Shield of the Pacific: Japan as a Giant Aegis Destroyer
Key Points: Japan’s acquisition of two Aegis Ashore sites will be a significant step to boost air and missile defense capabilities for the region, but their potential has not yet…
Author: Tom Karako
The Forthcoming Missile Defense Review
Later this spring, the Trump administration will release its 2018 Missile Defense Review (MDR), which is expected to better align U.S. missile defense policy with the present security environment. President…
Trump’s 2019 Missile Defense Budget: Choosing Capacity over Capability
The administration’s budget request for FY 2019 prioritizes near-term readiness against limited but growing ballistic missile threats from sources such as North Korea. This choice, however, falls short of connecting missile defense efforts to the reality of renewed great power competition as articulated in the National Defense Strategy.
When Allies Get Nervous
In a nuclear world, nuclear weapons are needed to deter major attacks, but who should possess these instruments of deterrence? Today the challenge of keeping nonnuclear states from going nuclear may be growing, perhaps nowhere quite as much as in northeast Asia…
Distributed Defense: New Operational Concepts for Air and Missile Defense
Despite the rising salience of missile threats, current air and missile defense forces are far too susceptible to suppression. Today’s U.S. air and missile defense (AMD) force lacks the depth, capacity, and operational flexibility to simultaneously perform both missions
Dissecting the Big Missile Defense Plus-up
Missile defense funds are likely to grow—a lot. In addition to a September reprogramming of an additional $249 million for the Missile Defense Agency for FY 2017, appropriations for FY 2018 could exceed $11 billion, over $3 billion more than the president’s original request. This would make for the highest level of missile defense funding in a decade…
A Missile Defense Agenda
In the 1990s, the U.S. intelligence community assessed that North Korea might acquire an intercontinental ballistic missile by 2015. That threat is now here.
Missile Defense and the Nuclear Posture Review
As missile defense capabilities have matured, they have become widely recognized for their contribution to broad strategic objectives and the US nuclear posture. The growing significance of missile defenses has been more broadly reflected in major national and military strategy documents across the last several administrations.
More distributed operating concepts needed for US Army air and missile defense
A new challenge faces the joint force: the prospect of conflict with a near-peer adversary who has spent two decades going to school on the U.S. way of war. Potential adversaries have integrated air defenses and precision-strike weapons that can hold forward-based U.S. forces at risk, complicate maneuver and impair freedom of action.
Op-ed: Improve the Space-Based Sensor System
The Pentagon’s missile defense review is now underway, incorporating mandates from both the White House and Congress. One of its considerations, at presidential direction, is whether there should be a…