Air and missile defense must be top priority for lawmakers

The more North Korea launches intercontinental ballistic missiles, the more obvious the obvious becomes — now is not the time for congressional defense committees to do anything that would impede America’s advancements in air and missile defense.

This fact is not lost on President Trump or our allies, as the U.S. and Poland have agreed to put PATRIOT defense systems in Poland, a country that still bears the scars of how vulnerable a nation can be when it has inadequate air defenses. 

{mosads}And it’s a harsh reality that is certainly not lost on our allies who have lost forces to friendly fire, primarily‎ because command-and-control technology developed in the 1980s are still in use.

The world has come to yet another perilous crossroads — and it is critical that our policy and budget experts stay focused and committed to upgrades within the Army Integrated Air and Missile Defense (AIAMD) program. 

America’s men and women who comprise the world’s most dominant ground forces on frontlines around the world must have the capability to destroy any missile or airborne threat that our enemies might launch against our troops. What global hotspots like Iran, Eastern Europe and of course North Korea have taught us is that those threats are only increasing in volume and complexity.

The threats are real. The ability to respond must be just as real.

The current fast-changing threat environment — in which technology and cyberwarfare advance almost daily — often require the Army to revise program requirements in the middle of program development. I’ve seen first-hand challenges posed by rapid technology changes within major Army programs.

New demands often push cutting-edge delivery timelines to the right and changing program requirements and re-baselining is sometime necessary to ensure that a desired capability is not dated when it is fielded. Such is the case with a key element of AIAMD, a new command-and-control system, a system of systems, known as the Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS).

These processes should be viewed — and supported — by Congress as our best hopes for maintaining our national defense and keeping the American people safe from a new generation of existential threats. 

As Barry J. Pike, the Army’s Program Executive Officer for Missiles and Space, recently testified before the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces: “The IBCS remains the Army’s number one air and missile developmental priority and serves as the foundation for Army [air and missile defense] modernization.”

The Army is restructuring the AIAMD program and extending the schedule to ensure the program includes significant new capabilities and to ensure emerging requirements are satisfied before IBCS enters Low Rate Initial Production or “LRIP.‎” 

This includes aligning the program with, and including, PATRIOT software upgrades, functionality and hardware updates. Aligning these capabilities and requirements will ensure a more robust IBCS capability that will incorporate the latest software and functionality.

Warfighters need to be able to better see the entire battlespace, and as Pike noted in his congressional testimony, this program will help them do that. Besides, Army’s pledge to its soldiers is to never allow them to wage merely a “fair fight” but to have overwhelming capabilities in any combat scenario.   

“The program will field Engagement Operation Centers and an Integrated Fire Control Network to integrate Army AMD sensors and shooters through a common battle command system,” Pike testified. “When fielded, IBCS will enable a tailorable, flexible, task-organized Army AMD force, breaking the current stove-piped system construct.” 

Lawmakers should recognize that seeing IBCS through production and deployment will give the Defense Department the better buying power it so urgently seeks. That’s because unlike the outdated systems IBCS will replace — this technology will be wholly owned by the government, with the Army being the key system integrator. In a changing environment, taking advantage of the open nature of the AIAMD enterprise architecture allows for the addition of new capabilities, at a vastly reduced cost. 

Gone will be the days of managing seven siloed, legacy command and control systems, each requiring maintenance and modernization budgets. That can be extremely cumbersome and costly, including paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single line of code.

Lawmakers might keep this in mind as they consider the budget needs of today’s Army. While I sympathize with lawmakers who are forced to choose between modernization and growing the force, the continued support of AIAMD is not a choice. Our enemies won’t allow it.  

In these dangerous times, modernized air and missile defense is not a luxury that can be delayed or gutted on a whim. It is, quite simply, a matter of life, death and common sense.

Let’s hope for the future security of our nation and her allies that the latter wins the day. 

Dean Popps is the former Army Acquisition Executive and Acting United States assistant secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology from 2008 to 2010. 

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.