President Donald Trump threatened North Korea “with fire and fury like the world has never seen” on Tuesday after reports suggested the communist country has mastered one of the final hurdles to being able to strike the United States with a nuclear missile.
As countries in Europe look to missile defense as a means for deterrence and response amid threats of insurgency, system type and investment amount vary – with the Eastern Flank and other countries bordering Russia among the big spenders.
The Pentagon’s Ballistic Missile Defense Review is underway and lawmakers, through both the House and Senate defense policy bills, are signalling the direction they want to go when it comes to developing the future defense architecture against both regional and homeland missile threats.
In their version of the 2018 defense policy bill, House lawmakers are putting pressure on the Army, to figure out a path forward to acquire a radar for the service’s future Integrated Air and Missile Defense System by threatening to withhold funds or transfer the responsibility to the Missile Defense Agency if progress isn’t made. But the White House is opposed to the pressure, objecting to the bill’s provision in its Statement of Administration Policy last month.
As Europe refocuses its efforts on deterrence, technology efforts and joint initiatives become even more dire. Industry has a key seat at the table for such efforts. Executive Editor Jill Aitoro spoke to Chris Lombardi, vice president for Raytheon International about regional priorities as well as industry’s role.
MDA was originally designed to do research on new missile defense capabilities, but as time went on and systems such as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile defense system and the Navy’s Standard Missile entered service, the agency found itself focusing on sustaining operative systems over designing new ones.
Israel is working with state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries and other firms to evaluate technologies needed to improve the ability to track, target and ultimately destroy threats.