Flaws Found U.S Missile Defense Strategy

According to a report released on Tuesday, the U.S’ missile defense strategy was lacking in protection from long-range ballistic missiles, even calling it “fragile”. The National Research Council criticized President Obama’s missile defense strategy, which mainly focuses on fending short-range missiles entering Europe from Iran. “For too long, the U.S. has been committed to expensive missile defense strategies without sufficient consideration of the costs and real utility,” said L. David Montague, co-chair of the panel that wrote the report and former head of the missile system division at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space. The Pentagon’s 30 ground-based interceptors are designed to hit incoming missiles before they reach their targets. “The U.S. military should focus on proven hardware that can intercept enemy missiles in midcourse, instead of spending large sums of money trying to hit an adversary’s missiles just after launch in the boost-phase”, the report added. Meanwhile, Iran continues to develop its missile program and intends to launch long-range missiles within a decade. The report also said that a change in strategy “would be less costly and fall within the Pentagon’s annual missile defense budget of about $10 billion”.