The director of the Missie Defense Agency (MDA) last week confirmed both the next homeland ballistic missile defense interceptor and first dedicated hypersonic missile defense interceptor are both running late due to earlier than planned downselects.
Last year, MDA selected Lockheed Martin
[LMT] to continue Next Generation Interceptor (NGI) development over competitor Northrop Grumman [NOC]. The agency previously planned to continue this competition at least through the Critical Design Review (CDR) (Defense Daily, April 15, 2024).
The NGI is planned to add to and possibly ultimately replace the current Ground Based Interceptors geared toward defending against nuclear-armed ballistic missiles that could be launched by North Korea in a conflict. They are largely deployed at Fort Greely, Alaska. MDA previously already built 20 silos at the site to accommodate the first group of NGIs.
Shortly before the decision was made public, MDA Director Lt. Gen. Heath Collins told the House Armed Services’ Strategic Forces subcommittee that the change was due to both fiscal pressure from caps in the Fiscal Responsibility Act as well as positive technical development from both teams (Defense Daily April 12, 2024).
He said accelerated contractor execution schedules meant MDA had “an appreciably larger body of technical knowledge and data available to assess contractor performance ahead of a traditional systems development at this point in the design maturation process.”
Collins now told the same panel on April 30 that this downselect occurred specifically about a year and a half earlier than MDA had previously expected.
He noted while NGI is MDA’s largest and highest priority that has achieved “significant progress at the system level,” it is still experiencing 18 months or more of delivery delay.
Collins confirmed the top limiting issue with NGI remains its solid rocket motor development.
“This is a new booster, a new development, and we have experienced delays and issues with that development, and are expecting 18 months or more delay into the delivery of that initial capability.”
He said in an attempt to reduce that delay, MDA has taken unspecified “actions to shore up the development as well as bring in an additional source to help buy down the schedule risk of the development.”
In his written statement to the subcommittee, Collins elaborated that beyond expected design challenges to NGI, its complexity is driving “unanticipated programmatic, technical, and producibility challenges that are driving increases to the estimated development and deployment schedule.”
He added there that the earlier-than-planned downselect most significantly impacted NGI’s supply chain. This means after learning of the incoming early downselect, suppliers moved to limit fiscal exposure and even stopped some development work on “critical NGI components.” These supply chain impacts were further exacerbated by the “post-COVID-induced inflation.”
Beyond those supplier issues, Collins explained there have been “significant” development and manufacturing issues with the solid rocket motor cases set to be used for qualification testing. The motors themselves are properly on the path to execute the first NGI flight test, he said.
“These development and supply chain challenges required us to develop a comprehensive NGI re-plan schedule. The result is key milestones have shifted to the right.”
Given all of the supply chain, inflation and development delay issues, Collins said MDA plans for the NGI program to execute its All Up Round Critical Design Review in the first quarter of fiscal year 2027, followed by two “rigorous flight tests” in FY 2029.
This schedule translates into providing U.S. Northern Command “with an opportunity to declare an Initial Operational Capability no later than FY 2030.”
Collins said MDA is also looking into adding a potential NGI flight test demonstration in 2028 to “demonstrate confidence” and reduce program risk.
Separately, Collins told the subcommittee the Glide Phase Interceptor (GPI) hypersonic defense program is also dealing with repercussions from the selection and downselect “years earlier than planned” due to similar DoD priorities and resourcing decisions.
Last September, MDA selected Northrp Grumman over RTX [RTX] to continue developing GPI (Defense Daily, Sept. 25, 2024). In November, MDA then awarded Northrop Grumman a $541 million contract to continue GPI development (Defense Daily, Nov. 15, 2024).
He said while hypersonic missile defense is still a ‘key area” that needs additional focus, delivery of the first GPI units was pushed back from 2032 to 2035 as a result of the earlier GPI selection.
Notably, Collins’ written statement to the committee said this shift to 2035 also marks that “the overall programmatic risk is high.”
However, he told the committee that if acceleration options that MDA is currently evaluating work out, they could recover back to the previous 2032 delivery plan.
“It is primarily a resourcing at this point. There are some technological things that need to happen in the next three to five years, but then there is a resourcing and alignment issue that could accelerate that. We believe we could recover to 2032 with no increased level of programmatic risk across the program, but that’s about the fastest we could do today,” Collins told the committee.
According to FY 2025 budget request documents published last year, the GPI timetable milestones were pushed back a year from the FY 2024 plans following Budget Control Act-forced funding reductions. The Preliminary Design Review was said to be set for FY 2030 instead of 2029, Critical Design Review in 2033 instead of 2032 and delivery starting in 2035 rather than 2034(Defense Daily, March 18, 2024).
Previously, the FY 2024 defense authorization act pushed PDA to develop and field GPI faster than the agency expected it would be able to: reaching Initial Operating Capability with 12 interceptors by the end of 2029 and Full Operating Capability of at least 24 interceptors by 2032 (Defense Daily, Dec. 21, 2023).
In his written statement, Collins elaborated that MDA is working with RTX and co-development partner Japan to “shore up the program” and look for opportunities for acceleration and to “burn down risk as soon as possible.”
Beyond potentially getting the GPI program back on track to 2032, he reiterated the agency is still exploring other alternatives and options to add “residual” or partial hypersonic defense capability to other weapon systems currently in use.
However, for now Collins reiterated the only other “hypersonic maneuvering target defense capability we have is in the fleet with the SM-6 and the Sea-Based Terminal capability.”