As the threat of hypersonic missile technology continues to proliferate, the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is looking at new concepts to protect the US, its deployed forces, and allies against the threat.
To address these evolving challenges, the defense department is reviewing its missile defense policies, strategies and capabilities to ensure the US has effective missile defenses, deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy Leonor Tomero said during a recent testimony at a House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces hearing regarding the fiscal year 2022 budget request.
The department’s approach for regional hypersonic defense will first focus on defense in the terminal phase, she said, meaning the final phase of a missile’s trajectory.
Information superiority is critical to future battlefields and is necessary to enable rapid planning and employment in a joint operating environment. To that end, the department is developing multi cyber-hardened, advanced, all-domain awareness for command and control architecture that will enable timely and accurate decision making to address emerging threats, she said.
Following the testimony, MDA released a seven-minute concept video illustrating how it envisages layered hypersonic missile defense. While rather long, the video is well worth a watch as it provides a lot of detail and explanations about how hypersonic missile defense is supposed to work.
