The US Army's Multi-Mission Launcher is dead...in steps a BIG Multi-Mission Launcher?

via Breaking Defense.

“The trigger really was MSHORAD allowing us to step back and try to not goldplate this thing,” McIntire told me. With MSHORAD and Iron Dome entering service, the Army should have the tactical threats covered. That means IFPC can focus on the other urgent threat — cruise missiles — without being constrained by size requirements to fit on the back of a truck.


IFPC’s truck-mounted Multiple Missile Launcher was a flawed take on a great concept: a single set of tubes that could fire a wide variety of interceptors depending on the target, from Lockheed’s 28-inch Miniature Hit To Kill to Rafael’s 9.8-foot Tamir — used by Iron Dome — and Raytheon’s 9.9-foot AIM-9X Sidewinder — originally built for fighter jets. But it sounds like the Army was trying pack too much in.


“Some of it’s classified,” McIntire told me, “but….the biggest thing I would tell you is we had some technical challenges with the missile and we weren’t comfortable with the reloading procedures.”


Now the Army can make the IFPC launcher bigger, to accommodate larger missiles, more missiles, or both. “You trade maneuverability for firepower,” he told me. “We’re actually going to be much better off with this approach.”

Story here. 

I just don't get the Army sometimes.  They shout expeditionary, the highlight their light forces but when it comes to providing them with necessary protection they always flub it up.

The MML as it was originally conceived would have made a formidable pocket asset for the Maneuver Commander to knock down any and everything up to and including the forward edge.  Now they're back to having a gap.

I don't think the Stryker based solution will have enough "shots" to be able to deal with the threat that a nation state can present.

It almost seems like they're stuck in the either/or category.  They're either looking at relatively static missile systems that can't scoot or they're going so light they can't stay in the fight.

But maybe the USMC can pickup the concept, put it on the MTVR and load it up with AMRAAMs, Harpoons and even MLRS rockets and make the concept sing.