The House and Senate conference version of the fiscal year 2025 defense authorization bill includes a House provision requiring DoD establish a third missile defense interceptor site on the East Coast by 2030.
The bill language directs the director of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) to establish a “fully operational third continental United States interceptor site on the East Coast” by December 2030.
Under congressional direction, in 2019 DoD identified Fort Drum, N.Y., as its preferred finalist for a potential third missile defense site. The third site would supplement interceptors currently based in Fort Greely, Alaska and Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., largely geared to defend against a potential North Korean attack. The East Coast site would supplement the capability if Iran produces missiles and nuclear weapons capable of hitting the U.S.
The current Ground-based Midcourse Defense System consists of 44 Ground Based Interceptors (GBI) interceptors, largely based in Alaska.
The bill also directs the MDA director to submit plans for the FY 2026 – 2031 budget requests covering establishing this interceptor site and update on progress in establishing the site.
Last year, former MDA Director Vice Adm. (Ret.) Jon Hill told a congressional panel that a third site is useful in that it could make it easier to shoot a target, assess if it has been destroyed, then shoot again if needed (Defense Daily, April 25, 2023).
“If you’re geographically dispersed and you have a third sight you have the ability to engage early and engage again after you’ve assessed whether or not you’ve hit the first time. So there’s a compelling need there that we continue to watch as the threat increases,” Hill told Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y) at the time.
Stefanik is a major supporter of adding the Fort Hood site, which if built will be located in her district. President-elect Trump has selected Stefanik to be the next United Nations ambassador.
However, Hill noted next steps would be determining how hard it would be to build the silos at Fort Drum, deciding how many to build at what timeline, and how it might affect the Next Generation Interceptor (NGI) timeline.
He also said the NGI program could accommodate two builders, if policymakers and lawmakers mandated that. MDA currently plans to build upward of 20 GBIs for the Alaska site, which has already built 20 waiting silos.
Earlier this year the Biden Administration said it “strongly opposes” the mandate for a third site because there is no operational need. The White House said they need to focus on finishing development of the NGI (Defense Daily, June 14).
In March 2023, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. (Ret.) Mark Milley told Stefanik the timeline to make Fort Drum operational as a missile defense site with 20 to 40 silos would probably be about a decade at a cost of billions of dollars.
While the Alaska and California sites are cited as suitable to deal with a potential limited North Korean missile attack, supporters cite the East Coast site as better suited for a potential future Iranian missile threat.
“Iran, if they were to develop the ICBM-level of missiles, which they haven’t yet, but if they do…and if they were to then develop a nuclear weapon to put on top of that, that’s where it becomes important,” Milley said at the time.
Milley said he personally supported developing the East Coast site.
MDA currently expects the first NGI to be emplaced in a silo in Alaska by the end of 2028, but has said competitors Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Northrop Grumman [NOC] were both on track to have it ready by 2027. In April, MDA downselected for Lockheed Martin to continue developing NGI (Defense Daily, April 15).
However, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report published this year said the current NGI development schedule looks overly optimistic compared to typical timelines. MDA’s schedule plans to start flight testing of NGI six years after awarding the development contracts after previously estimating in 2019 it would take 8.5 years to reach the first test flight. GAO also said the program has added risk by overlapping the design and production phases to achieve the schedule (Defense Daily, June 27).
The selection of Lockheed Martin occurred earlier than MDA had originally planned, partially due to budgetary pressure imposed by the Fiscal Responsibility Act. MDA previously planned to make the MDA downselect after the Critical Design Review, which would make it easier for the loser to become a second producer to increase the NGI production rate.
Last year, Lockheed Martin said it planned to reach CDR by the third quarter of FY 2025 (Defense Daily, Oct. 16, 2023).