All figures in millions of dollars. * The Senate NDAA transferred authorization for THAAD O&M and Procurement obligations to the Army. The Senate Appropriations Committee transferred appropriation obligations for Aegis BMD to the Navy and THAAD to the Army. ** Military construction is appropriated by a different subcommittee than the Senate Defense Appropriations subcommittee. The...
Just over a year ago, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan announced that the 2020 defense budget would be the “masterpiece” that would finally align Pentagon spending with the new direction of the National Defense Strategy. The release of the new budget follows the January 2019 release of the Missile Defense Review, which laid out...
On January 22, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and the Israel Missile Defense Organization (IMDO) successfully tested Israel’s Arrow 3 Weapon System in collaboration with the Israeli Air Force from a test site in central Israel. Neither the MDA press release nor Israeli reports mention the specifications of the target “long-range” ballistic missile, but Israel’s...
On December 11, the U.S. Navy and Missile Defense Agency conducted an SM-3 Block IIA intercept test from an Aegis Ashore facility at the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Kauai, Hawaii. The SM-3 IIA successfully intercepted an IRBM target launched by a USAF C-17 thousands of kilometers southwest of the Aegis Ashore site. An MDA...
On October 22, the U.S. Army confirmed its collaboration with the Navy, the Air Force, and the Missile Defense Agency to develop hypersonic weapons, amid developments in hypersonic missile testing in Russia and China. According to the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC), the three armed services and the MDA are collaborating on a...
On August 1, Congress passed the FY 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The bill authorizes a total of $10 billion for the Missile Defense Agency, $51 million more than the Trump Administration request. The authorization includes relative reductions to programs that were forward financed in the final FY 2018 omnibus appropriations bill and supplements...
Rethinking the push for program transfer When the U.S. Missile Defense Agency was created in 2002, the expectation was that it would initially develop missile defense systems but then transfer responsibility for their procurement to the military services that would operate them. The process has not worked out quite as expected. Missile defense capabilities have...
On October 15, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) announced that ships from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States participated in a live-fire integrated air and missile defense (IAMD) scenario. During the exercise, the Arleigh-Burke class guided-missile destroyer USS Donald Cook (DDG-75) tracked and defeated a medium-range ballistic...
On July 24, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) indicated that sailor error was responsible for a failed SM-3 Block IIA missile intercept test. According to Defense News, a tactical datalink controller, responsible for maintaining communications between the missile and the Navy’s Aegis ship combat system, incorrectly identified the incoming ballistic missile target as friendly, consequentially...
The United States‘ Missile Defense Agency is accelerating the development of an interceptor designed to counter several incoming warheads or decoys simultaneously. The most recent Department of Defense budget request seeks $259 million for the Multi-Object Kill Vehicle (MOKV) program for technology risk reduction and product development and speeds up its projected completion by five...
