A safety blanket vs. nuclear attack: National Guard troops defend our skies

Courtesy Photo | A ground-based interceptor is launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, toward a ballistic missile target launched from Alaska during a test Dec. 5, 2008. (Photo courtesy of the Missile Defense Agency)  

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, CA, UNITED STATES

12.10.2015

Story by Brandon Honig 

California National Guard Primary   

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. - When Steve Perez began a temporary assignment at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., in 2004, it was just him and an officer. But he knew the size of his team didn’t reflect the importance of his job – protecting the United States from an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) attack.

“If we weren’t here to do our job, it would be catastrophic to the United States,” said Perez, now a sergeant 1st class based at Vandenberg. “I mean, could you imagine a nuclear missile hitting Los Angeles? How many casualties would that cause? Millions of people, gone in an instant.”

In 2004, Perez was an active duty soldier acting as a liaison to the 100th Missile Defense Brigade (MDB) in Colorado for the fledgling Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system, which had missiles deployed to Vandenberg. He spent 90 days in California, then rotated out for a new two-person team.

The mission at Vandenberg grew during the next five years, and in 2009 a seven-person missile detachment was established there as part of the California Army National Guard. That contingent has since grown to comprise 14 soldiers vigilantly monitoring the skies and space every moment of every day.

With their fellow brigade members at Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado, and Fort Greely, Alaska, Detachment 1’s soldiers live by the motto, “300 soldiers defending 300 million Americans.”

“We’re like a safety blanket,” Perez said. “We take out that threat ICBM from wherever it comes at a moment’s notice.”

Hitting a Bullet at 15,000 MPH
About once a year, a test ballistic missile is launched from a U.S. base somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, triggering alerts at the 100th MDB’s three locations. Sensors on land, at sea and in space detect the test launch and begin gathering data to project the missile’s trajectory.

Once the missile is deemed a threat, the warfighters of the 100th MDB launch a ground-based interceptor missile to meet the target at a point in the exoatmosphere, the region of space just beyond Earth’s atmosphere. As the interceptor approaches that point in space, it opens its own viewer, finds the target and homes in on it.

Traveling at an incredible rate of speed, the interceptor needs tremendous accuracy – but no warhead – to destroy its target.

“We are basically hitting a bullet with a bullet at about 15,000 miles an hour in space, so the margin for error is very small,” said 1st Lt. Kevin Weger, who served as the detachment’s executive officer until a recent transfer to Schriever. “You’re hitting something a little bit bigger than a micro-fridge [in diameter] with an object of the same size in outer space, so we’re basically looking to hit the target dead-on.”

An Essential Mission
The 100th MDB is headquartered in Colorado, but its interceptor missiles are launched from Vandenberg and Fort Greely. The 14 members of Detachment 1 monitor the system at Vandenberg, manage and maintain the interceptors and their equipment, and communicate any status changes to brigade headquarters in Colorado.

The brigade’s training is vigorous and includes elements of physics, astronomy and probability in addition to highly technical training on the missile system itself. And because the GMD system is still undergoing research and development, the training never ends.

“This system is always evolving, and you have to be constantly learning new things and be on your toes,” said Sgt. Jose Montalvo. “Downtime is about educating myself, making myself better at what I do and studying our plan of action.”

Soldiers like Montalvo work 12-hour shifts, and real-life threats are rarely detected. But multiple nightly exercises run by U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) keep the troops sharp.

“Those exercises are unannounced, so soldiers here working at 2 o’clock in the morning can get a phone call [or other communication], and they don’t know if it’s real or for an exercise [initially],” Perez said. “So there’s always that heightened sense of alert when you pull a shift, because you don’t know what’s going to happen until it happens.”

The Future is Now
The GMD system got its start in the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan. At a time when “mutually assured destruction” was considered the only way to prevent an enemy’s nuclear attack, Reagan launched the Strategic Defense Initiative – better known as “Star Wars” – to create a new line of defense against nuclear missiles.

Technology at the time was not yet capable of striking a ballistic missile on the edge of outer space, however, and the program stalled. In the ’90s, the success of the Patriot missile program during the Gulf War proved that knocking a missile out of the sky was possible, and Reagan’s vision again gained momentum. Then, in 2002, President George W. Bush issued a directive to set up missile defense capabilities by 2004.

The Ballistic Missile Defense System was declared operational in September 2004, and it has been running round-the-clock ever since.

“We could face an ICBM threat at any point, especially from a rogue nation that could launch for any number of reasons – grievances they have with the United States,” Weger said. “It’s important for us to always stay on alert, and this brigade has soldiers on call, on ready, on station 24/7/365.”

• Date Taken: 12.10.2015
• Date Posted: 12.10.2015 14:16
• Story ID: 184147
• Location: VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, CA, US