In the past five years, Russia, China, and others have accelerated their development of hypersonic missiles to threaten U.S. forces in the homeland and abroad. The current Ballistic Missile Defense System, largely equipped to contend with legacy ballistic missile threats, must be adapted to this challenge. The same characteristics that make hypersonic missiles attractive may also hold the key to defeating them. This CSIS report argues how a new hypersonic defense architecture should exploit hypersonic weapons’ unique vulnerabilities and employ new capabilities, such as a space sensor layer, to secure critical nodes. These changes are not only necessary to mitigate the hypersonic threat but to defeat an emerging generation of maneuvering missiles and aerial threats.

A guide to defense systems analysis by experts who have worked on systems that range from air defense to space defense. The Department of Defense and the military continually grapple with complex scientific, engineering, and technological problems. Defense systems analysis offers a way to reach a clearer understanding of how to approach and think about complex problems. It guides analysts in defining the question, capturing previous work in the area, assessing the principal issues, and understanding how they are linked. The goal of defense systems analysis is not necessarily to find a particular solution but to provide a roadmap to a solution, or an understanding of the relative value of alternative solutions. In this book, experts in the field—all of them with more than twenty years of experience—offer insights, advice, and concrete examples to guide practitioners in the art of defense systems analysis. The book describes general issues in systems analysis and analysis protocols in specific defense areas. It offers a useful overview of the process, a discussion of different venues, and practical advice running a study and reporting its results. It discusses red teaming (the search for vulnerabilities that might be exploited by an adversary) and its complement, blue teaming (the search for solutions to known shortcomings). It describes real-world defense systems analysis for both traditional and nontraditional areas, including air defense and ballistic missile defense systems, bioterrorism defense, space warfare, and interplanetary communications. Perspectives on Defense Systems Analysis is a very readable resource for analysts and engineers in industry, government, and research.

The Patriot Air Defense System has been developed as a modular system with a high level of integrated software-driven functionality providing a broad range of inherent flexibility. The system has evolved from its initial, basic design which provided defense against the air breathing threat in complex countermeasure environments with a single Patriot missile type to the Patriot Advanced Capability 2 (PAC-2) which provides defense against a combination of the air breathing and tactical ballistic missile threats utilizing four missile types. The Patriot Air Defense System continues to evolve to the Patriot Advanced Capability 3 (PAC-3) configuration which incorporates radar and communication upgrades as well as the Lockheed Martin Vought Systems (LMVS) PAC-3 missile, a fifth missile type. As part of this capability, scheduled to be fielded in 1999, the Patriot Project Office (PPO) and the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) have contracted with Raytheon for the integration of the PAC-3 Missile Segment into the Patriot Air Defense System. The goal of this program is to achieve a balanced design that provides a fielded capability which maximizes the kill potential of the PAC-3 missile while maintaining overall performance of the Patriot System. The modular hardware design and flexible software architecture of the Patriot Air Defense System supports a system design which meets this goal.

Compiled from various sources, some still classified, and many of which have never previously been published, this book clearly portrays the development of the Russian air and ballistic missile defense systems. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union invested heavily in its air defense systems. As a result, Russia now possesses the most advanced air and ballistic missile defense systems in the world. Russian air defense systems are also highly proliferated and are currently in use by many countries. Since the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the USSR, it has become increasingly possible to study Russian air defense, but Russia is by no means an open book on defense-related subjects. Some information circulates in the media, but for the time being, air defense systems are still subject to a degree of speculation. Air and ballistic missile defense programs in the Soviet Union and Russia have a very long history. Soviet engineers started working on both programs in the 1950s, and by 1960 they had built the first successful systems able to intercept enemy aircraft and intermediate-range ballistic missiles. Current Russian air defense doctrine follows a layered multi-level approach providing in depth coverage from any aerial or ballistic missile attack. This layered system allows Russian air defense forces to create zones that can be very difficult to penetrate. The highest level of these defensive networks uses long-range systems providing air defense umbrellas potentially up to 500+ km. The second level includes medium-range systems like the S-350 and Buk variants (infamous for downing Malaysian Airline’s flight MH17 over the Ukraine in 2014). This medium-range level is intended to provide air defense zones which are also covered under the long-range systems but are more cost-effective in this envelope. The third level presents mobile short-range systems which are intended to provide extra protection for the long-range systems as well as stationary objects. These systems, along with highly mobile systems like the Buk are often also attached to ground forces formations such as armored and mechanized divisions and brigades. What are the abilities of these systems against NATO? President Putin emphasized the need to strengthen the country’s air defenses amid NATO’s military activities near Russia’s borders. One of the key new concept developments is counter-stealth detection and interception. The other is to counter future hypersonic missile threats. It is, as the author reveals, Russia that is leading the way in these races.

The Strategic Defense Initiative intensified study of defending America against nuclear missile attack, but even a perfect SDI would leave North America open to attack from bombers and cruise missiles. The neglected topic of continental air defense was the focus of a conference held at the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. This comprehensive occasional paper by physicist and CSIA fellow Arthur Charo, which grew out of the conference, lays out the technological prospects and problems for air defense in a manner accessible to expert and layperson alike. Co-published with the Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University.

In the 1950s, the United States Air Force led the way in building continental air defenses to protect the nation against bomber attack. By the end of that decade, the United States and Canada deployed a warning network of ground-based radars extending from the United States' southern borders to the arctic tundra, a fleet of airborne early-warning planes, naval radar picket ships, radar platforms (the Texas Towers) fastened to the ocean floor in the Atlantic Ocean, and a civilian corps of ground observers. Once warning of approaching enemy bombers had been received, the military forces of the United States and Canada were prepared to unleash against the invader an arsenal of weapons that included fighter-interceptors equipped with lethal air-to-air missiles, antiaircraft artillery, and short- and long-range surface-to-air missiles, some nu­ clear tipped. The whole system was coordinated through a technologically advanced, computer-oriented command and control system, the first of its kind ever deployed. The story of the rise of air defense in the United States after World War II is complex, and this volume does not presume to be a complete history of the subject. It focuses on the U.S. Air Force's predominant role in defense of the continental United States against manned bomber attacks. Although the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy, and the Canadian Air Force contributed resources to the mission, the U.S. Air Force had primary responsibility for research, development, and deployment of most of the systems and weapons. The outstanding exception was antiaircraft artillery, the province of the U.S. Army. In some respects, the Army can be said to have fielded a complementary air defense system separate from that of the Air Force. This book, however, examines the Army's part in the mission only as it concerns roles and missions controversies with the Air Force. The volume begins with the U.S. Army Air Service's involvement with air defense in World War I and traces the story through to the late 1950s and early 1960s. At that time, the intercontinental ballistic missile supplanted the bomber as the most dangerous long-range threat to North America, precipitating a dramatic decline in bomber defenses over the next two decades. A number of important themes emerge: the development of technology, particularly for command, control, and communications systems; roles and missions debates; interpretations and analysis of the threat; and Air Force theories and approaches to offensive and defensive strategic warfare. The last is by far the most pervasive theme.