Defense News:

The Missile Defense Agency has drifted from an organization that researches and develops advanced technology toward one that focuses on procuring and sustaining fielded systems, but Gen. John Hyten, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wants the agency to get back to its original charter.

The agency’s budget request for fiscal year 2021 showed MDA was moving away from what it was originally tasked to do. For example, funding for procurement and sustainment grew across the MDA’s five year development plan from FY21 through FY25. And its top three unfunded priorities were all requests for additional procurement of existing systems.

“The initial structure, if you think about it, I think it was exactly right because MDA was supposed to focus on the new thing, the research and development, the new technologies, and if you break out the MDA budget that came out in the ’21 budget and you add up all the money that’s in the MDA, what you’ll find is most of their money is in production and sustainment,” Hyten said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Feb. 23. “That should be a normal process. What you really want for MDA is to focus on this next generation thing and next-generation interceptor and next-generation sensor, a next-generation architecture and next-generation capability and drive that piece there.”

MDA has “been forced to focus on the production sustainment of all these other capabilities, which make it very difficult for them to focus on the core mission. So I think the structure of MDA is absolutely correct. We just have to make sure we align their capabilities with their charter correctly,” Hyten said…

Click here to read the full article.