Army weighing sending missile defense prototypes forward into theater

Tasked by the Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, the service’s missiles and space shop is examining the possibility of sending new air and missile defense capabilities still in the prototype phase into theater, the program executive officer told Defense News.

“The chief has challenged us and has asked us to look at opportunities, present some options, by which we would accelerate [the Integrated Battle Command System] to the field, accelerate [the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor] to the field and accelerate some of the [Indirect Fire Protection Capability] capabilities to the field,” Maj. Gen. Frank Lozano said in an interview ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference.

Both the Raytheon-developed LTAMDS and Leidos’ Dynetics-made IFPC have experienced successful test events over the past year.

“We’ve really had some great success on the test range,” Thomas Laliberty, Raytheon’s land and air defense systems president, told Defense News. “We produced six production representative units [and] delivered those probably faster than any radar of that magnitude has ever been produced.”

And while the large live-fire tests get the most attention, “we’ve been doing all the other testing that makes a system like LTAMDS something that you can deploy,” Laliberty said.

The PEO is working to assess courses of action alongside Army staff and the Army Futures Command’s air-and-missile defense cross functional team at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

The assessment includes the possibility of sending the systems to either U.S. Central Command, U.S. European Command or U.S. Indo-Pacific Command areas of operation in some combined form, according to Lozano.

“There’s a lot of pros and cons with doing that,” he said.

Also included in the assessment will be analyzing how reliable the prototypes might be. IBCS, for instance, has reached full operational capability and is in early fielding, but the LTAMDS radar, which will replace the Patriot air–and-missile defense system, is in prototype testing and evaluation. The IFPC capability is also in early tests.

A major benefit to getting the prototypes out to soldiers in theater is the early real-world feedback the systems would receive, allowing the Army to improve and adapt the systems at a faster pace, Lozano explained.

“We’re looking at where can we put these systems to where, one, it’s most beneficial to the soldiers, because there are soldiers engaged in an active counter-[unmanned aircraft systems] fight in CENTCOM right now.

“We have soldiers forward deployed in Poland operating Patriot systems and we have soldiers in the 94th [Army Air and Missile Defense Command] operating in INDOPACOM with the 1st Multidomain Task Force,” Lozano said.

Poland is signed on to buy LTAMDS and is already incorporating IBCS into its Patriot batteries.

But the service is also looking at where prototypes provide a complementary benefit to the ongoing base program efforts, Lozano added.

“CENTCOM would be a great option relative to providing soldiers capability, but because it’s a very harsh environment and it’s an operational environment the risks are different,” he said.

One issue would be the ability to forward deploy testers and evaluators because the soldiers are in a real conflict zone, and “we don’t want to detract from the mission that’s going on there,” Lozano said.

In EUCOM, there are ongoing operations that would provide the prototypes real world data, but there are a lack of suitable test ranges, Lozano noted.

And one capability might be more suitable for one theater and mission as opposed to another.

“IFPC would look good for CENTCOM employment, but maybe LTAMDS not so much,” Lozano said.

In INDOPACOM, the Army is working with the 94th AAMDC to understand the benefits of a unit receiving LTAMDS or IBCS. One would be that the theater has three major test ranges: the Reagan Test Center at Kwajalein Atoll, the PMRF in Hawaii and the Kodiak Range in Alaska.

Capability in the Pacific could also help “in activities associated with the deterrence of the [China],” Lozano said.

The Army will work on possible plans over the next 90 days, looping in top officials like the Army vice chief of staff and the acquisition chief.

“I would suspect that after the first of the year, we’ll have something nailed down that we would like to execute,” Lozano said. “Every combatant command is important. … Rather than load down one command with all these capabilities, we’re trying to see what would be an equitable spread, but also beneficial to the command, the program office and the Army staff to further the development of the capabilities at a rapid pace.”