In a Pentagon speech Thursday, President Trump unveiled a strategy for defending America against enemy missiles that revamps and rethinks a Cold War concept first conceived under President Ronald Reagan: a missile shield that relies in part on assets in space.
“We are committed to establishing a missile defense program that can shield every city in the United States,” Trump said to a military audience in the Pentagon’s subterranean auditorium.
“My upcoming budget will invest in a space-based missile defense layer,” Trump said. “It’s new technology. It’s ultimately going to be a very, very big part of our defense, and obviously our offense.”
Initially that plan would involve placing more sensors in orbit around the earth in order to better detect potential threatening missile launches in time to shoot them down with land- or ship-based interceptors. But it also calls for study of space-based weapons that could destroy incoming warheads in space, which is the same concept first envisioned by Reagan in the 1980s.
At the time critics mocked the idea as “pie in the sky” and dubbed it “Star Wars.”
The review calls for a new urgency to fund and develop more advanced missile defense concepts and capabilities to meet an expanding offensive missile threat to the homeland, U.S. forces overseas as well as America’s allies and partners.
[Related: Pentagon says Space Force could cost less than $5 billion]
The unclassified document states, “U.S. missile defense will require the examination and possible fielding of advanced technologies to provide greater efficiencies for U.S. active missile defense capabilities, including space-based sensors and boost-phase defense capabilities.”
Or as Trump put it, “We will always be at the forefront of everything.”
The 2019 Missile Defense Review is the first overhaul of national missile defense doctrine in nearly a decade. It reflects a shift from a time when the primary threat was intercontinental missiles from a rogue nation such as North Korea, to the current state of the world in which both Russia and China are fielding new technologies such as maneuverable hypersonic warheads that can fly five times faster than the speed of sound. Another threat comes from land-based cruise missiles than can deliver precision strikes in a conventional war and threaten ships at seas, including U.S. aircraft carriers.
“Today, the number of missile programs around the world are developing disproportionate to other capabilities,” said acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan in remarks introducing the president. “The rest of the world is not developing new fighter and bomber aircraft, they are developing missiles.”
Trump also announced the addition of 20 new interceptor missiles to be added to the ground-based, mid-course defenses in Alaska, a plan that has been in the works for years.
Currently the U.S. has a total of 44 ground-based interceptor missiles based in silos at Ft. Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.
In addition the U.S. has 35 Aegis warships capable of long-range surveillance, tracking, and ballistic missile defense using deployed SM-2, SM-3, and SM-6 missiles, in addition to one “Aegis Ashore” site.
There are also six active Terminal High Altitude Area Defense or “THAAD” batteries for destroying missiles in their final stage, including two systems deployed in South Korea to counter North Korea and one in Guam for homeland defense.
“The review states for the first time that the U.S. will use missile defenses to protect against regional threats from Moscow and Beijing in Europe and Asia. Not just for rogue states anymore,” said Matthew Kroenig, an analyst at the Atlantic Council. “Critics will argue that missile defenses don’t work or will be destabilizing, but they haven’t been paying attention in recent years. There is now an impressive record of success in tests and actual conflict.”
Shanahan promised to fulfill Trump’s vision of a impenetrable missile shield over the entire United States.
“Mr. President, we are ready for this task,” Shanahan said. “This is the department of ‘get stuff done.’”
