Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

4. Department of Defense · Notable · Needs Congress

Buy at least 64 Next Generation Interceptors

Partially done

126 4. Department of Defense

“Buy at least 64 of the Next Generation Interceptor (NGI), which is more advanced than the GBI, for an eventual uniform fleet of interceptors. The Biden Administration currently plans to buy only 20.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    No interceptor has been bought, and the Department's own exhibit says so by leaving the column empty. The FY 2027 Program Acquisition Costs by Weapon System book carries the program under the combined line **Ground-based Midcourse Defense and Improved Homeland Defense Interceptors**: FY2025 actuals $2,398.4M RDT&E and $16.6M procurement; **FY2026 enacted $2,306.0M of RDT&E and $0 of procurement, with no quantity in any cell**; FY2027 request $2,759.2M, again all RDT&E. The narrative says the FY2027 money "funds for the comprehensive development of the NGI, covering its design, testing, and integration while executing Critical Design Review and subsystem qualification in FY2027". So the program is funded and pre-production: not one of the 64 the Quote asks for, nor the 20 it says the previous plan bought. `partial` unchanged — the program money is enacted, the named quantity is not procured.

  2. Partially done

    The FY2026 NDAA authorizes program element 0604874C, Improved Homeland Defense Interceptors - the Missile Defense Agency line that carries the Next Generation Interceptor - at $1,582,414,000, at the request. Neither Act states an interceptor quantity, and no allowlisted source records a buy of 64 or of any other number.

  3. Partially done

    Section 20003(b)(2) of the reconciliation act (P.L. 119-21) appropriated $800,000,000 for accelerated development and deployment of next-generation intercontinental ballistic missile defense systems, available until 2029 - the homeland interceptor line the Quote is about, funded above the plan of record.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

“Next Generation Interceptor” returns zero hits in the enacted text of P.L. 119-60, P.L. 119-21 and P.L. 119-75, and zero in the Federal Register in the window; the program appears under the Improved Homeland Defense Interceptors program element and under the reconciliation act’s “next-generation intercontinental ballistic missile defense systems” phrasing, which are the terms that find it.

  • The ask needs an act of Congress; it is partial on the ladder for such asks (funding for the program enacted, the named quantity not).
  • mda.mil’s program pages return an error page; the NGI system page is a lead.
  • The quantity question is now answered from a Primary source (2026-09-03). The FY 2027 budget exhibits are published at comptroller.war.gov and open without difficulty; the FY 2027 Program Acquisition Costs by Weapon System book was read. It confirms the rename trail this log already records — the weapons book indexes the program as Ground-based Midcourse Defense and Improved Homeland Defense Interceptors, and “Next Generation Interceptor” appears only inside the narrative and in the prime-contractor list — and it settles that no NGI procurement quantity exists in FY2025, FY2026 enacted or the FY2027 request.
Action
expand
Object
Next Generation Interceptor (NGI) procurement
ID
262