The Ballistic Missile Defense, the first ever from Guam, saw the first use of the AN/TPY-6 radar and the tilting Vertical Launching System. The Missile Defense Agency has been preparing to protect Guam from increasingly complex threats emerging in China and North Korea.
The MDA (Missile Defense Agency) conducted its first BMD (Ballistic Missile Defense) exercise from Guam, in the western Pacific, on Dec. 10, 2024. The exercise was successful, with the live intercept of a ballistic missile target, said the agency.
The test
Designated Flight Experiment Mission-02, the test saw the Aegis Guam System intercepting an air-launched Medium Range Ballistic Missile target off the coast of Andersen Air Force Base, more than 200 nautical miles to the northeast of the island. According to Japan Times, the collision took place at an altitude of over 600 km.
The highlights of the drill were the first use of the AN/TPY-6 radar to track the target and the first use of a tilting Vertical Launching System to launch the Standard Missile-3 Block IIA missile to intercept the target. The former is based on the giant AN/TPY-7 Long Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) used by the MDA in Alaska, while the latter is based on the Mk 41 Vertical Launch System (VLS) usually installed on ships. Moreover, the VLS is also used in the Aegis Ashore system, although it is not capable of tilting like the one in Guam.
The US Missile Defense Agency successfully intercepted an air-launched intermediate range ballistic missile target during a test off Guam for the first time, a significant milestone in the island’s defense capabilities, the Pentagon said https://t.co/WdEsfnRGzN pic.twitter.com/ddRiX7XtwZ
— Reuters (@Reuters) December 11, 2024
The MRBM target was released from a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III, strapped to a special pallet and pulled out of the cargo bay by parachutes before it began its attack run. The AN/TPY-6 “tracked it shortly after launch to intercept in the first end-to-end tracking use of the radar during a live ballistic missile flight test,” said the official statement.
Official images show the MRBM target captured with infrared cameras, and both plain and infrared views of the SM-3 Block IIA exiting the ground launcher. The successful interception “confirmed our ability to detect, track, and engage a target missile in flight, increasing our readiness to defend against evolving adversary threats,” said Rear Adm. Greg Huffman, Joint Task Force-Micronesia Commander.
The test, which has been defined as a critical milestone, is part of an effort to have intercepting technology before China and North Korea’s long-range missile inventory. The effort involves the creation of a Guam Defense System capable of countering multiple threats at once, with a “persistent layered integrated air and missile defense capability.”
Over the next decade, the U.S. plans missile defenses at 16 sites around the island, with other systems including the SM-6, Patriot PAC-3 MSE, THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Air Defense), and short-range air defense system called the Indirect Fire Protection Capability, beside the SM-3 Block IIA and AN/TPY-6.
An advanced medium-range ballistic missile is air launched from a US Air Force C-17 Globemaster III off Andersen Air Force Base in Guam as part of Flight Experiment Mission-02 on Dec. 10.
CC @dvsteff.bsky.social @krakek.bsky.social
— Ryan Chan 陳家翹 (@kakiuchan.bsky.social) December 12, 2024 at 11:39 AM
Test’s significance
In August, the MDA was preparing to transport the AN/TPY-6 to Guam “to protect Guam from increasingly complex threats emerging in China and North Korea,” Defense News said. The new radar uses technology from MDA’s Long-Range Discrimination Radar at Alaska’s Clear Space Force Base, which will have its own test next year ahead of declaring operational capability.
Moreover, between Jul. 20 and Aug. 13 this year, the U.S. Navy and the MDA had also tested the IAMD-T (Integrated Air and Missile Defense-Target) in the Pacific Dragon series of exercises around Hawaii. NAVSEA (Naval Sea Systems Command) describes the IAMD-T as a “semi-guided target designed to trigger and engage terminal ship defense combat systems, such as SM-2 and SM-6.”
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BMD exercises testing the SMs often employ the ARAV (Aegis Readiness and Assessment Vehicle), whose -B variant was also fired as a part of PD 24 from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, Hawaii. Whether the air-launched MRBM dropped from the C-17 Globemaster III during this test was an ARAV-B or an IAMD-T is not yet known.
FEM-02 meanwhile provided “critical support to the overall concept, requirements validation, data-gathering and model maturation for the future Guam Defense System (GDS),” said the statement. The goal for the future GDS is “defending Guam and protecting forces from any potential regional missile threats,” further added the statement.
“This is a tremendous group effort and provides a glimpse of how organizations within the Department of Defense have come together to defend our homeland Guam now and in the future,” said MDA director Lt. Gen. Heath Collins. “Collectively, we will use this to build upon and validate joint tracking architecture and integrated air and missile defense capabilities for Guam.”
Guam sits in a strategic position in the Pacific Ocean, much closer to China and Taiwan than the bases in Hawaii and Japan. The island, which is seeing an increasing presence of U.S. forces, hosts U.S. Navy’s vessels and periodic deployments of bombers and fighter jets.
In the event of an escalation in the Indo-Pacific, Guam would become a key transit point for military forces converging in the area. This, in turn, would put the island in the crosshairs of China’s ballistic missiles, a threat that the U.S. must be ready to counter.
PLA Rocket Force and island chains
Chinese military analyst Antonio Graceffo outlined in a Feb. 1, 2024 piece in the Taipei Times how the PLA Rocket Force (PLARF) poses a “significant threat to the US and its allies in the Indo-Pacific. He further mentioned the “specialized rocket force functioning as a unique armed service,” with its separate training commands for officers and engineers, funding and development programs.
The crown jewel of China’s ballistic missile inventory is the ‘carrier-killing’ 1,500-2,000 km range DF-21D ASBM (Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile), which can hit the second island chains and any approaching U.S. naval flotilla. The DF-26 IRBM ( Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile) can reach 3,500 kilometers, putting Guam within its engagement range. The PLARF is also slated to soon field the DF-27, which carries an HGV (Hypersonic Glide Vehicle).
Graceffo said that the PLARF would execute precise conventional strikes using its entire arsenal of missiles. These include 1,000 short-range ballistic missiles, 100 intermediate-range ballistic missiles, and about 600 ground-launched cruise missiles, all with ranges of 1,000km to 1,500km.
“Over the past decade, China has doubled the range and coverage of its land-based missiles, now extended to include all US bases in the Pacific, including Guam,” the analyst said. The PLARF would fire from “mobile, ground-based units” using “shoot-and-scoot” tactics that involve moving the launcher after firing to evade counterfire.
By 2028, the PLARF is projected to possess more than 1,000 ballistic missile launchers, including at least 507 capable of carrying nuclear payloads, 342 to 432 conventional launchers and 252 with dual capabilities. It would also possess 320 solid-fuel fixed ICBM (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile), with 30 liquid-fuel fixed ICBM silos under construction. These figures do not include the tactical and strategic conventional missiles operated by the PLA Air Force and the PLA Navy.
INDOPACOM wants to strengthen Guam
Foreign Policy in Mar. 2023 reported INDOPACOM’s assessment asking Congress for over $15 billion to match China’s rapid military buildup.
This request included $1.6 billion for boosting missile defenses in Guam to counter China’s medium-range missiles, fielding the Aegis Ashore system and the U.S. Army’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense program. Another $5.3 billion was sought for overhead persistent infrared radar to cover the Arctic, missile warning tracking in low-earth orbit, and more than $1 billion to build a space-based sensor layer to track Chinese missiles.
The assessment also asked for additional Tomahawk LACMs (Land-Attack Cruise Missiles) worth nearly $266 million; $395 million to develop a longer-range version of the system; more missiles for the F-35A used by the U.S. Air Force; more than $350 million for anti-submarine torpedoes; and nearly $315 million for new sea mines.
Another $2 billion would also fund a submarine pier and satellite communications base at Guam, and more parking space for aircraft at Andersen Air Force Base, among other things. These comprise parking for bombers and fighter jets at Tindal and Darwin air bases in Australia; developing an airfield at Tinian in the Marianas; and more boat ramps and storage on Tinian, the Micronesian island of Yap, and Palau.
