This summer, U.S. Army air defense artillery units in the New Mexico desert have been detecting, tracking, and shooting down ballistic and cruise missile targets. These efforts are testing, with considerable success, their Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System, or IBCS, and its ability to tie together diverse sensors and interceptors.

The keyword here is integration. Something of a Pentagon buzzword, neither the meaning of integration nor its future potential for countering air and missile threats is adequately understood.

Populated by more numerous, diverse, maneuverable, accurate, and sophisticated missile threats, the modern battlefield is becoming faster and more lethal. And adversaries such as China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran are developing more innovative ways to employ them. As a result, the United States can no longer take for granted the ability to deploy superior military forces whenever and wherever needed. As defense budget constraints begin to bite, the challenge is to find innovative approaches that will effectively defeat these threats without breaking the bank…

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