US Missile Defense Agency is Requesting Money to Place a Particle Beam Weapon in Orbit

he Missile Defense Agency has offered new details about plans to develop a science fiction-sounding space-based neutral particle beam weapon to disable or destroy incoming ballistic missiles. The goal is to have a prototype system ready for a test in orbit by 2023, an ambitious schedule to demonstrate that the technology has progressed to a more useful state from when the U.S. military last explored and then abandoned the concept nearly three decades ago.

The U.S. military’s budget request for Fiscal Year 2020 asks for $34 million in funding for the neutral particle beam program, or NPB, according to documents released on Mar. 18, 2019. The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) wants a total of $380 million through 2023 fiscal cycle for development of the directed energy weapon. Defense One, citing unnamed U.S. officials, had been first to report the existence of the plan on Mar. 14, 2019. It’s also worth noting that Congress set out a goal of testing of at least one space-based missile defense system prototype by 2022 and the deployment of “an operational capability at the earliest practicable date” in the annual defense policy bill for the 2018 Fiscal Year.

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Russia has Successfully Tested a Modernized Missile Defense Interceptor

The Air and Space Forces conducted a successful test launch of a "new modernized interceptor of the Russian missile defense system" at the Sary-Shagan test site. According to a VKS spokesman, the new interceptor has better accuracy and range and extended service life.

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China Conducted Another Missile Defense Test

China has successfully carried out another test of an anti-missile intercept system, the Defence Ministry said on Tuesday, describing it as defensive and not aimed at any country.

China has been ramping up research into all sorts of missiles, from those which can destroy satellites in space to advanced nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, as part of an ambitious modernization scheme overseen by President Xi Jinping.

The Defence Ministry said in a brief statement the “ground-based midcourse anti-missile intercept technology” had been tested on Monday within China’s borders.

“The test reached its expected goals,” the ministry said. “This test was defensive and not aimed at any country.”

It provided no other details.

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Russian Test the Moscow Missile Defense System

On November 23, 2017 the Air and Space Defense Forces (VKS) conducted a successful test of an interceptor of the Moscow missile defense system. The test took place at the Sary-Shagan test site. The launch was conducted by the crews of the VKS air and missile defense army.

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US Military Wants to Move Missile Tracking Sensors into Space

As the U.S. military works on developing its next-generation missile defense systems, more of the resources need to be focused in space, experts said Dec. 14.

“It’s so important that we make this broader shift from a terrestrial-based system to a system that primarily plays from space in the next couple of years,” said Richard Matlock, program executive for advanced technology at the Missile Defense Agency.

The military has long relied on the Space-Based Infrared System, or SBIRS, as a warning against launches of ballistic missiles. But Matlock argued that the U.S. needs to supplement it with a more layered capability in orbit with many different satellites and systems that could not only detect, but track and target a missile through every part of its flight.

“The architectures consisted largely of terrestrial sensors deployed on land, deployed on our ships, and interceptors also deployed in silos, in trucks, and in ships,” he said. “As we examine the impact of the evolving, more maneuverable, more complex threat on this, we begin to see gaps emerging in the future to our system, which is primarily based on our lack of persistent global sensor coverage.”

Those gaps could be addressed by developing a “globally persistent space-based sensor array” that would include radar and electro-optical sensors, Matlock said, at an event hosted by the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance (MDAA).

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China Pressing Ahead With ASAT System

China’s Defense Ministry confirmed today that it was pressing ahead with anti-missile system tests after pictures appeared on state television, depicting a successful missile intercept test conducted in 2010. The Chinese announcement coincides with growing tension over South Korea’s decision to allow the U.S. deployment of THAAD anti-missile system in the Korean peninsula.

According to Yang Yujun, spokesman of the People’s Republic of China’s Defence Ministry, the development of missile defense capabilities is an essential part of the country’s national security strategy. “It will improve the self-defense capability of China and is not targeting any particular country and will not affect international strategic stability,” Yujun said, adding that China would consider taking unspecified measures to maintain strategic balance in the region. China is unimpressed by Washington claims that the introduction of THAAD poses no threat to China.

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China also released video of its missile defense test.

Russia Tested Short Range Missile Defense System

The Russian Aerospace Force successfully carried out a test-firing of the A-135 anti-ballistic missile interceptor from Sary-Shagan missile testing site in Kazakhstan at 07:00 hours Moscow Standard Time on Jun. 21.

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South Korea has Begun Modifying the VLS on its Aegis Destroyers

South Korean Navy's Aegis destroyers will get an upgraded missile launch system that will allow them to intercept North Korean ballistic missiles, a government source said Sunday.

The Navy is moving to install new vertical missile launch systems on its three King Sejong the Great class ships that will allow them to launch the longer range SM-3 and SM-6 ship-to-air missiles, said the military source who declined to be identified.

At present, the ships are only able to fire off the SM-2 missiles with a range of 150 kilometers, which is insufficient to intercept ballistic missiles. The SM-3 can fly up to 500 kilometers, while the SM-6 has a range of 400 km. The SM-3, in particular, has the ability to attack targets at a higher altitude than the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system and can reach speeds of Mach 7.8.

"Once the vertical launch systems are installed, the Navy will have the infrastructure to utilize the longer-range systems," he said

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Did India Lie About its Ballistic Missile Intercept Test?

The Hindu said the ballistic missile intercept test carried out by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) on May 15 was a failure because the interceptor was not launched in the first place.

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Israel Claims to Have Successfully Tested Iron Dome From a Ship

Israel claimed Wednesday that it successfully intercepted a test salvo of shore-launched short-range rockets with a new sea-based version of the Iron Dome.

Col. Ariel Shir, the Israel Navy’s head of combat systems development, said the live fire test was conducted two weeks ago using the Adir radar developed by Israel Aerospace Industries/Elta and the Rafael-developed Iron Dome, both of which were integrated aboard the service’s INS Lahav Sa’ar-5 corvette-class surface vessel.

“I can say all the threats shot toward our assets were targeted by the Adir radar — one of the most advanced naval radars that exists today — and interception was accomplished by Iron Dome,” Shir told reporters Wednesday.

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India Successfully Tested a Ballistic Missile Interceptor

India test-fired its Advanced Air Defence (AAD) interceptor on May 12 and the missile destroyed a modified Prithvi ballistic missile.

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Aegis Ashore Declared Operational in Romania, Angers Russians

The Navy and U.S. Missile Defense Agency declared a ballistic missile defense site in Romania operational this week.

The Lockheed Martin-built Aegis Ashore facility in Deveselu is the first of two sites planned as part of the U.S. and NATO’s BMD network based on the same technology used in the Navy’s guided missile destroyers and cruisers to protect against ballistic missile threats.

The site is built around a SPY-1D(V) air-search radar linked to three 8-cell Mark-41 Vertical Launch Systems armed with Raytheon Standard Missile 3 interceptors – the same equipment used on destroyers. The installation is named by U.S. sailors.

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Russian reaction is less than positive.  Which is stupid.  They can easily overwhelm this.  It merely takes away the ability to use one or a few nukes.  Limited nuclear war is a fallacy the Russians still believe in.

US Missile Defense Agency Wants a Laser Weapon for Missile Defense by 2021

The US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) hopes in 2021 to have developed and demonstrated an aerial laser with which it could intercept and destroy ballistic missiles.

Specifically, the agency wants "a low-power laser, in the 100-kW range, to prove the coherency and physics part" of destroying a ballistic missile from an unmanned airborne platform, MDA director Vice Admiral James Syring told the Senate on 13 April.

He said MDA wants to field a prototype to help gage if there is a feasible material solution, and explained that the effort would not be on the same large scale as the manned Boeing YAL-1 Airborne Laser Testbed (also known as the Airborne Laser: ABL), a multibillion development effort that was ultimately cancelled in 2009 after Secretary of Defense Robert Gates found the technology and operating concept unworkable.

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The Disaster that was the Precision Tracking Space System

Proponents of the Precision Tracking Space System were not shy about touting its supposed benefits.

The head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency said PTSS represented an “unprecedented capability” to protect America and its allies against a nuclear attack by the likes of North Korea and Iran.

A key congressional supporter described it as “a necessity for our country.”

The planned network of nine to 12 satellites, orbiting high above the equator, would detect missile launches and track warheads in flight with great precision, the proponents said.

It would be able to tell apart real missiles from decoys — an elusive capability known as “discrimination.” It would help guide U.S. rocket-interceptors to destroy incoming warheads. And it would do all this at a fraction of the cost of alternative approaches.

Based on those promises, the Obama administration and Congress poured more than $230 million into design and engineering work on PTSS starting in 2009. Four years later, the government quietly killed the program before a single satellite was launched.

The Missile Defense Agency said PTSS fell victim to budget constraints. In fact, the program was spiked after outside experts determined that the entire concept was hopelessly flawed and the claims made by its advocates were erroneous. It was the latest in a string of expensive failures for the missile agency.

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Have Sting: the Giant Nuclear Powered Railgun the US Considered Building

A long time ago in an era much like ours, the United States poured billions into its “Star Wars” missile defense program. What those billions actually bought is still highly classified, so much so that we know very little about the various exotic space weapons conceived during the late Cold War.

One of those concepts — “Have Sting” — would have been the biggest gun in the solar system … had it ever been made.

Aerospace historian Scott Lowther has published some excellent diagrams of Have Sting, a proposed orbital railgun the size of the International Space Station. Having studied a General Electric report on the project, Lowther deduced a fair amount about the cannon’s characteristics.

“This vehicle appears to have everything such a system would need, from power to attitude control, sensors to thermal control,” Lowther said.

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Missile Defense Agency Tests 2 Different SM-3 Variants in Three Days

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency on Dec. 8 conducted the second developmental flight test of its Standard Missile (SM)-3 Block 2A interceptor and awarded Raytheon a contract to build 17 more.

Two days later, the MDA carried out the first intercept test involving a land-based variant of the SM-3 Block 1B, a smaller interceptor deployed primarily on ships at sea. The land-based SM-3 Block 1B variant is being developed as part of the MDA multiphased plan for defending Europe against missile threats.

In the Dec. 10 test, the Block 1B interceptor, cued by a remote AN/TPY-2 radar, lifted off from the Aegis Ashore Missile Defense Complex on Kauai, Hawaii, and destroyed a ballistic missile target that had been launched from a U.S. Air Force C-17 aircraft. The test’s success keeps the MDA on track to begin deploying SM 3 Block 1B interceptors in Romania next year, Raytheon said.

“This test proved that no matter how you launch it, an SM-3 can hunt down threats in space and destroy them,” Taylor Lawrence, president of Raytheon Missile Systems of Tucson, Arizona, said in a Dec. 10 release. “The flexibility to deploy SM-3s from land or sea expands protection options for our combatant commanders and allies around the world.”

Meanwhile, on Dec. 8, the MDA conducted a flight test of the SM-3 Block 2A, being developed jointly with Japan, from the Point Mugu Sea Range on San Nicolas Island in California. The test did not include the launch of a target.

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Russia to Upgrade its Missile Defense Systems

The Russian Aerospace Forces will receive a modernized missile defense system in the near future, Colonel Andrei Cheburin announced.

"I’m sure that in the short-term perspective we will receive an upgraded missile defense system," Cheburin told RSN Radio.

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Putin Delusional, Believes European Missile Defense Aimed at Russian Nuclear Arsenal

President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday pledged Russia would build weapons that could pierce any anti-missile shield as he accused the United States and its allies of looking to shackle Moscow's nuclear capabilities.

"As we have repeatedly said, we will focus... on offensive systems capable of overcoming any anti-missile defence systems," Putin said at a government meeting on the defence industry in the Black Sea city of Sochi.

Russia has been locked in a feud for years over NATO plans to build a missile-defence system in Europe that it says is aimed against Iran but Moscow says is really directed at Russia.

"References to the Iranian and North Korean nuclear missile threats are a cover-up," Putin said.

The "true intentions" of the missile shield were aimed "at neutralising the strategic nuclear potential" of Russia, he said.

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The Russian arsenal is too big to stop entirely.   At best it would stop the ability to fire single nuclear weapons.

Putin States American Antimissile Defenses are a Threat to Russian Nuclear Capabilities

The expansion of the United States' ballistic missile defense system is a threat to Russia's nuclear capability, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday.

Putin added that U.S. ballistic missile shield bases in Eastern Europe could also be used to station offensive weapons and that he was worried about NATO military infrastructure moving closer to Russia's borders.

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US Navy Expands Use of SM-6 Missile From Five to 35 Warships

The Navy is massively expanding its planned use of the Standard Missile-6, a new high-tech ship-launched surface-to-air missile that can destroy enemy missiles, aircraft and unmanned systems.

In total, the Navy has authorized use of the SM-6 to expand from five ships to more than 35 ships.

“This effort is steeped in fleet requirements, focusing on delivering capability to support urgent operational needs in targeted areas of responsibility,” a Navy official told Military​.com

Previously, the SM-6 was only configured to fire from the most recent Aegis radar combat weapons system on Navy ships, a system called Aegis baseline nine. The Navy’s new authorization allows the SM-6 to integrate with the software and electronics used in Aegis Combat Weapon System baselines 5.3 and 3.A.0.

The Navy’s Aegis Weapon System, currently deployed on cruisers and destroyers, is a command and control technology using computers linked to a multi-function, phased array AN/SPY-1B radar. The high-powered, four megawatt Aegis radar is able to search and track more than 100 potential targets, Navy officials said.

“We came to the realization that we can do AAW(anti-air warfare) with baseline 5. That opened up a world of potential for concept of operations for the Navy –for fleet defense and area defense strategies,” said Mike Campisi, SM-6 program director, Raytheon.

The SM-6, which first became operational in December of last year, is engineered with both an active and semi-active seeker, giving it an increased ability to discern and discriminate targets when compared to other missiles, Campisi explained.

“It has capabilities to go over-the-horizon,” he said.

In addition to missile defense and defense against fixed and rotary wing aircraft, the SM-6 can also defend against land-attack and anti-ship cruise missiles in flight. Having an over-the-horizon ability against anti-ship cruise missiles could prove extremely advantageous as it brings the possibility of destroying them at much greater ranges.

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