Defense News:

The best way to defend the United States from a cruise missile attack may be to focus on where adversaries are keeping the ships and aircraft that could fire such a weapon and not take a broader approach to counter any possibility, the vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said Feb. 23.

The U.S. has yet to reach a conclusion in the long-term debate on how to defend the U.S. homeland from cruise missiles, but Gen. John Hyten, the Pentagon’s no. 2 officer, said the focus needs to not be entirely on defeating cruise missiles in the terminal phase, which is the tail end of a missile’s trajectory to a target.

“If you look at the cruise missile problem from the terminal phase, that basically means you have to build giant point defense radars or some kind of aerial defense radar because even a Low-Earth Orbit satellite has a difficult time seeing most cruise missiles,” Hyten said during a Center for Strategic and International Studies event focused on missile defense. “You have the ability to see some and we should make sure we explore that and understand that piece, but to deal with the cruise missile threat, the first sensor, first critical sensor piece of the puzzle is the platform sensor because the cruise missile is launched from that platform.”

With the exception of a possible nuclear-powered cruise missile, the weapon has to be launched from a platform that needs to come relatively close to the target, Hyten explained. This could be a platform such as a submarine, ship, or aircraft…

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