US Missile Defence Update

Missile Defence Needs Networking

A report out this morning from the US National Academy of Sciences calls on the nation’s Missile Defense Agency to take a new tack on the age-old problem of stopping ballistic missiles before they fall on the homeland.
The report authors say it is time to abandon airborne lasers and super-fast interceptors that can catch a missile in its vulnerable boost phase (when it is attached to its rocket). Instead, the programme needs to network existing technologies together so that they can actually hit something travelling through the air.
The report backs up a 2003 study by the American Physical Society that essentially ruled out boost-phase technologies. In fact, the United States has been backing away from boost-phase-intercept technology, and it essentially ended its two main programmes in 2010.
Nevertheless, the idea “keeps coming up like a bad penny every spring”, says David Montague, a consultant and former head of Lockheed Martin’s missile systems division, who co-chaired the committee. Congressional supporters continue to believe that a system to catch warheads when they’re still attached to their rockets is the way to go.

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