DoD Rethinking Plan To Shift Missile Defense To Services

摘要

The U.S. Defense Department is rethinking its plan to assign responsibility for buying and operating some of its highest-profile missile defense systems to individual military services, according to a senior Pentagon official. U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, director of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency (MDA), said the elements of some systems are too broadly based to be properly run by a single service. As an example he cited the Ground Based Midcourse Defense System, the U.S. territorial defense system slated for initial deployment this autumn. The MDA is developing the Ground Based Midcourse Defense System, which includes both ground-based interceptors and space-based sensors. The disparate nature of these elements has the MDA rethinking plans to assign responsibility for operating and maintaining the system to the U.S. Army.