16/10/2015 DGA

Dans le cadre de sa conférence multinationale annuelle sur la défense antimissile balistique, l’Agence américaine pour la défense antimissile (Missile Defense Agency), sur proposition du comité de programme international, a décerné le 6 octobre 2015 le « Technology Pioneer Award » aux équipes françaises et italiennes du système de défense aérienne élargie SAMP/T.

Ce prix récompense le succès du tir effectué le 6 mars 2013 par un missile Aster 30 Block 1 contre une cible représentative d’un missile balistique tactique de type SCUD, en interconnexion avec la chaîne de commandement de l’OTAN.

Ce tir avait pour objectif de montrer que la capacité de défense antimissile balistique du SAMP/T et son interopérabilité avec l’OTAN via l’utilisation de la liaison 16 lui permettent de s’intégrer dans une opération interarmées et interalliés.

Le tir a été réalisé au centre DGA Essais de missiles de Biscarrosse, conjointement par le quatrième régiment d’artillerie de Mantoue (Italie) et le Centre d’expertise aérienne militaire (CEAM) de Mont-de-Marsan. Il a mobilisé des moyens importants de plusieurs centres de la DGA et de l’OTAN, ainsi qu’une frégate Aegis américaine.

Les principaux atouts du SAMP/T sont notamment la défense de zone sur 360° ainsi que sa capacité à traiter simultanément tout type de cibles aériennes conventionnelles et balistiques de courte portée. Développé et produit par Thales et MBDA à travers le consortium Eurosam, en coopération entre la France et l’Italie, le système SAMP/T est en service dans ces deux pays qui l’apportent comme contribution au programme OTAN de défense antimissile balistique.

April 3, 2014 defense-aerospace.com

(Source: US Government Accountability Office; issued April 2, 2014)

Missile Defense: Mixed Progress in Achieving Acquisition Goals and Improving Accountability

Testimony by Cristina T. Chaplain, director, acquisition and sourcing management, before the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Senate Committee on Armed Services.


The Department of Defense's (DOD) Missile Defense Agency (MDA) made progress in its goals to improve acquisition management, and accountability and transparency. The agency gained important knowledge for its Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) by successfully conducting several important tests, including the first missile defense system-level operational flight test. Additionally, key programs successfully conducted developmental flight tests that demonstrated key capabilities and modifications made to resolve prior issues. MDA also made some improvements to transparency and accountability. For example, MDA improved the management of its acquisition-related efforts to deploy a missile defense system in Europe and MDA continued to improve the clarity of its resource and schedule baselines, which are reported to Congress for oversight.

Although some progress has been made, MDA acquisitions are still high risk, due to inherent technical and integration challenges, tight timeframes, strategies that overlap development and production activities, and incomplete management tools. More specifically:

MDA faces challenges stemming from higher-risk acquisition strategies that overlap production activities with development activities. While some concurrency is understandable, committing to production and fielding before development is complete often results in performance shortfalls, unexpected cost increases, schedule delays, and test problems. GAO found that the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense SM-3 Block IB and Ground-based Midcourse Defense programs, which have already produced some of their assets before completing testing, discovered issues during testing that have affected or continue to affect production.

Testing continues to fall short of goals. For example, the first ever system-level operational flight test failed to demonstrate true integration. MDA also combined, delayed, and deleted some tests, and eliminated test objectives in other tests. These challenges reduced the knowledge they had planned to obtain in order to understand the capabilities and limitations of the BMDS.

MDA has not yet fully developed or implemented a complete management strategy for synchronizing its efforts to deploy missile defense in Europe. As a result, it remains unclear how different European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA) efforts are aligned together and what constitutes success in delivering capabilities in Europe.

Issues with the content and presentation of resource and schedule baselines continue to limit their usefulness as management tools. For the fourth year, GAO has found that MDA's cost estimates are unreliable for some BMDS elements and do not include certain costs for military services which may significantly understate total costs. Recently, Congress took steps to require that improvements be made to MDA's cost estimates, so GAO did not make any new cost recommendations. MDA's schedule baselines continue to be presented in a way that makes it difficult to assess progress. For instance, MDA's schedule baselines identify numerous events, but provide little information on the events and why they are important.

Why GAO Did This Study

In order to meet its mission, MDA is developing a diverse group of BMDS components including (1) land-, sea-, and space-based sensors; (2) interceptors; and (3) a battle management system. These systems can be integrated in different ways to provide protection in various regions of the world. Since its inception in 2002, MDA has been given flexibility in executing the development and fielding of the ballistic missile defense system. This statement addresses recent MDA progress and the challenges it faces with its acquisition management. It is based on GAO's March and April 2014 reports and prior reports on missile defense.

What GAO Recommends

In April 2014, GAO recommended that MDA verify any changes needed for the SM-3 Block IB missile through flight testing before approving full production; retest the fielded GMD interceptor to demonstrate performance and the effectiveness of changes; and take actions to improve the clarity of its schedule baselines.

DOD partially concurred with the recommendation on the SM-3, stating that MDA will verify the efficacy of any modifications by testing and that the production decision will be vetted through the DOD process. DOD did not agree with the recommendation on GMD, stating that the decision to flight test the interceptor will be made by the Director, MDA, based on the judgment of other stakeholders.

GAO previously made recommendations on EPAA and testing. DOD generally concurred with them. GAO continues to believe all recommendations are valid.


Click here for the full testimony (19 PDF pages) on the GAO website.

Click here for the related report (49 PDF pages) on the GAO website.

March 5, 2014 defense-aerospace.com

(Source: Missile Defense Agency; issued March 4, 2014)

Missile Defense Agency (MDA) Fiscal Year 2015 Budget Overview

The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is requesting $7.459 billion in FY 2015 to develop and deploy interceptors, sensors, and command and control, battle management and communications (C2BMC) systems that constitute the Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) to provide U.S. homeland defense and regional missile defense for deployed forces, allies, and friends.

The Agency is requesting a total of $37.575 billion from FY 2015 to FY 2019, the period of the Future Years Defense Program (FYDP).

The budget protects previously established homeland and regional defense priorities. For Homeland Defense, in response to recent threat developments, the Department increased the planned number of fielded Ground Based Interceptors (GBIs) by 14. MDA will maintain our commitment to build out homeland defenses to 44 GBIs by 2017. In addition we 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. We continue to emplace GBIs in Missile Field 2 (MF2), conduct GBI component testing, and refurbish currently deployed GBIs 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 we progress towards 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.

MDA will take additional steps to keep pace with the threats to the U.S. homeland. 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 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.

The budget also requests $79.5 million to begin development of a Long Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR). The new LRDR is a mid-course tracking radar that will provide persistent sensor coverage and improve discrimination capabilities against threats to the homeland from the Pacific theater. This new radar also will give the Sea-Based X-band (SBX) radar more geographic deployment flexibility for contingency and test use.

We are also requesting $122 million for Discrimination Improvements for Homeland Defense (DIHD). This investment will develop and field an integrated set of Element capabilities to improve BMDS engagement reliability, lethality, and discrimination. The combined effects of these investments will be a deployed BMDS architecture more capable of discriminating and killing a reentry vehicle with a high degree of confidence that will dramatically improve BMD System capability and Warfighter shot doctrine while preserving inventory.

For Regional Missile Defense, MDA will continue to focus on threats from Asia-Pacific and the Middle East as we continue 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 Force 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 (SM-3) Block IA, IB, and IIA (delivery in 2018) variants.

Our goal in EPAA Phase 2 is to provide robust capability against Short Range Ballistic Missiles (SRBMs) and Medium Range Ballistic Missiles (MRBMs) by ensuring the system provides multiple opportunities to engage each threat missile in flight. The architecture includes the deployment of the Aegis BMD 4.0 and 5.0 weapon systems with SM-3 Block IBs at sea and at an Aegis Ashore site in Romania. The Romania site is on schedule to be available in 2015.

In support of EPAA Phase 3, the SM-3 Block IIA, which we are co-developing with the Japanese government, and an upgraded version of the Aegis Weapons System are on schedule for deployment in 2018 at the Aegis Ashore sites in Poland and Romania and at sea. The upgraded Aegis Weapons System combined with the faster, longer reaching SM-3 IIA will provide capability to counter more sophisticated threats when compared to the SM-3 IA and IB and will extend coverage to NATO allies in Europe threatened by longer range ballistic missiles.

The MDA is requesting $435 million to procure 30 Aegis SM-3 Block IB missiles in FY 2015, for a total of 332 SM-3 Block IB missiles. MDA requests $68.9 million for advance procurement for four long lead items associated with the FY 2016 SM-3 Block IB missile buy to ensure timely delivery to the Combatant Commander. These items include: 1) MK 104 Dual Thrust Rocket Motor, 2) MK 72 Boosters, 3) Integrated Dewar Assemblies and 4) Circuit Card assemblies.

For FY 2015, the MDA is requesting $464 million for THAAD procurement, which includes the purchase of 31 THAAD interceptors. This puts us on a path for an additional THAAD battery, based on warfighter demand and operational need. We will continue to enhance THAAD’s ability to operate through post-intercept debris, enable launch of THAAD’s interceptors using sensor data provided by other BMDS sensors, and maintain capability against current and evolving threats.

We will also deploy a second forward-based X-band AN/TPY-2 radar in Japan, improving homeland and regional defense capabilities and increasing our global operational AN/TPY-2 radar posture, and we will build and improve the C2BMC infrastructure at fielded sites.

In addition to continuing the enhancement of global BMD survivable communications and support for operations and sustainment of C2BMC at fielded sites, in FY 2015 we will integrate Overhead Persistent Infrared data into C2BMC to support cueing of BMD sensors worldwide. We will also improve sensor data integration and battle management in C2BMC to support Aegis BMD cueing and launch-on and engage-on remote capability.

We are developing fiscally sustainable advanced BMD technologies that can be integrated into the BMDS to adapt to threat changes. Our investments are focused on technology that brings upgradeable capability to the warfighter. Our advanced technology investments are determined by systems engineering, which permits us to evaluate and determine which emerging technical solutions will best address gaps in the BMDS and enhance overall BMDS capability and performance. The goals of our investments are to deploy a future BMDS architecture more capable of discriminating and intercepting the reentry vehicle with a high degree of confidence, and to allow warfighters to dramatically improve their shot doctrine.

This budget continues MDA’s longstanding commitment in support of Israeli defensive efforts to include the development of the David’s Sling Weapon System (DSWS), Upper Tier Interceptor (UTI), Arrow Weapon System Improvements, and procurement of the Iron Dome Weapon System (IDWS). MDA is working with the Israel Missile Defense Organization (IMDO) on these programs to include the delivery of Iron Dome batteries and interceptors and long lead item procurements for (DSWS) and (UTI).

Working collaboratively with independent testers and the Services, MDA follows an Integrated Master Test Plan and continues a flight test program using operationally realistic conditions to demonstrate BMD capabilities against current and emerging threats. Robust testing demonstrates BMDS capability while further enhancing war fighter confidence in the performance of the BMDS.

The FY 2015 budget balances capabilities and risks to: deter aggression, protect the interests of the United States and its allies, respond to warfighter requirements, and pursue cost- and operationally-effective capabilities against future threats. To advance the Administration’s missile defense priorities, the FY 2015 MDA’s request for BMD programs is $7.459 billion.


Click here for the FY2015 Appropriations Summary (1 PDF page)

9/21/2013 Strategy Page

PACIFIC OCEAN (Sept. 18, 2013) An SM-3 Block 1B interceptor is launched from the guided-missile cruiser USS Lake Erie (CG 70) during a Missile Defense Agency test and successfully intercepted a complex short-range ballistic missile target off the coast of Kauai, Hawaii. (U.S. Department of Defense photo)

14/05/2013 by Paul Fiddian - Armed Forces International's Lead Reporter

US defence/aerospace firm Lockheed Martin and the US Missile Defense Agency have carried out an initial air-launched ballistic missile target test, with positive results.

According to Lockheed Martin and the MDA, the eMRBM (Extended Medium-range Ballistic Missile) target was dropped from a USAF C-17 Globemaster III strategic transport aircraft, positioned over Arizona at an altitude of 25,000 feet. Once released, the Extended Medium-range Ballistic Missile prototype detached itself from the carriage extraction system and deployed parachutes as it descended to the ground.

In a press release, Targets and Countermeasures programme director, Patricia Dare, commented: "The eMRBM air-launch equipment and carriage extraction system performed nominally in this test, verifying system performance and preparing the launch team for future mission operations."

EMRBM Flight Test

The eMRBM flight test involved an unpowered pilot missile target and, so, the sortie took place to confirm that the system's support equipment performed as expected. Next, the missile target itself will be launched and that mission's scheduled to take place before the end of 2013.

"This new target is designed to provide the threat realism that is essential to ensuring that missile defense systems are developed against accurate representations of the systems they would likely encounter in an operational environment", added Lockheed Martin Missile Defense Systems' John Holly

Ballistic Missile Target

The air-launched Extended Medium-range Ballistic Missile target is being developed by Lockheed Martin as a strike platform for warfighters to practise-hit when they're being taught how to operate the Ballistic Missile Defense System, which would be activated in the event of ballistic missiles being directed towards the United States.

Lockheed Martin is presently working on no less than 17 missile target designs, in line with the Targets and Countermeasures Prime Contract awarded it a decade ago. According to Lockheed Martin literature released at the time, 'These target systems will enable the US to realistically, reliably and affordably test the full range of ballistic missile defense systems under development.'