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GAO-16-254R 1 (2016-02-17)

handle is hein.gao/gaobaajqb0001 and id is 1 raw text is: G3 A O U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 441 G St. N.W. Washington, DC 20548 February 17, 2016 Congressional Cor m ittees Missile Defense: Assessment of DOD's Reports on Status of Efforts and Options for Improving Homeland Missile Defense The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is developing the Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) to defend the U.S. homeland and U.S. regional friends and allies against ballistic missile attacks from countries such as North Korea and Iran. To counter such threats to the U.S. homeland, the BMDS is designed to combine the capabilities of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system with a network of ground-, sea-, and space-based sensors to provide an integrated, layered defense. GMD defends against threats by launching ground-based interceptors that release kill vehicles to find and destroy the threat. According to the Department of Defense (DOD), protection of the United States from the threat of ballistic missile attacks is a critical national security priority. In building that protection, MDA has spent tens of billions of dollars developing the GMD system, including: fielding ground station assets and a fleet of over 30 GMD interceptors; upgrading, redesigning, refurbishing, and retrofitting the system; and performing eight intercept flight tests, four of which were successful.1 According to DOD's Office of the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation, GMD has demonstrated a partial capability to defend the U.S. homeland against a simple ballistic missile attack from North Korea or Iran. According to MDA, the current GMD kill vehicle design and concept of operations represent a performance plateau that cannot be overcome without augmenting and replacing the kill vehicles in the current fleet of fielded interceptors. Doing so would likely require a multibillion dollar investment by MDA. To that end, DOD is conducting a formal study to assess options, called an analysis of alternatives (AOA), to identify potential cost-effective solutions for improving homeland ballistic missile defense. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014 (FY14 NDAA) and the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015 (FY15 NDAA) required DOD to assess options for im proving homeland ballistic missile defense. More specifically, section 238 of the FY14 NDAA required the Secretary of Defense to submit to congressional defense committees a report that included, among other items, an evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of potential future options for improving homeland ballistic missile defense, including consideration of each option's technical feasibility, operational effectiveness, cost effectiveness, schedule, and agility to respond to future changes in the threat. Section 1665(b) of the FY15 NDAA required the Director of MDA to submit to the congressional defense committees a report that included, among other items, an evaluation of the benefits and drawbacks of potential options to improve homeland ballistic missile defense capability against a potential, emerging Iranian ballistic missile threat. DOD submitted a report entitled Potential Future Homeland Ballistic Missile 1Three of the test failures were due to kill vehicle failures. One of the testfailures was due to a target failure. For more information, see GAO, Missile Defense: Opportunities Exist to Reduce Acquisition Risk and Improve Reporting on System Capabilities, GAO-15-345 (Washington, D.C.: May 6, 2015), 62. GAO-16-254R Homeland Missile Defense Page 1

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