The U.S. The Defense Department and Japan Ministry of Defense finalized an agreement to jointly develop and build a new hypersonic missile defense interceptor, with Japan to focus on propulsion elements, both countries announced Wednesday.
DoD said this agreement covers the Glide Phase Interceptor (GPI) Cooperative Development (GCD) project arrangement under a bilateral memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for research, development, test and evaluation projects.
While the Missile Defense Agency has been and will continue leading development of GPI, under the GCD agreement Japan will lead development of rocket motors and propulsion components of the system.
This comes two months after MDA director Air Force Lt.. Gen. Heath Collins said the discussions were proceeding well and he hoped to see a signed agreement on co-development with Japan within months (Defense Daily, March 8).
Last year, former MDA director Vice Adm. Jon Hill first confirmed DoD was exploring this cooperative development of GPI with Japan (Defense Daily, March 16, 2023).
At the time, he said DoD was using the same cooperation model with Japan as they have used with the Standard Missile (S)-3 Block IIA program.
In 2021, MDA awarded contracts to RTX [RTX], Northrop Grumman [NOC] and Lockheed Martin [LMT] to develop and refine their concepts for the Glide Phase Interceptor (GPI) hypersonic missile defense system (Defense Daily, Nov. 22, 2021).
In 2022, MDA down-selected to RTX and Northrop Grumman to continue refining concept work (Defense Daily, June 24, 2022).
During a May 8 hearing, Collins told lawmakers MDA expects to select the single GPI design by the end of fiscal year 2024. He also said it will be “very hard” to meet the congressionally-mandated initial operating capacity (IOC) of 12 GPI interceptors fielded by the end of 2029 (Defense Daily, May 9).
During an April House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee hearing, subcommittee chairman Rep. Doug Lamborn said the GPI down-select is now happening five years earlier than previously planned as part of an effort to cut spending (Defense Daily, April 16).