The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) requests $7.459 billion in Fiscal Year 2015 to develop and deploy the systems that constitute the Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS).
The BMDS is being developed by the agency to provide U.S. homeland defense and regional missile defense for deployed forces, allies, and friends.
MDA requests a total of $37.575 billion from FY 2015 to FY 2019, the period of the Future Years Defense Program (FYDP).
For Homeland Defense, in response to recent threat developments, the Department increased the planned number of fielded Ground Based Interceptors (GBIs) by 14; something announced last year by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, a commitment supported in this budget, said MDA Director Vice Adm. James Syring, during a briefing on the agency budget March 3.
The Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), released Tuesday, said as the Joint Force rebalances so that it remains modern, capable, and ready, the department will take additional steps consistent with the president’s FY ’15 Budget submission to protect key capability areas supportive of the strategy.
One of those steps is in missile defense, where the QDR said it was increasing the number of Ground-Based Interceptors and deploying a second radar in Japan to provide early warning and tracking.
“We will make targeted investments in defensive interceptors, discrimination capabilities, and sensors; and we are studying the best location for an additional missile defense interceptor site in the United States if additional interceptors are needed,” the QDR document said.
MDA’s budget documents said it would maintain its commitment to build out homeland defenses to 44 GBIs by 2017. In addition, it will execute a return to intercept flight test in the third quarter 2014. The focus of the test will be on Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system reliability and GBI performance.
Last year, MDA began refurbishment of Missile Field 1 at Fort Greely, Alaska (FGA) to develop silo capacity to support emplacement of additional GBIs. GBIs will continue to be emplaced in Missile Field 2 (MF2). GBI component testing will be conducted and refurbish currently deployed GBI to test and improve their reliability.
MDA will continue to acquire GBIs to support GMD operations, testing, and spares and emplace GBIs in MF2 as it moves toward 44 by the end of 2017.
MDA continues to fund operations and sustainment of the GMD weapon system with Operation and Maintenance, Defense-Wide funds.
“We will take additional steps to keep pace with the threats to the U.S. homeland,” Syring said. “We have requested $99.5 million to initiate the redesign of the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) for GMD. The redesigned EKV will be built with a modular, open architecture and designed with common interfaces and standards, making upgrades easier and broadening our vendor and supplier base.”
The acquisition strategy is undecided at this point, he said.
The redesigned EKV will increase performance to address the evolving threat; improve reliability, availability, maintainability, testability and producibility; and increase in-flight communications to improve usage of off-board sensors information and situational awareness to combatant commanders for enabling new tactics such as shoot-assess-shoot.
For Regional Missile Defense, MDA will continue to focus on threats from Asia-Pacific and the Middle East as it continues to support the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA) to protect our European NATO allies and deployed forces from ballistic missile attacks.
The Department met its objectives for EPAA Phase 1 by deploying Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) ships in the Mediterranean Sea, a land-based radar in Turkey, and Command, Control, Battle Management, and Communications system node at Ramstein Air Base in Germany in 2011.
The next two EPAA phases–Phases 2 and 3–include additional Aegis BMD ships (2014-2015) and Aegis Ashore in Romania in 2015 and in Poland in 2018. Aegis Ashore will be capable of launching Standard Missile-3 variants.