Army missile defense systems Patriot and THAAD talk in test

April 9, 2018

Army Times:

WASHINGTON — The Army’s two key missile defense systems — Patriot and the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense system — successfully talked in a test conducted by the Missile Defense Agency and the service at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, April 6.

The Army is planning to tie THAAD and Patriot together within in two years and received a surplus of funding in the recently passed fiscal 2018 omnibus spending bill to proceed with the effort.

Tying the systems together is critical to establishing a more effective, layered approach to air-and-missile defense and could enhance the development of the Army’s future AMD command-and-control system, the Integrated Air-and-Missile Defense Battle Command System — or IBCS.

Both THAAD and Patriot picked up a live short-range Lynx missile target suing their radars and tracked the target individually, but both systems “exchanged messages through tactical data links and verified interoperability between the weapons systems,” according to an MDA statement…

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