The Marine Corps is on track to begin fielding its new Medium Range Intercept Capability (MRIC) in 2025, a lead official has confirmed.
Col. Andrew Konicki, the Marine Corps’ program manager for ground-based air defense, said Wednesday a Quick Reaction Assessment with MRIC, which incorporates components of Israel’s Iron Dome system, is still slated for September and is a key next step to moving into a program of record and fielding.
“That’s in lieu of a traditional [initial operational test and evaluation] for program of record. So it’s essentially the same thing just at a smaller scale. So we’ll still have Marines using an equipment set in a test environment, knocking down threats, things of that nature,” Konicki said during remarks at the Modern Day Marine conference in Washington, D.C. “Marines will be on the system and employing the system in a test environment. Then once we get through that piece, we get into fielding the residual prototype aspect of the [Middle Tier Authority acquisition pathway].
The MRIC prototype involves integrating the Marine Corps’ Northrop Grumman [NOC]-built Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar (G/ATOR) and General Dynamics Missions Systems [GD]-developed Common Aviation Command and Control System (CA2CS) with Israel’s Iron Dome mini-Battle Management Control components and the SkyHunter interceptor, the U.S. version of the Tamir missile.
“This is getting at that high-end threat, that cruise missile threat. It’s taking what the Israelis have in a very, very good package and American-izing that from an effector standpoint. So it’s moving from the Tamir missile to the SkyHunter missile for American purposes, putting that on an MTVR [truck] and using that as our capability to launch, detect and all the other aspects. And we’re also coupling that with the G/ATOR radar system and the CAC2S command and control system,” Konicki said.
The Marine Corps has previously said its intent is to buy three batteries worth of MRIC for initial fielding after successfully completing the upcoming Quick Reaction Assessment in the fall of 2024 (Defense Daily, June 28 2023).
“We have been on track since day one of that schedule,” Konicki added on the planned 2025 initial goal. “We are on track from a programmatic standpoint [for] cost, schedule and performance.”
“The capability that we’re going to put out today is not the end all, be all capability that we’re going to keep from now until eternity. It’s a constant evolution of increasing that capability,” Konicki added.
Konicki noted the joint venture of RTX [RTX] and Israel’s Rafael officially broke ground in February on a new production facility in Camden, Arkansas that will build SkyHunter interceptors for MRIC and serve as a second source of Tamir interceptors for Israel’s Iron Dome.
The facility is expected to be up and running in late 2025, with Konicki adding that there are no “significant” differences between SkyHunter and Tamir interceptors.
“They’re 95 to 99 percent common. So we talked ‘American-ization’ [of the interceptor]. It’s a [difference in] couple of piece parts and some other aspects that I don’t really want to get into in this forum. But they’re essentially the same thing,” Konicki said.