Shielded from Oversight

The report details the technical specifications, deployment history, and systemic failures of the US Ground Based Interceptor (GBI) and its associated kill vehicles. It highlights a pattern of deploying hardware and software before adequate flight testing, resulting in numerous design flaws, manufacturing errors, and failed intercept tests across multiple versions of the kill vehicle (CE-I, CE-II, and CE-II Block 1). The document also outlines future development plans for the Redesigned Kill Vehicle (RKV) and Multi-Object Kill Vehicles (MOKV), while discussing the kinematics of SM-3 interceptors as potential alternatives.

• The Ground Based Interceptor (GBI) is deployed in silos at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and Fort Greely in Alaska, with a procurement cost of approximately $75 million per unit.
• Early GMD intercept tests relied on prototype kill vehicles and surrogate boosters that did not represent the final fielded configuration, meaning components were deployed without being flight tested in their production-representative form.
• The Capability Enhancement-I (CE-I) kill vehicle has suffered from significant reliability issues, including a failure in July 2013 caused by a battery electrolyte leak and known performance issues with divert thrusters that the MDA does not plan to fix for fielded units.
• The Capability Enhancement-II (CE-II) kill vehicle experienced multiple test failures, including one caused by a missing lock pin and another due to a guidance system design flaw where divert thruster vibrations caused a "track gate anomaly."
• The MDA is developing a Redesigned Kill Vehicle (RKV) to replace current versions, focusing on modular design, improved reliability, and reduced assembly steps, with development spending planned at $658 million through FY 2020.
• The Multi-Object Kill Vehicle (MOKV) program aims to deploy multiple small kill vehicles on a single interceptor to overcome the challenge of discriminating between actual warheads and decoys.
• The SM-3 Block IIA interceptor is considered a potential alternative to additional GBI sites, although it is slower (4.0–4.5 km/s) and cannot intercept ICBMs from Iran or Russia if based in Europe.

APA

Union of Concerned Scientists (2016). Shielded from Oversight. https://www.ucs.org/sites/default/files/attach/2016/07/Shielded-from-Oversight-appendix-6.pdf

Chicago

Union of Concerned Scientists. Shielded from Oversight. 2016. https://www.ucs.org/sites/default/files/attach/2016/07/Shielded-from-Oversight-appendix-6.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Union of Concerned Scientists |title=Shielded from Oversight |date=July 2016 |url=https://www.ucs.org/sites/default/files/attach/2016/07/Shielded-from-Oversight-appendix-6.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{unionofconcernedscientists2016shielded, author = {{Union of Concerned Scientists}}, title = {{Shielded from Oversight}}, institution = {Union of Concerned Scientists}, year = {2016}, month = jul, url = {https://www.ucs.org/sites/default/files/attach/2016/07/Shielded-from-Oversight-appendix-6.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }