Navy Arleigh Burke–class guided missile destroyer, USS John Finn, launched an SM-3 Block IIA interceptor-a missile designed to quickly ascend from the earth’s surface and kinetically strike ballistic missile reentry vehicles outside of the earth’s atmosphere, using what is known as hit-to-kill technology. missile defense objective is to “ensure that we can detect and destroy any missile launched against the United States-anywhere, anytime, anyplace.” The president’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, similarly cited China as “one of the reasons why we’re looking at strengthening our national missile defense system here in the United States.” What Was Tested President Donald Trump remarked during the launch of the MDR that the core U.S. homeland missile defense efforts undermine their strategic nuclear deterrents.Īnkit Panda is the Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Missile Defense Review (MDR) notes that the United States “relies on deterrence” (as opposed to missile defense) to protect the homeland against “Russian and Chinese intercontinental ballistic missile threats.” But officials in both countries have expressed concerns that U.S. These concerns have intensified since the United States in 2002 withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Because Iran does not currently possess an ICBM capability, the nominal threat today concerns North Korea, which has conducted three ICBM tests involving two separate missile designs.īeyond North Korea, however, Russia and China have long expressed concerns that the United States seeks to counter their capacity to use ICBMs against it. Earlier post–Cold War efforts focused on a wider range of potential threats.

homeland missile defense efforts have been scoped around defending the country from a “limited” ballistic missile threat from North Korea and Iran.

The consequences for strategic stability and future arms control are serious. interceptor type to exhibit this capability. With this milestone, the SM-3 Block IIA becomes only the second U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has confirmed that, for the first time, a Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) Block IIA interceptor successfully destroyed an intercontinental-range ballistic missile (ICBM) target in a test.

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