U.S. Missile Defense Counters Growing Threat

By Cheryl Pellerin

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON – Six days after North Korea’s failed long-range rocket launch, the head of the Defense Department’s Missile Defense Agency testified on Capitol Hill about bolstering U.S. defenses against a growing ballistic missile threat.

Agency Director Army Lt. Gen. Patrick J. O’Reilly appeared yesterday before the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee to discuss the administration’s fiscal 2013 budget request of $7.75 billion for his agency.

The request is a reduction of more than $650 million from the fiscal 2012 appropriation. Since 1999, the United States has invested more than $90 billion in missile defense.

The latest request, O’Reilly said, “balances our policies as documented in the 2010 Ballistic Missile Defense Review [with] U.S. Strategic Command's integrated air and missile defense priorities, [Missile Defense Agency] technical feasibility assessments, affordability constraints and current intelligence community estimates of the ballistic missile threat.”

But the director expressed concern to the panel about two critically needed programs that are in jeopardy because of past congressional funding reductions.

The first, he said, is a missile defense sensor capability provided by the precision tracking space system, which allows space-based tracking of ballistic missiles. The second is the need to develop a second independent layer of homeland defense with the SM-3 IIB interceptor, a highly deployable missile that would destroy threat missiles earlier in their flight paths than the current architecture.

“I request your support for these programs,” O’Reilly said, “so that our homeland benefits from the same layered missile defense approach that we successfully employ in our regional defenses.”

The director described improvements made last year to the complex ballistic missile defense system designed to protect the United States and its allies. These include activating a new missile field and a fire-control node at Fort Greely, Alaska; activating an upgraded early warning radar in Thule, Greenland; and upgrading the reliability of three ground-based interceptors, or GBIs, he said.

“This year,” O’Reilly told the panel, “we continue to aggressively pursue the agency's highest priority -- to conduct a missile intercept with the newest version of the GBI's exo-atmospheric kill vehicle after two previous flight-test failures.”

A failure review board of government and industry experts redesigned critical GBI kill vehicle components and established more stringent manufacturing and component requirements, he added.

“These requirements have previously not been encountered anywhere in the aerospace industry,” O’Reilly noted, adding that these have caused delays in preparing for the next flight tests.

“We will fly a nonintercept test by the end of this year to verify we have resolved all issues, and then we will conduct our next intercept flight test early next year to reactivate the {ground-based midcourse defense] production line,” the director said. “We will not approve the execution of a flight test until our engineers and independent experts are convinced that we have resolved all issues discovered in previous testing.”

Also this year, the agency will activate a hardened power plant at Fort Greely, increase the firepower of fielded GBIs by testing and upgrading GBI components, and boost the capability of sea-based X-band radar, the tracking and discrimination radar used for the GMD element of the Ballistic Missile Defense System.

“Regional defense highlights over the past year include the on-time deployment of the first phase of the European Phased Adaptive Approach,” O’Reilly said, “consisting of the command-and-control node in Germany, forward-based radar in Turkey and an Aegis missile defense ship on station in the Mediterranean Sea.”

The agency also demonstrated the first Aegis intercept of a 3,700-kilometer target using remote forward-based radar, he said, and the simultaneous intercept of two missiles by the terminal high-altitude area defense system, called THAAD.

The THAAD element gives the missile defense system a globally transportable, rapidly deployable ability to intercept and destroy ballistic missiles in or out of the atmosphere during the final, or terminal, flight phase.

“This year the first two THAAD batteries will be available for deployment, increasing the number of Aegis-capable ships to 29,” the director said, and three SM-3 Block IB flight tests will show that last year’s flight-test failure is resolved.

Coming up, he said, the largest missile defense tests in history will involve the first simultaneous intercepts of multiple short and medium-range ballistic missiles and cruise missiles by Patriot forward-based radar.

The United States has missile defense cooperative programs with the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, Israel, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Poland, Italy and many other nations. O’Reilly said the agency works with more than 20 countries, “including our cooperative development programs with Israel and Japan and our first foreign military sale of THAAD to the United Arab Emirates,” and supports technical discussions with the Russians on missile defense.

Phases 2 and 3 of the European phased, adaptive approach to missile defense are on track to meet the 2015 and 2018 deployment dates, the director said.

Panetta, Dempsey Agree International Accord Needed on Syria

By Jim Garamone

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, April 19, 2012 – Syria is in the midst of a tense, fluid and dangerous time, and the U.S. military stands ready to do whatever mission the president and Congress assign to it, top Defense Department leaders told the House Armed Services Committee here today.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, repeatedly stressed the situation in Syria is complicated and that no unilateral U.S. action can solve the problem of Bashar Assad’s regime killing its own people.

The Syrian people revolted against Assad beginning last year. Unlike similar revolts in Tunisia and Egypt, this one met the iron fist of the Syrian military.

“Rather than trying to meet the legitimate demands of the people, the regime … turned instead to violence against its own people,” Panetta said. “That violence has been brutal, and it has been devastating. It has put the Syrian people in a desperate and difficult situation. It has outraged the conscience of all good people, and it has threatened stability in a very important part of the world.”

President Barack Obama has said that through his violence against his people, Assad has lost any legitimacy. Administration leaders repeatedly have stressed that Assad should begin the transition to a government that respects the rights of the people.

This will require an international consensus, Panetta said. From every angle, the situation in Syria is enormously complex, he added.

“There is no silver bullet; I wish there was, but there isn’t,” he said. “At the same time, the situation is of grave consequence to the Syrian people. There are many others who are affected by what happens in Syria as well, including Syria's neighbors -- Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, and all nations with a vital interest in the Middle East.”

In his remarks to the committee, Dempsey said the Assad regime should have answered the revolt with real democratic reform. “Instead, the regime responded with brutality,” he said. “Syria’s internal convulsions are having consequences for a region already in turmoil.”

Thousands are fleeing the civil war in Syria, and fighting has spilled over into neighboring countries -- most notably in Turkey, where five people were killed in a refugee camp.

The United States has other concerns due to the fighting, such as opportunistic extremists who may seek to exploit the situation, the chairman said. The United States also is concerned about the fate of Syria’s chemical and biological weapons. “They need to stay exactly where they are,” the general said.

At present, Dempsey said, the U.S. military is limited to sharing information regarding Syria with regional partners. “But should we be called on to help secure U.S. interests in other ways, we will be ready,” he added.

Meanwhile, the chairman told the panel, the U.S. military maintains its agile regional and global posture.

“We have solid military relationships with every country on Syria’s border,” he said. “Should we be called, our responsibility is clear: provide the secretary of defense and the president with options, and these options will be judged in terms of their suitability, their feasibility and their acceptability.”

DoD, Navy and Wind Farm Developer Release Historic Memorandum of Agreement

By Kenneth Hess, Chief of Naval Operations Energy and Environmental Readiness Division Public Affairs

NAVAL AIR STATION (NAS) KINGSVILLE, Texas (NNS) -- The Navy released today a memorandum of agreement (MOA) signed by officials from the Department of Defense (DoD), the Department of the Navy and Texas Wind Group (TWG) that outlines a mutual approach to enable a renewable energy developer to build and operate wind turbines at planned locations in Kleberg County, Texas, while reducing the potential for those turbines to affect flight operations at NAS Kingsville.

"Sustaining military readiness is the number one priority of everyone in the Navy chain of command," said Capt. Mark McLaughlin, commanding officer of NAS Kingsville. "This agreement helps preserve NAS Kingsville's capability to train naval aviators, while enabling the compatible development of new energy sources."

Signing for DoD was David Belote, director of the DoD Energy Siting Clearinghouse. Signing for the Navy were Roger Natsuhara, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for Energy, Installations and Environment; John Quinn, acting director of the Chief of Naval Operations Energy and Environmental Readiness Division; Vice Adm. William French, commander, Navy Installations Command; Rear Adm. John Scorby, commander, Navy Region Southeast; Capt. Douglas Edgecomb, commanding officer, Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, and McLaughlin. Dru Steubing signed on behalf of Texas Wind Group Managing.

"The Navy recognizes the strategic and fiscal importance of developing domestic sources of energy for use both ashore and at sea," said Quinn. "As we develop new sources of energy, it is critical that we not create a new problem as we solve another. This agreement with the Texas Wind Group is proof that when energy developers and the military work together, it is possible to achieve a win-win for both national security and energy security. This agreement allows the military mission and alternative energy production to co-exist in South Texas, and may pave the way for similar agreements elsewhere."

TWG's Riviera I wind farm project will be comprised of 83 turbines between nine and 11.5 nautical miles south of NAS Kingsville's radars and navigation aids. Electromagnetic interference (EMI) from the turbines has the potential to impact those systems. However, the MOA describes technical solutions for this, such as connecting NAS Kingsville's air surveillance radar system with the radar at Corpus Christi International Airport and optimizing radars to "ignore" signals received from wind turbines. TWG will contribute $500,000 to help pay for these technical upgrades to Navy radar systems. Under the MOA, TWG also agreed to reposition certain turbines that would have caused interference with the Kingsville precision approach radar. TWG also agreed to temporarily curtail the operation of certain turbines if the precision approach radar is negatively affected.

"The Texas Wind Group is delighted to be the first wind energy company to finalize an agreement of this type with the Navy," said Steubing. "We are fully committed to protecting the capability of our nation's military, and we appreciate the opportunity to work with the Navy to make our development compatible with the Navy mission in South Texas."

The Navy and the Department of Defense will continue working closely with renewable energy developers and local communities in South Texas to ensure local wind turbine projects can coexist with the Navy mission.

The MOA is available for download at http://greenfleet.dodlive.mil/files/2012/04/TWG-MOA.pdf.

DCoE April Webinar: Coping Skills in Children of Deployed Parents

By DCoE Strategic Communications

Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury will host its next webinar, “Children of Deployed Parents: Health Care Provider Strategies for Enhancing Coping Skills,” April 26, from 1 to 2:30 p.m. (EDT).

Since the onset of Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom, military families have experienced multiple and extended deployments. Although many children adjust well, the stress of parental deployment may increase the risk for adjustment problems, emotional difficulties and internalizing or externalizing behaviors (e.g., physical aggression or substance abuse).

Health care providers frequently serve military families struggling with deployment-related issues. This webinar will discuss the impact of parental deployment on children’s psychological health and identify strategies and resources relevant to coping.

Featured speakers are:

■Dr. Stephen Cozza, Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress, associate director

■Michelle Sherman, Ph.D., Oklahoma City Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Family Mental

Health Program, director; University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, clinical professor

All professionals who care for service members are encouraged to attend, including service members and their families. You may register now, or click here for more information.

Continuing education units and continuing medical education credits are now available. Click here for details. To obtain credits, you must pre-register using the Adobe Connect platform.

Follow us on Twitter@DCoEPage during the webinar for live Tweeting and use #DCoEWebinar to join the conversation.

PGA golfer visits Wisconsin National Guard training institute

By Sgt. Megan Burnham

112th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment

PGA golfer Steve Stricker of Madison continued his education about the Wisconsin National Guard by visiting the 426th Regional Training Institute, its employees and current students at Ft. McCoy, Wis., Tuesday (Apr. 17) as part of a Community Center of Influence event. 

Stricker and another Madison-based PGA golfer, Jerry Kelly, conducted a similar visit in January to the Milwaukee-based 128th Air Refueling Wing to learn about the role of the Wisconsin Air National Guard. Events like these help increase understanding of the Wisconsin National Guard and its dual mission for an influential audience that might not otherwise interact with National Guard members.

The day began with Stricker meeting Brig. Gen. Mark Anderson, commander of the Wisconsin Army National Guard; Command Chief Warrant Officer Craig Krenz, and Col. Kenneth Koon, Wisconsin Army National Guard chief of staff, at Joint Force Headquarters in Madison before taking a 45-minute UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter orientation flight to Ft. McCoy.

"I felt a lot of anticipation, really not knowing what to expect," Stricker said. "I've never been up in a Black Hawk before so I knew that was going to be very exciting."

Subject matter experts at the 426th RTI demonstrated the capabilities of the training simulators to Stricker. These included Mine Resistant Ambush Protector (MRAP) rollover trainer, operator driver simulator, call for fire trainer and engagement skills trainer (EST).

"Mr. Stricker gets the chance to observe Soldier's training and the types of equipment and systems they train on, which gives him a much better perspective of what we do, how we train and our missions," Anderson explained. "This allows him to be a better advocate for the sacrifices made by our Soldiers and - from having seen and experienced some of the training firsthand - he can provide a better perspective to those influential people he deals with."

In addition to the simulator demonstrations, Stricker met with Soldiers conducting classes such as transportation operations, cannon crewmember advanced leadership course (ALC) and resilience training assistant (RTA) course.

"It means a lot to both our staff and our students that [Stricker] found time to come up to see what we do for a living," said Lt. Col Gary Thompson, operations officer for the 426th. "We have all seen him work, but it was great for our morale to have a chance to show him what we do as Soldiers.

"Mr. Stricker is a class act," Thompson continued. "It was great to have him here, taking time to shake hands, sign every golf ball and pose for every picture requested."

Stricker said that he and the PGA Tour understand the importance of supporting and "to give back just a little bit" to the military, the National Guard and Wounded Warriors.

"They serve our country and serve us as individuals," Stricker said. "It's [an] important part of what we have, the freedoms we have here in our country."