Defense News:

Protecting the continental U.S. and Guam from missiles and hypersonic weapons are the top priorities for the Missile Defense Agency, Vice Adm. Jon Hill, the MDA director, said in an interview with Defense News.

At the top of his list is ensuring the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system is capable now and in the future of protecting the homeland from not only intercontinental ballistic missile threats from hostile nations including North Korea and Iran, but also from emerging threats such as hypersonic weapons, he said during the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.

The MDA is also turning its sites on establishing an architecture to defend Guam against possible ICBMs, cruise and hypersonic missiles and even unmanned aircraft systems.

The agency will likely manage the ICBM and hypersonic missile defense components while the Army will take the lead on cruise missile defense. While MDA hasn’t “really started the program,” Hill said, it is funded in fiscal 2023 to lay down the basic architecture of the systems that will go on Guam.

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