CSBA suggests shift in mindset for America’s air and missile defense programs

Mark Gunzinger and Bryan Clark from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) said in a new report that the Pentagon had been relying on a small number of long-range interceptors to defeat enemy guided missiles, such an approach is flawed as countries such as China, Iran, Russia and North Korea now possess large number of precision guided weapons that could overwhelm the defenses of U.S. forces, reducing America’s ability to project power.

Instead, the authors suggest that U.S. forces rely on medium-range interceptors, gun-launched guided projectiles, and non-kinetic defenses such as electronic warfare and directed energy (DE) weapons to defeat those salvos of attacks.