KLC: ONE YEAR LAUNCH-FREE!

Congratulations to Alaska Aerospace Corporation for completing one year launch-free!  The last launch at the KLC was December 5, 2008.
On December 31, 2009, AAC  can proudly state that not one launch occurred in the calendar year 2009!
This "for profit" corporation and its facility have been bailed out by the federal and state governments since 1995.  
AAC officials have admitted that launch revenues do not cover the cost of operating the facility.

Meanwhile, a 30 million dollar "rocket storage facility" is being constructed at the KLC, using federal and state money.  At least they can store them even if they aren't launching them!
To those who claim that the KLC is vital to National Missile Defense, it should be noted that the target missiles fired from Kodiak can be launched from portable launch pads using mobile mission control modules.  Little, if any, of the infrastructure currently in place is required for MDA launches.
And local residents have reported that that Faulty Tower (the unused launch tower sitting on an earthquake fault) is continuing to rust and corrode in the harsh marine climate of Narrow Cape, despite a million dollar paint job just two years ago.

Kodiak Launch Complex Already Outdated & Obsolete?

Danger Room What’s Next in National Security

Top General: Missile Defense Is Dead, Long Live Missile Defense (Updated)

• By Nathan Hodge
• March 24, 2009 |

Ballistic missile defense as we know it is all but dead, one of the country’s top military just declared. But already, there are new anti-missile priorities taking shape.

General James Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, relayed the message yesterday to the defense industry. "Ballistic missiles are about as passé as e-mail," he said to an audience of missile-defense contractors. "Nobody does it anymore. It’s just gone… no stupid person, enemy out there would be so silly as to come at us with a minimum-energy trajectory. Give me a break. Even the people we would call ‘Third World’ have gone beyond that."

The administration of President George W. Bush poured around $10 billion a year into ballistic missile defense; it focused particular effort on fielding a limited missile defense capability that would protect the United States from a lone missile lobbed by a rogue state (i.e., North Korea). It also expended serious political capital trying to seal a politically controversial deal to station missile defense interceptors in Eastern Europe.

In theory, the European site was supposed to protect the United States and Europe from long-range ballistic missiles launched from the Middle East (although Iran has yet to acquire a missile that could reach the United States). Cartwright said missile defense funds would shift toward deterring more realistic threats. "The architecture associated with those terminal defense type capabilities, those area defense type capabilities that have the mobility and have the capability to be out there to address those threats are where we are going to start to put money," he said. "Because it is the most likely."

That’s good news for the developers of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or Thaad, a "hit-to-kill" air defense system that can knock down short- and medium-range missiles at greater ranges and higher altitudes than the Patriot system. But it’s not so great for defense contractors who are designing far-out systems to destroy enemy missiles in the vulnerable "boost" phase. As Noah noted earlier today, one major boost-phase program is already in the crosshairs: the laser-equipped Boeing 747 that is supposed to zap missiles out of the sky as they rise from the launch pad.

Observers are also wondering what this shift means for Boeing’s Ground Based Midcourse Defense, or GMD. The Bush administration activated GMD at two sites, one in Alaska and one in California; according to Reuters, Cartwright said the future of the system would depend on whether it could counter other threats. "The more utility, the more willing you’re going to be to put money in it," he said.

Interestingly, Gen. Bantz Craddock, the head of U.S. European Command, said in written testimony submitted today that the U.S. Navy was studying the feasibility of stationing a missile-defense-capable Aegis ship to defend the Eastern Mediterranean region. In his testimony, Craddock said the Navy was leading an "urgent effort" to develop a command-and-control architecture for an Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense ship operating in defense of countries in the Eastern Mediterranean.

At first glance, that sounds like a more realistic way to counter the Iran missile threat than deploying the long-range GMD system in Europe. The U.S. military has previously looked at the possibility of creating an "instant" ballistic-missile defense system by tying the land-based X-band radar developed for Thaad with sea-based radars and interceptors; Rick Lehner of the Missile Defense Agency told Danger Room a transportable X-band radar has been used in previous tests to provide cueing information to an Aegis ship which then used the data to perform a simulated launch and intercept.

UPDATE: The Obama administration is also picking up on a top complaint of the missile defense critics: namely, that missile defense testing isn’t real enough. Elaine Grossman of Global Security Newswire quotes Peter Verga, the acting deputy defense policy chief, as saying: "I think anything the test community can do to reassure people that the tests are, in fact, operationally realistic is very important."

PHOTO: U.S. Army

Kodiak Rejects Missile Defense - Overwhelmingly

Results from the Kodiak Daily Mirror online poll, December 5 through December 12:

The U.S. missile shield...

is unnecessary - 67.17%

is important for the nation's defense - 21.59%

will never work - (5.1%)

will ramp up a new arms race - (6.15%)

[percentages based on 667 responses]

Over 78% of the respondents voted anti missile defense. While online polls are generally considered "unscientific", it seems clear a community that is home to a facility used in missile defense tests rejects the notion that it is actually needed.

Coupled with another poll from 26 February 2005, it appears that the KLC is not only unneeded, but also unwanted. We have copied the post from that date below:

Poll Proves Local Opposition to Kodiak Launch Complex

Results of the Kodiak Daily Mirror online poll (17-24 February 2005) 839 responses
Published 24 Feb 2006 in the Kodiak Daily Mirror, page 4
"Why Should the Kodiak Launch Complex exist, or not exist?"

41% - It's waste of taxpayer money and useless in national defense
15.85% - It could potentially damage the environment.

56.85% - Anti-Kodiak Launch Complex

27.41% - It's crucial for national defense
15.71% - It's good for the local economy

43.12% - pro-KLC

The poll clearly indicates local attitudes toward Space Pork Kodiak. We suspect the numbers opposing the KLC would be even higher if there hadn't been the large number of out-of-state workers in town to support the latest MDA launch. The poll was running over 50% for "It's a waste..." until somebody alerted the KLC staff around Feb 22 causing a huge spike in the pro percentages. Despite this anomaly, the unmistakable community opposition is undeniable and prevailed in the overall results.

More Alternative Views of the Missile "Test"

From Arms Control Wonk

MDA Test Oddities

I am close to posting on the most recent Missile Defense Agency flight test (FTG-05).

In case you wonder why this is taking me literally days to work through (with lots of help from David Wright), read these statements by new MDA Director General Patrick O’Reilly.

Good afternoon, or as Mr. Whitman said, almost good evening. What I would like to do is go over exactly what happened this afternoon. At 1504 Eastern time, a little after 3:00, we launched a target out of Kodiak, Alaska and it did end up, 29 minutes later, with an intercept off of California using a ground-based mid-course defense system, the Aegis system, some of our satellite systems and our early warning radar system in Sacramento and also using a forward-based radar that we had located in Juneau, Alaska for today’s test only.

[snip]

All right — and we showed the footage of today’s launch out of Vandenberg. As I said, the target was launched at 1504 and at 1523 Eastern Time, the target was in view and — of the Beale radar and the other sensors, and we launched a ground-based interceptor. That’s the first stage, and then it will show a separation. We’ll have other data that will come over the next 24 hours — the intercept occurred over 200 kilometers in altitude and 1,300 kilometers downrange from the launch point.

[snip]

Q: Why is it hard for the target to — why is it hard to deploy countermeasures, why did that fail?

GEN. O’REILLY: Well, I can’t get into the great detail, but I can say simply, countermeasures, you try to build them to be very lightweight so that they don’t affect the original flight, but at the same time, you’re traveling at about 10 kilometers a second, somewhere around there, around 15,000 miles an hour. So at that, at that and you’re leaving the earth’s atmosphere, and you’re typically doing a lot of maneuvers at that point and at the same time you have to try to deploy two or three or four, whatever it is, lightweight objects. And that has been problematic on this particular target. The target itself is 40 years old, and it was one of some of our older missiles. Again, this was the last test using this particular target configuration, and we have a new target that is being assembled at this time by Lockheed Martin, that’ll be tested in the spring with Aegis and then follow up with a GMD later on this summer in another test. And that will be a different countermeasure system, again, a newer one.

The numbers in these passages are complete goobledygook.

— The entire scenario took 29 minutes? It is hard to believe that the interceptor was launched nineteen minutes into flight (15:23 EST) and took a full ten minutes to travel just 1,315 kilometers.

1,315 km in ten minutes works out to about 2.2 km/s. (The hypotenuse of triangle with 200 km and 1,300 km legs.) The GMD interceptor is supposed to have a burnout of like 7-8 km/s.

What, did MDA strap the interceptor to a flock of geese? That’s got to be a mistake. It probably should have taken four or five minutes for flyout. I am honestly very, very confused here.

— The countermeasures failed because the missile was traveling 10 km/s?

First, this is a 3,000 km range missile with a burnout velocity of probably around 4.5 km/s. It wasn’t traveling anywhere near 10 clicks a second. (Not that speed would explain why the countermeasures didn’t work, but he’s clearly trying to make something up on the spot and just gets confused.)

Second, ICBMs don’t travel 10 km/s. The speed is more like 7 or 8 km/s. Of course, O’Reilly also gave the measure in miles per hour — 15,000 mph, which in metric that is about 7 km/s.

So, here you what appears to be a simple error (the timeline doesn’t jibe), an apples-to-oranges comparison (talking about ICBM speeds in a test against a much slower moving MRBM) and a basic inability to convert to metric.

Other than that, everything is clear as a bell.

Comment

I’d looked at similar puzzlements in an earlier test. I don’t have an explanation for the apparently slow fly-out time of the interceptor, but do have a thought about the target speeds and, possibly, some constraints on decoy deployment.

If you look at the locations of the second and third stage range safety areas (http://www.kodiakdailymirror.com/?pid=19&id=7035), you see that they’re much closer together than would be expected. I suspect that means the third stage was used as an accelerator to give the target RV an ICBM-like trajectory. I.e., the second stage delivers the third stage to a point at or after the apogee of a simulated ICBM trajectory, then the third stage pitches down to impart the proper velocity vector. After which the decoys would have to deploy. Something like was done at White Sands way back when: http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/app4/athena.html

Might be worth running some simulations using such a scenario.

— Allen Thomson · Dec 11, 02:02 PM ·

Additional Perspectives on "Successful"(?) Missile Test

From "The Political Landscape"
http://www.wholesomereading.com/?p=338#comment-505

Missile Command

If the Obama administration brings us one significant change, I hope it’s the end of this bloody fraud.

From "Griper News"
http://gripernews.blogspot.com/2008/12/when-is-failure-success-when-you-ask.html

Saturday, December 06, 2008
When is Failure Success? When You Ask the Pentagon
clipped from edition.cnn.com

A missile shield test was a "smashing success," Pentagon officials said Friday, despite the failure of the test to put to rest concerns that the interceptor might not be able to differentiate between real missiles and decoys.

Eight of the United States' 13 missile defense tests have been deemed a success.

The ground-based interceptor missile, launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, destroyed a long-range ballistic missile launched from Kodiak, Alaska, the Defense Department's Missile Defense Agency said.

But one key aspect of the test -- to see whether the system could tell the difference between a missile and a decoy aimed at confounding its "seek" systems -- failed because the decoy did not deploy.

Early in his campaign, Obama pledged to "cut investments in unproven missile defense systems." But he later said he would support missile defense systems if they work.

That last paragraph tells you all you need to know. If it doesn't work, Obama's going to cut it. So every test, regardless of outcome, will be called a success.

The spin isn't even consistent. Where the test was meant to simulate "countermeasures similar to what Iran or North Korea could deploy," Lt. Gen. Patrick J. O'Reilly, director for the Missile Defense Agency, says, "Countermeasures are very difficult to deploy. We have had trouble deploying them in the past."

So N. Korea and Iran can pull it off, but we can't?

From "In From the Cold"
Jason Wolfe said...

What does this do to the global deterrence environment? How does this affect our relationship with Russia? Keep in mind that this was launched from Alaska, which can see Russia from its windows. Even if this missile defense shield is propoganda and would never work in against a real missile, it will still have the effect of driving up deterrence tensions. Russia will now have to move ever closer to launch on warning readiness. Remember "Able Archer" from 1983? Remember how close the world came to ending from false alarms? These missile defense systems would never stop a real nuclear assault, simply because the number of interceptors is less than the number of nuclear missiles. But these missile defense systems dramatically increase nuclear tensions by forcing the weaker nations to adopt launch on warning posture.

Pretend we successfully get this missile defense shield online. The era of deterrence will be over, and America will now have the power of "compellence". America will be able to compel all other Nuclear powers to obey us, because we can win in a Nuclear war. Does anyone else see how dangerous that world would be? Any nuclear war, even small ones, will end our civilization. Eroding deterrence, and entering compellence puts the world at risk. These missile defense shields are needlessly jeopardizing the future of the species.
3:05 PM