U.S. Missile Defense Is Cruising for a Bruising
A new report argues the Pentagon needs to wake up to low-flying threats.
By Jack Detsch, Foreign Policy’s Pentagon and national security reporter.
A Ground-based Interceptor missile, an element of the
nation’s Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, was launched from North
Vandenberg on September 12, 2021. U.S. Space Force photo by Airman Kadielle Shaw
July 14, 2022
It
was like a scene from a horror movie: After weeks of calm, Russian
cruise missiles, which Ukrainian officials said were fired from the
Black Sea, interrupted a peaceful Sunday morning in Kyiv in late June,
slamming into two residential buildings, leaving one person dead and six
wounded.
The
fear at the Pentagon is that those kinds of attacks are not some
far-off threat. Since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale
invasion of Ukraine nearly five months ago, Russia’s cruise missiles,
which can be launched from the air or by sea, have become the Kremlin’s
garden-variety weapon. And they’ve scrambled the minds of American
defense planners, who spent decades planning to defend against a nuclear
attack by a rogue state, like North Korea, and now have to contend with
non-nuclear weapons that can outfox traditional missile defenses.
The
United States does not have the defenses to keep up with Russian and
Chinese advances in cruise missile technology, according to a new report
set for release Thursday by the Center for Strategic and International
Studies (CSIS), a Washington think tank. While the U.S. defensive
structure remains focused on ballistic missiles, which are easier to
defend against because they leave and reenter the atmosphere in a
predictable trajectory, the report authors are calling on the Pentagon
to beef up a constellation of radars. They call for more U.S.-based
over-the-horizon radars, which peer far from the homeland, and
prioritized area radars, which focus on U.S. territory, to more quickly
respond to Russia and China if they fire a weapon at the United States
from the Arctic or Atlantic oceans.
“The
current system of command and control, though staffed by highly
dedicated U.S. and Canadian military personnel, employs 1990s-era
technology and uses 1960s-era decision processes,” the CSIS authors
wrote in their report. “Besides a near complete lack of mission
integration, there are almost no purpose-built defenses against
low-altitude cruise missile threats.” The two-decade-long modernization
program for sensors, shooters, and radars would cost U.S. taxpayers
about $33 billion.
Under
the plan, the United States would first add four over-the-horizon
radars that range more than 600 miles offshore and one area defense
radar, before completing 360-degree coverage in three phases. Those
defenses would be backstopped by fighter jets; CSIS also leaves open the
possibility for adding space-sensing capabilities and drone and
hypersonic defenses in the future.
The
plan comes as the U.S. Defense Department is busy putting together its
nuclear and missile defense reviews. Washington is also sketching out a
response to more capable Russian and Chinese missiles, including
hypersonic weapons, some of which can circumnavigate the globe at five
times the speed of sound and move to dodge projectiles in flight.
New
variants of Russian and Chinese cruise missiles cover “a whole lot of
the United States with standoff capability,” said Tom Karako, a senior
fellow at CSIS and the lead author of the report. “It’s pretty
astonishing.” That means that China and Russia could have nuclear-level
effects without resorting to the bomb. For instance, China has developed
the DF-26 missile, known in Pentagon parlance as the “Guam Killer,”
because it can reach—and perhaps destroy—much of the U.S. island in the
Pacific without necessarily resorting to a nuclear salvo.
And
it’s no longer a risk that the United States can accept, some believe,
considering the possibility of Russia or China firing cruise missiles
from the Atlantic Ocean or from the Arctic circle, where both nations
have tried to carve out more turf, with U.S. neighbors moving faster in
some instances than the Pentagon. After a visit to North American
Aerospace Defense Command in June, Canadian Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau pledged that his country would invest nearly $4 billion in the
next six years to add two over-the-horizon sensors and a network of
classified sensors to reinforce possible northern missile approaches,
upgrading a chain of radar stations in the far north that have been in
place since the 1980s.
A senior defense official told Foreign Policy earlier
this month that the command is still figuring out how to deal with the
threat of Russian and Chinese hypersonic glide vehicles, after China’s
around-the-world launch test last year, compared to ballistic missiles,
which the United States is able to defend against.
“Peer-level
competitors don’t envision coming into direct strategic conflict with
the United States,” the official said, speaking anonymously according to
ground rules set by the Pentagon. “But their concern is that they could
end up in a conflict that escalates in their near abroad, and they want
to be able to inflict damage in order to compel de-escalation on the
part of the U.S.” The
threat has grown as Russia has unveiled new families and classes of
cruise missiles. During the 1980s, Russia had prepared rudimentary land
attack cruise missiles that could hit targets about 1,600 miles away, in
an effort to saturate NATO’s front lines with explosions. But new
generations of cruise missiles have raised eyebrows even further at the
Pentagon, such as the air-launched AS-23A that first began development
in the 1990s, guided by the Russian alternative to GPS, that may have a
range of around 3,000 miles, enough to reach targets in North America
from well outside the early warning zone.
Even
subsonic cruise missiles could be fired from off the coast of North
America by Russia with little to no warning. The senior U.S. defense
official said that both Russia and China have been working on missile
programs that can strike critical infrastructure inside the United
States, including cruise missiles with intercontinental range.
The
nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office proposed putting in place
airborne and ground-based radars to form a perimeter along the coastal
United States and rely heavily on fighter interceptors to down
fast-traveling missiles. CSIS offers up a cluster of 10 over-the-horizon
radars, seeing far into the reaches of northern Canada, giving the
United States eyes that can see almost everywhere, backstopped by the
sensor towers—think cellphone towers laden with sensors to detect
incoming missiles.
“You
get three different layers of sensors and three different types of
interceptors,” Karako said. “If anything, we went too big.”
But
there’s a sign that there could start to be buy-in within Washington
for plans to better cover the country with sensors and shooters.
Pentagon budget documents indicate the new U.S. National Defense
Strategy, still on hold in the department, will highlight long-range
cruise missile threats from Russia. The Missile Defense Agency has
allotted nearly $14 million for cruise missile defense experiments.
What’s key is progress on controversial U.S. missile defenses in Guam,
known as Aegis Ashore, as China has tried to rapidly ramp up its
missiles designed to attack the island. The Pentagon is investing nearly
$200 million into the effort next year.
“What
we learn on Guam is also something that can be applied here,” Vice Adm.
Jon Hill, director of the Missile Defense Agency, said at an event
in May. “Because you’ve got to remember, Guam is really about the size
of Chicago, right? We’re defending the size of a very large city. So, I
think it’s very applicable to what we’ll do in the United States.”
Jack Detsch is Foreign Policy’s Pentagon and national security reporter. Twitter: @JackDetsch