The Missile Defense Agency is starting to contemplate what concepts and capabilities it’d need around 2045 in a brand new request for information (RFI).
MDA issued an RFI on May 5 to conduct market research “to help within the identification of progressive Missile Defense System technologies, architectures, concepts and Concept of Operations (CONOPS) to deal with regional and homeland ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missile threats within the 2045 time epoch.”
Firms that reply to the solicitation can access a classified annex of details for the precise missile defense needs and threats MDA anticipates going forward in the subsequent few a long time.
The agency said it’s specifically in search of “latest, progressive, and potentially disruptive concepts” while the RFI is supposed to “capture a broad swath of enabling and/or revolutionary technologies.”
MDA is searching for responses from a wide selection of respondents including large and small businesses, academia, non-traditional defense contractors, Federally Funded Research and Development Centers and University Affiliated Research Centers.
The notice underscored that, given the 2045 threat within the classified annex, MDA expects a few of the industry concepts can be of a lower Technology Readiness Level (TRL), which is appropriate on this RFI.
The solicitation said DoD plans to make use of the technical responses to support capability forecasts, technology program planning, inform phased implementation planning and the science and technology investment strategy.
As a part of this effort, MDA plans to conduct an industry day on June 15 at MDA’s facility at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala. It is going to include each a Secret and Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) threat briefings.
More specifically, MDA said the RFI is searching for concepts and technologies with a spectrum of capabilities, including disruptive technologies. This includes sensors, defeat mechanisms, fire control, command and control and battle management and communications and “left through right of launch.”
All of those concepts should give you the chance to evolve to counter advanced missile defense threats around 2045.
The notice said submissions “should consider effectiveness, survivability, costs, and address relevant portions of the Missile Defense System kill chain.”
The kill chain consists of plan, left through right of launch, detect/track/discriminate, command and control, engage and assess.
Notably, the notice said MDA can also be taken with identifying and countering the event, acquisition, proliferation and use of offensive missiles to limit their damage except for traditional missile defense systems.
The agency listed submissions should detail advanced technologies and complete missile defense architectures with weapons sensors, fire control including command and control, communications, and interface to Missile Defense System battle management and the associated research and development technology programs needed to provide them.
MDA can also be taken with the submissions including information like technical descriptions of key enabling technologies, an outline of the manufacturing readiness level of the concepts, identification of any near-term manufacturing technology investments needed to maneuver the technology into production, and an outline of the domestic industrial base capability for any concepts.
This includes descriptions of if there are sufficient domestic sources for materials and manufacturing/assembly capabilities to satisfy potential demand, near term industrial base investments needed to enable these concepts an important near-term technology investments to enable a 2045 solution, rough order of magnitude estimate of costs, expected operational life expectancy of any systems, survivability and resilience strategies, design features that would allow for cost savings, and “any potential revolutionary, game-changing, leap ahead technologies that would out-pace the 2045 threat.”
While MDA prefers to see complete future architectures, the notice said partial solutions are useful too while extensions to existing systems “should depict how the changes would lead to the specified capability.”
Finalized briefing paper responses are due by July 31
