“There have been some really impressive results,” said MDA Executive Director Laura DeSimone on recent directed energy tests.
By Theresa HitchensA new approach to speed, scale and efficiency for the industrial base
Radars, EW, EO/IR, space imagery, and microelectronics are brought under one roof for a streamlined approach to common people and factories.
Russia since this spring has been using both newly minted cruise missiles and even hypersonic missiles in its war to annex Ukraine.
By Theresa Hitchens
“If we want deterrence to be effective, it takes three things: 1. Capabilities 2. Credible threats in the mind of the adversary and 3. The will to communicate the first two,” Chris Stone, Mitchell Institute fellow, told Breaking Defense.
By Theresa Hitchens
The two reviews were largely welcomed by more hawkish commentators and criticized by supporters of more robust approaches to nuclear arms control — with the latter lamenting that Biden has walked away from campaign promises to reduce US reliance on nuclear weapons.
By Theresa Hitchens
“We need to recognize that we can no longer operate in the somewhat static ‘spy vs spy’ conditions of the Cold War and that we are dealing with a technologically advanced and ever-adapting adversary who has both the know-how and funding to continually push us on every front,” former Pentagon official Doug Loverro said.
By Theresa Hitchens “I would like to have overhead sensors that see everything, characterize everything that goes on on this planet from a missile perspective, all the time everywhere. … That’s unobtainium right now,” says VCJCS Gen. John Hyten.
By Theresa Hitchens
GA-ASI’s MQ-9B: The right UAV for persistence, power, and performance
When assessing the state of the art of unmanned aerial systems, it’s critical to be very clear about what various aircraft can and can’t do – and could never do.
“The future will be a mix of kinetic and non-kinetic. It will be a mix of hard kill and soft kill, because of where the threat is going to. The threat will drive us to do something different,” says Vice Adm. Jon Hill, who heads the Missile Defense Agency.
By Theresa Hitchens
CBO estimates that developing F-35-launched boost-phase interceptors to defend against North Korean ballistic missiles would cost $25 billion to $40 billion to develop, with an additional $10 billion to $20 billion a year to operate.
By Theresa Hitchens
“If they tried that, I’d expect to see a bipartisan display of pitchforks on Capitol Hill, and the likeness of certain DoD officials burned in effigy,” said one expert of any move to disband MDA.
By Theresa Hitchens
What happens when the Pentagon’s new ballistic missile defeat program doesn’t work? They keep using the old one, which has a spotty track record.
By Paul McLeary
The Pentagon has quietly asked defense contractors for ways to spot enemy missile launchers — so the US can destroy them before they even fire.
By Paul McLeary
The Pentagon has almost completed a study of how to shoot down hypersonic missiles. It’s also developing new offensive weapons — conventional, not nuclear — whose deployment will become legal with the end of the INF Treaty.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Despite the Navy’s misgivings over having dozens of its ships sailing in boxes hunting for missiles, plans remain in place for more Aegis-capable hulls, as well as new radars, and mobile missile defense batteries.
By Paul McLeary
The Missile Defense Review sets “the stage for a high-stakes policy debate between those who value missile defense as an enabler of US grand strategy, and those who fear enhanced missile defense may start an arms race with Russia and China,” write Walter Slocombe and Robert Soofer.
By Walter Slocombe and Robert Soofer