Defense News:
Congress is increasing land-based missile procurement dollars as part of its $573 billion fiscal 2016 defense spending package released Wednesday.
“The bill reflects investments in critical missile procurement programs underfunded by the services,” according to a Senate report on the bill.
The Army is getting $100 million more on top of its $415 million request to buy Lockheed Martin-made Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhanced (PAC-3 MSE) missiles originally listed as part of the service’s unfunded requirements sent to Capitol Hill earlier this year.
The unfunded requirements list is essentially a wish list of things a service would need in that fiscal year but couldn’t afford to include in its budget request and is normally requested by Congress.
The PAC-3 MSE missile is the latest variant of the interceptor used in the Patriot air-and-missile defense system…
The spending bill also provided $20 million more in funding to develop a multi-object kill vehicle as part of the Missile Defense Agency’s Common Kill Vehicle program to design a kill vehicle that can take out multiple warheads with a single interceptor.
Developing a new kill vehicle for the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense System (GMDS) interceptors is one of the agency’s top priorities. The Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) is a critical component of the GMD system that is designed to protect the homeland from possible ballistic missile threats from North Korea and Iran. The EKV has struggled in tests in the past but has seen some recent successes…
