Neither Israel nor US has the capacity to counter Iran’s new cruise missile

 

 

The new Hoveizeh cruise missile with a range of 1,350km was tested on Saturday, Feb. 2, as Iran’s answer to the successful Israeli-US Arrow-3 missile test on Jan. 22, DEBKAfile’s military sources report.

Star Wars? Pentagon Wants to Deploy Space-Based Missiles to Counter Enemy Hypersonic Weapons

Note: Video available on website.

 

CBN News has learned the Department of Defense is looking into deploying space-based missiles and sensors to bring down high-speed hypersonic missile attacks from China and Russia.

Michael Griffin, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, said a network of 1,000 missile interceptors deployed on satellite launchers could be built for $20 billion.

China Just Tested Several Dozen Hypersonic Missiles The US Can’t Defend Against

 

China has launched ahead of the United States with “several dozen successful hypersonic missile tests that Washington cannot ignore,” Missile Defense Agency commander Lieutenant General Samuel Greaves warned Tuesday.

“The Chinese have now done several dozen successful hypersonic (missile) tests… we just cannot (ignore),” Greaves briefed a group of government officials held by the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance.

Under Secretary of Defense for Management and Engineering Michael Griffin also acknowledged that China had alarmingly carried out dozens of successful hypersonic missile tests and warned that Russia was not far behind the Chinese in hypersonic missile development.

Air Force Doubles Down on Hypersonic Weapons Development with 2nd Contract

High Speed Strike Weapon (Photo courtesy of Lockheed Martin)

 

The U.S. Air Force has awarded a second contract to develop a new hypersonic weapon that would move five times the speed of sound.

The service on Monday awarded Lockheed Martin Corp. a contract — not to exceed $480 million — to begin designing a second hypersonic prototype, according to a release.

“We are going to go fast and leverage the best technology available to get hypersonic capability to the warfighter as soon as possible,” said Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson.

“It’s Real, It’s Coming, It’s A Matter Of Time” – US General Warns Of Hypersonic Attack

 

Air Force Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves, director of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), said he has the full support of Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Michael Griffin to advance the development of space-based sensors that would defend the nation from hypersonic attacks by America’s adversaries.

The Pentagon believes funding will be in place next year to begin the constellation of missile-surveillance satellites amid new warnings of hypersonic weapons being tested and deployed Russia and China.

Why is America still stuck with token missile defense?

The covers of silos housing ground-based interceptor missiles at the Fort Greely missile defense complex in Fort Greely, Alaska, on April 26, 2018. Photo: Reuters/Mark Meyer

 

The answer harks back to a 1972 treaty, and despite that agreement expiring years ago, defense experts and politicians failed to move with the times

The short answer: the anti-defense mentality of late 1960s politicians and academics, embodied in the spirit and main provisions of the 1972 US-Soviet anti-ballistic defense missile treaty, remains embedded in the US bureaucracy, our military and defense industry.

That spirit is the heart of official US policy: we must do nothing, develop or research anything, that poses obstacles to missiles from Russia or China striking America.

Pentagon: Missile threats increasing

(Photo by: Jacquelyn Martin) John Rood, undersecretary of defense for policy, told lawmakers that the threat posed by advanced missiles is increasing. (Associated Press/File)

 

Senior Pentagon and military officials this week outlined the growing array of missile threats facing the United States from China, Russia and other states, including maneuvering hypersonic weapons.

John Rood, undersecretary of defense for policy, told a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing that the threat posed by advanced missiles is increasing.

“The United States, allies and partners confront a security environment that is more complex and volatile than any we have experienced in recent memory,” Mr. Rood told the subcommittee on strategic forces, in a likely preview of the Pentagon’s forthcoming Ballistic Missile Review, a major study that will highlight missile threats and the Trump administration’s plan for a multilayered missile defense network to counter them.

Adversaries including China, Russia, North Korea and Iran are expanding their missile forces in three ways, Mr. Rood said. They include increasing the capabilities of current missile forces; adding new and unprecedented types of missiles to their arsenals; and better integrating missiles into foreign states’ use of coercive threats, military exercises and war planning.

Exclusive: Pentagon evaluating U.S. West Coast missile defense sites – officials

FILE PHOTO: A Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptor is launched during a successful intercept test, in this undated handout photo provided by the U.S. Department of Defense, Missile Defense Agency. U.S. Department of Defense, Missile Defense Agency/Handout via Reuters/File Photo

 

SIMI VALLEY, Calif (Reuters) – The U.S. agency tasked with protecting the country from missile attacks is scouting the West Coast for places to deploy new anti-missile defenses, two Congressmen said on Saturday, as North Korea’s missile tests raise concerns about how the United States would defend itself from an attack.

West Coast defenses would likely include Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-ballistic missiles, similar to those deployed in South Korea to protect against a potential North Korean attack.

The accelerated pace of North Korea’s ballistic missile testing program in 2017 and the likelihood the North Korean military could hit the U.S. mainland with a nuclear payload in the next few years has raised the pressure on the United States government to build-up missile defenses.

China Reveals Images of New Hypersonic Strike Aircraft

 

Ultra high-speed vehicles shown for first time on state-run television

China has disclosed the first images of secret hypersonic strike aircraft that are being developed to deliver nuclear warheads through U.S. missile defenses. State-run CCTV on Oct. 8 broadcast images of four different vehicles or missiles that U.S. intelligence agencies believe are mockups of hypersonic strike vehicles, including one known as DF-ZF.

It is the first time images of the hypersonic aircraft were made public.

China’s Great Leap in space warfare creates huge new threat

People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force fighter pilots pose at the Jiuquan space base, in Gansu province. Photo: China Out / AFP

 

China is building an array of high-technology space arms – anti-satellite missiles, lasers, GPS jammers and killer satellites – that Beijing says will give its military strategic advantage in a future conflict with the United States.

The People’s Liberation Army now has the capability of attacking, destroying or disrupting the 500 US satellites circling the earth at heights of between 1,200 miles and 22,000 miles, according to a new study by a US think tank, the National Institute for Public Policy.

The report, on “Foreign Space Capabilities,” also reveals that China’s military has discussed plans for using space detonations of nuclear weapons to create electronics-killing Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attacks against orbiting satellites used by militaries for precision weapons targeting, navigation and communications.

Pentagon Accelerates Work on Multi-Warhead Interceptor

Artist’s conception of the Multi-Object Kill Vehicle deploying to attack an incoming missile.

 

Officials won’t say it’s because of North Korea. But experts say Pyongyang’s planned ICBMs will almost certainly release decoys to cloak their nukes.

The Missile Defense Agency, or MDA, is accelerating the development of an interceptor that can take down several incoming warheads — or one warhead and several decoys — simultaneously. While MDA officials say the move is not a response to any specific threat, one prominent defense watcher notes that North Korea is likely working hard on missiles that can fire decoys to confuse interceptors.

Inside the Ring: Pentagon Studies Ways to Counter Hypersonic Missile Threat from China, Russia

Navy Phoenix missiles like this one may be used to acquire hypersonic flight test data. (NASA)

 

The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency has launched a study of innovative ways to counter advanced missile threats such as ultra-high-speed maneuvering hypersonic missiles.

“MDA understands the emerging threat posed by hypersonic glide vehicle and maneuvering ballistic missile warheads and is evaluating programs and technologies to address this threat,” MDA spokesman Chris Johnson told Inside the Ring.

The agency recently released a request for information that will seek to identify weapon concepts for defense against future advanced threats such as hypersonics, he said. The responses are due Friday and will be used to develop an “analysis of alternatives” planned for 2017.

Inside the Ring: James Syring, missile defense chief, seeks laser funding to counter China, Russia

The gutting of the U.S. military by the Obama administration has allowed for Russia and China to out-gun America. We’re in the phase right now where America is losing its supremacy. Budget cuts have seriously degraded any chance of modernization and the little funding that is allowed goes towards programs such as this are not sufficient. You can’t make mistakes like this, that are so grave to the national security of America, by accident.

 

The U.S. is moving to counter Chinese and Russian hypersonic strike vehicles using lasers, the director of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency revealed last week.

But Vice Adm. James Syring told a House Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces hearing that he lacks the funding to counter hypersonic missile threats, but that money has been requested in the defense authorization bill to deal with the threat.

“I’ve asked for $23 million to begin a low-power laser demonstrator this year to demonstrate the feasibility by 2021,” the three-star admiral said.

Critics say the Missile Defense Agency has been remiss by not beginning work earlier in countering future Chinese and Russia high-speed maneuvering strike vehicles. The relatively low funding and long lead time for a demonstration of a laser against a hypersonic strike vehicle are not likely to address the growing threat of hypersonic missiles.

Admiral: China Launching Cyber Attacks on Missile Defense Nets ‘Every Day’

Chinese soldiers browse online news on desktop computers at a garrison of the PLA / AP

 

Cyber threat comparable to Iranian, North Korean missile danger

Chinese military hackers are conducting cyber attacks on the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency networks on a daily basis and will soon shift to hacking into networks of missile defense contractors, the admiral in charge of the agency told Congress on Thursday.

Vice Adm. James D. Syring, the MDA chief who is in charge of building multi-billion dollar anti-missile defenses, told a House hearing that while his networks are successfully fighting off the cyber attacks, missile defense contractors need to improve their network security.

Deficiencies In Missile Defense System Put US Homeland At Risk, Audit Says

Concerns about failures to properly improve the accuracy and effectiveness of the Missile Defense Agency’s (MDA) ground-based missile interceptors have been raised in a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit report at a time when nations across the globe — including China, Russia and North Korea — are developing ballistic missile capabilities.

The GAO audit details three separate flight tests of the GMD’s Capability Enhancement I (CE-I) interceptor and the upgraded version called the Capability Enhancement II (CE-II) in which both interceptor designs had issues with their guidance systems.

The CE-I and CE-II are ground-based exoatmospheric kill vehicles are engineered to intercept incoming ballistic missiles outside of the Earth’s atmosphere.