The Missile Defense Agency’s fiscal year 2021 $9.2 billion budget request shows a refocus on developing and deploying a layered homeland ballistic missile defense system. The focus: operational regional missile defense capability to underlay the current Ground-Based Midcourse Defense System designed to protect the continental United States, following the abrupt cancellation of an effort to upgrade the system’s interceptors.

The MDA is funding a Next-Generation Interceptor instead of pursuing the now-canceled Redesigned Kill Vehicle (RKV) program, which would have upgraded GMD’s current GBIs with a more capable kill vehicle than is currently deployed at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

But the agency is also going to take regional missile defense capability already resident within the Navy and Army and use it to provide a layered defense against intercontinental ballistic missile threats to the United States homeland.

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