Missile Defense Agency

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The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is the section of the United States government's Department of Defense responsible for developing a layered defense against ballistic missiles. The agency has its origins from the Strategic Defense Initiative which was established in 1983, renamed as the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization in 1993, and then renamed as the Missile Defense Agency in 2002. See National Missile Defense for the history of DoD missile defense programs.

Contents

[edit] Mission statement

According to the agency's web-page:

"The Missile Defense Agency's mission is to develop, test and prepare for deployment of a missile defense system. Using complementary interceptors, land-, sea-, air- and space-based sensors, and battle management command and control systems, the planned missile defense system will be able to engage all classes and ranges of ballistic missile threats. Our programmatic strategy is to develop, rigorously test, and continuously evaluate production, deployment and operational alternatives for the ballistic missile defense system. Missile defense systems being developed and tested by MDA are primarily based on hit-to-kill technology. It has been described as hitting a bullet with a bullet - a capability that has been successfully demonstrated in test after test."

MDA divides its systems into 3 categories, boost phase, mid-course phase and terminal phase, each corresponding to a different phase of the threat ballistic missile flight regime. Each phase offers different advantages and disadvantages to a missile defense system (see missile defense classified by trajectory phase), thus the layered defense approach concept should improve overall defense effectiveness.

[edit] Boost phase defense

  • Kinetic Energy Interceptor (KEI) - in December 2003, MDA awarded a contract to Northrop Grumman for developing and testing - perhaps later also to be applied for mid-course defense. It has to be launched from a location not too far from the launch site of the target missile (and is therefore less suitable against large countries), it has to be fired very soon after launch of the target, and it has to be very fast itself (6 km/s).
  • Airborne Laser - Team ABL proposed and won the contract for this system in 1996.

One can distinguish disabling the warheads and just disabling the boosting capability. The latter has the risk of "shortfall": damage in countries between the launch site and the target location.

See also APS report.

[edit] Midcourse (ballistic) phase defense

[edit] Terminal phase defense

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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