By Emelie Rutherford
Two senior Pentagon officials said they are working to bolster ballistic missile defense fielding in the near term, an effort that could double the number of planned Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) assets in the coming years.
Missile Defense Agency Director Air Force Lt. Gen. Trey Obering told reporters yesterday he wants the number of Aegis and THAAD interceptors to be increased during Pentagon discussions on Program Objective Memorandum 10 (POM ’10).
He said plans now spelled out in the five-year future years defense plan running until fiscal year 2013 call for approximately 133 Standard Missile-3s (SM-3s) that are part of the Aegis system, and 96 THAADs. He said he would like to see those numbers “roughly” double starting with the FY ’10 budget and going until the “’15, ’16 timeframe.”
“If you take a look at what’s in our budget today and you look over the FYDP, and double that, you come close,” to the number of Aegis and THAAD interceptors he would like, Obering said.
Specifically, he said he would like to roughly double the current production rate.
“How much that equates to across the FYDP depends on how much money the [Defense] Department allocates to them,” he said. “But if they allocate the money that we would recommend to do this, it would roughly double the number of missiles across the FYDP.”
Such an increase would not double the amount of needed money, he said, because economies of scale and running of production lines would control costs.
Pentagon acquisition executive John Young submitted written testimony to the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee yesterday talking about this desire to field additional ballistic missile defense assets in the near-terms.
“System elements like Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense could provide our Combatant Commanders as well as our friends and allies a significant defensive capability in just a few years,” Young wrote. “I am working with General Obering to achieve this goal through the [Defense] Department’s programming and budgeting process.”
Young and Obering testified before the subcommittee yesterday.
Obering told reporters that the warfighters–Joint Staff and U.S. Strategic Command–actually make decisions on the matter, and that MDA generally doesn’t make force-structure decisions.
“That’s up to the warfighters,” he said. “So they came in and they said this is the force structure we believe we need, looking at the scenarios that they may be faced with, that’s what they’re doing.”
As to where the extra money would come from for the additional ballistic missile defense interceptors, Obering said that would be hashed out during the POM ’10 process.
“Whether we take it out of our portfolio, whether it is a combination of service money or our money, that’s what we have to go through this budget process and we’ll come up with our POM ’10 number,” he said.