Originally published Air and Missile Defense for the US Is an Absolute Imperative on by https://globalsecurityreview.com/columbia-class-the-submarine-the-u-s-navy-is-desperate-for/ at Global Security Review
Commentary: Air and Missile Defense Is an Absolute Imperative
By: Brig. Gen. Houston Cantwell, USAF (Ret.) for Air & Space Forces
If there is anything we’ve learned from the conflicts in Ukraine and Israel—and the growing threats from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea—it is that massed air and missile attacks are now a fundamental component of modern warfare. This puts our U.S. homeland at risk.
President Trump’s executive order calling for an “Iron Dome Missile Defense Shield for America” to protect against “ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks” is right on target. Achieving that vision, however, is far from simple. Fortunately, the U.S. already possesses the building blocks for such a defense, what we might call a phase one solution. Now we need to get serious about scaling and employing it.
Today’s threats present a “back to the future” moment. During the Cold War, when Soviet nuclear-armed bombers and ballistic missiles threatened the United States and our allies, America invested aggressively, advancing the state of the art in air defense and early warning by establishing defenses including 43 primary and 96 supplementary radar sites, mostly in Canada and the northern U.S., each designed to detect and track threats.
Originally published Air and Missile Defense for the US Is an Absolute Imperative on by https://globalsecurityreview.com/columbia-class-the-submarine-the-u-s-navy-is-desperate-for/ at Global Security Review
Originally published Global Security Review
