From 2015, the US Army initiated a program intended to ensure the close protection of its sensitive infrastructures against aerial threats, ranging from aircraft to drones including cruise missiles, rockets and mortar shells. The program, identified as Indirect Fire Protection Capability or IFPC, pronounced "If Pick", is both the consequence of the increase in rocket and drone attacks in low and medium intensity theaters, as in Afghanistan or Iraq, and the threat of seeing a conflict against a technological nation appear again.
Starting in 2016, the US Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development, and Engineering Center, or AMRDEC, began designing the Multi-Mission Launcher, or MML, a launch system capable of launching several types of surface-to-air missiles simultaneously. , and which will be, for a long time, the pillar of the IFPC Increment 2-Intercept program, that is to say the surface-to-air missile dimension of the program, which will also have a high energy laser defense system, microwave system to eliminate swarms of drones, and a CIWS.
Several types of missiles were tested from the MML, such as the Sidewinder AIM-9X, which was also selected to be one of the missiles of the IFPC Inc-2I, but also the Hellfire and the Stinger. The US Army finally entrusted, in 2018, Lockheed-Martin with the Miniature Hit-to-kill Missile or MHKM, and Raytheon, which presents the SkyHunter, local version of the Israeli Tamir, and the Accelerated Improoved Intercepter Initiative, or AI3 , a contract to design and propose the second missile which will equip the system. It is likely that the match will be between the MHKM and the SkyHunter which are very small missiles, less than 2 meters for less than 3 kg, particularly economical, between $15 and $20.000 each, while the AI3, derived from the Sidewinder AIM-9M, is an economical version of the Sidewinder, a missile whose price is around $400.000, and whose performances are quite close to those of the AIM-9X already selected. At the key to this competition is a $2,6 billion contract.
Anyway, today is the MML which is called into question, and even eliminated from the landscape by the US Army. Indeed, it seems that the postulates taken to design it are not satisfactory, and do not make it possible to meet all of the needs of the IFPC Inc-2I program, according to the official declaration of the US Army, without the we know precisely what characteristics are in question. However, we can deduce from the words of General Brian Gibson, in charge of the program, that from now on, the vertical launch option could be favored.
This decision does not seem to call into question the schedule of the program, which must provide a first operational system before the end of 2023, failing which the Pentagon will acquire additional Israeli Iron Dome batteries, in addition of the 2 batteries already acquired to ensure the interim. But this solution would not be to the taste of the US Army, which wants to make the IFPC a global program, integrating all the systems and detection means to protect a perimeter, and no longer give in to the stacking of systems, as is the case today.
We understand, between the IFPC program, and the IM-SHORAD program, that the US Army is today making significant efforts to compensate for its weakness in the field of close anti-aircraft and anti-drone defense, in order to put itself at the same level as Russia or China (and to surpass it, they hope). On the other hand, we understand less why this problem remains ignored in Europe...