Missile Agency Seeks Funds for Defensive Systems

WASHINGTON, Feb. 15, 2011 — A ground-based sys­tem for home­land defense and inter­cep­tors for region­al defense high­light the Mis­sile Defense Agency’s por­tion of the Defense Department’s fis­cal 2012 bud­get request.
The agency request­ed more than $8.6 bil­lion for fis­cal 2012, com­pared to last year’s request­ed $8.4 bil­lion, Navy Rear Adm. Ran­dall M. Hen­drick­son, the agency’s deputy direc­tor, told Pen­ta­gon reporters yes­ter­day via video tele­con­fer­ence from Col­orado Springs, Colo.

“The 2012 bud­get is pred­i­cat­ed on and assumes the even­tu­al approval of [fis­cal] 2011’s request­ed lev­els of $8.41 bil­lion,” he said. 

If approved, the $8.6 bil­lion bud­get would be used to pay for com­plet­ing the ini­tial field­ing of the Ground-Based Mid­course Defense Sys­tem for home­land defense, in addi­tion to enhanc­ing region­al defens­es with at least two inter­cep­tor sys­tems against short‑, medi­um- and inter­me­di­ate-range bal­lis­tic mis­siles, Hen­drick­son said. 

Home­land secu­ri­ty projects include com­plet­ing the pur­chase of six ground-based inter­cep­tors and the pur­chase of five more, as well as fin­ish­ing 14 mis­sile-launch­ing silos at Fort Gree­ley, Alas­ka, and start­ing work on a new East Coast com­mu­ni­ca­tions ter­mi­nal, the admi­ral said. 

Region­al defense plans include pur­chas­ing 68 Ter­mi­nal High-Alti­tude Area Defense inter­cep­tors, six launch­ers and a tac­ti­cal sta­tion group. The plan calls for pur­chas­ing 46 stan­dard sea-based inter­cep­tors, among oth­er projects. 

The third phase, Robust Inter­me­di­ate Range Bal­lis­tic Mis­sile Defense, is expect­ed to be com­plet­ed in 2018. Sys­tem improve­ments would include expand­ed shoot­er coor­di­na­tion and improved radar, Hen­drick­son said. 

The fourth phase, Ear­ly Inter­cept and Region­al Inter­con­ti­nen­tal Bal­lis­tic Mis­sile Defense, is sched­uled to be com­plet­ed in 2020. 

The projects to com­plete the third and fourth phas­es include com­plet­ing the pre­lim­i­nary design for the Pre­ci­sion Track­ing Space Sys­tem satel­lite, and fin­ish­ing the final designs and engi­neer­ing mod­els for its space­craft bus, opti­cal pay­load and com­mu­ni­ca­tion pay­load components. 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

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