The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s mark, or first draft, of the fiscal year 2024 defense authorization bill would add $100 million to fund six more Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors due to concerns about fielding and China.
A senior committee aide told Defense Daily
that in the wake of U.S. Strategic Command approving the current Army requirements for two more THAAD batteries in 2018, Batteries 8 and 9, Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) is concerned current production rates are not sufficient given threats in a Chinese conflict.
“The chairman is concerned that decreasing rates of production slows fielding to the THAAD force in support of Regional Combatant Command operational plans against worldwide threats and delays meeting the USSTRATCOM requirement,” the aide said.
In 2022, producer Lockheed Martin [LMT] received a $74 million contract to produce the 8th THAAD battery, expected to be fielded in 2025.
Moreover, the aide said THAAD interceptors would be “particularly useful in a China scenario, to include in the defense of Guam.”
The aide also argued the chairman’s position that President Biden’s FY 2024 budget request “plans to procure a measly 11 THAAD interceptors,” but adding these six interceptors would be a 50 percent increase to production.
The administration’s request for 11 THAAD interceptors is at a cost of almost $217 million (Defense Daily, March 14).
MDA’s budget estimate overview documents said procurement of the 11 interceptors “supports the minimum quantity required to maintain continuous production at the prime and supplier level.”
Last year, MDA decided the architecture for the military to defend Guam will include maintaining one THAAD battery already deployed there while adding mobile unit versions on the Aegis Combat System, Raytheon Technologies [RTX] Standard Missile (SM)-3 and SM-6 missiles, the Northrop Grumman [NOC] Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS), and more (Defense Daily, March 29, 2022).