26 May 17. DoD Government-Industry Advisory Panel to Meet June 14-15- (82 Fed. Reg. 24109) – The US Department of Defense has announced that its Government-Industry Advisory Panel will meet Wednesday, June 14, and Thursday, June 15, 2017, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM EDT, at the Pentagon Library, Washington Headquarters Services, 1155 Defense Pentagon, Washington, DC 20301-1155. The meeting room will be displayed on the information screen for both days. The Pentagon Library is located in the Pentagon Library and Conference Center (PLC2) across the Corridor 8 bridge. For entrance into the meeting, you must meet the necessary requirements for entrance into the Pentagon. Those wishing to attend must register by June 9 by contacting LTC Andrew Lunoff, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Acquisition), 3090 Defense Pentagon, Washington, DC 20301-3090, email: , phone: 571-256-9004 or Peter Nash, email: , phone: 703-693-5111. This will be the seventeenth meeting of the Government- Industry Advisory Panel and continued recurring teleconference meetings. The panel will cover details of 10 U.S.C. 2320 and 2321, begin understanding the implementing regulations and detail the necessary groups within the private sector and government to provide supporting documentation for their review of these codes and regulations during follow-on meetings. Agenda items for this meeting will include the following: (1) Final review of tension point information papers; (2) Rewrite FY17 NDAA 2320 and 2321 language; (3) Review Report Framework and Format for Publishing; (4) Comment Adjudication & Planning for follow-on meeting. (Source: glstrade.com)
26 May 17. Budget Request Seeks Greater Missile Defense Capabilities. The Missile Defense Agency’s priority in the president’s fiscal year 2018 budget request is to deliver greater missile defense capability for the warfighter and to invest in advanced technology and future capabilities, MDA’s director of operations said here this week.
Briefing reporters at the Pentagon, Gary Pennett noted that the agency is requesting $7.9bn in 2018 to continue to develop reliable, increasingly capable and state-of-the-art defenses against ballistic missile threats for the nation, deployed forces, allies and international partners.
“MDA remains committed to delivering, expanding and sustaining our nation’s homeland missile defenses,” Pennett said, “and requests $1.5bn in [fiscal] 2018 for the ground-based midcourse defense program, or GMD.” Thirty-six ground-based interceptors, or GBIs, are in place today, and the agency is on track to expand the fleet to 44 by the end of 2017, he added.
The 2018 budget request also would fund flight and system ground testing of homeland defenses, continue developing the redesigned kill vehicle, enhance the nuclear stockpile reliability program and expand the GBI battle space, Pennett said.
The operations director said the agency would continue to develop GMD ground-system hardware and software upgrades and fire-control and kill-vehicle software to improve discrimination capabilities — the ability to differentiate between incoming missiles and decoys.
Regional Defense
Regional defense uses Aegis ballistic missile defense, the naval component of the Ballistic Missile Defense System. Aegis BMD builds on the existing Aegis weapon system, the standard missile and Navy control-and-communication systems. It targets short- to intermediate-range ballistic missile threats above the atmosphere using the Standard Missile-3, and targets short-range ballistic missiles inside the atmosphere with versions of SM-2 and SM-6. And an initiative called Aegis Ashore adapts Aegis weapon system capabilities to land locations.
Pennett said the 2018 request for Aegis BMD is $1.7bn and that this includes sustaining the deployed SM-3 fleet. MDA will buy 34 SM-3 Block IB missiles for deployment on land at the Aegis Ashore site in Romania and later in Poland