| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The Defense Department's chief weapons tester called in January for the redesign of a key component of the U.S. system intended to intercept long-range missiles launched from North Korea or Iran, raising questions about the department's plans to expand the current system. J. Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon's director of operational test and evaluation, wrote in his annual report, released Jan. 29, that recent test failures of the U.S. ground-based interceptor (GBI) system raise concerns about the system's reliability and suggested that the missile's exoatmospheric kill vehicle (EKV) be redesigned to assure it is "robust against failure." Echoing Gilmore's view, Frank Kendall, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, told a Feb. 25 conference in Washington, "We've got to get to more reliable [missile defense] systems." Merely "patching the things we've got is probably not going to be adequate. So we're going to have to go beyond that," he said. The EKV plays a central role in the missile defense mission. It is lifted into space by a booster rocket and then uses its onboard sensors to locate an incoming enemy warhead and destroy it on impact. U.S. officials have compared the task to hitting a bullet with another bullet.
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