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…
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…
Rethinking the push for program transfer When the U.S. Missile Defense Agency was created in 2002, the expectation was that it would initially develop missile defense systems but then transfer…
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…
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…
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.
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…
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
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…
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.