Defense News:

The Missile Defense Agency has correctly concluded the need for a new approach to managing the nation’s only ground-based, anti-missile system to protect the U.S. homeland. It’s a bold but overdue move.

Vice Adm. Jon Hill’s call for increased competition — a source of innovation, motivation and new solutions — for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, or GMD, is spot on. The admiral’s plan to establish a weapon system integrator in lieu of the lead system integrator should be supported within the Pentagon and Congress.

A lead system integrator assumes responsibility for the system’s design, development, test, evaluation and system performance. The selling point of a lead integrator is that it normally performs those tasks within a set budget and timeline while reducing the government’s program management burden and optimizing industry’s technological innovation and management skills.

A lead system integrator for GMD may have been relevant in 2001, and at that time MDA might have required assistance in the technical details of system design, but that is no longer the case. MDA is capable of leading the design and implementation of solutions, but it will need assistance with the intricate integration of all the various GMD elements, a function MDA’s weapon system integrator concept should perform. Technical design authority and program decisions, though, should be retained by MDA and not delegated to a private contractor, as is the norm with a lead system integrator…

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