The American leadership is dissatisfied with certain points in the activities of the United States Missile Defense Agency. Because of this structure, responsible for missile defense, may reassign to another deputy defense minister.
The United States Missile Defense Agency is currently subordinate to Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Development Michael Griffin. It is his actions that raise questions in Congress. As analyst Nathan Straut notes, questions have arisen, including, on the proposal to create a space low-orbit sensor layer of sensors, targeting probable adversary’s hypersonic weapons. note, that the missile defense agency requested 2020 year 157,4 million dollars to develop hypersonic missile defense.
all 2019 year, Michael Griffin, with the support of the presidential administration, defended his point of view on the future of the program “Space Sensors for Hypersonic Ballistic Tracking” (Hypersonic Ballistic Tracking Space Sensors, HBTSS). Congressmen claimed, that the Missile Defense Agency should take full responsibility for the development of the system, whereas the White House considered, what is the load balancing between the Missile Defense Agency and the Space Development Agency, who also reports to Under Secretary of Defense Griffin.
As a result, Congress managed to defend its position., after which all the responsibility for the development of the system was assigned to the Missile Defense Agency. However, then questions arose for the agency itself, as congressmen considered, that it does not invest enough in the HBTSS program.
Derek Thornir – Director of Space Development Agency
In the same time, Interestingly, own work on the creation of a system for intercepting hypersonic weapons is carried out at the Space Development Agency. Its leader Derek Tornir announced the work on creating a large constellation of low-orbit satellites, that, allegedly, will be able to detect and track Russian and Chinese hypersonic missiles.
After that, questions arose in Congress regarding the actions of the Space Development Agency., which moved forward with its developments, without waiting for a missile defense plan to be submitted from the Missile Defense Agency. But Derek Tornir reacted rather harshly to Congressional questions:
You start a debate about, that was before – chicken or the egg. We are going to deploy both systems at the same time.. I will say, that none of them is more complicated than the other, and both systems are needed by the United States,
– stressed the head of the Space Development Agency.
Anyway, the argument itself over, who will be responsible for the sensor program and for its funding, hardly likely to hurt the future of development. clear, that the US is extremely interested in creating a hypersonic missile tracking system, especially considering, that even American experts admit their country's lag in hypersonic weapons from Russia and China. Furthermore, it is this reason that explains the increased interest of congressmen in the development and their desire to streamline the development and achieve the greatest possible efficiency and effectiveness in creating such a system.
