Posted on 08/22/2020 5:14:50 AM PDT by Kaslin
Homeland missile defense faces an uncertain future. The U.S. deploys 44 ground-based interceptors to Alaska and California and a global sensor network to defend the homeland from a limited attack. But as these systems age and the foreign missile threat grows, the U.S. needs to commit to ensuring an adequate missile defense for the future.
A strong missile defense offers many benefits. Most importantly, it can save hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of American lives, from a limited nuclear attack.
It also serves as a deterrent. By lowering the probability that an attack will succeed, it forces states like North Korea to think twice before pushing the launch button.
Other benefits include giving our military greater freedom to defend our allies (by lowering the probability of a retaliatory homeland attack) and strengthening our hand in diplomatic negotiations (because our adversaries know we can to mitigate their threats).
Despite the multiple advantages of a strong homeland missile defense, plans to achieve that goal — first articulated in 1983 — have not been realized. What started as President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, a comprehensive plan to render any missile attack obsolete was eventually scaled back to President Bill Clinton’s plan to deploy only 100 ground-based interceptors. It was not until 2004, when the urgently emerging North Korean threat became apparent, that interceptors were deployed as part of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system.
There has not been significant progress on expanding the GMD system since, even though the threat has increased.
North Korea continues to improve the size, sophistication, and range of its missile arsenal. Eventually, it could arm its missiles with countermeasures like decoys and penetration aids to evade U.S. missile defenses. Meanwhile, the kill vehicles on today’s ground-based interceptor fleet, now over a decade old, continue to age and face obsolescence issues. Senior defense leaders expect these two issues — increasing threat and aging defenses — to converge around 2025.
The Pentagon’s Redesigned Kill Vehicle program would have bridged this gap until a next-generation interceptor was developed. It also would have added 20 interceptors to our defenses. But that program was abruptly cancelled last year.
At best, the Pentagon’s Next Generation Interceptor (NGI) program will not begin to replace aging interceptors and add capacity to the GMD system before 2028. Until then, the very real prospect of having insufficient capability to defend against a rogue nation should prompt serious concern within Congress and the administration.
The GMD system is also underprepared for a potential Iranian missile attack aimed at the East Coast. Interceptors in Alaska are technically capable of defending the entire United States. However, an East Coast missile defense site would significantly increase the probability of successful intercept.
The administration has identified the need to deploy sensors to space for the purpose of “birth-to-death” missile tracking. Yet this program, the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor, has been plagued by insufficient funding requests and program turbulence.
What’s needed to stabilize our homeland missile defense is more money and numerous steps. To get the ball rolling, Congress and the administration should focus on the following:
First, the space sensor layer program needs to be sufficiently funded to move up its deployment as much as possible. Being able to see the threat—including emerging threats like hypersonic missiles—must be a prerequisite to advanced shooter capabilities. Fortunately, both the House and Senate have authorized more funding for this program than the Pentagon requested.
Second, the U.S. must invest heavily in keeping the current ground-based interceptor fleet viable until the NGI can be brought to the field. Last year, Congress provided additional funding to extend the service life of the current 44 interceptors. This effort should continue in future years as part of a comprehensive effort to maintain the GBI fleet.
The Defense Department must prioritize addressing this near-term problem before other important, yet less urgent issues like East Coast defense or boost-phase intercept technology.
Third, the U.S. should proceed with the administration’s plan to develop a homeland defense “underlay” using regional interceptor systems, but not as a replacement for short-term improvements to the existing interceptor fleet. Pursuing an underlay as a “back-up” option to shoot down incoming missiles is a worthwhile pursuit, but it could become too costly and time-consuming to “solve” the aging fleet problem.
The Defense Department has yet to put “math” to the concept of an underlay. Both the Senate and House defense policy bills would rightly require the Pentagon to begin answering critical questions about its plan before proceeding to the next steps.
The National Defense Strategy and the Missile Defense Review both identify homeland defense as the highest priority. It is therefore essential that homeland missile defense receive greater emphasis and a clearly defined future. The steps outlined above will put the Defense Department back on track.
the real questions are:
Why did the Clowns let Op Paperclip’s infiltrants
control US missiles to attempt to kill
the ELECTED PRESIDENT?
Why has there been NO accountability for this
OR the manufactured “Novel (patented, dual purpose)” virus
Atrocity and its PLANNED election-infection?
Great question .... imho
A message to America from China...we now have the ability to strike your homeland in a matter of moments.
It was simply a contrail in favorable weather conditions.
It was capable of shooting down incoming ICBMs in 2011.
It was killed by President Obama.
>>Completely debunked.<<
We were told so...right? I have researched this over the years and I could not find “the debunk”.
What I did see was sources attempting to debunk. I’ve seen many launches from the space coast...that was a missile. Not a bird, not a plane, not a weather phenom.
Maybe she’s not aware of it?
It was a contrail.
When discussing missile defense of our homeland, we will reopen a sore wound. “NIMBY”, especially since the birth of the super busy body with a nose in everybody else’s butt, aka ‘ken/karen’.
Folks pitched a fit over the unwanted noise of freedom created by jet aircraft performing alert bird flights.
Folks pitched a fit over missile silos containing our nuclear deterrent missile strength.
How many fit pitchings will there be by all these confounded motherlovin super sensitive no guts babies, when the government starts erecting this missile defense system?
“It looks ugly!; it messes with my wifi!’; and the old saw, ‘you could spend the money somewhere else!’; and lastly, ‘why the heck are all these military people in my town?’
Pinging phantomworker
Meh, just tell anyone who pops a nuke that you hope they have fun, because a half hour later a few thousand will showed right back down on them.
It worked for decades.
I’ve never heard that. Can you point me in a direction to read more about that please?
Like it’s going to make a difference. The Russian Federation alone currently possesses 6,500 nuclear warheads, including strategic nuclear weapons that can be launched by long-range delivery systems, as well as non-strategic nuclear weapons with lower yields and shorter ranges capable of sub launch right off our shores. And thanks to Bill Clinton passing out MIRV technology to China, thus North Korea, they now are players and can hit the CONUS. The only defense we have is the threat of retaliation. And if some nut like in Korea gets in power, they are too stupid to be threatened. They have very little concern for life so they don’t care.
rwood
It worked for decades.
Works great as long as you can ID the perpetrators.
Launch from an unknown platform, off shore...
It will be much harder to know who to launch back at.
Then, there are the potentials for false flag attacks.
No sense in putting more money into ground based interceptor missiles.
Keep what we have, to defend against any newly emerging rogue state with simple technology.
But for our main adversaries, we will need to defeat hypersonic weapons, and that will require directed energy weapons.
...
Easy, don’t waste a lot of time on particularly *who* shoots off one. Just tell North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, Crapistan, Cuba, Venezuela, etc, that if -one- goes off on us...from some offshore platform, as John Wayne said said in Big Jake...”your fault, my fault, nobody’s fault, you get your head blown off”.
Besides, maybe we’d get lucky and it would only be one on DC.
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