Army photo

Lockheed’s prototype Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) fires from an Army HIMARS launcher truck

UPDATED with Maj. Gen. Ferrari comments WASHINGTON: The Army’s ambitious plans for offensive missiles and missile defense will reach fever pitch just as Pentagon budgets may well come crashing down, in 2023. That said, not every expert forecast is so pessimistic – see below.

Target 2023

The Army has big plans in multiple areas, but other expensive weapons are scheduled to enter service somewhere around 2027-2030 — for example the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle (OMFV) to replace the 1981-vintage M2 Bradley or the Future Vertical Lift aircraft to replace Reagan-era helicopters. By contrast, multiple missile systems are set to enter service in 2023. That includes both offensive missiles to strike enemy ground targets (and, in later upgrades, ships) and defensive missiles to shoot enemy missiles, drones, and aircraft out of the sky before they can kill American troops.

Yet most experts we talk to expect a sharp dip in the 2023 budget because that is when the Biden Administration will have its first chance has to truly shape Pentagon spending for the post-COVID world. The Army’s own former chief of staff, now Joint Chiefs chairman, has predicted a budgetary “bloodletting” of ground force programs in the next few years to fund a naval and air buildup against China. Can all these Army programs survive?

“Seriously, in my career, certainly this is the most amount of modernization I’ve seen and experienced inside the air and missile defense portfolio,” Brig. Gen. Brian Gibson, air and missile defense modernization director at Army Futures Command, said on a Foundation for Defense of Democracies webcast last week. “It’s probably the most simultaneous [modernization programs] since the Cold War.”

Northrop Grumman graphic

The IBCS network connects previously incompatible radars and launchers into a unified air and missile defense system (Northrop Grumman graphic)

The offensive side is similar. After decades in which US ground-based missiles were limited in range by the INF Treaty, “in ’23 there’s gonna be a lot of stuff that goes past INF restrictions of 499 km,” said Brig. Gen. John Rafferty, Gibson’s counterpart for Long-Range Precision Fires, at AUSA’s virtual Global Force conference last week. “Starting with… the Long Range Hypersonic Weapon in the thousands of kilometers, down to the Mid-Range Capability, a mix of SM-6 and Tomahawk [ranging about 1,600 km – ed.] and then the Precision Strike Missile, which we’re going to push beyond 500 km a little  bit later this year out at Vandenberg.”

The Army wants combat-ready prototypes of all three offensive missile systems in service in 2023, along with a prototype battery of 18 Extended Range Cannon Artillery howitzers.

The years between now and ’23 are also a big push for air and missile defense. The Army is fielding a new command and control network for the split-second timing missile intercepts require, IBCS; a new IBCS-compatible radar, LTAMDS; a new frontline Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense (MSHORAD) anti-aircraft and anti-drone system on the 8×8 Stryker chassis; the Israeli-made Iron Dome anti-rocket system; and the new Indirect Fire Protection Capability (IFPC), optimized to take down cruise missiles. (Patriot and THAAD remain the defenses of choice against ballistic threats).

“In two to three years, you will have the first battalion fielded with this Integrated Battle Command System [IBCS],” Gibson said at the FDD event. “They will also be equipped with the Lower-Tier Air & Missile Defense [Sensor],” aka LTAMDS.

The Army’s two Iron Dome batteries will be operational late this year, Gibson said. While he didn’t say so today, the Army is not likely to buy additional full-up batteries, but the Iron Dome’s upgraded Tamir missile is in the mix of potential ammunition types to be fired from the IFPC launcher, with a “shoot-off” among contending interceptors later this year.

For IFPC, “we will have initial capability, several … launchers and missiles, in FY [fiscal year] ’23,” Gibson continued. “Lastly, we will be on the tail end of fielding this first set of our Maneuver Short Range, Air Defense battalions.

“So, in three years, you’ll see all of this kit fielded in our Army,” he concluded. And just to be clear, that three-year clock has already started: It’s 2021, 2022, 2023.

Dynetics Graphic

Dynetics concept for their Common Hypersonic Glide Body (C-HGB) for use by Army and Navy missiles.

The Optimists

Now, not every expert predicts a budgetary meltdown in those years.

“Often, messages that command the least amount of mainstream support enjoy the biggest megaphones,” said retired Army three-star Thomas Spoehr, now with the Heritage Foundation. “I think that is the case with those who now propose the defense budget should be cut.

Heritage Foundation photo

Lt. Gen. (ret.) Thomas Spoehr

“You will note that very few of them actually serve on an armed services or defense appropriations committee,” he said in an email. “If you look at Democratic leaders in the defense area, Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) or Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), both of them have discounted steep reductions in defense.

What’s more, Spoehr went on, “it isn’t just that Army missile and missile defense programs reach a “fever pitch” by 2022-2023: most of DoD’s programs also achieve that level of intensity then too—GBSD [a new ICBM], Columbia-class subs, B-21 bombers, and FFG(X) [frigates].”

The Army’s offensive missile programs, in particular, stand in good stead, Spoehr argued. “Given the recent strong statements of support from both Admiral Phil Davidson at INDOPACOM and General John Hyten, Vice Chairman, for the Army’s long range precision fires & missile defense programs, those programs are likely going to be prioritized highly in the Army and DoD.”

AUSA photo

Gen. (ret.) Carter Ham

Carter Ham, a retired Army four-star who now heads the Association of the US Army, was less sanguine but still fundamentally optimistic. “Despite the recent letter from some 50 House Members to drastically reduce defense spending, I’m not sure ‘crashing down’ will be the correct descriptor of future defense budgets,” Ham told me. “Will defense budgets be under extraordinary scrutiny? Absolutely. But that’s not unusual.”

The Army’s already been making tough budget choices in recent, moving over $30 billion in grueling Night Court sessions, Ham pointed out, and it’s been consistent in its priorities – with offensive missiles at No. 1 and missile defense at No. 5 (of six). The hard part, he said, is explaining these choices to the public.

“The Army is challenged more than the other services in explaining requirements,” Ham said. “It’s just easier to explain requirements for ships, planes, satellites and other very high-priced items. Army capabilities are, in many cases, tied less to big-ticket platforms that result in lots of jobs in many states and districts.”

“The Army’s role in deterrence needs to be better defined,” he added, although a recent paper by Army Chief of Staff helps with that. “And, of course, underlying all of that is that, just as we almost always have done, few believe we’ll ever again be engaged in large-scale conflict.” Of course, so far in history, that’s one optimistic forecast that has always been proven wrong.

Flat Is The New Cut

But what if the budget does drop? Remember, said the former head of resourcing for the Army staff (section G-8), retired Maj. Gen. John Ferrari, even a flat budget is effectively a cut, not only because of inflation, but because of personnel costs that rise faster than inflation — and the Army has more personnel by far than any other service. “Even if you believe that there’s not going to be a large cut to defense, there’s certainly not going to be an increase to defense,” Ferrari told me. “And even a flat topline … is actually a cut to defense because of inflation, pay raises, and the cost of health care.”

The effect year to year isn’t that great, he said, but it insidiously eats into the services over time.

AEI photo

Retired Maj. Gen. John Ferrari

There’s a second problem that’s likely to be more dramatic, Ferrari added: pressure to transfer resources from the Army to the other services. “Probably for the first time in a long time, probably since Christine Fox was in charge of CAPE… you’re seeing a willingness to realign spending within DoD,” he said. “Those pressures don’t portend well for the army. because in neither one of those conversations is there anybody going on record, saying, ‘but hey, the Army can come out a winner in this.””

Historically, the Army has often zigged left when it should’ve zagged right, Ferrari told me. Under his boss, Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army protected near-term readiness and current procurement while sacrificing some longer-term development programs. At other times, it sacrificed near-term needs to preserve the long-haul R&D, only to have those programs eventually canceled too — Future Combat Systems is the classic example — and end up with nothing.

When in doubt, Ferrari said, protect the program that’s actually producing hardware now over the one that’s still a promise of procurement years down the road. That principle, he noted, would put Army offensive missile and missile defense programs in great shape if they can just make it into prototype as planned by 2023.

“The Congress of the United States tends to support those types of programs when you can actually see something come off the assembly line,” he said — and that makes economic since, since the marginal cost of additional weapons on a hot production line is lower than that of starting production of something new. By contrast, he went on, “there are other programs the Army has that are just ramping into large R&D programs with a ‘trust me, we’ll get this right’ kind of focus — the helicopters, the Bradley replacements, [that] aren’t going to come into the force until the end of the decade.”

In tough budget times, Ferrari said, “those have not traditionally fared well.”