“The Army decided earlier this year to drastically accelerate its plans to get the Patriot medium-range air-and-missile defense system and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system to communicate. The service has since seen an influx of cash in its fiscal 2018 and 2019 budgets approved by Congress to move forward with the effort. But what does it really mean for Patriot and THAAD to be interoperable, and why is it seen as an urgent need on the Korean peninsula?
Getting THAAD and Patriot to talk to each other is extremely important in building better operational capability and a better picture of incoming threats, Brig. Gen. Randall McIntire, who leads the Air-and-Missile Defense Cross-Functional Team, said at the time. Driving the effort are the forces in South Korea, where both THAAD and Patriot are deployed, so funding coming in for the accelerated project is categorized in the FY18 AND FY19 appropriations bills as a joint urgent operational need for U.S. Forces-Korea. THAAD is also deployed on Guam, while Patriot units are spread wider around the world. Patriot deployments are considered to be among the most taxing and lengthy ones in the Army. ‘We’ve got THAAD and Patriot on the peninsula of Korea working side by side,’ McIntire said, so ‘how do we leverage those two systems so we can have better use of each one of those systems, missiles, and taking advantage of the great [AN/TPY-2] radar that is part of THAAD to increase the battlespace of Patriot?’”
Source: So Patriot and THAAD will talk. What does that really mean?
