Under construction within the confines of the fenceline of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands near Kekaha is a missile-launching complex U.S. Army officials are hoping will be able to knock down any kind of hostile
Under construction within the confines of the fenceline of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands near Kekaha is a missile-launching complex U.S. Army officials are hoping will be able to knock down any kind of hostile incoming projectile.
That would be the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THADD, designed to be able to knock out enemy missiles before they begin their descent. The facility is around 90 percent complete, said Christopher J. Taylor, deputy director of communications for the federal Missile Defense Agency (MDA).
Out in the Kaulakahi Channel and beyond, where sophisticated computers and range hardware detect the movements of both marine animals and ships and submarines, a mobile version of the “hit-to-kill,” anti-missile technology continues to be tested.
The biennial Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) international naval training exercise will be held on a high-technology level for as long it’s held, and this year crews on Navy ships are helping inch closer to reliability and formal implementation a ship-bound weapons system with both offensive and defensive missile capabilities and firepower.
Aboard the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis and its carrier group, along with the USS Lake Erie and USS Paul Hamilton, testing continued last week northwest of Kaua‘i on the Aegis weapons system. The Lake Erie is familiar with Kaua‘i waters, having performed here before, and carries the Aegis combat system capable of tracking 100 different targets simultaneously while launching countermeasures.
The event last week, Pacific Explorer III, was the latest in an ongoing series of exercises in which Aegis ships conduct long-range surveillance and tracking of ballistic missiles and successfully communicate that information in support of the Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS).
In the exercise, friendly forces were threatened with ballistic-missile attacks. Three-stage sounding rockets, Aegis readiness assessment vehicles, replicated the threat. Upon launch from pads at PMRF, the rockets were detected and tracked by crews on the Aegis ships, reporting the tracks to the BMDS system for engagement by ground-based midcourse interceptors (missiles). Officers aboard the Aegis BMD ships also directed F/A-18 pilots to conduct simulated attacks against the launch site. This was done in coordination with a simulated Tomahawk strike from the ships.
The exercise then called for the hostile force to launch a cruise-missile attack on the BMD ships. The Lake Erie and Paul Hamilton shifted mission focus to cruise-missile defense, and engaged the inbound cruise missiles with anti-cruise-missile missiles. Live drones were used to simulate the cruise missiles, also launched from PMRF. The exercise was under the operational guidance of the Third Fleet’s commander, and included participants from U. S. Strategic Command, Northern Command, commander, Pacific Command, and Seventh Fleet in Japan.
Paul C. Curtis, Associate Editor, can be reached at pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).
