{ "archive_path": "archive/1792058715.769564", "base_url": "www.twz.com/land/the-days-of-army-air-defense-systems-firing-just-one-type-of-interceptor-are-ending", "basename": "the-days-of-army-air-defense-systems-firing-just-one-type-of-interceptor-are-ending", "bookmarked_date": "2026-10-15 10:05", "canonical": { "archive_org_path": "https://web.archive.org/web/www.twz.com/land/the-days-of-army-air-defense-systems-firing-just-one-type-of-interceptor-are-ending", "dom_path": "output.html", "favicon_path": "favicon.ico", "git_path": "git/", "google_favicon_path": "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.twz.com", "headers_path": "headers.json", "htmltotext_path": "htmltotext.txt", "index_path": "index.html", "media_path": "media/", "mercury_path": "mercury/content.html", "pdf_path": "output.pdf", "readability_path": "readability/content.html", "screenshot_path": "screenshot.png", "singlefile_path": "singlefile.html", "warc_path": "warc/", "wget_path": "www.twz.com/land/the-days-of-army-air-defense-systems-firing-just-one-type-of-interceptor-are-ending.html" }, "domain": "www.twz.com", "extension": "", "hash": "1P4ZSX48H6CN27T7DDYY", "history": { "archive_org": [], "dom": [], "favicon": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--output", "favicon.ico", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.twz.com" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-10-15T16:24:09.369185+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "favicon.ico", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792058715.769564", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-15T16:24:08.741171+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "git": [], "headers": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--head", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.twz.com/land/the-days-of-army-air-defense-systems-firing-just-one-type-of-interceptor-are-ending" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-10-15T16:24:09.789525+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "headers.json", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792058715.769564", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-15T16:24:09.376302+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "htmltotext": [], "media": [], "mercury": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/@postlight/parser/cli.js", "https://www.twz.com/land/the-days-of-army-air-defense-systems-firing-just-one-type-of-interceptor-are-ending" ], "cmd_version": "1.0.0", "end_ts": "2026-10-15T16:25:42.838925+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "mercury", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792058715.769564", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-15T16:25:38.449131+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "pdf": [], "readability": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/readability-extractor/readability-extractor", "/tmp/tmpa0krpjvo", "https://www.twz.com/land/the-days-of-army-air-defense-systems-firing-just-one-type-of-interceptor-are-ending" ], "cmd_version": "0.0.11", "end_ts": "2026-10-15T16:25:38.434453+00:00", "index_texts": [ "The U.S. Army now has at least five named programs seeking new anti-air interceptors of various tiers to collectively address everything from advanced hypersonic missiles to small weaponized drones. In the process, an important central theme is emerging: the service\u2019s days of fielding air defense systems that can only use one type of interceptor look to be increasingly over. For the U.S. military, the impacts from the war with Iran have made clear that diversifying munitions stockpiles and supplier bases is no longer just valuable, it is critical.\n\n\n\nArmy Lt. Gen. Frank Lozano, the service\u2019s Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Fires, highlighted this growing trend yesterday during a panel discussion at the Association of the U.S. Army\u2019s (AUSA) main annual convention, at which TWZ has been in attendance.\n\n\n\nSecretary Hegseth, second from the left, seen in front of a launcher for the Patriot surface-to-air missile system during a tour of Redstone Arsenal in Alabama earlier this year. Army Lt. Gen. Frank Lozano is seen at far right. DoW/USN Petty Officer 1st Class Alexander Kubitza \n\n\n\nTo provide some immediate context, with the exception of Patriot, the main ground-based air defense systems in Army inventory today are fielded with just one type of interceptor. In the case of Patriot, the service\u2019s procurement of new interceptors had also been increasingly limited to just one type, the PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE). Production of the preceding PAC-3 Cost Reduction Initiative (CRI) missile ended in 2023. Just earlier this year, the Army placed its first order in decades for new PAC-2 Guidance Enhanced Missile-Tactical (GEM-T) missiles, an older interceptor design for Patriot that has remained in production primarily for U.S. allies and partners. \n\n\n\nA graphic showing different interceptor load options for existing trailer-based Patriot launchers. Lockheed Martin \n\n\n\nSeparately, the Army is in the process of fielding Enduring Shield, a new middle-tier air defense system designed to handle multiple interceptor types. However, the service is currently only acquiring AIM-9X Sidewinders to load into them. We will come back to this later on.\n\n\n\nAn Enduring Shield launcher. USAF Pfc. Sang Woo Choi\n\n\n\n\u201cWe have the capabilities we need to have to fight and win, but it\u2019s our job to ensure that victory is achievable in the future inside of any dynamic environment scenario fight we might find ourselves in,\u201d Lt. Gen. Lozano said yesterday. \u201cSo, it\u2019s incumbent upon Mr. Ingraham [Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Brent Ingraham] and I to continue to be creative and looking at, well, should we buy GEM-Ts because they\u2019re being produced?\u201d\n\n\n\n\u201cGEM-Ts are a really good missile in the battlespace within they operate. I mean, they\u2019re being employed today by air defense brigades around the world,\u201d he continued. \u201cSo if we have the opportunity, it\u2019s probably something we should take advantage of, and we\u2019re looking at doing that.\n\n\n\n\u201cWe\u2019ve had a lot of discussions about even more interceptors. From a PAC-3 MSE perspective, our goal has always been to get to 2,000 [per year],\u201d he added. \u201cWhy we\u2019re running programs like LCI [Low Cost Interceptor], and NGSRI [Next-Generation Short-Range Interceptor], and NGCM [Next-Generation C-UAS Missile], and Second Interceptor, is because I think the easy button answer is just buy more of a great missile. We\u2019re going to buy more [PAC-3 MSEs], but when we start talking about overall missile output, we start looking at numbers like is it 4,000, is it 6,000, is it 8,000, we\u2019re looking at a diverse set of capabilities.\u201d\n\n\n\nThe LCI program is seeking a lower-cost and lower-tier interceptor for Patriot with a unit price of no more than $1 million. PAC-3 MSE\u2019s average unit cost has been around $4 million in recent years. \n\n\n\nA PAC-3 MSE interceptor seen being launched. US military A Patriot launcher fires a newer PAC-3-series missile during a test. DoD\n\n\n\nNGSRI is the Army\u2019s program to find a replacement for the venerable Stinger. The new missiles have to be compatible with existing vehicle-based and man-portable launchers.\n\n\n\nA US Army soldier fires a Stinger from a man-portable launcher during training. US Army \n\n\n\nThe Army is working to field a new counter-drone interceptor through NGCM. Those missiles will be integrated into launchers the service has now for the Coyote interceptor.\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\tRaytheon Missiles & Defense proves counter-UAS effectiveness against enemy drones\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Second Interceptor effort is for Enduring Shield, which is also known as the Indirect Fire Protection Capability Increment 2 (IFPC Inc 2). The main goal there is to provide increased capability against incoming cruise missiles compared to the AIM-9X. \n\n\n\nThere is also the Army\u2019s Future Interceptor effort, which also came up separately at the panel yesterday, and is also for Patriot. Unlike LCI, the aim here is to acquire a new interceptor with improved capabilities against hypersonic missiles and other upper-tier threats. \n\n\n\nHistorically, Army programs like these would eventually result in the selection of a single winning missile design. Lozano\u2019s remarks yesterday point to the service increasingly taking a very different approach. \n\n\n\nOn \u201csecond interceptor, obviously, we just moved into phase two of that program. We\u2019ve got Lockheed Martin competing with Boeing, who was teamed with Anduril,\u201d Lozano said. \u201cBut we wanted to turn up the heat on that program. I constantly get frustrated when a funding profile emerges over the FYDP [the Future Years Defense Program], and then magically we lay in a five-year program.\u201d\n\n\n\nAt left, a model of the Boeing/Anduril offering for the Second Interceptor effort. At right, a rendering of Lockheed Martin\u2019s proposed Second Interceptor. Jamie Hunter/Lockheed Martin \n\n\n\n\u201cI\u2019m like, no, I actually need that capability now,\u201d he continued. \u201cSo, have we thought maybe what if we ran a 24-month program or a 36-month program, right? And so, in that vein, what we have decided to do is, while those two companies continue to compete, we\u2019re going to create a shoot-off opportunity in [the] fourth quarter [of Fiscal Year 20]27, and I want to run an in-parallel, what I call an in-stride competition.\u201d\n\n\n\n\u201cWe just held an industry day, and we basically just said, hey, if there\u2019s any other company who didn\u2019t make the first cut in the phase one, but, oh, by the way, who continued to invest in the IFPC Second Interceptor capability, we\u2019d love for you to come out to the range,\u201d he added. \u201cWe\u2019ll give you range time, we\u2019ll present targets, and we\u2019ll allow you to recompete with an opportunity to get back into the program folder.\u201d\n\n\n\nThe Army is doing the exact same thing with NGSRI, where Lockheed Martin and Raytheon have been competing face-to-face. That program is also now planning to hold a new shoot-off that will be open to other vendors in the fourth quarter of Fiscal Year 2027.\n\n\n\nA picture showing a test of Lockheed Martin\u2019s NGSRI entrant, called QuadStar. Lockheed Martin \n\n\n\nRaytheon, which is also the prime contractor for Stinger, has previously released this image in relation to work on its NGSRI design. Raytheon \n\n\n\nThere are signs the Army is moving in a similar direction with NGCM, where it previously selected AeroVironment to supply its Freedom Eagle-1 (FE-1) interceptor. The service put out a request for information seeking new NGCM options in August, with a goal of holding an initial evaluation again in the fourth quarter of Fiscal Year 2027. A deeper operational assessment could then follow in Fiscal Year 2028.\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\tFreedom Eagle-1, the Next-Gen CUAS Missile\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\nTo reiterate, on top of all this, the Army is also now pursuing at least two new interceptor options for Patriot. \n\n\n\n\u201cWe have to address the threat, and we need to address the threat in a complementary way, meaning we need to fight on a cost curve that\u2019s affordable for the U.S. Army to maintain and sustain that warfighting capability abroad,\u201d Lozano stressed yesterday.\n\n\n\nThis gets to the crux of the matter. It is not at all a new observation that just having a stockpile of any particular munition on day one of a conflict is not enough, especially if the fight becomes drawn out. There needs to be sufficient depth to those stocks at the start and the ability to readily replenish them in line with expenditures. The war with Iran, compounded by other crises in the Middle East and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, has made clear that these core truths apply to all armed forces, even the U.S. military. \n\n\n\nLower-cost munitions are part of the solution, but they also need to be producible at scale on reasonable timelines. The lead time for higher-end munitions today is often measured in months, if not years. Furthermore, being locked into a single vendor has been shown to not just be undesirable, but a potential national security risk in an actual conflict. Lozano\u2019s remarks yesterday, and how the Army is now pursuing new anti-air interceptors, reflect larger trends, not just in the acquisition of larger volumes of munitions overall, but also from a broader array of total suppliers. \n\n\n\nThere has also been a push across the U.S. military to bring in new and non-traditional firms, including in partnership with established prime contractors. An example of this is the Boeing/Anduril team-up for Second Interceptor. This was also underscored by new framework agreements the Pentagon announced back in May regarding the planned purchase of thousands of lower-cost cruise missiles.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe @DeptofWar has reached new framework agreements with a slate of disruptive new entrants to aggressively expand the United States military\u2019s lethal cruise missile and hypersonic missile strike capabilities.\u00a0Low-Cost Containerized Missiles (LCCM) Program:\u2022 Anduril\u2022\u2026 pic.twitter.com/Fr2xAnBM7y\u2014 Department of War CTO (@DoWCTO) May 13, 2026\n\n\n\n\n\nWith regard to the LCI program, specifically, Lozano highlighted an additional aspect of all of this yesterday.\n\n\n\nLCI has \u201ca unique twist to it because we\u2019re looking for companies who have all-up rounds, but I\u2019m also asking for companies to come in at the component level,\u201d he explained. \u201cWe typically don\u2019t do that, right? There\u2019s a lot of risk in managing components and generating all-up round systems. But we\u2019re also looking for weapon system integrators, because I want to be able to create two or three teams who can compete with the all-up round guys to see if we can generate some momentum behind the fact that we need to thicken our inventory with low-cost, affordable munitions.\u201d\n\n\n\nThe U.S. Navy is now pursuing a roughly similar approach with its Naval Modular Missile (NMM) program. NMM envisions an entirely new family of sea-launched surface-to-air missiles that offer very different capabilities, but that all feature certain common components, as you can read more about here.\n\n\n\nA graphic laying out the Navy\u2019s vision for the different members of the NMM family, and shared components between them. USN \n\n\n\nThe Army is also eyeing a new family of launcher vehicles, as well as containerized options, all capable of firing various types of surface-to-air and surface-to-surface munitions. Autonomy is also an important aspect of what is aptly dubbed the Common Autonomous Multi-Domain Launcher (CAML) program.\n\n\n\nIt is also important to note here that the underlying aim is not to eliminate more exquisite munitions, or the capabilities that they offer, but to create a more affordable, complementary mix of options. \n\n\n\n\u201cWhat I would say is we\u2019re solely focused on delivering on the programs we are executing now,\u201d Lozano said in closing at the end of the panel yesterday. \u201cWe have to deliver, and if we deliver on that wide variety of capability, then we can increase and ramp that capacity. And that would be my wish list, that we have enough resources and we achieve programmatic success in the way that we\u2019re planning to, so we can deliver in mass.\u201d\n\n\n\nAll signs point to the diversity in munitions that Lozano is talking about here being particularly pronounced in future Army air defense capabilities full of systems firing multiple types of interceptors. \n\n\n\nContact the author: joe@twz.com" ], "output": "readability", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792058715.769564", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-15T16:25:35.801134+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "screenshot": [], "singlefile": [], "title": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.twz.com/land/the-days-of-army-air-defense-systems-firing-just-one-type-of-interceptor-are-ending" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-10-15T16:25:35.792941+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "The Days Of Army Air Defense Systems Firing Just One Type Of Interceptor Are Ending", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792058715.769564", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-15T16:25:35.742672+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "wget": [ { "cmd": [ "wget", "--no-verbose", "--adjust-extension", "--convert-links", "--force-directories", "--span-hosts", "--no-parent", "-e", "robots=off", "--reject=js,mjs,woff,woff2,ttf,otf,eot,mp4,m4v,mov,webm,ogv,mkv,avi,flv", "--timeout=120", "--restrict-file-names=windows", "--page-requisites", "--user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) wget/GNU Wget 1.21.3", "--compression=auto", "--timestamping", "https://www.twz.com/land/the-days-of-army-air-defense-systems-firing-just-one-type-of-interceptor-are-ending" ], "cmd_version": "GNU Wget 1.21.3", "end_ts": "2026-10-15T16:25:35.732041+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "www.twz.com/land/the-days-of-army-air-defense-systems-firing-just-one-type-of-interceptor-are-ending.html", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792058715.769564", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-15T16:24:09.798402+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ] }, "icons": null, "is_archived": true, "is_static": false, "latest": { "archive_org": null, "dom": null, "favicon": "favicon.ico", "git": null, "media": null, "pdf": null, "screenshot": null, "singlefile": null, "title": "The Days Of Army Air Defense Systems Firing Just One Type Of Interceptor Are Ending", "warc": null, "wget": "www.twz.com/land/the-days-of-army-air-defense-systems-firing-just-one-type-of-interceptor-are-ending.html" }, "link_dir": "/data/archive/1792058715.769564", "newest_archive_date": "2026-10-15T16:25:38.449131+00:00", "num_failures": 0, "num_outputs": 6, "oldest_archive_date": "2026-10-15T16:24:08.741171+00:00", "path": "/land/the-days-of-army-air-defense-systems-firing-just-one-type-of-interceptor-are-ending", "schema": "Link", "scheme": "https", "snapshot_id": "f9b243d0-76c1-488a-8d8e-0cd330dd5965", "sources": [ "/data/sources/1792058715-import.txt" ], "tags": ",war_movement,war-wiki,pool", "tags_str": "war_movement,war-wiki,pool", "timestamp": "1792058715.769564", "title": "The Days Of Army Air Defense Systems Firing Just One Type Of Interceptor Are Ending", "updated": "2026-10-15T16:24:08.741023+00:00", "updated_date": "2026-10-15 16:24", "url": "https://www.twz.com/land/the-days-of-army-air-defense-systems-firing-just-one-type-of-interceptor-are-ending" }