Defense News:
WASHINGTON — House lawmakers want the Pentagon to quickly produce a space-based missile defense strategy, according to the Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee’s mark of the fiscal year 2018 defense authorization bill released this week.
The strategy would lay out the plans of the Missile Defense Agency, the U.S. Air Force and other agencies “to develop a space-based sensor layer for ballistic missile defense that provides precision tracking data of missiles beginning in the boost phase and continuing throughout subsequent flight regimes; serves other intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance requirements; and achieves an operational prototype payload at the earliest practicable opportunity,” the subcommittee mark reads.
The lawmakers would require the Defense Department to provide the strategy one year following passage of the legislation to include how it would develop the sensor layer and the estimated costs including development, acquisition and operations and sustainment across its life cycle, according to the document.
The strategy should also assess the maturity of technologies needed for the layer and recommend what still requires development and further research…
