Missile defense

Trump’s New Missile Policy Relies Heavily on Largely Unproven Technologies


President Donald Trump took to a Pentagon podium on Thursday to paint a picture of a gathering storm — a not-too-distant storm of long-range, defense-evading enemy missiles.

“All over, foreign adversaries, competitors, and rogue regimes are steadily enhancing their missile arsenals…Their arsenals are getting bigger and stronger,” Trump said. “They’re increasing their lethal strike capabilities, and they’re focused on developing long-range missiles that could reach targets within the United States.”

It’s a real problem. Arms watchers have observed China, Russia, and North Korea rapidly developing new missile capabilities. The Trump administration’s newly unveiled policy solution to this problem, embodied in the Missile Defense Review released Thursday, is a crash effort to develop tech and hardware solutions that are either less than perfect or so new and experimental as to be almost speculative.

The new missile-defense strategy has two main emphases that separate it from its predecessor, laid out in the 2010 Ballistic Missile Defense Review. The first is on defending the American homeland; the second is on defeating hypersonic and other kinds of new and emerging types of missiles.