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 responsibility for their procurement to the military services that would operate them. The process has not worked out quite as expected. Missile defense capabilities have...
Several decades ago, former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone once described his country as a “big aircraft carrier” from which to defend against Soviet aircraft. Although such an analogy fails to capture the richness and depth of the U.S-Japan alliance, it did say something important about Japan’s unique geographic and strategic position. Today’s air and...
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 Barack Obama’s 2010 Ballistic Missile Defense Review (BMDR) reflected the security environment of the time and the aspirations of the Obama administration. In particular, technological...
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.
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.
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.
