Defense Bill Would Accelerate EKV Redesign Work

摘要

The U.S. House version of the defense authorization bill for 2015 would accelerate design work on a new missile-busting kill vehicle and suspend procurement of an existing version pending additional testing. The bill, approved May 8 by the House Armed Services Committee, authorizes the Missile Defense Agency to spend $40 million more than the $100 million it requested for next year on a redesign of the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV), which has been implicated in a string of test failures of the primary U.S. territorial missile shield. The EKV is designed to separate from its booster rocket above the atmosphere and home in on warheads and destroy them by direct impact. U.S. Navy Vice Adm. James Syring, the MDA's director, has cited the redesigned EKV, along with a new long-range discrimination radar and improved target discrimination capabilities, as the pillars to a dramatically improved Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system.