Defense News:

Congress is making moves to fund an eighth Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery, according to both fiscal year 2021 House and Senate defense policy and spending bills, a requirement that has gone unfunded for almost a decade.

The Missile Defense Agency has had a total requirement for nine THAAD batteries for years, but has not had the funding to complete the last two. But, with the House and Senate bills proposal injecting millions into the program, MDA could get an additional battery. THAAD has proven increasingly integral to the Defense Department’s regional defense architecture, and a prospective participant in a layered homeland ballistic missile defense that would bolster the current Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system positioned in Alaska and California.

The THAAD system is in high demand and there are batteries currently stationed in Guam and South Korea, and THAAD has deployed to Israel and Romania.

The need for THAAD has grown, as the Army continues to integrate the system along with the Patriot Air-and-Missile Defense system into a more robust regional missile defense architecture capable of defending against near-peer threats like China and Russia. Integrating the two systems is the result of an urgent operational need on the Korean peninsula.

And MDA is eyeing THAAD as an element for a more layered approach to homeland defense against intercontinental ballistic missiles. The agency unveiled plans in its FY21 budget request, in February, to create a more layered homeland defense system that would include regional missile defense capability, already resident with the Navy and Army, to bolster homeland defense against ICBMs…

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