Marcia Holmes (Sara Thompson/Army)
AUSA: The Army’s somewhat mysterious Mid-Range Capability (MRC) has just transitioned from an early research effort to a prototyping phase, with the service planning to field a first prototype in fiscal 2023, according to Marcia Holmes, who leads the effort for the service’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office.
Holmes, whose formal title is deputy RCCTO director for hypersonics, directed energy, space and rapid acquisition, told the Association of the US Army (AUSA) conference today that the new missile will have a range between the 1,725 miles of the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) and the current 300-plus miles of the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM).
Like LRHW and PrSM, MRC “is also part of the Army’s number one priority, Long-Range Precision Fires,” Holmes said. “It is complimentary to other LRP systems in development; it supports this layer defense.”
And like the LRHW, the new mid-range missile is also being built in tandem with the Navy, Holmes explained.
“We’re able to deliver on this aggressive, accelerated schedule because we are leveraging existing hardware, software, and institutional training for these proven capable missiles, for SM-6 and Tomahawk,” she said. “And by maintaining commonality with the Navy, we are able to capitalize on modernization efforts, on investment strategies, across a multi-service Mid-Range Capability programs to include joint test events … the Navy and the Marine Corps.”
Once the prototype is delivered, it will be transitioned into a program of record under the Program Executive Office for Missiles and Space, Holmes added. The Army already has stood up a transition team.
The MRC’s progress is yet another leap for the Army’s long-range strike plans, which are critical to the service’s role in countering China across all domains — land, sea, air, space and cyberspace.
The service announced last Thursday that soldiers had received the first prototype hardware for LRHW, now dubbed “Dark Eagle.” the service intends to field LRHW, which if stationed in Guam could reach targets all the way to Taiwan, in FY23. PrSM just began its engineering and manufacturing stage, and it too is slated for fielding in FY23.
As Army Secretary Christine Wormuth announced yesterday, the Army is aiming to deliver its first directed energy weapon, the Directed Energy – Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense system (DE M-SHORAD), sometime before the end of the year for its fleet of Stryker vehicles.
DE M-SHORAD uses a 50 kilowatt class laser, Holmes explained. “We have demonstrated that in a successful combat shoot-off this summer against realistic environments and threats in an operational environment. So, we have proven that technology.”
Holmes said that future plans for DE M-SHORAD include its participation in this Project Convergence wargame. That massive wargame, designed to prove new technology and operational concepts for how the Army implements DoD’s Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), began today and will run for about six weeks.
JADC2, in turn, is the foundational US military initiative for linking all sensors to all shooters in near-real time in order to make real DoD’s plans for a new America way of war under the Joint Warfighting Concept.
