Richard B. Nugent: “The Counter-electronics High Power Microwave Missile Project, better known as CHAMP, is an Air Force program to disrupt…”

“The Counter-electronics High Power Microwave Missile Project, better known as CHAMP, is an Air Force program to disrupt or eliminate an adversary's electronics without causing physical damage to facilities or people. My amendment would transfer $10 million within the Air Force R&D budget from directed energy technology to advanced weapons technology. This will move duplicative funds from laboratory development of high- power microwave technology to integration on a delivery vehicle for actual use on the battlefield a decade ahead of schedule. The Air Force intends to develop CHAMP for use on a reusable delivery vehicle that will be available to combatant commanders in 2025. For a small investment of $10 million this year, the Air Force can get CHAMP to the combatant commanders on a cruise missile delivery system 18 months after enactment of this bill, almost a decade ahead of schedule. The reason we can do this so quickly and at such a low cost is by utilizing unused cruise missiles, just like the ones the Air Force used to test CHAMP recently. There is an existing stockpile of cruise missiles that have been removed from their original mission and can be cost-effectively repurposed as a delivery vehicle for CHAMP. Over the next few years, the Air Force has an opportunity to fit CHAMP on a proven delivery vehicle already in stock. In this window, it is very cheap to make a cruise missile-delivered CHAMP system and very expensive for adversaries to defend.…”