Missile Defense Agency - Boost Phase Defense

Boost Phase Defense

  • Kinetic Energy Interceptor (KEI) - in December 2003, MDA awarded a contract to Northrop Grumman for developing and testing. It will have to be launched from a location not too far from the launch site of the target missile (and is therefore less suitable against large countries), it has to be fired very soon after launch of the target, and it has to be very fast itself (6 km/s). In 2009, the Department of Defense and MDA determined that Northrop Grumman could never build anything this technologically advanced and has cancelled the program, allocating no funding for it in its recent budget submission.
  • Boeing YAL-1 Airborne Laser (ABL) - Team ABL proposed and won the contract for this system in 1996. A high-energy laser was used to intercept a test target in January 2010, and the following month, successfully destroyed two test missiles.
  • Network Centric Airborne Defense Element (NCADE) - On Sept. 18, 2008 Raytheon announced it had been awarded a $10 million contract to continue research and development of NCADE, a missile defense system based on the AIM-120 AMRAAM.

One can distinguish disabling the warheads and just disabling the boosting capability. The latter has the risk of "shortfall": damage in countries between the launch site and the target location.

See also APS report.

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