HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – The U.S. Army is planning to grow its air and missile defense force by 30%, according to the commander of the service’s Space and Missile Defense Command.
In addition to adding three Patriot battalions equipped with the Lower-Tier Air-and-Missile Defense Sensor, or LTAMDS, radar, the service will also add five Indirect Fire Protection Capability battalions and seven Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems batteries, Lt. Gen. Sean Gainey said Tuesday at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.
This force structure increase will take place over the next eight years, he added.
The plans align with the Army’s recent push to increase air-and-missile defense capability across the board, as lessons learned in Ukraine and in the Middle East continue to reinforce the necessity of the capability. The service also acknowledges a need to develop a more layered defensive structure that can address wide-ranging threats, including swarms.
The Army’s Patriot force has one of the highest operational tempos in the service, and a push to find a way to alleviate the pressure on those units has been ongoing for years.
The service believes one way to resolve that strain — in addition to simply growing the Patriot force structure — is to develop and field systems that can counter some of the proliferating threats on the battlefield, like drone swarms, cruise missiles or rockets, artillery and mortars with other capabilities like IFPC and counter-UAS systems.
Fielding five IFPC battalions aligns with the Army’s plan to develop five Multidomain Task Force, or MDTF, units, that will be dedicated to specific combatant commands and be equipped with Long-Range Fires Battalions that will have Mid-Range Capability and Long-Range Hypersonic batteries, as well as IFPC battalions.
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The Army previously indicated it wanted to complete that force structure by fiscal 2028.
The Army has also sent IFPC prototypes to South Korea to help the Army work on concepts to create a composite air-and-missile defense battalion.
The service is additionally planning to build a composite battalion that will include Patriot with LTAMDS and the Integrated Battle Command System, and IFPC to serve within the architecture of the Defense of Guam system currently under development.
As part of its sweeping Transformation Initiative announced in May, the Army also said it wanted to dramatically increase C-UAS capability throughout the service. It has requested flexible funding to buy counter-drone systems in its fiscal 2026 budget request.
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.
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