Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) is the United States system for intercepting incoming warheads in space. It is a major component of the U.S. missile defense strategy to counter ballistic missiles, including intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). GMD is administered by the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA), while the operational control and execution is provided by the US Army, and support functions are provided by the US Air Force. Previously known as National Missile Defense (NMD), the name was changed in 2002 to differentiate it from other U.S. missile defense programs, such as space-based and sea-based intercept programs, or defense targeting the boost phase and the reentry phase (see flight phases).
Read more about Ground-Based Midcourse Defense: Description, Flight Tests, Program Costs
Famous quotes containing the word defense:
“Unlike Boswell, whose Journals record a long and unrewarded search for a self, Johnson possessed a formidable one. His life in London—he arrived twenty-five years earlier than Boswell—turned out to be a long defense of the values of Augustan humanism against the pressures of other possibilities. In contrast to Boswell, Johnson possesses an identity not because he has gone in search of one, but because of his allegiance to a set of assumptions that he regards as objectively true.”
—Jeffrey Hart (b. 1930)