Air Force Lt. Gen. Glen VanHerck, the nominee to head U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on July 28 that he shares the desire of Air Force Gen. Terrence O’Shaughnessy, the current commander, to accelerate the fielding of the Next Generation Interceptor (NGI) before 2030.
VanHerck told the committee that he discussed NGI last week with Missile Defense Agency (MDA) Director Vice Adm. Jon Hill and that Hill had said that he expects to receive NGI industry proposals next week.
“I understand Northern Command’s number one requirement was timing and sequencing of the Next Generation Interceptor,” VanHerck testified in response to a question from Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.). “I’m optimistic based on my discussions with Jon Hill that we’ll see the NGI move further left.”
Last August, DoD officially
canceled the Redesigned Kill Vehicle (RKV) program after design problems more than tripled costs and created the NGI program to replace RKV. The NGI includes a new booster rocket and a new kill vehicle (Defense Daily, Aug. 21).
Northrop Grumman [NOC] and Raytheon Technologies [RTX], and Boeing [BA] are among the four contractors DoD is expecting to compete for two NGI contracts. Boeing and Raytheon were the contractor and subcontractor, respectively, for RKV. MDA released the RFP for NGI in April.
Whereas the RKV was only improving the kinetic interceptor at the end of the Ground-Based Interceptor (GBI), the NGIs will replace the entire missiles.
The GBIs are part of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system that aims to defend the U.S. from a limited ballistic missile attack. MDA intends to produce at least 20 NGIs replacing the planned 20 RKVs to fill silos at the Fort Greely, Alaska, GMD site.
MDA estimates the total cost of designing, developing, and fielding 50 NGIs will be over $11 billion if it retains two prime contractor competitors through the critical design review period.
Officials are looking at fielding an interim capability–the current GMD system with an under-layer, prior to fielding NGI. VanHerck said that appropriated funds are allowing a GMD service life extension and “will bring additional capabilities and redundancy to the system.” In addition, MDA has a test this winter of the Navy Aegis SM-3 and the Army Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD). The under-layer system “is TBD,” Van Herck said. “We need to see that [winter] test first.”
On July 28, SASC also heard from Army Lt. Gen. James Dickinson, the nominee to head U.S. Space Command, who would be the first non-Air Force commander of SPACECOM. Air Force Gen. John Raymond serves as the commander of U.S. Space Command and as chief of space operations for the U.S. Space Force–a dual hatting that the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, P.L. 116-92, allows for one year only “without further appointment.” Raymond has served as the commander of SPACECOM, the 11th combatant command, since Aug. 29 last year and as the chief of operations for Space Force, the sixth military service, since Dec. 20 last year.
In his prepared testimony, Dickinson said that SPACECOM needs defensive and aggressive capabilities against China and Russia in space.
“China is likely pursuing antisatellite weapons capable of destroying satellites operating in geosynchronous Earth orbits,” according to Dickinson’s prepared remarks. “China’s PLA [People’s Liberation Army] currently operates and trains with a ground-based antisatellite missiles capable of destroying satellites in Low Earth Orbits. China is currently designing jammers capable of targeting military reconnaissance platforms and disrupting military communications transmitted at extremely high frequencies. China will likely soon field a ground-based laser weapon capable of disrupting or damaging satellite sensors in low orbits.”
As for Russia, Dickinson wrote in his prepared testimony that “Moscow’s broad spectrum of counterspace weapons–GPS jammers, SATCOM Jammers, directed energy weapons, orbital threats, and ground-based kinetic energy threats all pose a threat to U.S. space-related assets.”
“Russia will use these weapons in part to gain and maintain information superiority over its competitors,” according to Dickinson. “The weaponization of information is a key aspect of Moscow’s information confrontation strategy to be employed in times of peace, crisis, and war.”