Soldiers stand guard as the Shenzhou VI spacecraft, mounted on the LM-2F carrier rocket, is moved to the launch pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China’s Gansu province, October 7, 2005. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)
SMD 2024 – The Missile Defense Agency’s new Transformation Task Force is not only a top-down approach to rethinking the agency’s business practices, but will also seek input from all sides, down to operators on the ground, according to the agency’s head.
“Part of this will also be a grassroots initiative,” Lt. Gen. Heath Collins said Thursday at the Space & Missile Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.
“We’re taking input from all players at all levels to determine what the best approach is to determine what we’re going to look like going forward. We don’t have an answer today as to what the endgame is going to look like. I have to be really quick and flexible, and we’ll continue to grow and change as we need to as we move forward,” he explained.
The new task force announced by Collins in June, Is The goal is to redesign the agency’s internal processes, technology development approach, and future architecture to address pressing new threats. On July 10 and 11, the MDA hosted an industry innovation summit to solicit input on these topics.
Key areas of interest include increasing threats ranging from China’s growing arsenal of ballistic missiles, to sophisticated hypersonic systems being developed and deployed in both China and Russia, to simple drones used by the Houthis in the Red Sea.
In addition, according to an MDA video presented by Collins, enemies are increasingly pursuing a “new style of warfare in which the adversary launches an air and missile attack to overwhelm the defender.” (Although he did not reveal the name, the video described an attack similar to the largely unsuccessful missile and drone attack Iran launched on Israel in April.)
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However, the Task Force’s mandate also includes examining internal agency and Department of Defense challenges, particularly the integration of responses to those threats that cross service domains and areas of responsibility.
“Missions collide and overlap. The challenge of integration is great,” Collins said. “There are silos between services, between units within the services, between MDA.”
MDA has also launched a comprehensive digital transformation initiative, Collins said. It covers everything from digital engineering to digital acquisition and relies heavily on the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
“It takes a very fundamental process to get there,” he said.
