The U.S. Army is on track to stand up a new battalion equipped with the Patriot surface-to-air missile system on Guam in October. The unit will also have Enduring Shield, a lower-tier air defense system that currently uses the AIM-9X Sidewinder as its interceptor. This is a major step forward in the U.S. military’s years-long effort to bolster air and missile defenses on the extremely strategic U.S. island territory in the Western Pacific. It is also a significant development for the Army’s Patriot force, which continues to be worryingly overstretched due to heavy operational demands, something TWZ calls attention to regularly.
The new Army air defense unit on Guam will be designated 3rd Battalion, 43rd Air Defense Artillery Regiment (3-43rd ADA). It will be under the purview, at least in part, of the 94th Army Air and Missile Defense Command (94th AAMDC) headquartered at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii.
“So, over the past couple of years, we’ve been working to increase the level of protection on Guam. In the past, we’ve had the THAAD [Terminal High Altitude Area Defense] battery there, and of course, Aegis BMD [ballistic missile defense capable] ship[s],” Army Col. Matt Dalton, Deputy Commander of the 94th AAMDC, said last week. “We’ve been working the past few years to increase that to provide a 360-degree defense, cruise missile defense, of the homeland [on Guam].”
Dalton was speaking during a panel discussion at the annual Space & Missile Defense (SMD) Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, at which TWZ was in attendance. An Army unit, known as Task Force Talon, has operated the THAAD battery on Guam since 2013.
“What does that entail? Construction, planning, barracks, housing, defense design, coordinating with the local authorities in the joint community, the governor’s office, FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] – so many, many things over the last couple of years,” he continued. “I think right now what we’re seeing is we’re starting to see the fruits of all that labor. This summer, the battalion commander arrived. This fall, 3-43rd ADA will stand up in October. Currently, there are about 120 or so soldiers specifically for that battalion on [the] island, on top of the the soldiers already there for the THAAD battery. And then over the next few months, we’re going to see the delivery of the weapon system.”
“The battalion will have both the Patriot Missile System and IFPC, or mobile ground-based launchers, which they will integrate to provide 360-degree, layered air and missile defense for Guam as part of our expansion to the defensive architecture to better protect everyone living there,” an Army spokesperson told TWZ when asked for more information about the “weapon system” Col. Dalton had referred to.
IFPC stands for Indirect Fire Protection Capability. IFPC dates back to the early 2000s, but the Army transitioned to the second phase, or Increment 2, of the program in 2021. That, in turn, led to the acquisition of the Enduring Shield system, which is primarily intended to help defend against cruise missiles and drones. We will come back to this in a moment.
Whether the Patriot systems headed for 3-43rd ADA are new-production assets or available with the Army’s existing inventory as part of a reorganization of other units is unclear, and TWZ has reached back out for more details. At the time of writing, the service is known to have 15 operational Patriot battalions, as well as two more that are non-deployable dedicated training units. A typical one of these battalions consists of a headquarters element and between three and five firing batteries. A single Patriot firing battery can have up to eight trailer-mounted launchers, along with a fire control radar and other supporting equipment.
“We know we have to grow that [Patriot force]. We have plans on the table to build a 16th, 17th, and 18th [battalions],” now-retired Army Gen. James Mingus, then the service’s Vice Chief of Staff, said last year. “And that’s not to include the Patriot battalion that we’re going to put in Guam as part of the Guam defense system.”
At that time, the Army general also talked about the possibility of future composite battalions with Patriot and IFPC/Enduring Shield systems. The Army also has plans to establish nine dedicated IFPC/Enduring Shield battalions.
“The IFPC battalions that are coming online will help offset that [demand for Patriot] as well, even though it’s not quite the same capability,” Mingus said. “In some environments, that [IFPC] actually is more appropriate to apply than a full-up Patriot battalion.”
Recent fighting with Iran has underscored the challenges posed by barrages that include a high-low threat mix. Furthermore, lower-tier IFPC/Enduring Shield systems can also provide critical defense for high-tier air defense assets like Patriot and THAAD, which are themselves high-priority targets for adversaries.
How many IFPC/Enduring Shield systems will be assigned to 3-43rd ADA is also unclear. The Army has said in the past that a typical IFPC/Enduring Shield platoon, multiple of which would be contained with a single battery, consists of four launchers linked to at least one AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel-series radar via the Army’s Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS) network. In their current form, each palletized launcher can be loaded with up to 18 AIM-9Xs. The Army is working to fielding at least one new interceptor for IFPC/Enduring Shield, primarily to help improve the system’s ability to defeat ever-more capable supersonic cruise missiles, though it would also boost its capabilities more broadly.
As an aside, the Army moved to acquire IFPC/Enduring Shield after deciding not to adopt a service-specific version of the Israeli Iron Dome system. An Iron Dome system was briefly deployed to Guam in 2021 as a test.
3-43rd ADA is still just one part of the larger plan to bolster air and missile defenses on the island as part of what is currently called the Guam Defense System (GDS). A prototype of a ground-based launch system based on the Mk 41 Vertical Launch System (VLS) used on various U.S. and foreign warships has already been emplaced on the island. There have been plans, at least in the past, for a Guam-specific version of the Aegis Ashore system that use Mk 41-based launchers to fire Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) and Standard Missile-6 (SM-6) interceptors.
Guam is also getting an entirely new sensor architecture as part of the GDS. Work to date has included the establishment of a radar site with a prototype AN/TPY-6, a design derived from Lockheed Martin’s AN/SPY-7 Long-Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) in Alaska. Questions about the future of the AN/TPY-6 have been raised in the past, but it was still in place as of July.
The Army has also previously deployed a Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) to Guam. LTAMDS can be used as a standalone sensor, but also intended as next-generation radar for Patriot, and it could easily be tied with 3-43rd’s other assets when the battalion stands up later this year.
“So instead of what we have today, with our Q-series [AN/MPQ-65] radars that have about a 270-view look, which grows – or, kind of negates how much coverage that you can have, the new LTAMDS is 360 [degrees],” Gen. Mingus said last year. “It also goes from about 85 kilometers [close to 53 miles] up and 85 kilometers out to 300 by 300 [kilometers; around 186 miles]. So [it] greatly expands the range, the altitude, and it’s a 360.”
In works since 2021, the overall GDS plan reflects the extremely strategic position Guam occupies in the Western Pacific and the growing threats the island faces. As we previously wrote:
“Since 2021, expanding air and missile defenses on Guam has been a centerpiece of larger U.S. military efforts to reorient itself to preparing for future large-scale conflicts, especially a potential high-end fight with China in the Pacific. Guam is a vital hub for U.S. air and naval operations in the Western Pacific. It is also an important location for staging ground forces for onward movement across the region. In turn, being able to adequately protect key facilities on the island, including Andersen Air Force Base, Naval Base Guam, and Marine Corps Base Camp Blaz, especially from a growing array of Chinese ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic threats, is seen as critical. Various tiers of drones are also a real and still evolving threat. Guam could be a target for other adversaries, as well. Concerns about increasingly longer-range North Korean ballistic missiles prompted Task Force Talon’s initial deployment more than a decade ago.”
As mentioned, the Army establishing a new Patriot battalion, even one also equipped in part with IFPC/Enduring Shield is a significant development in of itself. The service’s existing Patriot force has been heavily in demand, and under significant strain as a result, for years, most recently due to the ongoing conflict with Iran. TWZ routinely highlights the worryingly inadequate capacity of the Army’s existing Patriot battalions to meet operational requirements now, let alone should a high-end fight, such as one against China in the Pacific, break out.
At the same time, work to establish the 3-43rd ADA highlights continued challenges the Army faces in bolstering its Patriot force, as well as its air and missile defense capabilities and capacity more broadly. As noted, it will have taken more than a year just to stand up this composite battalion on Guam, which will also be dedicated to defense of the island. The Army’s timeline for establishing the three other planned Patriot battalions is unclear. Prime contractor Raytheon is itself under immense strain to meet existing global orders for new Patriot systems due to competing priorities, and not just ones emanating from the United States. Last year, Switzerland saw its orders for new Patriot batteries deferred to meet urgent requests from Ukraine, and authorities in Geneva subsequently raised the prospect of canceling the deal altogether as a result of the delays.
Patriot systems also need stocks of interceptors to go along with them, and this has also become its own area of serious concern, especially in light of heavy expenditures in fighting with Iran. Transfers to Ukraine have also had significant impacts on U.S. stockpiles, as well as those of other countries. Questions have been raised about the ability of Raytheon and Lockheed Martin to meet still-growing demand for PAC-2 and PAC-3-series Patriot interceptors, respectively. These are long-lead items that take years to deliver. Both companies have been working to bolster their production capacity, but it will take time for this to translate into increased deliveries. Lockheed Martin is now also developing a lower-cost PAC-3 variant, called the Adapted Capability Effector (ACE), which it sees as another way to help boost total production. Just this year, the Army put in its first order for a new-production batch of older PAC-2 interceptors in more than three decades, further underscoring the current level of demand.
The establishment of 3-43rd ADA on Guam in October will still be an important development. At the same time, there is still much work to be done before the Army meets its larger goals for a sorely needed expansion of its Patriot force.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com
Loading comments…
Comments couldn’t be loaded. Please refresh the page.