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Axios
5 days ago
- Politics
- Axios
Ukraine's "Spiderweb" drone assault is a wake-up call for all
Ukraine on Sunday targeted Russian air bases as far from the front lines as Siberia using cheap, explosive drones sprung from semi-trucks. If you didn't already appreciate the utility and consequence of small unmanned aerial vehicles, you should now. The big picture: Just as the adoption of the Minié ball made the Civil War far deadlier, the proliferation of inexpensive drones is making military assets everywhere, including in the U.S., more vulnerable. Threat level: The coordinated "Spiderweb" attack — about a year and a half in the making, employing 117 drones across multiple time zones — has global implications. Among them: The cost curve cannot be ignored. Prized, nuclear-capable bombers doomed by tools that can be slapped together in a trench or garage? Do the math. A lack of air defenses and hardened shelters is foolish at best, negligent at worst. Tom Karako, an expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, described the moment as "a new missile age" in which "everybody has to look up." Almost everything is in range. If Ukrainian operatives can go undetected for months and sneak so close to Russian perimeters while locked and loaded, so too can China. Panic a few years ago over land grabs near American installations now feels prescient. Shipping container subterfuge is the real deal. The Gravehawk, developed by the U.K. and Denmark, amounts to overhead protections in a box. Meanwhile, the 2024 China Military Power Report warned Beijing may be a building a "launcher that can fit inside a standard commercial shipping container for covert employment of" YJ-18 missiles aboard merchant ships. What they're saying: "The paradigm shift we're witnessing isn't just about drones, it's about the fundamental collapse of traditional defense and security thinking," Aaditya Devarakonda, the CEO of Dedrone by Axon, told Axios. "The real challenge isn't just detecting these threats; it's accepting that we're now operating in an environment where attackers can spend hundreds to destroy billions of dollars of equipment," he said. "Our security and response systems need to match that speed and asymmetry." My thought bubble: You can bet the farm the next time a reporter asks about lessons learned from the Russia-Ukraine war, some military official name-drops Spiderweb. Zoom out: Ukraine's security service, the SBU, said Russian wreckage totaled $7 billion. Western analysts are poring over satellite imagery to confirm the degree of destruction. Forty-one aircraft were hit, according to the service's initial public tally. Targets included A-50, Tu-95, Tu-22M3 and Tu-160 warplanes. Russia has very few A-50 surveillance aircraft still in use; losing even one would be a major blow. Disabling strategic bombers also hampers the country's nuclear capabilities. "This puts to bed the 'well Ukraine is a very specific use case' argument," Dan Magy, CEO of California-based Firestorm Labs, told Axios. "Because of the size and cost of drones, creativity can be unconstrained when it comes to disruptive missions." Yes, but: Russia can still very much reach out and punch Ukraine in the mouth. Moscow has plenty of ballistic missiles and variants of the Iranian Shahed UAV at its disposal. The bottom line: Ukraine's operation was "very impressive from a military-science perspective," George Barros, the Russia team lead at the Institute for the Study of War, said in an interview.
Axios
09-04-2025
- Business
- Axios
Army inks potential $4.2 billion deal for intel-gathering blimps
The future, chock-full of super-stealth warplanes, blinding-fast missiles and network-crippling hacks, will also feature aerostats — specialty blimps, for the uninitiated. Why it matters: For all the hoopla bleeding-edge technologies generate, it can be the simplest tools that prove most effective and long-standing. Plus, the juxtaposition is absolutely wild. Driving the news: The U.S. Army could spend as much as $4.2 billion over the next 10 years to sustain and upgrade its aerostat arsenal, according to a contract announced April 3. Ten companies, including Leidos, Qinetiq and TCOM, will compete for work overseen by the service's intelligence, electronic warfare and sensors shop, PEO IEW&S. Foreign military sales could also happen across European and Central commands. Poland last year announced a $1 billion arrangement. How it works: The Army has long deployed and experimented with aerostats and lighter-than-air systems; they contribute to communications relay, jamming, shot-spotting and more. One example, the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System, made headlines a decade ago when it broke free of its mooring in Maryland and floated into Pennsylvania. "Balloons are one of the very first intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities used in air warfare," Brandon Pollachek, a PEO IEW&S spokesperson, told Axios. Today's aerostats "provide an essential and persistent 24/7 eye in the sky," he said. They're also "extremely cost-effective." (A Qinetiq spokesperson made the same point when asked about the contract.) My thought bubble: These beacons of U.S. presence in the Middle East are being modernized with China and Russia in mind — like all things Pentagon. The bottom line: "The United States of America needs to get over our JLENS problem, and we need to do it fast. There's just too much utility to these kind of platforms," Tom Karako, an expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in an interview.
Yahoo
29-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
What to know about Trump's US Iron Dome missile defense plan
President Trump on Monday night signed an executive order to create a next-generation missile defense shield, which the White House referred to as the 'Iron Dome for America' after Israel's missile defense system. The plan faces questions, including the cost and feasibility of deploying a shield across the entire continental United States. But there are also hopes it could help the nation address long-standing concerns about homeland security. Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, gave a nod to the Trump proposal on several fronts: its prioritization of speed, focus on adversaries like Russia and its potential to address a multiplicity of missile threats. 'The end here is that there is [a] gratifying prioritization of the problem. So that's good,' he said. 'It deserves to be a White House priority.' It's unclear how expensive the plan will be, or how long it will take to put it together. Trump's order calls for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to submit an implementation plan within 60 days. Karako said missile defense may take years to upgrade because it involves a range of systems. But he insisted the technology can be rolled out to meet demand. 'A lot of technology has now been improved operationally,' he said. Republicans praised the plan. 'I'm thrilled to see President Trump prioritize the modernization and expansion of U.S. missile defense,' said Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), chair of the House Armed Services Committee, in a statement. 'President Trump's order makes it clear our missile defenses will be oriented to defend against all threats from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries.' Trump asked Hegseth to review ways to increase missile defense technology development with other countries, boost theater missile defenses of forward-deployed U.S. troops and increase American provisions of missile defense capabilities to allies. Trump wants an assessment of the strategic missile threat to the U.S. and a specific set of locations to defend against an attack from nuclear adversaries, and he called for a funding plan before finalization of the fiscal 2026 budget proposal. In the executive order, Trump lamented that the Reagan administration's Strategic Defense Initiative to protect against intercontinental ballistic missiles ended up being shuttered. 'The threat of attack by ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles, and other advanced aerial attacks, remains the most catastrophic threat facing the United States,' the order reads. 'Over the past 40 years, rather than lessening, the threat from next-generation strategic weapons has become more intense and complex with the development by peer and near-peer adversaries of next-generation delivery systems and their own homeland integrated air and missile defense capabilities.' Trump said the shield will defend against 'ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries,' and that he wants to take out targets 'prior to launch and in the boost phase,' while increasing the development or deployment of interceptors and sensors. He also called for the exploration of nonkinetic capabilities to defend against threats and to increase supply chains to procure needed materials. 'We protect other countries, but we don't protect ourself,' Trump said at the House GOP retreat on Monday. 'The United States is entitled to that.' Trump also said the technology was now there to meet the requirements for a large missile defense shield. There are technologies that the U.S. has yet to field that could greatly expand defense capabilities: interceptors to take out targets in space or within the boost phase of flight, along with nonkinetic options like directed energy, or lasers, and high-power microwaves. Karako said space-based interceptors were a crucial component for the future and not 'as wild as it may sound.' 'I think we are going to get there as a country,' he said. 'There's a logical necessity, almost as an implication of space becoming a warfighting domain.' Still, the U.S. has yet to field such technologies, which could take years to develop. Trump promised an Iron Dome system during his campaign, saying he would make 'the greatest dome of them all' to defend against foreign threats. Israel's Iron Dome is meant to take out short-range rockets and artillery fired from up to 43 miles away, but the U.S. does not face threats across the border like Israel, a small country in the Middle East. The U.S. has invested in Ground-Based Interceptors (GBI), which are designed to take out long-range threats like ballistic missiles. Today, there are 44 GBIs, with 40 at Fort Greely, Ala., and four at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. It's unclear how Trump plans to upgrade the GBI system, and whether he plans to add other defense architectures to them. Robert Soofer, who leads the nuclear strategy project at the Atlantic Council, wrote in a report earlier this month that an updated shield was needed because threats are growing against the U.S. from hostile, nuclear-armed adversaries such as North Korea, China and Russia. 'The missile threat to the homeland is real and growing and, if left unaddressed, could seriously undermine U.S. grand strategy and the very basis of national defense strategy,' Soofer wrote. Soofer argued that the objective was not to create an 'impregnable missile defense shield' but to establish 'sufficient defenses to counter adversary missile threats of coercion' and protect nuclear retaliatory forces. Soofer recommended a layered missile defense system across land, sea and space, in which there would be multiple integrated systems that can take out targets. He said GBIs were never meant to stand alone and called for the inclusion of SM-3 block IIA missiles and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-ballistic missile system. 'When viewed from the attacker's perspective, a layered missile defense system presents a very difficult challenge that cannot be solved simply with increased numbers,' he wrote. But some critics of boosting homeland defense have raised concerns before about fueling an arms race, as it remains unclear how adversaries will respond to Trump's defense buildup. Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) said 'having a robust, layered missile defense system makes me feel more safe and secure today, and buying a few more interceptors would probably make me feel a little bit more comfortable tomorrow.' 'But when I think about the world we will leave to my 2- and 4-year-old daughters, I am less sure,' he said in a 2023 hearing. 'How will expanding U.S. missile defense today impact strategic stability tomorrow? We are already in an arms race. Will it make our world more safe?' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
29-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump's missile shield marks shift in homeland defense strategy
President Donald Trump's executive order to develop a next-generation homeland missile defense shield marks a shift in the United States' long-standing homeland missile defense strategy, which has focused on threats from rogue nations like North Korea and Iran rather than from peer adversaries like China or Russia. The order — titled 'The Iron Dome For America' in a nod to the successful, lowest tier of Israel's multilayered air defense system of the same name — also addresses a broader array of complex threats from hypersonic weapons to cruise missiles. Further, the order revives the pursuit of space-based interceptors for missile defense, a concept that has been scrapped multiple times in recent history due to technological challenges and high costs associated with the development. The executive order requires the defense secretary to submit an architecture design, outline requirements and develop an implementation plan for the next-generation missile defense shield within 60 days of its signing. 'The foundation of an Iron Dome for America needs to be air- and cruise-missile defense, and then we work our way up from there,' Tom Karako, a missile-defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Defense News. 'Those are the gaps that we're most vulnerable with and that we need to fill and work on filling most urgently. … It's not just the high-end hypersonic stuff or the ICBMs, it's all this other stuff.' The Pentagon has worked for years, including in Trump's first term, trying to come up with a plan to defend the U.S. homeland from cruise missiles. Officials were said to be closing in on a design framework for the mission as the Defense Department was formulating its fiscal 2024 budget request, yet the work appeared to have lost some traction in favor of other defense priorities. Land-attack cruise missiles can be launched from the air, ground or sea, and because they fly at low altitudes under powered flight it is difficult for radars to detect them. Ballistic missiles, on the other hand, can be detected much earlier, which allows more time to track, decide and act on a threat. Meanwhile, for cruise missiles, decision-makers may have only a couple of minutes to respond, and salvos of cruise missiles can attack from different directions, complicating the approach to defeating the threat. Currently, the United States' homeland missile defense posture consists of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense System. The system, developed to counter intercontinental ballistic missile attacks aimed at the continental U.S. from North Korea and Iran, is made up of ground-based interceptors primarily in Alaska, with a few silos at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The Missile Defense Agency is developing a new interceptor capable of addressing more complex threats, which will ultimately replace the current interceptors. Additionally, the defensive architecture includes radars positioned in places like Clear, Alaska, and at sea in the Pacific, and a constellation of space-based detection capabilities is also in development. While the U.S. has focused on ballistic missile defense of the homeland from rogue states, near-peer adversaries Russia and China have made investments over several decades to develop cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons. The 2019 Missile Defense Review highlighted the need to focus on near-peer cruise missiles and directed the Pentagon to recommend an organization to have acquisition authority of cruise missile defense for the homeland. The designation requirement also appeared in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act. Much of the architecture would include capabilities already well under development, including the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor layer, solutions to address threats prior to launch and in the early 'boost' phase of flight, and nonkinetic and kinetic defeat capabilities for advanced threats. Yet, the order renews a push made in Trump's first administration to develop and deploy 'proliferated space-based interceptors capable of boost-phase intercept,' the order states. The concept for space-based interceptors to take out missiles launched from the earth was first championed in the Reagan administration. The fiscal 2018 National Defense Authorization Act required the MDA director to establish a space test bed to conduct research on an intercept layer in space, but Congress agreed to repeal the requirement in the fiscal 2020 policy bill after Trump's Missile Defense Review released in 2019 did not include investment in the pursuit. Instead, the Pentagon planned to launch a study, lasting potentially six months, to look into the most promising technologies and come up with estimates for cost and time. The Pentagon would then consider the findings before choosing whether to move forward. Following that, the MDA did little to fund research and development in the space-based interceptor arena in its FY20 budget, aside from allocating less than $15 million toward feasibility studies. Congress turned its focus to backing the budget for a space-based sensor layer, now in development and making progress toward an ability to track complex threats like hypersonic missiles that can fly under ground-based sensor radars. Putting interceptors in space has been controversial for myriad reasons, including its technological feasibility to the likelihood of high development costs to the idea that it could trigger an arms race in space. Developing space-based interceptors is difficult, Karako said. 'Furthermore, there are a number of threats that space-based interceptors are not useful against, like cruise missiles, maybe hypersonic stuff,' he said. Those threats would fly outside of the range of a space-based interceptor, closer to the earth's surface. 'The implications of what it means to treat space as a warfighting domain are just beginning to sink in,' he said. 'We are now at the advent of a new national conversation about space-based interceptors.'
The Hill
29-01-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
What to know about Trump's US Iron Dome missile defense plan
President Trump on Monday night signed an executive order to create a next-generation missile defense shield, which the White House referred to as the 'Iron Dome for America' after Israel's missile defense system. The plan faces questions, including the cost and feasibility of deploying a shield across the entire continental United States. But there are also hopes it could help the nation address long-standing concerns about homeland security. Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, gave a nod to the Trump proposal on several fronts: its prioritization of speed, focus on adversaries like Russia and its potential to address a multiplicity of missile threats. 'The end here is that there is [a] gratifying prioritization of the problem. So that's good,' he said. 'It deserves to be a White House priority.' It's unclear how expensive the plan will be, or how long it will take to put it together. Trump's order calls for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to submit an implementation plan within 60 days. Karako said missile defense may take years to upgrade because it involves a range of systems. But he insisted the technology can be rolled out to meet demand. 'A lot of technology has now been improved operationally,' he said. Republicans praised the plan. 'I'm thrilled to see President Trump prioritize the modernization and expansion of U.S. missile defense,' said Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), chair of the House Armed Services Committee, in a statement. 'President Trump's order makes it clear our missile defenses will be oriented to defend against all threats from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries.' Trump asked Hegseth to review ways to increase missile defense technology development with other countries, boost theater missile defenses of forward-deployed U.S. troops and increase American provisions of missile defense capabilities to allies. Trump wants an assessment of the strategic missile threat to the U.S. and a specific set of locations to defend against an attack from nuclear adversaries, and he called for a funding plan before finalization of the fiscal 2026 budget proposal. In the executive order, Trump lamented that the Reagan administration's Strategic Defense Initiative to protect against intercontinental ballistic missiles ended up being shuttered. 'The threat of attack by ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles, and other advanced aerial attacks, remains the most catastrophic threat facing the United States,' the order reads. 'Over the past 40 years, rather than lessening, the threat from next-generation strategic weapons has become more intense and complex with the development by peer and near-peer adversaries of next-generation delivery systems and their own homeland integrated air and missile defense capabilities.' Trump said the shield will defend against 'ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles, and other next-generation aerial attacks from peer, near-peer, and rogue adversaries,' and that he wants to take out targets 'prior to launch and in the boost phase,' while increasing the development or deployment of interceptors and sensors. He also called for the exploration of nonkinetic capabilities to defend against threats and to increase supply chains to procure needed materials. 'We protect other countries, but we don't protect ourself,' Trump said at the House GOP retreat on Monday. 'The United States is entitled to that.' Trump also said the technology was now there to meet the requirements for a large missile defense shield. There are technologies that the U.S. has yet to field that could greatly expand defense capabilities: interceptors to take out targets in space or within the boost phase of flight, along with nonkinetic options like directed energy, or lasers, and high-power microwaves. Karako said space-based interceptors were a crucial component for the future and not 'as wild as it may sound.' 'I think we are going to get there as a country,' he said. 'There's a logical necessity, almost as an implication of space becoming a warfighting domain.' Still, the U.S. has yet to field such technologies, which could take years to develop. Trump promised an Iron Dome system during his campaign, saying he would make 'the greatest dome of them all' to defend against foreign threats. Israel's Iron Dome is meant to take out short-range rockets and artillery fired from up to 43 miles away, but the U.S. does not face threats across the border like Israel, a small country in the Middle East. The U.S. has invested in Ground-Based Interceptors (GBI), which are designed to take out long-range threats like ballistic missiles. Today, there are 44 GBIs, with 40 at Fort Greely, Ala., and four at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. It's unclear how Trump plans to upgrade the GBI system, and whether he plans to add other defense architectures to them. Robert Soofer, who leads the nuclear strategy project at the Atlantic Council, wrote in a report earlier this month that an updated shield was needed because threats are growing against the U.S. from hostile, nuclear-armed adversaries such as North Korea, China and Russia. 'The missile threat to the homeland is real and growing and, if left unaddressed, could seriously undermine U.S. grand strategy and the very basis of national defense strategy,' Soofer wrote. Soofer argued that the objective was not to create an 'impregnable missile defense shield' but to establish 'sufficient defenses to counter adversary missile threats of coercion' and protect nuclear retaliatory forces. Soofer recommended a layered missile defense system across land, sea and space, in which there would be multiple integrated systems that can take out targets. He said GBIs were never meant to stand alone and called for the inclusion of SM-3 block IIA missiles and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-ballistic missile system. 'When viewed from the attacker's perspective, a layered missile defense system presents a very difficult challenge that cannot be solved simply with increased numbers,' he wrote. But some critics of boosting homeland defense have raised concerns before about fueling an arms race, as it remains unclear how adversaries will respond to Trump's defense buildup. Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) said 'having a robust, layered missile defense system makes me feel more safe and secure today, and buying a few more interceptors would probably make me feel a little bit more comfortable tomorrow.' 'But when I think about the world we will leave to my 2- and 4-year-old daughters, I am less sure,' he said in a 2023 hearing. 'How will expanding U.S. missile defense today impact strategic stability tomorrow? We are already in an arms race. Will it make our world more safe?'
