Rethink Navy Ballistic Missile Defense
The traditional ballistic missile defense mission is too narrow and operationally limiting.
By Commander L. Paul James, U.S. Navy (Retired)
October 2019
Last June, Defense News broke a story that the Navy was through with ballistic missile defense (BMD) patrols. This conclusion was based on comments made by then-Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral John Richardson during the U.S. Naval War College’s 2018 Current Strategy Forum. There, he expressed frustration with committing “six multimission, very sophisticated, dynamic cruisers and destroyers†to “a tiny box, defending land.â€1 Missing from this story, however, was his qualifying statement, “I want to get out of the long-term missile defense business and move to dynamic missile defense.†In this assessment, the CNO is on the mark. It is time the Navy gets out of the business of defending static land assets and reconsiders how ship-based BMD capabilities can best contribute to countering the missile threat.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2019/october/rethink-navy-ballistic-missile-defense
