendar year 08 we will start flying Block IB. What’s
different? It gives us a two-color seeker with the new advanced signal proc-
essor in the missile and it gives us, at some point in this Block IB, a new
divert-out to control system called Throttleable Divert Attitude Control Sys-
tem (TDACS), which is a further design over our current Solid Divert Atti-
tude Control System (SDACS) (Figure 13). Again, we get more capability
and we will assert that one when we need to. But the initial effort is to get
the new signal processor with new color seeker and that gives us much
greater discrimination against the targets that we will be up against at that
timeframe. But I will highlight to you that we meet our current requirement
for our threat set that we were tasked to go up against.

Next is a Block II development program which we are co-

developing with Japan. We are going to start firing that missile in 2012
timeframe. We will have the Block IB seeker, the two-color seeker, but
what will be different is that we will have a 21-inch second and third stage
motor. What does that do for us? It gives us a much faster missile. I
showed you the earlier pictures of the defense of the homeland and this
enhanced capability now enters into what it buys us in battle space. But
more importantly, instead of having three ships defend Japan, it is one
ship. Two ships with 21-inch SM-3 missiles can defend Australia. Again, it
takes time, a lot of engineering, a lot of investment by the American tax-
payers and in this case Japanese taxpayers, but delivers a very quantifiable,
understood capability that we can implement.

Let’s talk about the Japanese cooperative development program

(Figure 14). I will preface this by saying that we are early on in the discus-
sions for this. The design is not done yet on this missile. But because we
are building on the known SM-3 program, we have pretty good fidelity on
it. We have entered it into the cost model that we use for oversight within
government and the normal cost analysis improvement group to get a good
sense of costs as we know the design today. But it is a preliminary effort;
we do not have a detailed design, so issues of where we are going on this
are still to be worked out. We are going into management development
discussions which will conclude this summer and then we will go to the next
stage of these discussions. Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, we have to get
this right. A lot of taxpayer dollars and a lot of Japan’s dollars are involved
and we must get it right because I do not know of anything in co-
development of this complexity or cost that has been undertaken to date.
We have talked about the increased expenditures and showed how Austra-
lia and Japan can be defended. We have a notional cost here of 50 per-
18
cent. But again, until we get through the discussions, we don’t have specif-
ics yet; it would be premature for me to say. But I will tell you that the en-
thusiasm which Japan to get on with this program is very impressive and
the joint cooperative research programs in radar and with missile and
rocket motors has laid a foundation to start this work.

Figure 14

Figure 15 shows potential naval coalition contributions – and I high-

light to you “potential.” The only country there that has committed physi-
cal dollars to a program record is Japan. But if you look where the navies
of the world are going today and what capability they are bringing with
their radars and their launcher systems, there are opportunities and in some
cases, there are memoranda going on to understand how and what we are
fielding and the technical implications of such. We will continue to leverage
those opportunities to make our friends and allies aware of where we are
headed on a more detailed basis so that they can make decisions for them-
selves and take advantage of these potential options.

19
 Figure 15

In summary, the capability the nation has built is at sea today,

manned by Navy sailors and is available for us. And it is going to become a
lot more capable. What we have today is pretty darn impressive, but it is
not where I want to go as a war fighter; it is not enough. I want more
flexibility and I want to be able to handle even more potential threats, but it
is pretty impressive. It is built on very sound engineering-level systems and
the engineering across the spectrum is very solid. We are leveraging the
existing teams in place to get the capability fielded. I think for Japan to
make the commitment they made is incredibly significant. I had the good
fortune to have been in the Pacific back in October. I visited Korea, China,
Indonesia, the Philippines and Japan and I have to tell you, this system
sends a message over there. It sends a message that it discourages people
who might be interested in proliferating ballistic missile defense. In fact,
there is movement forward preventing these kinds of actions. It sends a
message that we don’t want to take the risk of some mistake being made
and the loss of life that could be incurred. I think the interest is growing.

As this capability becomes more real, I believe there will be more

interest in having it. I was up in Elkton, Maryland last Friday and we had a
test of part of our divert attitude control system (DACS), which was very,
20
very successful. There was great work by the Raytheon, Honeywell and the
ATK teams up there overcoming some technical issues and they overcame
them with flying colors. As I was talking to the workforce, somebody asked
me why this was so important and emotional to me. As someone who was
in the Pentagon on 9/11, I want to be part of something that says we did
our best, so if somebody considers doing something so horrible, so totally
illogical, so horrible again, that we will at least have a capability to give the
warfighters a shot at preventing something like that. So with that, I will be
glad to take your questions, if I can.

Questions and answers.

Question: Admiral Hicks, thank you very much for an excellent over-
view. Your last comment was that last Friday the SDACS fired successfully
or burned successfully, but earlier you said there was going to be a switch to
TDACS in Block II, if not 1B.

Hicks: And you are asking why? I will put it simply like this. SDACS is
very good, but it has a 1992 design, where we were first going. I think the
team has taken that particular design as far as it can go. So to go where
we want to go in the future, for the capability – what I call divert capability,
having the missile be able to adapt to more complex threats – we need to
go to a more robust design. To be very blunt, I am concerned about the
cost of the missiles. I need more of these missiles, not fewer, and we are
working with the industry team to get that cost down. But we need the
SDACS because it gives us an incredibly good capability, it is attainable and
it is real today, whereas any future capability is still a work in progress. As
the program sponsor for all the Navy combat systems, we are really good
about starting something, then wanting to jump to the next solution. I am
a Kentucky farm boy by nature and I like the bird-in-the-hand concept. We
will keep pressing the SDAC as far as it can take us and then we will go to
the next iteration. But it was gratifying to see how hard the team worked
to pull that off, on the missile side, and to see how emotional the work
force was, down to the secretary, on the success of that test. It was really
great to be part of. I felt like I was on ship again, almost, except without
salt air.

Question: Do you plan to co-produce the 21-inch design with Japan?

And do you have any plans in the near term to address the sea-based ter-
minal again?

21
Hicks: I will take the first one. As far as work share, it is pre-decisional.
We have to get the design down to get that. But we have some pretty
good stretch goals on co-development where both nations are very com-
fortable with the initial airing framework. In my first week in the job, I had
my first high-level discussion with the Japanese government’s representa-
tives here in Washington and General Obering. They are enthusiastic and I
think we have a very good understanding of where we want to go and what
we have to do to accomplish it. I followed that visit up with some of the
team here in front of you. We go back to Japan in January for further dis-
cussions. It will be a frenetic pace between now and next summer to get
this locked down.

On your second question on sea-based terminal, when I was still on

the Navy staff, we initiated a study effort with the Missile Defense Agency.
I was co-lead for the Navy along with Mr. Keith Englander from the Missile
Defense Agency and we did a very good analysis of the requirements for
sea-based terminal capability that dates back to the lineage I discussed.
When the original Navy area SM-2 Block 4 program was cancelled early in
the first part of the Bush Administration, there was a tasker out about what
were we going to do now that this had been cancelled. This study went to
great lengths to answer where we needed to go and while it is somewhat
predetermined, we revalidated the requirement for a sea-based terminal ca-
pability. Pre-decision was used to say how we are going to achieve that,
but I would suspect that it is going to be an FY08 budget issue for the Navy
and the Missile Defense Agency. But the level of cooperation between the
Agency and the Navy to get the answers and get the analysis done behind
the requirement to complement the other piece of the architecture and the
already existing capabilities out there was very good.

Question: You talked a lot about the SM-3 interceptor. That was very
interesting and I thank you for that. Could you talk a little about the target
vehicles? Could you talk about any research plans on that over the same
time period as your plans on the SM-3?

Hicks: Do you mean did they evolve the target vehicles? I am a little bit
out of my depth here on that one. We have good targets set for SRBM
and medium-range and short-range. We can dictate requirements of how
we want to modify it to stretch the envelope and we in fact done that. I
can’t disclose the details, obviously, but we can stretch it pretty well. All I
will say is that we stretch the limit pretty well this last test and we are ec-
static about it. For future capabilities in the path on a Ground-based Mid-
course Defense (GMD) system, they have a fairly robust target set for the
22
Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) that GMD responds to. As the SM-
3 program evolves, we will continue to leverage that target set. It is inter-
esting: we are trying to build a target. We want to simulate what the poten-
tial enemy could have, but we don’t want to pay much for it. Everybody
wants a cheap, reproducible target, but then they are shocked when it
doesn’t do the robust profile. So it is not cheap. When we looked at the
FTM 04-3 test, I must admit part of my recommendation was based on cost
considerations. I said, “General, I love to fly the missile, but you know we
have already learned what we need to learn. We are stewards of taxpayers’
dollars, too, and we need to move on.” And it was the right decision to
make. You saw one on the video there. There is a target called the Aegis
Readiness Assessment Vehicle (ARAV). It is not something I would tradi-
tionally target a missile against, but for tracking and fleshing out the system
against a lower-cost target, it has been very effective for us and we are go-
ing to continue to leverage that capability. Because once the Navy gets
more ships with this capability, we occasionally need something to fly out
there that the crews can exercise against that really replicates that profile.

Question: Would you address Aegis BMD capabilities against other po-
tential threat nations – Iranian missiles against Israel or Western Europe and
Chinese ballistic missile capabilities?

Hicks: As long as the threat set is similar to what we see in the current
known life and public domain, SRBM, MRBM, the capability is the same.
Geography plays a role, depending on where you do it. The Mediterra-
nean and the Black Sea offer, against some threat sets, some good capabil-
ity; obviously freedom of movement is important in the South China Sea.
One of the reasons I am excited beyond words about BMD 3.6 computer
program is that it gives you the multi-mission capability so you can operate
pretty far forward and still operate the ship in a fully tactical mode and do
ballistic missile defense. You still have a radar resourcing issue. If you are
doing a lot of targets, you have to manage your radar so you don’t over-
utilize resources in one sector. But it gives you a lot more operational flexi-
bility for multi-mission areas. In fact, one of the things we will doing in the
FTM 06-1 test is full multi-mission engagements. So the same lay-downs
you see here can be applied to other geographic areas of the world, against
those threat sets.

Question: I am curious: given the great successes that you have described
about the Aegis BMD system, and especially in comparison with other mis-
sile defense systems and their success rates, is there much collaboration on
key sensor technologies with the people flying the other missile defense
23
systems, and particularly the ones in California and Alaska, but also with
future space-based systems? I mean, is there enough sharing of the sensor
technology, is there sharing of the sensor technology, as it seems there
would be an advantage to this?

Hicks: I am ready to answer your question, but it would help if I could go

back to Figure 3. That is a great question, actually. Let’s look at the total
capability and all the other pieces that we have today. Right now we have
fielded Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3), the Patriot system, and we
have the Aegis BMD system. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense
(THAAD) is still undergoing testing. It just flew, but it is still a ways away
from what I call tactical delivery to the war fighter. GMD is available in an
emergency mode, but it is still going through testing. The airborne laser
(ABL) had a successful test, but it is now being torn down and a ground-
based version going in the airplanes, so its next test won’t be until 08. So
in answer, right now and through 2010, this is what I have today. I have to
have it. I need it. Because if not, I have nothing. If we look forward to
2010, what will be viable and technically delivered? Well, we should have
GMD full up. We should have THAAD operationally delivered, Aegis BMD
and Patriot. Now if you look at where the world is and where we need to
be operationally deployed, we will be lucky at that point to have one battal-
ion of THAAD available to set up. So it gives us a limited sense of where
we can deploy. We want maximum flexibility. One of the previous ques-
tions is, where are we going to be against what threat sets? If I want opera-
tional flexibility, then I need more of the other. So the idea is to maintain,
as General Obering would say, a balanced investment approach to give us a
near-term capability while not buying too much of one thing, so we under-
stand the finite amount of dollars to get us there from here. So if we look
at the timeframe to deliver capability, it is a matter of having something
now and building upon it; as other pieces come in, we help make the whole
architecture more robust for ballistic missile defense to handle the full re-
gime of threat sets. Because remember, we could be defending ourselves
with a ship forward, we could be defending a carrier strike group or an am-
phibious strike group. We could be defending a port of a friendly nation
that is being blackmailed. We could be defending a nation where we have a
commitment to defend, an ally. Or we could be contributing forward in a
first stage of an engagement of a threat that is heading toward the conti-
nental United States or Hawaii or Guam or Alaska. So that is how I would
answer your question.

* * *
24
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