The Drive:

A senior officer at the U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, says the command is actively engaged in discussions about how to optimize air-defense capabilities, including ground-based surface-to-air missiles, to protect domestic critical infrastructure in a crisis. He said that the growing ability of potential adversaries to launch long-range conventional strikes, especially using advanced air, sea, and submarine-launched cruise missiles, has prompted new concerns about threats to the homeland, which is “not a sanctuary any longer.” This is just the latest example of U.S. officials sounding similar alarms bells in recent years — but it is a less common public acknowledgment about the limitations of existing defenses within the continental United States.

U.S. Air Force Colonel Kristopher Struve, the vice director of operations for NORAD, discussed domestic critical infrastructure defense during a virtual roundtable on air and missile defense that the Missile Defense Advocacy Association (MDAA) hosted yesterday. Struve took the place of Air Force Brigadier General Paul Murray, NORAD’s Deputy Director of Operations, who had been “called into a four-star meeting,” according to MDAA Chairman and Founder Riki Ellison…

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