“This is our 72nd Congressional Roundtable. It’s a discussion on missile defense with Tim McRae from the Missile Defense Agency. The last time I saw Tim was September, the past September 2024, at the end of September, and I was in a silo with you on Missile Field 4 at Fort Greely at the bottom of the new NGI silos that you’re doing. So, it’s great to see you again, and back then, we talked about going big, making big, going fast on this, and just a historic memory of the 20th anniversary of putting, with a presidential directive, not an executive order, in under two years. Under two years, you were able to put in GBI’s in Missile Field 1, you had an architecture with SBX, I think was out there, part of it, and you had a command and control system over the top of it. It’s just a remarkable achievement 20 years ago.
So, we’re honored to have you here, Tim. I’m going to read your bio, because it’s an important one for everybody to understand who you are and what you represent. So, Tim is the Director for Strategy, Plans, and Resources for the Missile Defense Agency. He is responsible for overseeing all Missile Defense Agency strategic planning and resource management matters, encompassing financial management, cost estimating, human resources, congressional liaison, public affairs, and strategic communications. He provides leadership, vision, oversight, and strategic advice for all agency resources matters relating to the agency’s 10-plus billion annual fiscal resource to develop, test, and sustain a layered missile defense system to protect the United States, its deployed forces, allies, and friends from missile attacks. It’s impressive. He, prior to that, was the program manager for the marquee program of the Missile Defense Agency, the ground-based midcourse system. He’s also had experience with Israel Cooperative. He’s also had experience with THAAD on the program. So, he’s quite qualified on everything.
So, I do want to start off with a win, Tim. Let’s start off with a win. Last week, your Navy, Aegis, on their flight test 40, and USS Pinckney did an amazing thing with your development, and you’re the only one in the country doing this for defensive hypersonic strike missiles. Can you just give us a little rundown of what happened last week?”
[Riki Ellison, MDAA Chairman and Founder]
“I kind of live in a glass house, so I don’t like to throw stones. MDA has made some mistakes, but we’ve learned from the mistakes. And so, whether it’s a technology issue that we had that we kept the program going longer than we should have, like RKV, we took those lessons, and those lessons are not just learned, they’re applied.
And so, we have changed our approach to how we manage programs. We have changed the organization that manages those programs. And so, now, what we have in MDA are program executives leading major pieces of the integrated architecture, homeland, theater-based, age-based, decision dominance. They have the authorities now. They’re not organized for process or organized for execution. And so, I think that has set a condition for us to go fast.
We’ve set up a transformation task force. So, how do we transform how we do business? So, not only from a technology, a model-based system engineering approach, how do we change our acquisition approach? How do we go faster and get leverage from these non-traditionals to increase the cadence of change and capability? And so, we have made, I’ll say, a pretty deliberate effort at this. Within four days of the executive order, we had an RFI on the street. The RFI was a request for information, was constructed to draw in those non-traditionals and not exclude them. We’ve just released a multiple acquisition authority instrument, which allows us to have a contract vehicle that gets right to those non-traditionals. It doesn’t mean the traditionals are out. There is a role for traditionals, but there’s absolutely a role for the non-traditionals. As we start talking about layers of integration, I think at the gaps between systems that still might remain, they’ve got a huge capability. They’ve got more capability in the artificial intelligence, machine learning, how to improve the speed of decisions. That’s an area where I think non-traditionals really excel.”
[Mr. Timothy R. McRae Director for Strategy, Plans and Resources, Missile Defense Agency]
“Thank you. People matter. They do. And winners associate with winners to win. And you have a bulk of winners there. I just, from this discussion, getting your authorities back, that is absolutely critical for you not having those authorities, It’s ridiculous. You did this. You did this at a presidential directive 20 years ago and under two years.
So that’s got to be put out there and addressed on that. So thank you for enlightening everybody and just history. It’s fact. This is what happened. There’s 40 years of depth. There’s nobody out there that can match. There’s nobody.
And that’s the fact. So you have to be our prime player. You have to be the MVP. You have to be the GOAT. And that’s where this is right now. People questioning that, it’s, yeah, you got to do it. So thank you. I appreciate the time. Great, great discussion. Thank you.”
[Riki Ellison, MDAA Chairman and Founder]
Click here to watch the virtual event
Speakers:
Mr. Timothy R. McRae, Director for Strategy, Plans and Resources, Missile Defense Agency
Mr. Riki Ellison, Founder and Chairman, MDAA
Audience Q/A Moderator:
Rear Admiral (Ret.) Mark Montgomery, Board of Directors, MDAA
