Over the past several decades, missile defense has been one of the military’s greatest technological challenges. The Pentagon is working on the U.S. Army’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System, or IBCS. According to the maker of the IBCS, it was created to provide a “single, unambiguous view of the battle space” and “significantly enhance aircraft and missile tracking \u2026 and the ability of combatant commanders and air defenders to make critical decisions within seconds.” IBCS was intended to replace the current Patriot command and control system.
As of today, IBCS has completed three successful test flights with four successful intercepts. IBCS supporters continuously repeat these facts, but they are misleading and don\u2019t tell the whole story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In fact, according to reports in the media, “software deficiencies” with IBCS have slowed the progress down. A recent Government Accountability Office report noted that IBCS software is “neither mature, nor stable as evidenced in numerous software problem reports.” The whole purpose of IBCS was to create better software and technology, to be more effective at accomplishing its critical mission. Hence, this is not the equivalent of a new fighter jet having some issues with the communications system. This is the equivalent of a new fighter jet being unable to fly or fire its weapons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps even more disconcerting is that a Milestone C decision\u00a0\u2014\u00a0to determine whether the program enters a production and deployment phase\u00a0\u2014\u00a0was supposed to happen later this year. But now, it seems that the decision has been postponed until the end of 2020. Again, that means the soonest we could have IBCS in the field would be in 2021. This is assuming that there are no further delays on a program that is already much delayed and\u00a0continuously\u00a0misses important benchmarks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
The fact is the threat to our men and women serving in the field\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and the homeland from missiles\u00a0\u2014\u00a0is not a shrinking problem, but a growing one. The situations in Iran and North Korea are very serious, and their threat of using missiles to target American interests and those of our allies around the globe is escalating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ret. Major General\u00a0Buff\u00a0Blount served as the Army’s Deputy G-3 and was the commanding general, 3d Infantry Division (Mechanized), when they were the lead force in capturing Baghdad during the second Iraq War.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Over the past several decades, missile defense has been one of the military\u2019s greatest technological challenges. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":82337,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":7,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[7,19],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2861],"class_list":["post-59916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air","category-pentagon"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"ZO2YSBWVHZGMHMVMRVOUR2WYQA","arc_canonical_url":"\/air\/2017\/06\/28\/new-realities-require-better-decisions-in-missile-defense-commentary\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n