WAAY:
The Redstone Arsenal-based Missile Defense Agency is asking the defense industry to submit ideas for “transportable” ICBM interceptor missiles, also known as Ground Based Interceptors (GBIs). In a Request for Information (RFI) posted on the Federal Business Opportunity site on April 28, the agency says they will use responses to evaluate alternative GBI locations and deployments.
GBI’s are the intercept portion of the Ground based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system. GMD is a program that intercepts incoming ballistic missiles in the “midcourse” phase of flight. That’s the portion where it is in space, heading towards it’s target. Currently, the US has sites at Vandenberg AFB in California and at Fort Greely, Alaska. But, the system goes far beyond the above-mentioned sites. It includes radar and data sites on Alaska’s Shemya Island and in Great Britain, Greenland, Colorado, New York, Japan and on the Sea Based X-Band Radar.
The agency defines transportable as the “ability to reposition operational assets, emplace, and be ready to launch within days.” That’s different from “mobile”, which is defined as the “ability to reposition operational assets in a ready state and be ready to launch within minutes.”
The notice states the reason MDA is looking for transportable launchers is because a mobile capability “tends to drive complex operations concepts, special security requirements, mobile command, control, and communications, and a level of launcher sophistication that pushes costs to unsustainable levels.”
