By Kris Osborn, Warrior
An F-35 surging beyond the radar horizon to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles, a Navy Aegis warship armed with interceptor missiles and the Army’s SM-6-firing land missile system called the Typhon … can all be positioned to share target data and destroy, stop, intercept or thwart a Chinese ballistic missile attack on Taiwan.
These kinds of Concepts of Operation form the basis of the Army’s Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS) missile defense system now being established in Guam. The US Army is expanding the scope, scale and lethality of an advanced target networking system with IBCS with a specific effort to support joint, multi-domain high-speed ballistic missile defense capabilities from Guam. Such a move is both tactically and strategically of great significance because Guam is roughly 1738 miles from Taiwan and could potentially be in position to provide command and control support to multi-domain defensive efforts and of course defend Guam itself by intercepting incoming Chinese ballistic missiles.
By leveraging a networked command control architecture using key IP protocols, interfaces and data gateway systems, IBCS is able to operate as a “meshed” multi-node system capable of connecting a range of otherwise disparate sensor and weapons platforms. The IBCS network includes the Patriot, Sentinel, Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTMADS)and Marine Corps Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar (G/ATOR .. AN/TPS-80), among others. In more recent years since its inception years ago, IBCS has evolved to integrate F-35s as aerial sensors and attack “nodes” and has also likely been extended to incorporate other offensive and defensive ground attack systems such as the Precision Strike Missile, Typhon, HIMARS and 155 artillery systems. The Army has also been working with IBCS-developer Northrop Grumman to connect the system with US Navy ship-based Aegis Radar.
“We have been working very hard with the team developing IBCS. We're looking at the defensive Guam system. We have been able to show how data moves through different kill chains with different sensors and shooters two years in a row,” Col. John Harvey, Director of Fires, US Army Pacific, told Warrior in an interview.
Chinese Ballistic Missile Arsenal
Long-range Chinese ballistic missiles such as the DF-27 can reportedly reach ranges of 8,000km, a distance that places them well within reach of hitting Guam from the 2.952-mile distance from mainland China. However, how many DF-27s does China have on hand? What kind of guidance systems do they operate with, and how precise is their targeting technology?
Located nearly 3,000 miles off the coast of mainland China, Guam would be hard to hit with land-based launchers. China’s famous DF-26 intermediate-range ballistic missile, for example, can travel 2,000 miles, yet it may not be able to reach Guam from the Chinese coastline. However, a Guam-based IBCS could be positioned through its multi-domain network to “see” Chinese ballistic missiles attacking US ships, bases and assets throughout the Pacific theater.
Guam is known to be a key base for many US military assets such as B-2 and B-52 bombers, so IBCS could provide critical protections from air, land or ship fired Chinese cruise missiles. Yet beyond this closer-in defensive capability, IBCS’ growing multi-domain capacity can increasingly enable it to defend areas at much greater distance and, for instance, use aerial or ocean surface nodes to “detect” incoming enemy missiles from beyond the radar horizon earlier in their flight trajectory.
It seems conceivable that IBCS could be used as a command and control system to extend ranges for offensive weapons as well, given its ability to network nodes across seemingly unreachable distances. It would make sense, for instance, to base IBCS in Japan and the Philippines as well, given its growing ranges and networked connectivity.
The Army already has Patriot missile defense batteries in the Philippines and is also test-firing its cutting edge Typhon missile system.
“Typhon the Army's contribution to the maritime fight because of its ability to shoot the SM 6 and a maritime Tomahawk. Right now this is surface based but it opens up new options as that weapon evolves. Looking at future evolutions, the Army is now experimenting with even newer platforms that potentially can be unmanned or could be tethered to a manned system to be able to fire similar munitions such as PrSM (Precision Strike Missile). We're going to have a whole magazine depth worth of capability that then we can contribute to the joint force and the land fight,” Harvey explained.
These newer possibilities could be of great relevance in the Pacific because, in theory, an unmanned platform or the surface of the ocean or in the air could function as a forward attack platform able to strike within range of critical targets otherwise unreachable due to simple “distance.”
“All of our experimentation, all of our testing and all of our remodeling says yes that we are building the right architecture in the right places to do absolutely that against not only today's threat but against tomorrow's threat,” Harvey said.
Kris Osborn is President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a highly qualified expert in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University
