The Pentagon is canceling a multibillion-dollar contract with Boeing for what’s known as the Redesigned Kill Vehicle, a new ballistic missile interceptor.
The move was announced Wednesday by Michael Griffin, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for research and engineering.
“Ending the program was the responsible thing to do,” he said in a statement. “Development programs sometimes encounter problems. After exercising due diligence, we decided the path we’re going down wouldn’t be fruitful, so we’re not going down that path anymore. This decision supports our efforts to gain full value from every future taxpayer dollar spent on defense.”
The move was lamented by missile defense boosters, such as Riki Ellison of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance.
“This decision will delay the deployment of any additional GBIs [Ground Based Interceptors] for the defense of the United States homeland to the 2030 time frame at the earliest,” writes Ellison. “The decision by Dr. Griffin also delays the modernization of the current 44 GBIs, currently made up of three generations of technical capability with the earliest from the 1990s.”
