The committee notes that the GMD system is approximately 10 years old and was originally designed for a 20-year service life.
The committee supports this position however, there is concern that the Administration has not made a commensurate shift in funding for the Ground-based Mid-course Defense (GMD) system to address long-standing issues that have manifested themselves in flight test failures, degraded reliability, escalating obsolescence, and erosion of margin of capability over the threat.
The committee believes these efforts should be supervised in part by MDA and should be competitively awarded through full and open competition.
Therefore, the committee directs the Director, Missile Defense Agency to submit to the Committees on Armed Services of the Senate and the House of Representatives in concurrence with the fiscal year 2016 budget submission a plan to employ HALT/HASS testing, as appropriate, in appropriate future MDA programs. The committee agrees with the Director’s belief that HALT/HASS testing could be useful in certain future MDA efforts. The committee believes this report was a useful review of the potential benefits and limitations of employing this rigorous review system in addition to current Missile Defense Agency (MDA) systems. 113-102) accompanying the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014, concerning highly accelerated life testing and highly accelerated stress screening (HALT/HASS) testing of Ballistic Missile Defense Systems and Components.