https://amgreatness.com/2019/11/06/the-pentagon-prudence-and-missile-defense/
While the allure of new technology to keep the country safe is understandable, it cannot and should not be pursued in a way that leaves the homeland open to direct threats.
Earlier this year, the U.S. military acknowledged that North Korean intercontinental ballistic missiles can now hit targets anywhere in the continental United States. Bizarrely, the Pentagon has responded by cutting the one program that could stop them.
The Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) program, which has existed since the early 2000s, is designed to protect the homeland from an intercontinental missile (ICBM) attack. Or, in other words, to act as the last line of defense in the event of nuclear war.
It does this by shooting ICBMs out of the sky. The GMD, which is made up of 64 ground-based launchers, sends out “kill vehicles” which use sensors, lasers, and rocket thrusters to track and catch ICBMs, destroying them before they hit the earth.
To most people it sounds like the stuff of “Star Wars” novels, but, increasingly, it is a necessary tool in a constantly changing, missile-heavy world. Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran either possess nuclear missiles, or are working hard to acquire them—to say nothing of other rogue nations and failed states doing the same.
This makes the Pentagon’s recent decision to terminate the program all the more confusing.
That the GMD has long been in need of an update is without question. Just one percent of the Pentagon’s mammoth budget goes toward missile defense—and of that one percent, a significant portion is spent overseas, defending U.S. forces and allies. Our “kill vehicles”—the central component of the GMD system, which take out incoming missiles—have been in need of a reboot for quite some time.
The Pentagon was working steadily toward a re-design of the program, before pausing it in May, and then outright canceling it in August.