America Needs an Air and Missile Defense Revolution

Mark Gunzinger, Bryan Clark

Security, United States

Reducing the size and lethality of an enemy’s PGM salvos is critical, since it can have the same effect as increasing the capacity of air and missile defenses protecting target areas.

Over the last 15 years, the Department of Defense spent more than $24 billion to procure a mix of surface-to-air interceptors that lacks the capacity to defeat large salvos of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and other guided weapons that America’s adversaries are now capable of launching. As a result, enemy precision strikes in future conflicts could overwhelm the U.S. military’s air and missile defenses. In peacetime, an inadequate air and missile defense architecture will reduce the credibility of American assurances to its allies and its ability to deter aggressors.

This inadequacy developed partly because the U.S. military has never fought an enemy that was armed with conventional weapons capable of precisely striking distant targets. Today, however, China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are fielding large numbers of increasingly accurate precision-guided munitions (PGMs) that threaten the U.S. military’s ability to project power.

Another factor behind DoD’s lack of missile defense capacity is its longstanding emphasis on preferentially using costly, long-range surface-to-air interceptors to defeat a small number of missile threats. The “layered” missile defense tactics favored by U.S. forces attempt to defeat incoming threats as far away as possible from their targets by using large and expensive long-range surface-to-air interceptors, then medium-range interceptors, and finally short-range defenses as a last resort. This approach is more appropriate for defeating a small number of ballistic and cruise missiles, some of which may carry nuclear warheads. Against large PGM salvos, however, it could result in situations where the U.S. military’s defenses are quickly exhausted, leaving its theater bases and forces vulnerable to subsequent strikes.

The good news is DoD could adopt operational concepts and field a mix of capabilities that could reduce the size of enemy strike salvos and greatly increase U.S. air and missile defensive capacity.