RealClear Defense

The United States is approaching a crossroads on homeland missile defense. As a result of rapid progress by nuclear-armed adversaries, missile threats capable of holding American cities hostage will soon outpace U.S. planned missile defense programs and capabilities.  If the United States is to halt its growing vulnerability to missile attack, it must decide soon how to adapt its missile defense posture to account for new technologies, advanced capabilities and a deteriorating strategic environment.

There is growing unease about the ability of the homeland missile defense “program of record,” focused on the development of a single new interceptor, to stay ahead of the rogue state ICBM threat from North Korea and, in the likely near future, Iran.  In the case of the former, the threat is expanding faster than anticipated. Given the likely decade long development of the Next Generation Interceptor (NGI), this threat will almost certainly create a window of vulnerability by 2030. Equally important, the current missile defense program lacks the technology and capability development efforts that could contribute to countering the rising danger of coercive threats from Russia and China, as witnessed by Moscow’s warnings that it is prepared to use nuclear weapons in its war on Ukraine to prevent defeat and the more oblique but still clear threats by Beijing to employ nuclear weapons in a Taiwan conflict.[1]  The threat of such limited nuclear use, occurring below the threshold of large-scale attacks, is calculated to persuade U.S. leaders that the risks of responding to aggression are not worth the costs, including the prospect of further escalation.

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