Missile Defense Agency Circles Ballistic & Cruise Missile Defense as a Top 2023 Budget Priority

Video Above: Hypersonic Weapons

By Kris Osborn – President & Editor-In-Chief, Warrior Maven

It likely surprises no one that the Missile Defense Agency’s 2023 budget proposal allocates 82-percent of its budget to research and development, indicating the Pentagon’s interest in uncovering breakthrough technologies able to help defend against a new and fast-evolving global threat equation.

Ballistic & Cruise Missile Defense

“Ballistic missiles are now more sophisticated and numerous. They are becoming more mobile, survivable, reliable, and accurate, and can achieve longer ranges. New ballistic missile systems also feature multiple and maneuverable reentry vehicles along with decoys and jamming devices,” Dee Dee Martinez, Comptroller, Missile Defense Agency, told reporters according to a Pentagon transcript.

The challenge of truly being able to “see” things faster and more completely anywhere in the globe, senior Pentagon officials describe, continues to grow more pressing as potential enemies continue to advance new technologies designed to prevent detection or intercept such as EW countermeasures to jam radar, decoys and coordinated multiple attacks.

The kinds of growing threats were envisioned and anticipated by defense planners in recent years. For example, a document called “Army Air & Missile Defense 2018 Vision” specifies some of the more difficult challenges presented by enemy weapons.

For instance, regarding ballistic missile threats, the Army Vision essay explains that advanced weapons are now engineered with “countermeasures, maneuverable re-entry vehicles, multiple independent reentry vehicles, hypersonic/supersonic glide vehicles and electronic attack.”