Dear Members and Friends,
The missile defense and space community of the United States gathers once a year in Huntsville, Alabama, the birthplace of advanced technologies that continue to be developed and deployed around the globe, making our world a safer place. Held in the peak of summer, this community meeting kicks off the season and brings the key U.S. commanders of both missile defense and space to present their achievements over the past year and, most of all, this year’s outlook on space and missile defense.
Click here to listen to remarks from MDAA’s Huntsville Breakfast of Champions, including presentations from Riki Ellison, Vice Admiral James D. Syring, Lieutenant General David L. Mann, and Congressman Mo Brooks.
This past year’s achievements have been truly remarkable as global decisions on both sides of the world to deploy additional Missile Defense systems have increased global protection for population by over 50%. The July 8th, 2016 announcements by the NATO Secretary General on going operational (Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance) with the second phase of the European Phased Adaptive Approach in South Eastern Europe and by the Republic of Korea to deploy a U.S. THAAD system for the missile defense of their country (Reuters), together brings close to 150 million of World population being protected by Missile Defense systems today. Adding to this tremendous achievement are combat intercepts by Patriot missile defense systems fielded by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both of which successfully defended Saudi Arabia populations against missiles fired by Houthi rebels in Yemen. Also earlier this year, the United States enhanced and increased reliability of U.S. ground based interceptors (Missile Defense Agency) to better protect the United States and North American Population of 330 million.
These are monumental achievements by this community, its military operators and its international allies to stay ahead of the threat, yet, the threat too had a say this past year. North Korea is blatantly improving its ballistic missile capabilities while Iran continues to test its nuclear-capable ballistic missiles against the intent of the Joint Cooperation Plan of Action.
“North Korea has tested more ballistic missiles this calendar year than any pervious in history, and it’s only August. The game has been escalated. You couple this with what [North Korea] has done with nuclear testing and now you begin to understand the foundation for the decision that we made as a country to deploy a THAAD battery to the Peninsula…Iran continues to test in numbers and increase capability…” –VADM Jim Syring, Director of the Missile Defense Agency, August 17th, Huntsville, Alabama
Amongst the threat technology development of this past year is the North Korean game changing underwater submarine ballistic missile launches and anti-ship missiles being demonstrated by North Korea and Iran, is the Hypersonic threat evolution being developed by Russia, China and others. This high speed and maneuverable hypersonic weapon does not follow a ballistic trajectory is stressing current sensor capabilities more than the current capabilities to intercept it.
“From a missile defense standpoint, we have to develop a future operational space layer, given where the threat is going with hypersonics and more capability development with ICBMs, this persistent tracking and assessment capability from space is a must.” VADM Jim Syring, Director of the Missile Defense Agency, August 17th, Huntsville, Alabama.
Challenging the missile defense community to counter the threat and evolve the system, the two salient points from this symposium were to establish persistent tracking and assessment space sensors at commercial space bus and constellation costs; and increase priority of the battle management, command and control, communications for the complex evolving global missile defense system that the United States and our international allies rely upon.
“C2BMC (Command, Control, Battle Management and Communications) …does [the Missile Defense Agency] have a worldwide network that interconnects the combatants and the decision-makers on a real-time basis? The answer is this system…The network is as important as an interceptor or radar delivery that we do.”VADM Jim Syring, Director of the Missile Defense Agency, August 17th, Huntsville, Alabama.
MDAA was honored to host its 9th annual Breakfast of Champions in Huntsville, Alabama during this symposium with the missile defense community, its elected officials and its Military Commanders. On behalf of the community, MDAA was honored to announce, the Major General John G. Rossi leadership award for the United States Army’s best air and missile defense soldier deployed on the Peninsula in the Republic of Korea. This award will be presented on November 18th in Seoul, Korea on U.S. Army Garrison Yongsan at the MDAA Peninsula Defender of the Year ceremony establishing perpetual annual award in his name. The award will be presented to an outstanding soldier who exemplifies the exceptional characteristics of its namesake.
