“Mark it down — the MDA director just said affordability is a focus of this agency,” Collins said Aug. 13 during the closing speech of the Space and Missile Defense Symposium. “I know you probably have never heard that before.”
The shift comes as MDA manages major programs including the multibillion-dollar Next Generation Interceptor while also confronting the cost of maintaining deeper missile-defense magazines. Collins said the economics of sustaining interceptor inventories will be central to keeping U.S. defenses in a prolonged fight.
“Life cycle costs per magazine depth is key to this whole equation,” Collins said. “This is an entire enterprise, and we’ve got to stay in the fight forever. So, the life cycle cost of magazines, that is very key.”
One of the agency’s initiatives is the Low-Cost Interceptor program, which is intended to produce modular interceptors costing less than $750,000 to counter ballistic and hypersonic threats, according to a SAM.gov notice cited by National Defense Magazine. Collins said the MDA effort is separate from an Army program with the same name, although both seek to bring down interceptor costs.
“But it doesn’t stop there,” Collins said. “We’re taking a look at all the expensive parts of an interceptor to look for opportunities to drive down every bit of cost in there as we move forward.”
Affordability will not replace performance as a requirement, with Collins listing lethality as another priority for the agency. “Bottom line, whatever we bring has to work,” he said. “We need to make sure we maintain lethality against that increasing complexity of target sets that the enemy is pursuing.”
MDA is also focusing on the ability of its systems to survive cyber, electronic and kinetic attacks. “We need to be prepared for that, and improve our resiliency and our survivability,” Collins said.
Open systems architectures will be another requirement as the agency seeks to integrate new technology more quickly. “It’s not a nice-to-have in the fight of the future. We need to be able to adapt at the pace the threat is adapting, and we don’t have the agility today and the systems to do that.”
Collins said software and tactics can already be updated on daily or weekly cycles, but new capabilities often take much longer to reach operational forces. “When a new capability comes on the market, we can’t wait for a six or seven or eight-year, or even a four-year, program to bring some capability to bear.”
Interoperability will also need to be designed into missile-defense systems from the beginning, Collins said. “Being able to integrate whatever kit you have in whatever fight you are in at the time that you’re in it is the most important thing,” he said.
The agency will also play a central role in Golden Dome for America, the planned multilayer missile-defense architecture for the U.S. homeland. MDA has been designated as the system-of-systems engineer, integrator and testing lead for the initiative.
“We have the expertise. We have the skill sets to do that,” Collins said. “Their success is our success in protecting our nation.”
Source: National Defense Magazine.
