Missile Defense Agency completes realignment of headquarters building

By Justin Creech, Belvoir EagleAugust 18, 2011

Missile Defense Agency completes realignment of headquarters building
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The Headquarters for the Missile Defense Agency officially opened its doors with its ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday on Fort Belvoir. The event cemented a historic moment in the evolution of the MDA.

"It's really important to all of us to have a place to gather," said Lt. Gen. Patrick J. O'Reilly, MDA director. "Today is a big milestone to actually have a home that everybody can come to as our permanent headquarters."

MDA was realigned pursuant to the Base Realignment and Closure Act of 2005 which relocated 300 executive leadership positions from facilities in the National Capital Region to Belvoir. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Baltimore District managed the design and construction of the 99,000-square-foot, $38.5 million project.

MDA has nearly 8,000 people in the agency across 14 time zones with almost 300 of them at Belvoir. O'Reilly said the state-of-the-art communication abilities and conference rooms the building has will allow the MDA to further facilitate its working relationships with its leaders.

"Just yesterday, from this facility, I had a meeting with senior leaders in Tokyo from the Japanese government," said O'Reilly. "It's part of the nature of missile defense that we work internationally and on a global basis, and this new facility allows us to do that."

MDA's roots go back to 1983 when President Ronald Reagan launched the Strategic Defense Initiative to develop non-nuclear missile defenses under the management of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization. By 1993, the SDIO was renamed the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization as the technologies developed under the original initiative had evolved.

After the U.S. withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, the BMDO was renamed the Missile Defense Agency.

O'Reilly and MDA Executive Director John James said the agency recently made improvements on the missile-intercepting range of many of the U.S. Navy Aegis ships.

"Our Aegis ships have a range of around 700 miles. When we integrate it with our sensors, radars and satellites, we have demonstrated that the 700-mile capability can become greater than 3,000 miles and intercept missiles 3,000 miles away with the same system," said O'Reilly. "We just integrated them together, so the ship is actually using the data coming from satellites and radars much farther than the ship could've seen by itself."

"I'm fairly sure that some number of years ago people thought this couldn't be done - but, we demonstrated it, we accomplished it, and it was very successful," added James.

With MDA Headquarters now having a central location, travel issues should no longer be as big for employees as they have been in the past.