“It’s Real, It’s Coming, It’s A Matter Of Time” – US General Warns Of Hypersonic Attack
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Sun, 07/01/2018
Air Force Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves, director of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), said he has the full support of Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Michael Griffin to advance the development of space-based sensors that would defend the nation from hypersonic attacks by America’s adversaries.
The Pentagon believes funding will be in place next year to begin the constellation of missile-surveillance satellites amid new warnings of hypersonic weapons being tested and deployed Russia and China.
“The hypersonic threat is real, it is not imagination,” Lt. Gen. Greaves explained Tuesday at the Capitol Hill Club, emphasizing that defending against hypersonic missile attacks has become a top priority for the agency. But he forewarned the audience at the elitist, members-only club in Washington, D.C., that the Pentagon has a poor track record developing satellite constellations and should not deploy new systems unless a considerable amount of testing has been completed.
“We will prove the technology before we jump into a major program,” said Greaves.
“We will not repeat AEHF, SBIRS, GPS 3, OCX,” he said, referring to a list of Air Force satellite programs that have cost taxpayers billions of dollars and were years behind schedule.
“We all know what happens when we overpromise and we underdeliver,” Greaves said.
Greaves said the Pentagon wants to construct a sensor layer in space for missile defense, which right now, that is at the top of MDA’s priorities. While there is an urgency to deploy the system because of Russia’s hypersonic threat, he noted that defense agencies should not rush — to make sure all the bases are covered.
“To go fast sometimes you need to go slow early on,” he said. “This is the slow part, doing the requirements, the architecture studies, the modeling and simulation, so by the time you make your decision, industry is ready to ramp up.”
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