WASHINGTON — Maj. Gen. Heath Collins spent the last 12 months managing among the United States’ largest homeland and regional defense programs. Now, he’s poised to steer the Missile Defense Agency, where he would oversee key modernization programs, a few of which is able to overlap together with his lengthy background focused on space and satellites.
President Joe Biden in May tapped Collins to be the following MDA director, succeeding Vice Adm. Jon Hill, who has served because the agency’s leader since 2019.
Collins “has a super resume for MDA,” said Air Force Brig. Gen. Jason Bartolomei, who served as a deputy to Collins once they worked together on the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program. Bartolomei now serves because the Air Force’s program executive officer for weapons and leads the Armament Directorate. Collins also held those titles.
“I feel his experience in space, nukes, aircraft and weapons has prepared him thoroughly for this chance,” he told Defense News.
Among the many agency’s efforts the following director will oversee are developing a capability to destroy hypersonic missiles, increasing using space sensors, and upgrading the homeland missile defense system to counter increasingly complex ballistic and non-ballistic threats. The agency also recently began constructing a strong air and missile defense architecture in Guam to guard the island from attack.
Collins “goes to be ideal for the job,” in keeping with Trey Obering III, who led MDA from 2004 to 2008.
“Heath has an ideal background for not only going to space together with his space experience, but additionally the combination,” he told Defense News “We’re fighting in a really integrated world now where now we have to tie space, air, land, sea, cyber all right into a coherent, integrated warfighting capability.”
Defending the homeland
Collins is now MDA’s program executive officer for ground-based weapons systems at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. He oversees a $3.4 billion portfolio, which equates to roughly a 3rd of the agency’s overall budget. The portfolio includes the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, which is undergoing major upgrades.
The GMD system, which dates back nearly 20 years, is made up of interceptors in the bottom at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, which might be designed to intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles, potentially fired by North Korea or Iran.
MDA is preparing to update the whole system, including its command-and-control elements, so it will probably each tackle more complex, emerging threats in addition to remain operational. Essentially the most significant upgrade is a brand new, more capable interceptor.
During his tenure, Hill has prioritized homeland missile defense and keeping the GMD system able to defeating rapidly emerging threats. Underway is a competitive development effort to switch current ground-based interceptors within the GMD system with a Next Generation Interceptor, or NGI.
A Northrop Grumman and RTX team is competing against a Lockheed Martin and Aerojet Rocketdyne team to switch the ground-based interceptors with Next Generation Interceptors.
The aim is to field the NGI by 2028, but industry competitors indicated they’ll move quicker. A 2021 independent evaluation from the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office found NGI’s development price tag could total $13 billion, while procurement, operation and sustainment could come to somewhat greater than $2 billion.
Since becoming program executive officer for ground-based weapons systems last summer, Collins has directly overseen the NGI program. The chief MDA role is a six-year term, although most directors serve three to 4 years. If Collins serves the complete length, he could see NGI all of the strategy to the developmental finish line.
“Given the singular importance of the Next Generation Interceptor — this system arguably most closely tied to MDA’s long-term institutional identity — it will be fortuitous for an acquisition skilled so near this system to give you the option to shepherd it and related efforts to fielding later this decade,” Tom Karako, a missile defense expert on the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, told Defense News.
Space-based defense
Even with enhanced missile defense capability from the bottom, the following MDA director might want to proceed proliferating space-based sensors for tracking and defeating missile threats, Obering said.
Defending the U.S. from Iran and North Korea, while also keeping in mind possible threats from China and Russia, “goes to take a mixture of space-based precise tracking and other varieties of tracking, in addition to traditional interceptors with terrestrial capabilities.”
Collins’ experience with satellites dates back to 20-plus years, when he was the manager of advanced satellite payloads on the National Reconnaissance Office in 2001. After two years within the role, he became the chief vehicle engineer on the organization until 2005.
He then spent several years working on wideband satellite communications efforts on the Los Angeles Air Force Base, and a couple of decade ago he became a deputy director of space and special programs at a Pentagon intelligence office.
The MDA is working with the Space Force to get its Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor on orbit in fiscal 2023. Hill has said the present sensor architecture allows for seeing and tracking some hypersonic threats, but with the ability to accomplish that from space would bolster the agency’s capabilities.
The 2 HBTSS satellites are expected to launch later this 12 months and can undergo on-orbit testing over the following 12 months. If successful, the sensors might be transferred to the Space Development Agency.
Hypersonic threats
MDA can also be within the early phases of a program to develop an interceptor to defeat hypersonic missile threats within the glide phase of flight.
From July 2020 to July 2022, Collins was the Air Force’s program executive officer for weapons. In that role, he oversaw the service’s hypersonic weapons programs, including the AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon, a lift glide hypersonic weapon; and the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile, which uses a scramjet to breathe in air to achieve hypersonic speed.
The AGM-183A ARRW, developed by Lockheed Martin, experienced three test launch failures during 2021 before recovering with a string of successful flight tests in 2022. But a failed all-up round test in March 2023 dealt a serious blow to this system, and its future is now in query.
Collins had ushered the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile program through its systems requirements phase; just prior to his 2022 departure, he announced the Air Force would pick a vendor later that 12 months to proceed development. Just a few months after he left the job, the Air Force chosen an RTX and Northrop Grumman team to develop the weapon.
If confirmed by the Senate as MDA director, he’ll manage the agency’s Glide Phase Interceptor, or GPI, effort for regional hypersonic missile defense. The agency has tapped Northrop and RTX to rapidly develop prototypes.
Hill has said MDA desires to speed up the plan, which now calls for the primary delivery within the early 2030s.
‘The toughest three-star job’
The MDA director job “might be the toughest three-star job within the military,” Obering said, “because initially it has been controversial … since it causes the divide between Democrats and Republicans, between the arms control and the warfighting folks, between even things like using space for warfighting or for peace.”
Collins will need “people skills and leadership skills” to navigate those complexities and bridge divides, Obering added.
And in keeping with Bartolomei, Collins is just that. “He’s an excellent listener. He’s cool under pressure, very regular. I feel he is a superb strategic thinker.”
Collins declined a request for an interview ahead of the confirmation process.
When Hill took the MDA director job in 2019, he told Defense News his No. 1 challenge was coping with the “poorly defined” MDA charter provision that required the agency, once it finished developing a missile defense capability, to transfer it to one in all the services.
MDA transferred the Patriot air and missile defense system to the Army, for instance, but Hill said not every program lends itself to such a move.
On the time, lawmakers desired to move the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense program to the Army. Hill warned that transfer could find yourself “fracturing a program during a time where it’s most crucial to have those programs stable and taking good care of the warfighter.”
Lawmakers ultimately backed off, but the talk could resurface, as Collins is prone to face increased attention from Congress on MDA’s work.
For example, a bunch of Latest York lawmakers is pushing for a 3rd homeland missile defense site on the East Coast, something previous MDA directors resisted because of budget constraints.
Also lately, lawmakers showed interest in what MDA and the services were doing to develop an air and missile defense architecture for Guam, along with pushing for a missile defense radar in Hawaii that the agency refuses to fund.
For instance, a provision within the Senate Armed Services Committee’s FY24 defense authorization bill requires MDA to provide a technique for “developing, acquiring and operationally establishing an integrated air and missile defense architecture” for not only Guam but the whole Indo-Pacific theater.
The House version of the bill calls on the agency’s director to provide a report on options for enhancing missile defense protection of the homeland “to hedge against the uncertainty of the longer term missile threats and technical risk within the U.S. missile defense development plans.”
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.