Missile Defense: DOD's Report Provides Limited Insight on Testing Options for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense System

Abstract : The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has sought to rapidly develop and field the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system to defend the United States against a limited intermediate and intercontinental ballistic missile attack from nations such as North Korea and Iran. The GMD system defends against these threats by launching a ground-based interceptor toward the enemy ballistic missile, releasing a kill vehicle that detects and destroys the threat. In March 2013, we found the total cost of the GMD system to be around $41 billion, approximately $4.5 billion of which will be spent between fiscal years 2013 and 2017. Currently, the Department of Defense (DOD) has deployed 30 GMD interceptors and it plans to deploy 14 more by the end of fiscal year 2017. However, flight testing intended to demonstrate the system s capabilities and limitations is not scheduled to be completed until at least 2022. Since 2003, we have found this approach of concurrently manufacturing, deploying, and testing interceptors is high risk because tests may uncover issues requiring costly design changes and retrofit programs. These risks materialized when MDA failed both of its attempts in 2010 to demonstrate the upgraded GMD interceptor, called Capability Enhancement (CE)-II, causing MDA to fall several years behind on deploying new interceptors. Additionally, the cost to demonstrate, as well as fix, the already produced CE-IIs has increased from $236 million to $1.309 billion. A second CE-II attempt to intercept a target missile, called Flight Test GMD (FTG)-06a, occurred in December 2010. According to the Director, MDA, the test failed because of excessive vibration in the inertial measurement unit a component of the kill vehicle s guidance system. As a result, MDA halted deliveries of the remaining CE-IIs until the failure is resolved. We reported in April 2012 that the failure investigation for FTG-06a concluded the inertial measurement unit required a redesign and additional development.