Missile defense

IBCS: Army Launches Massive Army Missile Defense Test

Over seven hundred troops, technical experts, and supporting personnel have come together in the New Mexico desert to field-test the Army’s new IBCS command network for missile defense. At the same time, the massive gathering is an equally crucial test for the Army’s defense against COVID-19, which is spiking in the southwest.

After weeks of rehearsals, the director for missile defense modernization, Army Futures Command’s Brig. Gen. Brian Gibson says, “we’re go for starting on the seventh.” That’s tomorrow, seven weeks after the originally scheduled May 15th, which the Army pushed back because of COVID-19. The Army has put in place elaborate precautions against the pandemic, precautions Gibson compared to those the NBA is using as it restarts the basketball season at Disney World.The first principle, Gibson told me in an interview last week, is to reduce the number of people physically present at the sprawling White Sands Missile Range to the absolute minimum required. Many Army and contractor experts monitoring the test can do their job just fine long-distance, as long as they have access to the detailed data being collected on the range. Yes, they may have to go to a secure facility to get that access, since much of the data is classified and can’t be shared over the usual work-from-home systems, but that’s still safer than traveling to White Sands and congregating there with people from all over the country.