Europe will never match the U.S.’s passion for missile defense; but step-by-step, Washington’s NATO partners are moving to build up capacities that could augment and expand the shield the Pentagon is creating.

Progress will be slow and incremental, though, and—in terms of budget expenditure—will remain a mere fraction of what the U.S. commits to the mission area.

Nevertheless, there is clear momentum in Europe to do more, even if the main motivator is industrial base considerations: France wants to ensure that its missile sector does not lose out to U.S. rivals in providing interceptors to European and other forces, and the Netherlands wants to sustain advanced naval radar capacities.

In the NATO context, budgets are less important than symbolic steps, and this is underscored by the members’ recent move to award a €2.5 million ($3.4 million) contract to an industry team led by Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), which will define the first elements of a plan that will enlarge the theater missile defense system to cover NATO territory and populations in Europe. Last year, NATO decided that it wanted to protect territory instead of just deployed forces. It was a long political battle, so this study effort—no matter how paltry the funding—has significant implications for the alliance’s future.

Work under the year-long effort is to be performed at the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency in The Hague, and “the results will then be taken forward for implementation in the NATO command-and-control network to broaden the capabilities of the NATO commander well beyond those demonstrated recently in missile defense testing between the U.S. and NATO elements last month,” the organization said in announcing the contract.

Alessandro Pera, manager for the Active Layered Theater Ballistic Missile Defense (ALTBMD) program—the command, control and communications backbone for the alliance’s missile shield—says that under the new contract award, “we will work as a team with our industry and national partners, in close consultation with both the NATO military and relevant NATO committees, to ensure we get the job done.”

The NATO contract follows a November 2010 decision at the Lisbon summit to provide the alliance with an additional layer of capability to protect Europe.

Meanwhile, the Netherlands, which has had a longtime interest in a missile shield, is pressing ahead to build up its own capacities. The Dutch defense ministry plans to expand the capabilities of the Thales Smart-L radar on Dutch frigates to take on BMD roles. The program’s value is estimated at €100-250 million, including logistics support and spares.

Other European navies using the sensor may follow the Dutch lead.

Dutch Defense Minister Hans Hillen notes that the Smart-L effort would help address the BMD sensor shortage within the NATO alliance. Citing NATO’s decision last year to take a more expansive approach to BMD, Hillen says Smart-L could give the ALTBMD command-and-control backbone the required long-range target-detection information. The sensor also could provide accurate launch-point detection analysis to help identify where a threat originates.  [Aviation Week]

You can read more at the link to include how Raytheon is promoting its SM-3 missile in an effort to sell it to European allies.

Right now, in many American ships beyond the top-tier AEGIS destroyers and cruisers, the detect-to-engage sequence against anti-ship missiles requires a lot of manual steps, involving different ship systems that use different displays. When a Mach 3 missile gives you 45 seconds from appearance on ship’s radar to impact, however, seconds of delay can be fatal. Seconds of unnecessary delay are unacceptable.

Hence Raytheon’s Ship Self Defense System (SSDS), which uses software and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) electronics to turn incoming data from several systems (radar, radar warning receivers, combat identification, electro-optics) into a single picture of prioritized threats. SSDS will then recommend an engagement sequence for the ship’s crew, or (in automatic mode) fire some combination of jamming transmissions, chaff or decoys, and/or weapons against the oncoming threat. The entire ship’s combat system concept, including the sensors and weapons, is known as Quick Reaction Combat Capability (QRCC) – and SSDS is the key element that ties it all together.  [Defense Industry Daily]

You can read a whole lot more about this system at the link.

Raytheon Co. said first-quarter profit rose 14 percent on increased sales from air-and-missile- defense systems and training programs. Profit for the full year will exceed the company’s earlier forecast.

Net income beat analysts’ estimates, climbing to $452 million, or $1.12 a share, from $398 million, or 92 cents, a year earlier, Waltham, Massachusetts-based Raytheon said in a statement today. Sales increased 9.9 percent to $5.88 billion.

Raytheon builds the Standard Missile 2 and makes the radar for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates intends to increase funding for both as he plans other missile-defense cuts. The systems have received more attention following an April 5 rocket launch by North Korea in defiance of a United Nations resolution.

“Operating profits came in 6 percent higher than our forecast, with Missile Systems and Network Centric Systems posting better than expected margins,” Rob Stallard, an analyst at Macquarie Capital Inc. in New York, said in a report to clients today. He rates the shares “outperform” and doesn’t own any. “A solid start to 2009 from Raytheon, and the company blew past conservative expectations.”  [Bloomberg]