The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has unveiled details about its vision of hypersonic defense during SMD Symposium (leading event in space and missile defense community), on 7 August.
According to the presentation, released by the MDA, the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2017 directed Agency to develop architectures for hypersonic defense capability for detected and intercepting threats using kinetic and non-kinetic options.
The agency has done “a lot of work already” on hypersonic defense, working with the space community. MDA is working to integrate its sensors with those owned by the broader national security space community to track hypersonic missiles and hypersonic aircraft.
Countries such as China and Russia are actively declaring their successes in the developing new hypersonic missile programmes and this causes concern for the United States.
The main task for MDA is the creation of a working model of the hypersonic defense system, to develop and field offensive and defense system.
It is only a matter of time before hypersonic weapons are added to the arsenals of America’s adversaries, the CNBC news agency quoted the head of the Missile Defense Agency Lt. Gen. Samuel A. Greaves, as saying on 26 June.
“The hypersonic threat is real, it is not imagination,” Air Force Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves explained, noting that defending against hypersonics has become a top priority for the agency.
At this moment the MDA’s priority is are define, select, and quickly develop and demonstrate integrated defensive architecture solutions for hypersonic threats.
To respond to this demand MDA is requesting $120 million in fiscal 2019 for hypersonic missile defense.