The Drive:

The head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Jon Hill, recently provided new details on progress toward establishing vastly upgraded air and missile defenses on the highly strategic island of Guam. Requirements for the overarching system are starting to solidify, but U.S. military officials still face challenges in figuring out how to fit all the components on the island.

“So, if you look at the PB 23 budget [President’s Budget for Fiscal Year 2023] submittal, you will see that there’s an MDA portion, which is the Ballistic Missile Defense capability and the hypersonic missile defense capability. And then the Army brings in cruise missile defense,” Hill explained. “And what’s great is both systems kind of have a crossover in what they can do.”

“So, the integration of those into a command suite with command and control battle management on top of it, [that] is the basic architecture,” he continued. “So you can think of a number of radars that ensure we meet the requirement, which is persistent 360-degree coverage, right, because of the evolved threat.”

“We have a very good feel for at least technically and operationally where things should go, okay, in order for it to function as a system,” the head of MDA added.

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