"Defense Budget Prioritizes Munitions and Amphibious Ships for Navy and Marine Corps"
The Pentagon plans to provide Guam with integrated missile defense architecture to detect and defeat higher-end Chinese threats by 2024. The Missile Defense Agency's chief, Adm. Jon Hill, outlined his evolving Guam plans that expand defenses from solely focusing on a threat from North Korean ballistic missiles to higher-end ones from "near-peers" like China. The plan will use the Army's Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS) and four Long Range Discrimination Radars placed along the periphery of the island. The evolving plan also includes a mix of launchers tied into the IBCS like the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, currently on the island, as well as Patriot launchers, and the aforementioned land-based variant of the Aegis vertical launch system.