The Exo-Atmospheric Kill Vehicle is designed to take out long-range ballistic missiles by destroying them while they are still in space.
WASHINGTON: Early plans for a long-awaited new ballistic missile defense system are on the desk of Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, but the industry proposals, expected to be approved for development contracts awarded this month, may take more time to work through the process.
An official with knowledge of the program said there have been “no decisions” made yet on the Next Generation Interceptor program, which is awaiting the award of two design and development contracts.
The NGI effort sprung to life in 2019 in the wake of the cancellation of a sputtering $5.8 billion effort to replace the existing Exo-Atmospheric Kill Vehicle, a ground-based interceptor designed to defend the US mainland against long-range ballistic missile attacks.
Pentagon officials and defense industry teams have been working toward two development contracts, which are with Hicks. The participation of Raytheon in the competition means Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is sitting the decision out, as his previous service on the company’s board led him to recuse himself from making any decisions involving the company.
Plans crafted by the Missile Defense Agency called for the Pentagon to choose two winners from teams led by Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing for development contracts, followed by a final decision on which team gets to build up to 20 new interceptors that would protect the homeland against ballistic missiles launched by North Korea or Iran.
While it’s unclear when the Pentagon might sign off on the contracts, sources suggest any delay is likely more due to the complexities faced by a new administration reviewing multiple programs at once, and Hicks’ upcoming workload while Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin travels in Asia next week.
Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said he’s “confident the Pentagon’s senior leadership will give the NGI question the close look it deserves, and move out toward an appropriate and sustainable path capable of addressing the significant rogue state threat to the homeland.”
The NGI is envisioned as the replacement for the failures of the Redesigned Kill Vehicle program, which was scrapped in 2019 after burning through $1.2 billion on research and development funding. But the Missile Defense Agency has taken its time on the NGI work, issuing requirements in 2019 and by all indications doing its homework on how and why the previous effort failed. The RKV followed an ambitious schedule and was initially slated to be fielded in 2020.
Defense officials have said they’ve been able to harvest much of the research they did on the program, shrinking the NGI’s timeline for development and eventual fielding.
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