"We're gonna down-select ... later in the year. Then I have to worry about future budgets, and so that's what's really going to throttle" the number of contractors, says MDA Director Vice Adm. Jon Hill.
"I'm here today to tell you that our future is not our past. It's time to change our future, and we change our future by how we behave. And we can do hard things, we can be successful at wicked hard problems," Army Lt. Gen. Neil Thurgood said.
The Joint Force, he said, "should," and "will" in future "use space strategic warning assets to meet tactical level ground requirements," says Gen. Jim Dickinson, SPACECOM head.
The Missile Defense Agency's budget request is the same today as it was in 2008. That has to change, says Rebeccah Heinrichs of the Hudson Institute.
"We do not intend to fly satellites in the Army," said Rick De Fatta, director of the Army's Space and Missile Defense Center of Excellence.
"I would like to have overhead sensors that see everything, characterize everything that goes on on this planet from a missile perspective, all the time everywhere. ... That's unobtainium right now," says VCJCS Gen. John Hyten.
Training with the first Long Range Hypersonic Weapon prototype system will commence on Oct. 18, says Rob Strider, deputy director of the Army Hypersonic Project Office.
If missile defenses can't protect everything, then Pentagon planners need to start thinking about new ways of deploying their limited assets - and that means new risks, say two Hudson Institute experts.
"It means that our adversaries are growing increasingly bold in their hostile acts of using ballistic missiles cruise missiles and UAS," Lt. Gen. Karbler said. "They're crucially bold in their conduct of irresponsible space activities. It means the Joint Force will demand more from the Army's Space and Missile defense capabilities and expertise going forward."
"I think the challenge [to establishing nuclear dialogue] is going to be on the Chinese side," said Maj. Gen. Michael Lutton.
“Rather than primarily focusing on kinetic defeat, for the defense of the homeland, I think we must get further left,” the head of NORTHCOM said Tuesday.
By digitally designing, integrating, testing and addressing issues long before they can arise in the operations and sustainment environments, we are able to deliver value throughout the life cycle of the product.
SDA and MDA need to characterize the Earth's infrared background -- which has "a lot of complex shapes to it, clouds, land and stuff like that" -- in order to "pull out the dim signal" of a hypersonic missile, an SDA official explained.