Military.com News:
The House Armed Service’s Strategic Forces subcommittee said Wednesday that Russia’s acts of aggression on the Ukraine border have increased the urgency in developing America’s missile defense systems.
Subcommittee leaders made their comments in the markup of the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act in which they called developing a new kill vehicle for ground-based missile interceptors a top priority.
The details for the proposed defense package released Wednesday includes $8.1 billion for various missile defense programs, including a multiple-object kill vehicle for dozens of ground-based interceptor systems based in Alaska, and California.
Navy Adm. James Syring, director of the Missile Defense Agency, told Congress in March the multi-object kill vehicle “will revolutionize our missile defense architecture” by enabling each ground based interceptor to take out multiple incoming targets.
The kill vehicles are released in space by booster rockets. The rockets use onboard sensors to detect an incoming target and then fire built-in thrusters to move it into a collision course with the target.
Subcommittee members questioned in the markup whether Russia has remained in compliance with the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty. The U.S. lawmakers urged President Obama to increase spending on “research and development of counter-force and countervailing U.S. responses [to the Russian violations] with a priority on capabilities that could be deployed in two years” if the Russians are not meeting the terms of the treaty…
