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F-35 Ready For Missile Defense By 2025: MDA Chief
11 Apr 2018 Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
"CAPITOL HILL: F-35 Joint Strike Fighters could detect, track, and, possibly, even shoot down ballistic missiles by 2025, the Missile Defense Agency director told Congress this morning. “I’d say six to seven years to essentially work out the Concept of Operations (and) develop the capabilities — (whether) it’s sensor-based or a new fast missile that’s hung on the bottom of an F-35 for the BMDS (Ballistic Missile Defense) mission — integrate those capabilities, test them, and deliver them into a theater of operations,” Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves told the Senate appropriations subcommittee on defense. “We see that deployed capability as, if not a game changer, then a significant contributor to future ballistic missile defense.”...
...The AMRAAM missile isn’t designed to chase an ICBM into space, so it would have a narrow window to kill one before it escaped the atmosphere. Greaves’s wording suggests using the F-35 to shoot ICBMs might require developing “a new fast missile,” which would take years to develop.
What the F-35 can already do is act as a sensor. Its Distributed Aperture System (DAS) can pick up the infrared emission of a boosting rocket, its computers can pinpoint the threat’s location, and its network connections can transmit tracking data to the rest of the force. What’s more, since the US military is buying a projected 2,443 F-35s — 1,763 for the Air Force alone — there’ll be lots of them in danger zones around the world. Developing a new weapon to turn them into missile killers would be expensive, but tweaking them to make them missile trackers is probably not, and it would add a whole new kind of sensor to the global missile defense system....
...“Our job is to look outside of the classic missile defense system” — Patriot, THAAD, GBI — “and look for sensors and shooters that would be able to contribute when integrated into the BMDS, and we see F-35 as one,” Greaves said. “We’ve been working with the Air Force at least the last few months, and we did a test (with the Navy) a few years ago.”...
...Besides the Air Force, Greaves said the regional Combatant Commanders (COCOMs) would play a vital role, specifically in figuring how to use the F-35 in real-world missions: “The Concept of Operations (CONOPS) is not my area; that is for the combatant commander,” Greaves said.
Greaves didn’t say so explicitly, but the commander in question is almost certainly that of Pacific Command, which confronts North Korea. Unlike Russia or China with their vast territories and massive anti-aircraft defenses, North Korea’s launch sites are relatively close to US airbases and could even be targeted by fighters outside North Korean airspace."
Source: https://breakingdefense.com/2018/04/f-3 ... mda-chief/
RAN FAA A4G Skyhawk 1970s: https://www.faaaa.asn.au/spazsinbad-a4g/ AND https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwqC_s6gcCVvG7NOge3qfAQ/