Defending Horizons: Army Air and Missile Defense Programs Gliding to Finish Line.

• Author: Easley, Mikayla

Reports of advanced and evolving threats from U.S. adversaries have put pressure on the Army to develop a range of new air-and-missile defense capabilities. After just a few years of development and rapid prototyping efforts, the fielding of several new systems is on the horizon, according to service officials and industry.

The Army began efforts to shore up its layered air-and-missile defense forces with the release of a strategic document in 2019 that outlined how the service would prepare for changes in the operational environment and the systems it planned to field through 2028. It highlighted several risks to national security, including China and Russia's military modernization efforts and the proliferation of tactical ballistic missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles and indirect fires in the Middle East. In particular, the document noted there is "no one silver bullet to counter the rapidly changing and complex threat set; rather, we must have an assortment of capabilities available to counter the threat in any weather and in a denied, degraded, or contested environment."

The air-and-missile defense systems are some of the service's top modernization priorities that Army Chief of Staff Gen. lames McConville promised would be in the hands of soldiers by fiscal year 2023. The platforms are a complement to the Army's separate modernization program focused on threats that travel at hypersonic speeds of Mach 5 or higher: the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon. Now, a mix of coordinated technologies--from directed energy weapons to advanced radars--are on track for fielding in the coming months.

Raytheon Intelligence and Space is set to deliver all the subsystems for the Directed Energy-Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense, or DE M-SHORAD, to the Army by the end of October, said Evan Hunt, the company's director of business development.

The systems will be integrated onto four Stryker fighting vehicles by Kord Technologies--which was selected as the prime contractor for the program by the Army's Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office in 2019--and then sent for further training with soldiers, Hunt said.

The first DE M-SHORAD system completed operational assessments at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico earlier this year. Once the newly finished subsystems are integrated, there is a possibility that the laser-equipped Strykers could be sent overseas for real operations in 2023, he added.

"It's pretty unheard of for a new weapon system of...