The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) plans to spend more than $300 million on three new initiatives in the next fiscal year to “dramatically improve” the ability of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system to protect the United States against long-range ballistic missiles.
MDA’s $7.5-billion fiscal 2015 budget request, unveiled March 4 for congressional consideration, includes $99.5 million to redesign the exoatmospheric kill vehicle (EKV) installed atop GMD ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California. MDA officials said they want to improve the performance and reliability of the EKV, which destroys an incoming warhead by colliding with it.
Although developed as a prototype, the existing kill vehicle was deployed by the Bush administration to provide an initial defense against long-range ballistic missiles fired from a state like North Korea. But problems with the EKV have contributed to GMD flight test failures in recent years, and the agency always intended to improve the kill vehicle anyway, said Navy Vice Adm. James Syring, MDA’s director.
At a Pentagon press briefing, Syring said MDA is assessing acquisition options for the redesigned EKV, including holding an industry competition or simply modifying its contract with Raytheon, the current supplier. He told reporters that “three very viable industry concepts” for a redesigned EKV have already been formulated and are under review.
The proposed missile defense budget also includes $79.5 million to begin developing a Long Range Discriminating Radar, which would improve GMD’s ability to “discriminate,” or distinguish warheads from decoys. The agency hopes to start deploying the new radar by 2020. The radar would be based in Alaska or elsewhere in the Pacific and would give the existing, mobile Sea-Based X-Band Radar “more geographic deployment flexibility for contingency and test use,” Syring said.
A third GMD-related budget item would provide $122 million for other discrimination improvements, including algorithm work, database updates and engineering.
“The combined effects of these [three] investments will be a deployed GMD architecture capable of discriminating and killing a re-entry vehicle with a high degree of confidence and will dramatically improve GMD system capability and warfighter doctrine, while preserving inventory,” Syring said.
Also at the press briefing, Syring said that MDA continues to study a potential successor to its two Space Tracking and Surveillance System demonstrator satellites, which it launched in 2009 to track ballistic missiles from space.
“We’re working hard with our partners who do space for a living on what the follow-on system or capability will be and when it will be,” Syring said, adding that the existing spacecraft have enough life and fuel to “be fine for the next few years.”
