Texas Star-Telegram:
Until just a few months ago, THAAD was an acronym largely unfamiliar to those outside the world of military weaponry and missile defense.
But crisis and controversy have propelled the state-of-the-art missile system into the global security lexicon amid fears that North Korea is preparing to lob missiles at South Korea and, ultimately, the United States.
Described by its Grand Prairie-based manufacturer, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, as one of the most advanced missile defense systems in the world, THAAD is being deployed to South Korea to protect the U.S. ally against an attack from the North.
THAAD — or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense — has yet to be tested in combat but it boasts an unbroken success rate in tests. “We are all very confident in that system,” said Chris Johnson, spokesman for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, which oversees THAAD and other components of the nation’s missile defense network.
The first elements of the THAAD system — which consists of truck-mounted launchers that fire eight interceptor rockets — were shipped to South Korea weeks ago after North Korea test-fired four ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan. The deployment was welcomed by South Korean leaders but provoked a diplomatic backlash from China and Russia.
China’s foreign ministry said the deployment threatened to “disrupt the strategic balance of the region.” Chinese citizens staged boycotts of South Korean products and angrily denounced a South Korean chain that provided land to house the THAAD system.
Officials at Missiles and Fire Control declined requests for interviews on THAAD amid the current sensitivities, but company officials in the past have hailed the system’s ability to detect and repel attacks from short-, medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles. THAAD employs a hit-to-kill technology in which interceptors use kinetic force to destroy an in-bound missile, akin to a bullet hitting a bullet.
Though not as well as known as the mile-long Lockheed Martin Aeronautics plant that produces the F-35 jet fighter in west Fort Worth, the Grand Prairie headquarters of the Missiles and Fire Control Division anchors an aerospace network that encompasses at least 15,000 employees globally and 15 sites scattered across the United States.
Grand Prairie jobs
More than 2,500 are employed at the headquarters facility in Grand Prairie, making it the city’s second largest employer after the local school district. THAAD units are manufactured at a Lockheed Martin plant in Troy, Ala., and about 150 employees are involved in the program at Grand Prairie, primarily in design and research.
The division’s business portfolio includes more than 50 product and services lines in at least 50 countries, including cruise missiles, advanced combat programs, mobile launchers and other sophisticated aerospace components. It is also a major subcontractor for another component in the government’s missile defense network, producing PAC-3 and PAC-3 MSE interceptor missiles for the Patriot system.
The varying elements of U.S. missile defense have all come into sharper focus with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un’s threats to expand the Stalinist regime’s nuclear arsenal and potentially develop nuclear-equipped ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States.
The U.S. government has spent more than a decade developing an intricate $40 billion system to defend the U.S. homeland. Called Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD), the system is composed of ground-based radars, satellite sensors and interceptor missiles to track and destroy intercontinental ballistic missiles that soar out of the atmosphere before descending on their trajectory to reach targets on the ground.
A total of 36 ground-based interceptors are positioned at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., to take out the inbound missiles. The response is a hit-and-kill kinetic strike that takes place outside the earth’s atmosphere while the enemy rockets are “midcourse” toward their target.
Boeing is the prime contractor for GMD. Key subcontractors are Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and Orbital Sciences.
Texas-built radar
Another major component in the nation’s defense apparatus is an enormous radar dome on a twin-hulled oil drilling platform that was built along the Texas Gulf Coast during George W. Bush’s presidency. Known as the Sea-based X-Band Radar, the self-propelled unit is larger than a football field and towers more than 280 feet from the keel to the top of the dome.
While GMD is charged with protecting the homeland, three other missile defense systems are designed to deal with regional threats from shorter-range missiles. Two belong to the Army — THAAD and Patriot — while the Navy operates the ship-based Aegis system. Aegis is produced by Lockheed Martin’s Rotary and Mission Systems program, headquartered in Washington, D.C.
THAAD’s home-base is Fort Bliss in El Paso, which straddles Texas and New Mexico as one of the nation’s largest military installations. Of the nation’s six THAAD batteries (a battery typically consists of six launchers with a total of 48 interceptor missiles), four remain based at Fort Bliss and are used for training or to be kept in reserve for deployment. Another is permanently deployed in Guam.
The battery being deployed to South Korea has been assigned to Seongju, about 130 miles south of Seoul, the South Korean capital, a spokesperson for United States Forces Korea said in an email.
The location “was assessed to be the most suitable to achieve maximum operational effectiveness, accommodate system emplacement siting requirements for operations in a timely manner, and with consideration to site safety and hazards,” said the USFK spokesperson, who asked not to be identified in keeping with official policy.
Fewer than 300 soldiers will operate the battery when it is fully deployed, said the official, and “will live as closely as possible to their place of duty.”
Whether or not THAAD will be put to the real-world test for which it was created has become part of a global guessing game as international leaders try to calculate Kim’s next move. Former U.S. Defense Secretary William J. Perry told reporters in a conference call last week that he believes that Kim’s provocations are part of a blustery show of force to perpetuate his regime, adding that the dictator is not likely to risk what would surely be a losing confrontation with the United States.
‘Ruthless and reckless’
Kim’s regime “is ruthless and reckless but it is not crazy,” Perry said.
Military analysts and missile defense experts generally agree that THAAD has performed impressively in testing, but some say that its true capabilities may not be known until it proves itself in combat.
“Under test conditions, THAAD has done well,” said David Wright, an expert on North Korea’s missiles and satellite launch program who is co-director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “This tells you that the system itself seems to operate well, but does not necessarily tell you how effective it would be against an actual attack, since the conditions may be different than those in tests.”
Wright pointed out, for example, that North Korea, which has an abundance of Scud missiles, might try to confuse the defense by firing a barrage of missiles at the same time…
