Pentagon Cancels Billion-dollar Missile Defense Project

The Pentagon is pulling the plug on a billion-dollar, technically troubled project to build a better weapon that would destroy incoming missiles. The move is aimed in part at considering new approaches to missile defense at a time of rapid technological change.

The announced reason for canceling the Boeing contract, effective Thursday, was that the project’s design problems were so significant as to be either insurmountable or too costly to correct. Beyond those immediate concerns, the Pentagon is considering whether it needs to start over with designing a defense against intercontinental-range ballistic missiles, such as those North Korea aspires to build, as well as newly emerging types of missiles.

One indication of that broader concern is the Pentagon’s statement that it will now invite industry competition to develop a “new, next-generation interceptor” — potentially a weapon that could take on hypersonic missiles being developed by China and Russia.

The Pentagon currently has 44 missile interceptors based mostly in Alaska. Each is designed to be launched from an underground silo, soar beyond the Earth’s atmosphere and release a “kill vehicle” — a device that steers into its target and destroys it by force of the collision. These weapons have been tested but never used in actual combat.