In Depth Analysis, Commentary, and Publications
Tensions with Iran are once again high, making plain the risk of unexpected conflict between Iran and the United States. In the event of such a conflict, the United States would likely rely heavily on regional missile defense architectures like the European Phased Adaptive Approach, or EPAA, designed to protect NATO from ballistic missile attacks...
Next week, people from across the missile defense community will gather at an annual symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, to consider how to adapt U.S. missile defense efforts to the challenge of renewed competition with Russia and China. A centerpiece of their discussions will be the emergence of advanced hypersonic missile threats and what to do...
On July 12, Turkey received the first elements of the S-400, a fourth-generation surface-to-air Russian missile system. Few recent weapon sales have been as geopolitically charged as this one. U.S. officials have threatened both military and economic sanctions should Turkey acquire the Russian system. The delivery comes after many years of negotiations for more advanced...
Acting Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan has warned that the U.S. has come to take military superiority for granted, as a kind of birthright. Perhaps no aspect of military superiority has been taken for granted in the post-Cold War period more than air superiority. With the return of great-power competition and the renewed need to...
Like its three predecessors, the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review reaffirmed the need for the nuclear triad of bombers, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and intercontinental ballistic missiles. Now comes the hard part. With the authorization and appropriation cycle for fiscal 2020 now underway, the United States is moving closer to the coming bow wave of modernization efforts...
The 2018 National Defense Strategy calls renewed strategic competition with major powers the central challenge of our time. The 2019 Missile Defense Review (MDR) represents the Trump administration’s attempt to adapt US missile defense policy, posture, and programs to this challenge. Upon the document’s public release in January 2019, President Trump stated that it marked...
Just over a year ago, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan announced that the 2020 defense budget would be the “masterpiece” that would finally align Pentagon spending with the new direction of the National Defense Strategy. The release of the new budget follows the January 2019 release of the Missile Defense Review, which laid out...
The Trump administration has today released its long-awaited Missile Defense Review (MDR). Initiated pursuant to both congressional and presidential direction, the report represents an attempt to adapt U.S. missile defense policy, posture, and programs to the strategic environment of great power competition. The United States and its allies face a more complex and challenging aerial...
In missile defense circles, commentators frequently remark that that there are only so many islands or ships in the Pacific on which to put radars. Reading through recent missile defense budget requests, however, one is struck by the fact that the Pentagon seems to have doubled down on a strategy of building a chain of...
Abandoning 360-degree coverage would make air defenses more vulnerable and undermine their mission Press reports and statements from U.S. Army leadership suggest that omnidirectional capability for the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor, or LTAMDS, may be slipping away as the threshold requirement it deserves to be. Air defenders and joint forces under their...
