Eurasia Review:
The critical mission of defending the U.S. homeland—homeland defense—requires a fully integrated capability to identify, categorize, and fuse strategic and tactical indications and warnings (I&W) by U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM), and U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM).
Today’s fiscally constrained environment may encourage decisionmakers to eliminate perceived I&W “redundancies” and create an I&W stovepipe for weapons release authorities (WRAs). In a mission area where time is of the essence and failure would result in grave damage to national security, such an arrangement would create an unacceptable risk to homeland defense.
Overview
According to the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, “countries invest in ballistic missiles because they are a means to project power in regional and strategic contexts” and provide “a capability to launch an attack from a distance.”1 This has led to an increase in ballistic missiles over the past 5 years. The total number of these systems outside the United States, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Russia, and China has risen to over 5,900.2 Hundreds of launchers and missiles are currently located within range of deployed U.S. forces.3
According to the U.S. Intelligence Community, current trends indicate that ballistic missile systems using advanced liquid- or solid-propellant propulsion technologies are becoming increasingly mobile, reliable, survivable, and accurate, and have the ability to strike targets over longer distances. Moreover, the “proliferation of ballistic missiles is increasing the number of anti-access weapons available to potential regional adversaries. These weapons could be used to reduce military options for combatant commanders and decrease the survivability of regional military assets.”4
These threats from state actors will likely become more dangerous due to increases in the numbers, capabilities, and lethality of delivery systems and payloads in development. North America currently has a modest BMD system specifically developed to counter intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) threats from rogue nations. BMD is a system of systems employing a layered defense architecture.5 It architecture integrates BMD capabilities and intelligence systems for I&W to defeat ballistic missile threats.6 Despite the vast array of terrestrial and space-based collection assets designed to provide I&W, however, the Intelligence Community faces challenges with providing strategic I&W. In particular, prioritization of geographic combatant commanders’ priority intelligence requirements (PIRs) could potentially create gaps in coverage, affecting timely intelligence that supports WRAs for effective BMD employment. This is important because of the limited engagement timeframe for incoming ballistic missiles from launch to impact. The decision by a WRA to engage must occur within minutes of a launch to enable defeat of the incoming weapon.
