Countering Missile Threats Means Addressing the Present While Planning for the Future
Absent any effort to expand or modernize GMD, homeland missile defense will likely fall behind current threats while NGI matures.
Absent any effort to expand or modernize GMD, homeland missile defense will likely fall behind current threats while NGI matures.
On April 24, the U.S. Department of Defense issued a Request For Proposal (RFP) for the Next Generation Interceptor (NGI), a new interceptor for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense System. According to the release, the solicitation period will conclude on July 31, 2020, with additional extensions available given the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. The Pentagon had previously...
The 2021 budget submission represents an inflection point for missile defense programs, the relationship between active defenses and other forms of missile defeat, and the institutional makeup of the missile defense enterprise.
Recent Pentagon actions have produced considerable uncertainty in the future of homeland ballistic missile defense. In August 2019, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Dr. Michael Griffin cancelled the Redesigned Kill Vehicle (RKV) program, a long-running effort to replace the kill vehicles on older Ground-Based Interceptors (GBI) designed to defend the nation from a long-range ballistic...