Abstract
The hardware visionaries never sleep. Last February an obscure and futuristic global weapon was presented–in concept–at the air force armament summit. It is called the Common Aero Vehicle or CAV.
The CAV concept is based on now abandoned advanced maneuverable reentry vehicle programs, which were the rage in the 1970s for the nuclear missile force. Boeing has taken the idea and increased the size to transform it into an intercontinental maneuvering vehicle able to evade ballistic missile defenses and deposit weapons within 1,000 meters of a target.
The development has enormous implications for strategic stability and arms control. The CAV concept represents the long-sought-after potential for conventional weapons that could be used to destroy strategic targets in Russia and elsewhere, thus supplementing the existing nuclear force. (It also could be a possible nuclear delivery system to replace current bomber and missile forces.)
A CAV would be a gliding, thousand-pound, hypersonic “penetrator” delivered by a denuclearized and excess Minuteman III missile booster or by a new “Mark I Military Spaceplane,” which would be something like a military version of a next-generation space shuttle. It is being designed by Boeing's “Phantom Works” in St. Louis. With air force support, the company has been working on the program in earnest since February 1998.
Boeing is also designing the “Refly”–a reusable, suborbital, “precision-strike” mini-spaceplane that would carry two CAVs or other miniaturized munitions. A Refly would be launched from the hold of the spaceplane.
With a 12,000-nautical-mile range, CAVs would have “near total global coverage” from east and west coast launch sites, according to a Boeing briefing I obtained. The booster would release a CAV upon reentry into the atmosphere, and the weapon would maneuver and glide to the target. Total flight time: 30 to 90 minutes. Boeing concludes that there are “no serious risk or readiness issues in aeromechanics and performance.”
Boeing has modeled a variety of flight plans. For an attack on a nominal weapons-of-mass-destruction storage site near Basra, Iraq (6,150 nautical miles from Florida), a CAV would take 35 minutes. The entry velocity, without evasive maneuver, Boeing concluded, would be 10 times the speed of sound.
The air force has also looked at other payloads for CAVs–cluster bombs, the “small smart bomb,” an air-to-air missile, and “hard-target penetrators.” All are under development.
Non-nuclear intercontinental weapons have been on the developers' drafting tables for years. The Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (in “Space Roadmap for the 21st Century Aerospace Force,” issued in November 1998) concluded that “truly revolutionary improvements are possible” with advanced weapons and delivery technologies.
The board described “a highly operable vehicle for both space and atmospheric missions at orbital speeds” that would allow “surgical effects delivery anywhere on earth in something like 45 minutes from a ‘go’ order.”
It concludes that “the implications for counterterrorism, hostage rescue, rapid support to a threatened ally, and many other situations likely to dominate the military picture in the next century are unprecedented.”
Focusing on “special” missions for CAV and other futuristic systems both segregates the programs from traditional aircraft and bombs (with their powerful constituents), and also suggests political capabilities and options that are not otherwise currently available.
One of the biggest impediments for CAV or any other new system is money. An air force briefing last March on the concept, which I obtained, calls for engineering development by 2004 and production by 2007. But current research is only minimally funded and engineering is unfunded.
At a time when American air power dominates, it may seem odd that such an array of exotic weaponry is being seriously pursued at all. The never-ending research and development cycle is both a strength and weakness of the Pentagon. Many “silver bullet” systems such as the CAV, the spaceplane, or directed-energy weapons constantly fester, soaking up valuable dollars and providing mostly fictional images of military solutions to future challenges.
But the process also provides the basis for what will come. Most of these systems never make it out of the briefing stage. But given the symbolic prohibition on the development of new nuclear weapons, and the emerging regard for unmanned global air strikes, CAV is one to watch.