Assessment of resilient missile defense sensing architectures

(a) Report Not later than March 1, 2027, the Secretary of Defense, acting through the Director of the Missile Defense Agency, shall submit to the congressional defense committees a report on the strategy of the Department of Defense to develop and field resilient and distributed missile defense sensing architectures. (b) Elements The report under subsection (a) shall include the following: (1) An assessment of current and planned fixed missile defense sensing infrastructure and associated vulnerabilities in contested environments. (2) An evaluation of modular, transportable, and rapidly deployable sensing capabilities, including their potential to restore degraded sensing coverage under operational stress conditions. (3) A description of ongoing or planned efforts to incorporate modular open systems approaches and commercially available technologies into missile defense sensing architectures. (4) An assessment of scalable radar integration concepts and the potential of such concepts to accelerate deployment timelines and improve operational resilience. (5) An identification of programmatic, technical, or acquisition barriers to fielding distributed sensing architectures and recommended actions to address those barriers. (6) Recommended near-term investments or pilot efforts to improve the survivability and reconstitution capacity of missile defense sensing networks. (c) Implementation authority The Secretary of Defense may use funds authorized to be appropriated by this Act to initiate pilot efforts or partnerships that support implementation of the recommendations contained in the report under subsection (a). (d) Definitions In this section: (1) The term distributed sensing architecture means a missile defense sensing approach that employs multiple geographically dispersed sensor nodes to reduce reliance on any single point of sensing infrastructure. (2) The term modular open systems approach has the meaning given that term in section 4401 of title 10, United States Code.