THAAD is scheduled for deployment in 2011. The first intercept attempt of the THAAD system will take place in late 2004 or 2005. In July 2004 THAAD testing will move from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico to the Pacific Missile Range for block 6 and 8 flight tests. Past failures hampered THAAD?s test schedule.

The Theater High-Altitude Area Defense [THAAD] system will provide extended coverage for a greater diversity and dispersion of forces and the capability to protect population centers. But the principal additional capability provided by this system is the ability to deal with longer-range theater missile threats as they begin to emerge. THAAD also reduces the number of missiles that the lower-tier systems must engage and provides a shoot-look-shoot capability--the ability to engage incoming missiles more efficiently. With a range of over 200 km and a maximum altitude of 150 km, THAAD is designed to intercept ballistic missiles at long ranges above the atmosphere.

THAAD is the most mature upper-tier system. The President?s Budget 1997 schedule for this program had LRIP beginning in fiscal year 2003, with a FUE in fiscal year 2006. However, DOD subsequently added $690 million to this program over the FY 1998 FYDP, which moves the FUE to late fiscal year 2004. This additional funding also: (1) completes the funding for the second Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) radar, (2) decreases schedule and technical risks during EMD, and (3) decreases the total acquisition cost by $457 million.

The THAAD Program was restructured in 1996, though there was a decision to keep the UOES portion of the program on track. DOD planned to be able to deploy an initial limited THAAD UOES capability in the second quarter of FY 1999 should a contingency arise. The final UOES capability would include about 40 missiles and two radars, which will be used for user testing, but which could be maintained in theater if needed.

Recent testing difficulties have led to the slip of this capability from the fourth quarter of FY 1998 to the second quarter of FY 1999. THAAD faces significant system engineering challenge. The fact that recent THAAD flights have not met all their objectives, stretching out testing and delaying the start of EMD by over fifteen months, illustrates the difficulty of this task. Since the seventh THAAD test was not successful, it was necessary to reevaluate the program?s schedule and content.

Studies done by the military and independent sources cited the following problems in the Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) Program: First, the program's compressed flight-test schedule did not allow for adequate ground testing, and officials could not spot problems before flight tests. The schedule also left too little time for preflight testing, postflight analysis, and corrective measures. Second, the requirement that an early prototype system be deployed quickly has diverted attention from the normal interceptor development process and resulted in interceptors that were not equipped with sufficient instruments to provide optimum test data. Third, quality assurance received too little emphasis and resources during component production, resulting in unreliable components. Fourth, the contract to develop the interceptor was a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract, which placed all of the financial risk on the government and did not hold the contractor accountable for less than optimum performance.

The restructure program addressed each of these four underlying problems. However, the reliability of current flight-test interceptors remains a concern because most components were produced when the contractor's quality assurance system was inadequate. Test failures caused primarily by manufacturing defects rather than advanced technology problems have prevented the Army from demonstrating that THAAD can reliably intercept targets in all required regions.

The restructuring of the THAAD program raised the issue of what the purpose of the User Operational Evaluation System battalion at Fort Bliss should now be. Whether all or only part of the battalion would warrant deployment for contingency operations would depend on the capabilities it could provide to warfighters and the priority of the need for one or more of those capabilities. However, there would be little basis for making a deployment determination because the Defense Department does not plan to conduct an operational assessment of the User Operational Evaluation System.