“Today, ministers endorsed a new overarching plan to defend our alliance in crisis and conflict, to make sure that we continue to have the right forces at the right place at the right time,” Stoltenberg told reporters Thursday, capping the first day of NATO’s two-day defense ministerial meeting.

The defense ministers of alliance-member countries committed to the new NATO “capability targets,” negotiated as part of the alliance’s regular defense planning cycle. A source said the alliance plans to invest in missile systems like the Raytheon Technologies-built Patriot and the SAMP/T air defense system made by Eurosam.

“We are implementing a balanced package of political and military measures to respond to this threat,” Stoltenberg said.

“This includes significant improvements to our air and missile defenses, strengthening our conventional capabilities with fifth-generation jets, adapting our exercises and intelligence and improving the readiness and effectiveness of our nuclear deterrent,” he added.

Members agreed to “have more forces which are heavier and more high-end capabilities,” as well as more advanced forces to “exploit emerging and disruptive technologies,” Stoltenberg said.

The members approved plans for exercises, intelligence activities, artificial intelligence standards and technological innovation ― as well as the plan for thousands of mutually agreed upon targets.

“This is a key aspect of NATO cooperation that we actually agreed to specific targets and allies deliver them. That’s also one of the reasons why we need to continue to see increased defense spending,” Stoltenberg said.

And despite still being in the early stages, Frank St. John, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin’s Missiles and Fire Control business, is confident the military will see operational capability of these weapons by the early 2020s.

St. John caught up with Defense News at the Farnborough Airshow about the latest in development.

In April, the U.S. Air Force selected Lockheed Martin to design and prototype a new hypersonic cruise missile as part of a broad Pentagon push to kick-start its hypersonic arsenal. Can you give me some detail on that program?

There are two programs that are in the works [in terms of hypersonics]. The first is HCSW. And that is what I’ll call a more mature technology program that can provide early operational capability air launched. We are just getting started with kickoff meetings, baselining the program schedule. But the intent is to, early in the 2020s, provide an operational capability for hypersonic capabilities. I can’t say much about requirements, but it combines some mature booster technology and some mature glider technology to create a rapid capability for the Air Force.

The other program we’ve been working is a similar approach but a more technical challenge — a hypersonic glider. We’ve been working on the glider with DARPA, and now are starting work with the U.S. Air Force. That’s scheduled for early to mid-2020s service capability.

The history here is a lot of the fundamental technology has been in development for a long time. Sandia Labs, DARPA, some NASA projects — there have been successful demos of hypersonic technologies. But there has not been the operational need that has pulled them into programs that will be fielded.

So what’s spurred the more recent push forward?

Two years ago we started to hear a dialogue about a need for hypersonic capabilities, to catch up to Chinese and Russians; what we’ve seen is more and more budget applied to hypersonic programs. Now we’re up to hundreds of millions of dollars of budgets DoD-wide. The operational pull is there from services, and the budget is there. Early 2020s is a realistic goal. We’re going to learn something, but a lot of the fundamental technology is demonstrated.

The Pentagon’s Research and engineering chief, Michael Griffin, said he supports new kinds of missile defense systems. But he told us recently that “space-based hypersonic defense is not a practical approach.” What do you think of that?

I’ll offer this: The space-based layer provides awareness and early warning. A lot of times people underestimate the importance of awareness of what’s happening and the early warning to cue the defensive systems to an event. That has historically been the role of space-based missile defense. I think it has application to hypersonics even still. The interceptors we have — PAC-3, THAAD — we’re doing studies to evaluate what their capabilities would be against a hypersonic attack. Some capabilities can be applied to a hypersonic [attack] while an ultimate capability can be developed. [So we’re evaluating] what we can do with the systems we have.

What place will hypersonic weapons have in the future stockpile?

I don’t want to speak for the department on what requirements might be, but my belief is that the requirements for this type of system are driven by the target set, and the number of targets, similar to strategic systems. It’s not going to be something where we’re producing thousands a year, like Hellfires. It’s going to be limited by what’s practically required to defeat the target set.

Is anything else happening that you want to share?

We announced that we’re partnering with Rafael in Israel for a precision weapons capability that operates separate from GPS. Israel is in a rough neighborhood. They can’t depend on GPS, so they developed SPICE [Smart, Precise Impact and Cost-Effective missile guidance kits]. They’ve integrated SPICE on F-16s, [and] are going to [integrate them] on the F-35.

Released in the spring of this year, the annual industrial capabilities report, put out by the Pentagon’s Office of Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy, concluded that the industrial base of the munitions sector is particularly strained — something the report blamed on the start-and-stop nature of related procurement over the last 20 years, as well as the lack of new designs being internally developed.

For their part, primes are investing their own dollars to meet demand, particularly as the Pentagon plans to invest more than $20 billion in munitions in its next budget.

“We went through a period over the last decade, where U.S. production requirements of munitions were at a fairly low rate compared to historical,” said Frank St. John, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin’s Missiles and Fire Control business. “Our response was to work hard to bring international partners into the programs and fill that with foreign military sales requirements. What we’ve seen over the last 18-25 months is a recognition by the department that they need to rebuild the stock on munitions. We’ve seen a steady increase across the board in every one of our programs — rate increases from 20 percent to 80 percent.”

But as primes expand factory capacity to achieve increased rates, suppliers are often limited in their ability to scale. That leaves Lockheed and Raytheon, the companies that together account for about 97 percent of the Defense Department’s munitions and missile procurement funding, to identify critical areas that might have a single source and make investments to develop alternatives, avoiding any single points of failure.

The Department of Defense is baking funds for such investments into the procurements, and structuring more munitions buys as multiyear contracts.

“We’re looking at a couple in some of our largest missile programs,” said Taylor W. Lawrence, president of Raytheon’s Missile Systems business. “That gives us the ability to predict the future. That also allows us to flow stability down into the supply base and makes it healthier over time. The most disruptive thing to us in industry [is] uncertainty, and variability in quantities they’re buying. The more we can predict, the better the health of the supply base will be.”

But even if a pool of first-tier suppliers can be stood up by joint efforts of primes and the Pentagon, dwindling materials used in the systems pose a more daunting challenge. As one example noted in the report, the department is facing rising costs for ammonium perchlorate, used in almost all DoD missile programs, because the sole is only operating at 10-15 percent of capacity due to limited demand. Similarly, there is no domestic supplier for Dechlorane Plus 25, a component in the insulation of weapons; the sole source is Occidental Chemical in Belgium.

Mackenzie Eaglen, a defense expert with the American Enterprise Institute, said in a May interview with Defense News that policymakers will likely want to start considering special protections and/or subsidies when needed. That said, “I’m not sure the bell can be un-rung in the case of Chinese suppliers,” she added.

In coordination with the DoD, primes are more often buying additional stock of the at-risk components to buy time to work alternative solutions, St. John said. They also identify alternative suppliers when they can, domestically or in an ally nation where a steady source of supply is fair to assume.

Also, to reinvigorate the supply of raw materials, efforts are underway to develop and qualify brand-new plotters domestically.

“So far, we’ve been able to address the needs,” St. John said. “But it is different than it was years ago, when DoD and military applications were on the leading edge. Now we’re buying along with the Apples and Samsungs of the world. We’re not driving the market the way we used to — as opposed to being the big dog.”

Aaron Mehta contributed to this report.

When the U.S. Missile Defense Agency was created in 2002, the expectation was that it would initially develop missile defense systems but then transfer responsibility for their procurement to the military services that would operate them. The process has not worked out quite as expected.

Missile defense capabilities have matured and several programs have been operationally fielded, but effecting transfer has proven to be complex. MDA has adapted by assuming new roles and missions, not only procuring systems but in some cases funding their operations and sustainment.

In an apparent effort to implement that original intent and improve MDA’s focus on research and development to outpace evolving threats, Congress has attempted to hasten the transfer process, but numerous factors continue to impede that effort. The time seems ripe to re-evaluate the underlying considerations that have slowed transfer, re-evaluate the particular costs and benefits of transfer, and consider some alternative courses of action. Taking an enterprisewide perspective is also necessary to first ascertain what problems, exactly, need to be fixed, and then avoid doing harm in fixing them.

The program elements particularly under consideration for transfer include the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, system and the TPY-2 radar to the U.S. Army; and Standard Missile-3, or SM-3, interceptor procurement to the U.S. Navy.

Although operated by the Army and Navy, much of the equipment is bought through MDA. Other elements have been developed and procured by MDA as a material provider, with the services then assuming the operations and sustainment cost, as has been the case with Aegis Ashore and the Upgraded Early Warning Radars.

By contrast, Patriot was transferred to the Army when MDA was created, but its subsequent modernization has been uneven. No real effort exists to transfer procurement of the homeland defense system, Ground-based Midcourse Defense.

The Army and the Navy have, however, already assumed significant operational responsibility for THAAD, TPY-2 and SM-3, including all aspects of doctrine, organization, training, material, leadership, personnel and facilities — the entire DOTMLPF process, except the “M.” The question of transfer is about whether the significant materiel budget should also go to the services, or instead remain with a centralized missile defense entity.

All things being equal, procurement costs for radars and interceptors are about the same regardless of whether the funds are located in one place or dispersed among several, but could increase with additional service requirements.

On one hand, transfer holds out the prospect of making the acquisition process a bit more uniform with other things purchased by the services, and would give more configuration control to service-specific stovepipes. Transfer also carries considerable risks, including the likelihood that the procurement and modernization of THAAD, SM-3 and TPY-2 could suffer relative to if they remained in a missile defense-centric organization. Integration with other elements of the Ballistic Missile Defense System, or BMDS, could also suffer, as service programs would remain subject to the parochialism that has inhibited broader integration of the joint force.

Congress has attempted to protect these unique national assets by classifying missile defense as a Unified Major Force Program, but these budgetary reporting requirements carry little teeth if the services choose to make missile defense assets a bill payer for other short-term priorities.

Make no mistake: The first time someone isn’t looking, Army budgeteers will probably try to use the additional funding to buy trucks rather than THAADs, and Navy budgeteers will try to buy hulls and Tomahawks rather than SM-3s.

Instead of pushing transfer to services that may not want it, it may be better to stop, reassess and organize the whole missile defense enterprise in a comprehensive and sustainable way. The standard against which any such revision should be judged is not the original intent of 2002 when missile defense was still in its infancy, but rather what is best suited to the long-term development, deployment, procurement, operations, modernization and integration of missile defense elements.

Four recent trends should serve to reinvigorate discussion about the institutions of missile defense acquisition. These include the further emergence of more advanced ballistic and non-ballistic air and missile threats; the division of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, or AT&L; the apparent competition between procurement and research and development budgets within MDA; and recent congressional interest in transferring missile defense procurement to the services.

Several principles should guide decisions about how to adapt to these trends. First, any reorganization should attempt to “do no harm” relative to current programs. Next, policy must drive the organizational structure, not the other way around. Given the extent of high technologies, it will also be important for any new acquisition processes to avoid excessive aversion to risk. Finally, any system should work to avoid bureaucratic impediments that can result in program breakage, including service deprioritization, configuration disconnects and risk aversion.

Such revisions will require updates to MDA’s charter, last modified in 2009. Among other things, it will probably be necessary to update the MDA mission to extend beyond merely ballistic missiles, and to better support its new (albeit largely unfunded) role as technical authority for integrated air and missile defense. The combination of MDA procurement and sustainment roles will also need to be adapted to the division of AT&L into the offices of Research and Engineering, or R&E, and Acquisition and Sustainment, perhaps with two undersecretaries jointly chairing the Missile Defense Executive Board that oversees MDA.

MDA must also retain the robust acquisition authorities given to its director. Similar authorities might even be replicated in other parallel development organizations that might be created under the undersecretary for R&E to address new challenges, such as directed energy, integrated air and missile defense, and hypersonics. Compromising these authorities merely in the interest of uniformity would invite delays and risk aversion found in too many Department of Defense programs, without meaningful gains in cost performance or oversight.

In terms of organization, two alternative paths worth consideration include the expansion and bifurcation of MDA with a second deputy director focused on procurement and operations, or the creation of an alternative entity responsible for procurement.

One approach would address the contention that MDA is somehow too busy or requires more “focus” on developmental problems. An expanded MDA structure might be enabled with a second deputy director, who would be responsible for procurement and operations, with the first deputy director focused on the research and development side of the house.

A second option might be to transfer procurement authority out of MDA, not to the services but to some other new entity, which might notionally be termed a “Missile Defense Procurement and Support Office.” Such an office might be closely aligned with a much-needed reinvigoration of the Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense Organization, whose critical joint perspective (and budget) has unfortunately been allowed to deteriorate in recent years.

Both approaches would adapt current organizations to how the enterprise has evolved, drawing on recent experience rather than fighting it. Either arrangement could be made to map onto the Pentagon’s new acquisition offices while still preserving the integrity of the BMDS development process. And both paths would permit the continued transfer to the services of operations and sustainment responsibility once missile defense elements are fielded, such as with the Upgraded Early Warning Radars and Aegis Ashore.

The specter of program transfer has bedeviled the missile defense community, maybe for too long. Instead of continuing to push for transfer, it may be better to leave well enough alone. Doing so comes with one psychological hurdle, however, namely to have budgeteers and congressional appropriators alike recognize that as missile threats have grown more complex, MDA and related entities may need to grow well beyond the historical budget range of $8 billion to $10 billion per year.

As the demand for missile defense capabilities continues to grow, the question of transfer should be decided in light of the roles and missions of the entire enterprise. Missile defense has come a long way in recent years, but there are many new challenges for integrated air and missile defense in a world of great power competition. The solutions to these challenges may not fit the institutional division of labor envisioned at the turn of the century.

Thomas Karako is a senior fellow and director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Wes Rumbaugh is a research assistant at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves, the head of the MDA, told lawmakers in April that the next test of the IIA will come before the end of the calendar year, a test in which the agency will try to put a string of bad luck behind it as it pushes toward the ultimate goal of testing the interceptor against an intercontinental ballistic missile by the end of 2020.

Following a successful intercept in February 2017, a test that same year failed after a sailor error caused a IIA launched from the destroyer John Paul Jones to self-destruct in flight. A second test failed in January 2018 went awry because of an as-yet unnamed component misfired, the significance of which Greaves has downplayed.

“The component that we’re concerned about has flown successfully nine out of 10 times,” Greaves told a Senate panel in April. “So, as of now, I am not concerned that it is a true design issue. And we’re following through to identify the problem and then correct it.”

A spokesman for MDA said the failure review board is still ongoing for the most recent test.

Despite the failures, MDA seems to feel good about the trajectory of the program, and SM-3 IIA will likely forge ahead, according to Tom Karako, a missile defense expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Even with the failure, the test accomplished the things they were doing the test for,” Karako said. It just does not sound as if the future numbers or pace of the program are contingent on the failure review board. Based on what they say thus far, these are separate tracks.”

The fact that so many of the main elements of the failed tests went right is a source of immense frustration for the Pentagon and contractors working the problem.

The SM-3 that misfired in January, for example, successfully received targeting data from an AN/TPY-2 radar through an encrypted link track and relayed it to an Aegis Ashore system on which it used the data to launch.

The implications of that technology for ballistic missile defense and for more conventional warfare are enormous. If a forward sensor can get a kill quality track that it can then, through a data link, transfer to another system such as Aegis Ashore, it can conceivably send that data to any number of Aegis-capable units up in the link. That means anyone who is in position to take a shot can do it without having a track on the missile with an organic sensor.

The same principle applies to more conventional engagements, meaning that, ultimately, ships in a network can rely on a sensor — maybe one Aegis ship or an aircraft equipped with a powerful radar or, even more ideally, an unmanned offboard sensor — to radiate while the other ships passively receive the data and launch without giving away their position.

For the SM-3 IIA, the question that people should be asking is what is the next evolution of the missile and what can MDA do to meet evolving threats, Karako said.

“All indicators are that the IIA is going forward. The real question that ought to be asked, given the reorientation of the National Defense Strategy’s laserlike focus on hypersonics, is what’s increment one and what is increment two for SM-3 IIA.”

Make the Navy maneuverable again

While MDA makes progress on IIA development, the Navy is losing patience with its current role in the national missile defense mission.

While the mission has been both a cash cow and a technological revolution for the service, standing patrol requirements have put an enormous strain on the Navy’s already overtasked surface combatants.

The Navy’s top officer said June 12 that he wants the Navy off the tether of those patrols so those ships can perform other missions and move as much of the standing requirements to shore-based systems.

“Right now, as we speak, I have six multimission, very sophisticated, dynamic cruisers and destroyers ― six of them are on ballistic missile defense duty at sea,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson said June 12 during his address at the U.S. Naval War College’s Current Strategy Forum. “And if you know a little bit about this business, you know that geometry is a tyrant.

“You have to be in a tiny little box to have a chance at intercepting that incoming missile. So, we have six ships that could go anywhere in the world, at flank speed, in a tiny little box, defending land.”

Richardson went on to say the Navy could be more effectively used for BMD in emergency or high-threat situations rather than as a permanent fixture.

Some relief could be on the horizon. Japan announced in 2017 that it plans to buy the Aegis Ashore system. But analysts and experts warn that the Navy shouldn’t be too hasty to ditch BMD patrols. The service has a disproportionately large number of highly capable (and expensive) surface combatants, a fact that has the Navy quickly pushing to develop a smaller surface combatant to complement the force, as threats are on the rise from Russia and China.

But the BMD mission is a big reason why the Navy is so Aegis-heavy.

“The BMD mission is part of what creates the force structure requirement for large surface combatants,” said Bryan McGrath, a retired destroyer skipper and defense consultant with The FerryBridge Group. “Absent it, the number of CGs [cruisers] and DDGs [destroyers] would necessarily decline.

“It cannot be forgotten that while the mission is somewhat wasteful of a capable, multimission ship, the fact that we have built the ships that (among other things) do this mission is an incredibly good thing. If there is a penalty to be paid in peacetime suboptimization in order to have wartime capacity, should this not be considered a positive thing?”

From the perspective of layered missile defense, moving standing requirements to shore makes sense. But the Navy isn’t going to get away from BMD anytime soon, said Karako.

“Shifting more of the requirements to land, that’s all goodness,” he said. “But the Navy isn’t going to get out of air and missile defense so long as there are air and missile threats.”

The request to shift fiscal 2018 funding must clear the House and Senate defense committees in order to be approved.

The service is trying to grow its annual capacity of Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement missiles from the current 240 annual capacity to 350 in FY2020.

To buy 100 PAC-3 MSEs, the Army has sold 100 PAC-3 Patriot Guidance Enhanced Missile-Tactical missiles to the UAE, collecting $363 million in proceeds from that sale, the reprogramming document notes.

This is just one of the ways that Lockheed will double its PAC-3 MSE line to 500 missiles annually in the coming years as it tackles exploding orders of the missile from not only the U.S. Army but its allies like Poland, Romania and Sweden.

Just among those three countries, Lockheed would build 576 PAC-3 MSEs.

The Army is reaching full-rate production for its PAC-3 MSE and has decided to increase the stockpile on hand as operations overseas continue to eat up the inventory.

The service had planned to buy roughly 95 missiles per year from FY18 through FY22, but a year later the service increased the 2018 order from 93 to 240 to include those bought with overseas contingency operations funds. In FY19, the Army asked for 240 missiles again, with base orders for the missile in FY21 and FY22 totaling 160 each year.

The Army’s plans to dramatically increase its PAC-3 MSE production going forward has seen unanimous congressional approval, although the final FY19 defense appropriations bill has yet to become law. House and Senate appropriators are fully funding the production of 179 MSE missiles in FY19 in the base budget.

The MSE version has a larger, dual-pulse, solid-fuel rocket motor and larger control fins that double the missile’s reach and improve performance against evolving ballistic and cruise missiles.

Congressional authorizers noted in a summary of the NDAA conference report, released July 23, that the conferees were supporting an increase in funding to address cyberthreats to U.S. missile defense systems.

The U.S. military and its allies are reliant on missile defense systems both regionally and to defend the homeland. Such a capability will require a more robust level of protection against cyberattacks as adversaries grow in their ability to take down systems through jamming and other electronic warfare capabilities.

The strategy to disarm enemy systems using jamming and electronic attack already plays a major role in war gaming against possible peer adversaries in the future. Using cyber and electronic attack is seen, at times, as the first line of offense to take down enemy air defense systems, so as to allow the injection of friendly forces into denied territory.

And since that’s part of the strategy to penetrate enemy systems, it will be and already is a part of the adversaries’ strategies, too.

While House authorizers initially planned to provide roughly $100 million to cyber-harden missile defense systems. The final version of the NDAA to come out of conference committee only authorizes about half of that, cutting House plans to fund $45 million to address cyberthreats to the ballistic missile defense terminal defense segment of the BMD framework.

But the lawmakers in charge of the purse strings want to spend twice as much as the NDAA would authorize, according to both the House and Senate FY19 spending bills.

House and Senate appropriators’ funding lines for cyber-hardening missile defense systems are essentially identical, so it’s likely the funding will withstand conference committee and come out in the final bill.

According to the Senate appropriations bill report, the committee is adding $100 million in funding to “advance the [Missile Defense Agency’s] compliance with the Department of Defense Cybersecurity Discipline Implementation Plan to protect MDA systems in highly-contested cybersecurity threat environments.”

Within that $100 million, House and Senate appropriators want $40 million in funds to increase cybersecurity for ballistic missile-enabling programs and another $16.2 for a cyber assessment of those programs.

Similar to the FY19 NDAA funding, appropriators plan to provide an additional $10 million for cybersecurity efforts for the ballistic missile defense system’s midcourse defense segment, which defends the homeland from possible attacks from North Korea and Iran.

Another $5 million would help cyber-harden missile defense sensors, while $10 million would fund cybersecurity measures within the brains of the entire ballistic missile defense system — the BMD’s Command and Control, Battle Management, and Communications system.

An additional $20 million would fund cybersecurity efforts related to BMD testing, and another $5 million would go toward cyber-hardening BMD targets.

Appropriators would also fund $5 million to work cybersecurity elements into ongoing BMD technology maturation initiatives, and another $5 million would attempt to secure BMD elements in space from cyberattack.

A space-based sensor layer’s persistent vantage point would provide hostile missile tracking from birth to death, a capability far beyond that of ground sensors. Missile defense experts believe a space-based missile defense architecture would dramatically improve the lethality of both homeland and regional missile defense, especially against emerging threats.

In its FY19 national defense authorization conference report, lawmakers want to see a more concerted effort from the MDA to make space-based missile defense a reality by authorizing additional funds, and particularly calling for plans that would begin development of a sensor architecture in FY19.

The House version of the defense authorization bill would have directed the MDA, and other major agencies and commands related to space efforts, to complete a plan and start development in FY19 for a space-based missile defense sensor architecture. But it would limit funds until a plan was presented to Congress.

The Senate bill required the MDA to begin development of the architecture unless the Missile Defense Review stated otherwise. The review is expected to be unveiled very shortly. The document’s release was predicted to drop late last year, but was delayed on several occasions.

The Senate’s version also required the defense secretary to submit a report on progress and coordination of efforts on such a capabiltiy among MDA, the Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The final bill mandates the MDA ensures its efforts to develop a space-based sensor architecture for missile defense that is compatible with DARPA’s work on the capability and would reduce the House’s proposed funding limitation to 15 percent, subject to what is decided as part of the FY19 defense spending bill.

The language builds upon what Congress requested for space-based missile defense development in its FY18 National Defense Authorization Act while providing a development starting line for the MDA to follow.

The language in the FY19 NDAA also mandates the development of the intercept layer for which Congress pushed in FY18. In that same fiscal year, the language requirement was contingent on what could be directed in the Missile Defense Review. This time, the legislation states the intercept layer will be developed, whether the review directs the activity or not.

MDA’s budget has consistently failed when it comes to advancing space-based missile defense despite rhetoric for years stating serious intentions to move forward proactively.

While the MDA is funding — in FY19 — the addition of two terrestrial-based radars in the Pacific, the space-based layer efforts are stagnant and relatively limited to three lines of effort. One is working to integrate a multispectral targeting system sensor on an unmanned aircraft to test the possibility of a future sensor.

MDA also will continue to fund the Space Tracking and Surveillance System demonstrators, but FY19 funding only sustains satellites as test assets.

The budget request also includes more work on the Space-based Kill Assessment payload, which is delayed by a year.

For some military leaders, this is not enough.

Gen. John Hyten, the head of U.S. Strategic Command, said earlier this year that the department has continued to look at space-based sensors. Some Pentagon leaders have thought the capability was not ready for prime time and that more studies should be done. But Hyten said there’s no reason to wait any longer, calling for the Department of Defense to rapidly move forward to counter emerging threats, especially those challenging to track, such as hypersonic missiles under development by peer adversaries China and Russia.

The Pentagon appears to be making small steps on its own to develop space-based sensor capability since the release of the FY19 budget request in February, but it hasn’t made any notable steps toward development of an actual space-based intercept capability.

The DoD recently requested in a reprogramming document sent to Congress in June that $13.5 million in FY18 funds be shifted from elsewhere in its budget to complete multiple industry-based concept designs and mission architecture trade studies for a future ballistic missile-defense space-sensor capability.

The money would cover the completion of designs from nine industry teams as well as deeper analyses.

The missile defense system was fired July 23 to counter a missile threat. It launched two interceptors to counter two SS-21 ballistic missiles that had been fired by Syrian government forces during fighting against rebels near the Golan Heights. The Syrian missiles fell within Syrian territory. One of the interceptors self-destructed over the Golan Heights.

According to The Jerusalem Post, the event is being investigated to determine if the system operated successfully.

With Iron Dome shown to be successful and an Arrow missile used to down a Syrian surface-to-air missile in March 2017, all the layers of Israel’s advanced missile defense have been put to use.

David’s Sling was co-developed by Raytheon and Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. Raytheon was chosen in 2004 as a partner by Israel’s Ministry of Defense, and the company worked to develop the system’s Stunner interceptor missile, which is designed to intercept missiles, drones, aircraft and other ordnance. In contrast to Israel’s Iron Dome system and its Tamir missiles, the Stunner uses hit-to-kill technology, which is designed to maneuver and strike an incoming threat, rather than detonate in proximity to it.

The first-time use of David’s Sling may increase the ability to sell and export the system if it can be shown to be successful. Recently, Rafael signed a cooperation agreement with Romania that involves Iron Dome, which could potentially lead to more sales. Ballistic missile threats launched by Houthi rebels in Yemen at Saudi Arabia, as well as uncertainty on the Korean Peninsula, offer other potential markets.

David’s Sling includes an active electronically scanned array, multimission radar, which works to identify an incoming threat, target and guide the interception. The radar was designed by Elta Systems, a subsidiary of Israel Aerospace Industries. Elisra, a subdivision of Elbit, developed the command-and-control components.

The system was tested to confront groups of threats that might emerge, such as a salvo of rockets and ballistic missiles. In May, 20 Iranian Grad and Fajr rockets were fired at Israel from Syria and intercepted by Iron Dome.

The David’s Sling was designed to be one part of Israel’s expanding multilayered missile defense. Operating at longer ranges than the Iron Dome, it is designed to confront medium-range threats from 40-155 miles, while the Arrow confronts longer-range threats.

Israel is eyeing a new 10-year, $8 billion plan to bolster its missile defenses. According to Raytheon, “teams in nearly 30 U.S. states across the U.S. are dedicated to producing the [David’s Sling] missile and its firing unit.”

The system was tested five times between 2012 and January 2017 before being declared fully operational in April 2017. It was initially developed to counter threats from Hezbollah’s arsenal, including the Zelzal, the Iranian Fajr-5 and Fateh 110, and Syria’s M600, as well as Scud missiles.

Hezbollah’s rockets had fallen on Israel with impunity in the 2006 conflict, and Israel’s Defense Ministry indicated in 2013 that it had high hopes for David’s Sling to give Israel the ability to “deal with threats with far higher efficiency.”

However, after the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, Israel became concerned about a potential Iran-backed threat emerging in Syria as well as other missile threats launched by additional groups in the region amid the instability of the last several years.

A month of interceptions

The July 23 incident came amid fighting in southern Syria. In late June, the Syrian regime launched a major offensive against Syrian rebels, and by mid-July the rebels and Islamic State militants were occupying an area near the Golan Heights and the 1974 cease-fire line between Israeli and Syrian forces.

On July 11, Israel used a Patriot missile to shoot down a drone from Syria that flew six miles over the cease-fire line. Patriot was again used to shoot down a second drone July 13, and yet again to target a Syrian warplane on July 24.

On the morning of July 23, David’s Sling detected two incoming SS-21 Tochka ballistic missiles. The SS-21 has a range of 100 miles and it was projected to fall within Israel near the Sea of Galilee, six miles from the cease-fire line. After the interceptors were launched, the system determined the SS-21 would fall in Syria, and so one interceptor was programmed to self-destruct while the other fell in Syria.

The use of the system comes four months after members of Congress sought $705.8 million in funding for U.S.-Israel cooperation on missile defense, including David’s Sling, Arrow and the Iron Dome. Of that, $183 million was destined for David’s Sling, the latest in $1.39 billion that the U.S. has contributed, according to the Congressional Research Service.

The current funding will go toward upgrades, such as “extending the system’s range, improving its seeker capabilities and addressing cruise missile threats,” according to a statement from the office of Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., who co-chairs the House Republican Israel Caucus.