Army eyeing fall release of new Air and Missile Defense Strategy

SMD 2025 — Within the next three months, the US Army will release its Air and Missile Defense (AMD) Strategy 2040 that will encompass lessons from Ukraine and the Middle East, along with a shifting focus on homeland defense, according to a three-star general.

“One of the important areas … is really dissecting the lessons learned from Ukraine and the Middle East and applying them to our AMD modernization,” Army Space and Missile Defense Command head Lt. Gen. Sean Gainey told reporters Tuesday.

“The main thing, from a lesson learned perspective, is complexity, mass and an attempt to seek and hunt air and missile defenses,” he later added. “It’s assets on the battlefield, and so all of those lessons learned are factored into how we’re moving forward.”

Gainey and other service leaders began working on the updated AMD strategy under the Biden administration. But since President Donald Trump retook the White House in January, the conflict in the Middle East has mushroomed and there has been a policy shift to focusing attention on homeland defense under the Golden Dome umbrella.

“Within the next three months, we will release the strategy 2040 out to the force,” Gainey said. “We’ve gone through all of the staffing, we’re at the final general officer level staffing. … So we feel very comfortable in getting this to the Chief of Staff of the Army and Secretary of the Army within the next couple of months.”

While he didn’t detail the entire plan, he offered some peeks at what might be inside. 

For example, the Army is planning to increase its AMD force structure by 30 percent over the next eight years. That shift, Gainey said, includes three additional Patriot battalions, five Indirect Fire Protection Capability (IFPC) battalions and seven counter-unmanned aerial system (C-UAS) batteries.

The service is also preparing to defend against an ever-evolving complexity of threats that includes a mix of drones and different types of missiles that are simultaneously fired in an attempt to overwhelm defenses and operators. That challenge, he explained, is being factored into Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS) plans to disaggregate formations and make them more survivable.

“They’re hunting the AMD assets out there, and all of those lessons learned are being factored into our modernization effort moving forward.” 

And when it comes to threats, Gainey noted that Group 3 drones and above (those weighing more than 55 pounds) are closer to the cruise missile challenge and defeating them is now part of the integrated air and missile defense portfolio.

“As we develop our Integrated Battle Command System, one of the things the PEO is also doing as part of that, is taking the capabilities we employ against counter drone, and integrating that into our larger IBCS capability,” the three-star general explained. “[That] then gives the operator the opportunity to not necessarily use a higher end Patriot … interceptor, but maybe use a drone type of interceptor, [such as] a Coyote, lower cost, focused on a one-way attack drone type of threat.”