Missile defense

DoD Wants Help To Spot — & Kill — Mobile Missiles

Three weeks from today, defense contractors will submit proposals for spotting hidden missile launchers — so the US military can destroy them before they ever fire. The winning entries could go on to flight demonstrators in just two years, a meteoric pace for the Pentagon.

It’s the first concrete step towards implementing the much-debated Missile Defense Review released last month, which called for an ambitious and expensive array of high-tech countermeasures, not just to usual suspects Iran and North Korea, but to the much larger arsenals of Russia and China.

Outlined in a document blandly titled “Time-Sensitive Target Mission Payloads Demonstration” that was posted without fanfare on the federal government’s main contracting website Feb. 15, the plan describes acquiring a variety of satellites and surveillance assets to find and track often hard-to-find mobile missile launchers that can be hit before they pop off their first missile. The solicitation released to the defense industry invites US nationals (no foreigners allowed) to an industry day briefing March 1st, with initial proposals due March 15 and flight demonstrations by 2021.