HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Amid the push for the Trump administration’s planned multilayered missile defense shield, the Missile Defense Agency is transferring older programs to focus on newer technologies, its director said Thursday.
“MDA is again asked to focus on game-changing technology to bring cutting-edge capabilities to the field as quickly as possible,” Lt. Gen. Heath Collins said during a closing keynote at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium here.
To do this, the agency is transitioning longstanding programs — “programs that are in production, heavy into sustainment” — to the services, Collins said. For instance, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense program, better known as THAAD, will transition to the Army “this year, very shortly,” while the Aegis Combat System and Standard Missile-3 programs will transition to the Navy next year.
MDA will also continue transitioning the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor satellite program, known as HBTSS, to the Space Force, he said.
That “frees up room” for MDA to focus on the Next Generation Interceptor in development by Lockheed Martin, which “is still [the] center piece in our ability to protect the homeland” from intercontinental ballistic missiles, Collins said.
Lockheed Martin said in an Aug. 10 news release that the NGI program recently completed a static fire test of the missile’s second stage rocket motor.
“We are still driving towards system-level CDR [critical design review] by the end of this year,” Collins said.
Additionally, he said MDA is “continuing a prototyping program called the Discriminating Space Sensor, a space-based capability that will bring new phenomenology and a new level of custody” in tracking ballistic and hypersonic missiles.
Another priority for MDA is advancing “a low-cost interceptor,” Collins said. “We’re taking a look at all the expensive parts of a munition, of an interceptor, to look for opportunities to drive down [the cost of] everything.”
“Everything I just talked about? All of it is being made available and will be made available for Golden Dome,” he added.
President Donald Trump has said the missile defense shield will be operational before his term ends in early 2029.
Gen. Michael Guetlein, the program’s manager, said here on Tuesday that Golden Dome has its “first operational site” at Fort Story, Virginia, and has completed two tests. He later told reporters the companies developing space-based interceptors for one of the planned layers have completed their first milestone, which involves design and component testing.
