The U.S.’ counter-UAS and cruise missile defense capability gap is real, as is our military's ability to deploy a layered defense against these threats or to adequately defend assets in a maneuver force's rear area or airbases.  IFPC's contribution to filling those gaps and achieving the air and missile defense's Principles of Mass and Mix - as well as setting the basis for establishing a layered defense - is critical.  The Army cannot walk away from this requirement, and the Army's Fiscal Year 2021 IFPC Shoot-Off is a solid approach to solving the challenge.  We do not need an exquisite solution - we need effective weapons.

The Foundation of Army Air & Missile Defense

The venerable Patriot air defense system has been the mainstay of Army air and missile defense for more than 35 years.  Patriot batteries were the first U.S. ground forces to deploy for Desert Shield in 1990, and for almost 30 years, Patriot has had a continuous mission in Southwest Asia.  Patriot is a tactical weapon with strategic value and impact.  As a U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General, in the U.S. Embassy in Israel, commented to one of this paper's authors in December 2002, as the 69th ADA Brigade was deploying into Israel, "if you park an aircraft carrier in a region it sends a powerful signal. However, positioning a purely defensive Patriot battery forward in a partner nation sends an equally powerful signal of our national intent."

Today, more than nine of the Army's 15 battalions are forward-deployed, with at least five of them in Southwest Asia.  Continually improved through software upgrades and technology insertion, and with a family of versatile and effective interceptors, Patriot is expected to remain in our force for another 20 years.

Patriot is the only true air and missile defense system in the Army inventory, and 16 partner nations employ it.  Designed to fight as integrated battalions, Patriot was intended to integrate with THAAD and operate as an air and missile defense task force.  Unfortunately, this requirement was lost during the transition of THAAD's development from the Army to the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and is just now being pursued.

Patriot's continued improvement is essential, as is integration with THAAD, and other joint and combined AMD capabilities.  Additionally, the U.S. should leverage cooperative development opportunities with our partners, as Patriot and THAAD foreign military sales are continuing to increase. Building partner capacity and capability means you have a path to integrating the partners into the defense and operating as a combined-integrated air defense force.

The Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) will greatly improve Patriot's performance and contribute to the joint air and missile defense fight.  LTAMDS replaces Patriot's sectored radar with a 360-degree radar, using Gallium Nitride (GaN) technology, to provide greater range, precision, and search volume.  A 360-degree search and track capability, coupled with its increased sensitivity, counters the challenges posed by today's unmanned aerial and cruise missile threats and offers a modern platform to counter the emerging hypersonic threat.

The ability to search and track an aerial threat in 360-degrees is not a "nice to have capability" - it is essential to surviving on today's battlefield, and it cannot become budget fodder.  A 360-degree radar is also critical to expeditionary operations, where individual, early-entry forces arrive in an immature theater and must execute their mission, as other theater capabilities arrive.  Case in point: one has to wonder how different last September's attack on the Saudi ARAMCO facility might have been if the Kingdom's air and missile defenses had a 360-degree sensor with LTAMD's capabilities?

LTAMDS is the Army's wide-area air and missile defense sensor and a key contributor to fighting as an integrated air and missile defense force.  Its demonstrated performance in a 2019 sensor competition and rapid acquisition path will provide four sensors for testing by the fall of 2022 and initial fielding in 2025.  It has momentum and promise and needs to remain at the forefront for resourcing.

The final element in the Army's air and missile defense reformation is its Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS).  Command and control systems are referred to as "the glue that binds a family of systems - the element that melds capabilities to create synergies and greater capabilities which could not be realized if capabilities operated in isolation."  IBCS is that command and control system, which has demonstrated the ability to

1. accept data from a joint family of sensors (including the F-35) to generate a single integrated air picture, which provides enhanced situational awareness and enhanced protection for friendly aircraft;
2. provide an integrated fire control network which optimizes the single air picture, thereby allowing the optimal weapon to engage a threat and enable earlier engagements, potentially multiple engagements (if necessary), and defend in depth;
3. perform integrated defense planning, to minimize gaps in cover; and
4. provide automated battle management aids to operations.

IBCS got off to a rocky start, but it has made tremendous progress and now exemplifies the Army's 2019 Modernization Strategy's language, "[we] may not succeed on the first demonstration and experimentation...but we will learn and rapidly adjust."³  IBCS has had five successful flight tests, and its development has been informed by Soldier Check-Out Events, which put soldiers on the system much sooner than traditional acquisition programs.  As it executes this summer's Limited User Test (LUT) and the Army weighs a production decision, it will be important to not only assess how well IBCS performs on the test but to assess the operational value of its performance and how early fielding of this capability improves air and missile defense operations and force protection.  Rolling out IBCS capabilities as soon as possible, while addressing lessons from the LUT, is essential.

IBCS has demonstrated joint integration and the ability for a Patriot battery to defeat multiple cruise missiles, at extended range, by utilizing Sentinel radar track data.  During a recent test, the Patriot battery's radar never saw or tracked the cruise missiles - it executed the engagement from the fire control network's composite track data, with the intercepts occurring at a never before demonstrated range.  This is the power of fighting as an integrated air and missile defense system.

Imagine this: Sentinel radars operating in the forward area with M-SHORAD detect and track a flight of cruise missiles inbound but outside the range of M-SHORAD or a forward area IFPC battery.  Those tracks are passed via the integrated fire control network to Patriot units well in the division's rear area for engagement.  Patriot executes an engagement, intercepting a portion of the cruise missile flight.  Simultaneously, the cruise missile data is passed to an Air Force control and reporting center, which directs F-35s to execute a second engagement against the flight of cruise missiles, again defeating a portion of the flight.  Finally, the few remaining cruise missiles are defeated by IFPC, which is defending the Division's aviation brigade, the cruise missile's intended target, in the division's rear area.  All the while, LTAMDS and Patriot are providing ballistic missile defense to the division's critical assets, contributing vital data to the single integrated air picture, and providing air tracks to the control and reporting center for engagement.

Way Ahead

Integration is powerful - and this kind of integration is necessary.  Integration turns point defense weapons into a networked system to provide area defense.  It enables a layered defense and defense in depth.  It allows for earlier target evaluation, weapon assignment, and engagement, and it greatly reduces the potential for uncoordinated engagements and interceptor wastage.  Integration overcomes the challenges of earth curvature, which confounds terrestrial sensors, mitigates terrain masking, and enables the joint or combined mission commander to apply the best weapon options.  It also closes the seams - which all operators hope to exploit.

Integration made possible by IBCS is not service specific.  It crosses into joint and combined operations.  Countless wargames and tabletop exercises point to the need for an integrated air and missile defense command and control system.  Unfortunately, the Army is only funded to integrate its systems.  That plan must expand to include THAAD, AEGIS, and other AMD capabilities and those of our partner nations, and must do so as soon as possible.

In 2003, 95 percent of our Patriot force was deployed, with most of it committed to Operation Iraqi Freedom.  Partner nations contributed 16 additional Patriot batteries to this operation, but collectively, only 50 percent of the Joint Force Commander's critical assets were defended.  An integrated defense would have increased that 50 percent value and improved the defense's effectiveness, most likely defeating the five Iraqi cruise missiles fired into Kuwait and preventing the two fratricides.  Integration is one of the four, doctrinal air and missile defense principles and has been a commander's planning task since World War II^, and maybe even World War I.

Today, we stand on the cusp of being able to operate in an integrated manner.  IBCS's upcoming LUT will inform the Army's fielding decision for only Army systems.  There is no plan or funding to integrate THAAD, or AEGIS, or any element of the homeland's air and missile capabilities.  Success in this summer's test and the decision to field IBCS should be the catalyst to develop and fund a plan to integrate those systems and open the door to partners.  It will also be important to address any latency issues associated with the integration of various systems while ensuring cyber protection for the overall integrated air and missile defense architecture. Congress has a tough job as it attempts to battle and pay for the COVID-19 response, and decrementing the defense budget may be necessary.  If lawmakers make defense a bill payer, they should do so with language that safeguards the Army's air and missile defense capabilities and initiatives and sets the plan for an integrated air and missile defense capability to expand beyond the Army.