As the Army looks toward 2025 in an era of evolving warfare – including the proliferation of ballistic missiles – leaders are focusing on what cutting-edge technologies will put them ahead of the curve in missile defense.
The Defense Department is exploring a daunting range of technologies to boost next-generation missile defense, including work under way on nanosatellites that provide off-the-grid communications, future lasers that are as compact as they are capable of taking out incoming threats, non-kinetic options and more.
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"The organizations that I represent have a wide variety of mission sets and support a number of ongoing operations while exploring new and emerging technological advances," said LTG David Mann, commander of Army Space and Missile Defense Command. "Space and missile threats posed by our adversaries have expanded and become more numerous and complex, not only in the area of ballistic and cruise missile systems, but also in the development of emerging technologies like hypersonic or hyper-glide weapon systems, anti-satellite technologies, cyber threats and the proliferation of unmanned aerial systems."
Mann spoke Aug. 12 at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.
The commander said that three nanosatellite programs are complete and more launches are scheduled for this fall for data communications satellites. He said the satellites provide "responsive beyond-line-of-sight communications support in very austere environments, which is critically important because we don't know where we will be deployed, we don't know what the infrastructure will be like."
"These satellites will demonstrate a low-cost solution for providing communications down to the squad-level," Mann said. "Nanosats are tremendously beneficial for units operating in remote locations while on the move. Additionally, they allow tactical leaders to better synchronize actions and seize the initiative while maintaining situational awareness."
Mann also said the Army has entered a cooperative research and development agreement with Lockheed Martin for a laser weapon to be tested out on drones and mortar rounds at White Sands Missile Range next summer.
The ground-based lasers that the Army wants are different from the afloat lasers the Navy has, the airborne lasers the Air Force seeks and the high-powered lasers wanted by the Missile Defense Agency to shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles, Mann acknowledged.
"There is some concern out there that maybe the services are being redundant, [but] it reflects the importance of that technology," Mann said. "The services are using this technology to look at different threat sets."
And while he largely deferred on questions about cyber and other non-kinetic capabilities, he did say the Army is making progress on those options as part of a comprehensive, layered missile defense.
"Just trust me when I say that there are some very exciting and promising technologies out there…some of them are very, very classified, very, very compartmentalized programs, so I can't go into a lot of specific areas. Trust me when I say, though, that all the services are looking at non-kinetic solutions to these threat sets," Mann told reporters after his remarks to the conference audience. "The big takeaway is it's a wide spectrum of capabilities that we have to address this threat set. You can look at non-kinetic, but it's not a be-all end-all. You can look at directed energy, but it's not a be-all end-all."
