The NATO Medium Extended Air Defense System Management Agency (NAMEADSMA) is located in Huntsville, Alabama. The agency was founded by NATO in July 1996 to oversee the tri-national Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS), a joint military project intended to replace the aging MIM-104 Patriot missile system.
The United States funds 58 percent of the MEADS program, and European partners Germany and Italy provide 25 percent and 17 percent respectively. MEADS development work is allocated in accordance with national funding. Personnel from the United States, Germany, and Italy staff the agency.
As contracting authority providing management of the MEADS program on behalf of the participating nations, NAMEADSMA is responsible for managing the system acquisition. The U.S. and Italy signed the Design and Development (D&D) MOU on 24 and 27 September 2004, respectively. The NAMEADSMA awarded the MEADS D&D letter contract to MEADS International Inc. on 28 September 2004, initiating the MEADS Design and Development (D&D) phase. The MOU was amended in March 2005 by the U.S. and Italy to allow the German Parliament additional time for their signature decision, and on 22 April 2005 Germany signed the MOU. NAMEADSMA awarded a $3.4 billion D&D definitized contract to MEADS International Inc. on 31 May 2005.
MEADS is being developed in accordance with International Common Operational Requirements that call for capabilities not met by current systems. MEADS incorporates the hit-to-kill PAC-3 MSE missile in a system that includes 360-degree surveillance and fire control sensors, netted-distributed battle management/communication centers, and high-firepower launchers. The system combines superior battlefield protection with unprecedented flexibility, allowing it to protect maneuver forces and to provide homeland defense against tactical ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, and aircraft.
Famous quotes containing the words medium, extended, air, defense, system, management and/or agency:
“It is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Only very slowly and late have men come to realize that unless freedom is universal it is only extended privilege.”
—Christopher Hill (b. 1912)
“Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and literature looks like word-catching. The simplest utterances are worthiest to be written, yet are they so cheap, and so things of course, that, in the infinite riches of the soul, it is like gathering a few pebbles off the ground, or bottling a little air in a phial, when the whole earth and the whole atmosphere are ours.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“For there is no defense for a man who, in the excess of his wealth, has kicked the great altar of Justice out of sight.”
—Aeschylus (525–456 B.C.)
“Whoever places his trust into a system will soon be without a home. While you are building your third story, the two lower ones have already been dismantled.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“People have described me as a “management bishop” but I say to my critics, “Jesus was a management expert too.””
—George Carey (b. 1935)
“It is possible that the telephone has been responsible for more business inefficiency than any other agency except laudanum.... In the old days when you wanted to get in touch with a man you wrote a note, sprinkled it with sand, and gave it to a man on horseback. It probably was delivered within half an hour, depending on how big a lunch the horse had had. But in these busy days of rush-rush-rush, it is sometimes a week before you can catch your man on the telephone.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)