Over the past fifteen years, missile defense has gone from an idea largely restricted by treaty, to a kind of infancy with initial defensive capability, to what now might be termed a kind of adolescence. Along the way, the combination of several trends has put the Missile Defense Agency budget under increasing but underappreciated strain. Created...
We need a way to fund Israel’s missile defenses without undercutting our own. This weekend, the acting head of Israel’s National Security Council will visit Washington, reportedly to conclude a new multi-year aid package. Replacing an arrangement set to expire in 2018, the deal is expected to include hundreds of millions of dollars for Israeli...
Missile defense is not just about ballistic missiles. The wider problem of integrated air and missile defense, to include cruise missiles, has received growing attention in recent years. However, attempts to design and field an architecture to detect and track cruise missiles has proven challenging...
The Unha launch is hardly the basis for panic, but it is time for certain measures to ensure security and stability. Coming on the heels of the North’s fourth nuclear detonation, the launch reflects both continued technical advances and their sustained ICBM ambitions. These recent events mean that active measures to counter North Korea’s missile program will likely take on renewed importance.
North Korea’s fourth nuclear test has provoked renewed calls among leading South Korean lawmakers for South Korea to obtain its own nuclear deterrent force. Public opinion has also become more supportive of a nuclear-armed South Korea.
The U.S. Air Force awarded a much-anticipated contract for the Long Range Strike Bomber (LRSB) last month, a critical platform to support both conventional missions and nuclear deterrence. Much remains to be done to deliver a nuclear-capable LRSB on budget and on schedule. Beyond the LRSB and the B61-12 gravity bomb life extension, however, modernization...
With the conclusion of a joint plan of action for Iran’s nuclear program, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov of Russia has returned to his favorite talking point: that NATO should scale back missile defenses. NATO should do nothing of the sort. Not only does the Iran deal not roll back the most numerous and diverse missile...
US Defense Secretary Ash Carter recently visited Berlin to assure allies that the US would deter aggression. NATO leaders are worried that Russia might invade the Baltics in a Crimea-style fait accompli, and then threaten nuclear escalation unless the alliance backs down. Moscow’s treaty violations and “nuclear sabre rattling,” Carter warned, raise “questions about Russia’s...
One may be forgiven for not noticing that Saudi Arabia on June 6 used Patriot missiles to intercept a Scud-class missile fired by Houthi rebels in Yemen. Besides adding the Saudis to the very short list of states that have intercepted a ballistic missile fired in anger, the episode holds several lessons about regional security...
This week President Obama convenes a summit with the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council, at which he will reportedly urge GCC members to move forward on missile defense cooperation. The range of cooperation under consideration consists of greater information and intelligence sharing, interoperability, additional foreign military sales on both a bilateral and cooperative basis,...
