Breaking Defense
Army soldiers in the southwest desert are getting ready to “knock something out of the sky” in live-fire tests of two critical new systems, the service’s director of air & missile defense modernization said. The IBCS command network is already tracking aerial targets on radar over White Sands Missile Range, Brig. Gen. Brian Gibson told me, and it will start shooting Patriot missiles at them in the second week of August. The IM-SHORAD anti-aircraft vehicle — which mounts Stinger missiles, Hellfires, a 30 mm cannon, and compact radar on an 8×8 armored Stryker — will start its live-fire tests soon after.
Both systems are being operated, not by contractors or Army testing experts, but by regular soldiers from the actual combat units slated to receive the new weapons when they’re ready. For IBCS, Gibson said, that’s a battery from the 3rd Battalion, 43rd Air Defense Artillery regiment (“3-43”) out of Fort Bliss, Tex., which currently operates the Patriot system, but without the network connection to other kinds of Army radars and launchers that IBCS will provide. For IM-SHORAD, it’s a platoon from 5th Battalion, 4th ADA Regiment (“5-4”) out of Annsbach, Germany, which currently uses Stinger missiles carried either by hand or on Humvees, which lack the armored protection and cross-country mobility of the new Strykers.
These tests come after decades of post-Cold War neglect of battlefield air defense, when the Army fought enemies who had no attack helicopters or fighter-bombers, just the occasional unguided rocket and, in recent years, mini-drones. It was the Russian invasion of Crimea that forced the Army to refocus on high-tech foes. In October 2017, Gen. Mark Milley – then Army Chief of Staff, now Chairman of the Joint Chiefs – announced a sweeping modernization program with new weapons ranging from long-range artillery to rifles. “But none of that’s going to matter if you’re dead,” Milley said, which is why his Big Six priorities included new air & missile defense systems.
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