MDA Budget Briefing Transcript
The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has a released a transcript of a news briefing on the FY 2011 defense budget. MDA Executive Director David Altwegg informed his staff that the agency requested $8.4 billion, about $500 million more than requested for FY 2010. An excerpt:
“And the budget supports continuous emphasis on development, testing, fielding, sustainment. And we have shifted our emphasis from the ground-based defense against intercontinental ballistic missiles to the regional threat, short- and medium-range missiles, which comprise about 99 percent of the ballistic missile threat extant.
“We also — as announced by the president on 17 September of ‘09, we are starting the four-phased approach to fielding a capability in Europe against the emerging Iranian threat, initially against, again, the short- and medium-range threat that exists, and hence our initial emphasis will be on Southeastern Europe.
…
“Now the objectives that we established at the start of the POM season were, in short, homeland defense; regional defense; proven, meaning adequate testing; and hedging against the future. And each of those enterprises has enjoyed an increase from ‘10 to ‘11, except for the hedge against the future, which has dropped off about a billion- plus (dollars).
“Now I want to say something about testing, not to ignore the other three objectives, but in ‘09, in about December of ‘08, we laid our testing program out on the table, and we developed some criteria to a number called critical engagement conditions, or CEC, and empirical management event, EME.
“And we required, and collectively we developed, criteria that became CECs or EMEs, and which led to almost a complete reordering of our test program.
“And why did we do that? Well, we can’t afford any more to conduct the number of flight tests that we used to, for instance, when I was a lot younger. At $200 million a flight test for a ground-based system, 80 (million dollars) to $90 million a flight test for a Aegis or THAAD, it’s just not affordable, for instance, to conduct 30 flight tests to determine a confidence level sufficient so that the director of operational test and evaluation would be comfortable.
“What we do now is we capture the right data so that we can develop high-fidelity models and simulations so that the warfighter in particular, and the testers to the same extent, have comfort that what we are fielding will, in fact, achieve the goals desired by the warfighter and the testers.”
Read the entire transcript here, and download the briefing slides here (PDF).
Tags: MDA, Missile Defense Agency