The US homeland stands unguarded
Summary
The Pentagon needs to modernize its plans to defend against new threats from Russia and China.
In the early 20th century, as air power advocates worked to understand the emerging role of aircraft in conflict, Brigadier Gen. William Mitchell conducted a series of tests. The purpose was to demonstrate the airplane’s superior capabilities for coastal defense, at that time a Navy mission. Mitchell believed the airplane—and the Army Air Corps—were better suited to the task.
In July 1921, Mitchell led the First Provisional Air Brigade from Virginia’s Langley Field in bombing tests against captured German ships and submarines. Mitchell’s tests culminated in the sinking of the battleship Ostfriesland, which the Navy had believed invulnerable to air attack. Despite this demonstration of air power’s efficacy, a fight between the services for primacy against attack from the sea continued for decades. The Navy and Army Air Corps conducted competing exercises to prove it could better defend the nation.
A hundred years later, the U.S. faces greater threats than those the 1920s War Department could have imagined. They contemplated attacks only from the sea and sea-based aircraft. Today the U.S. faces threats from all domains. Russia and China can target American cities and infrastructure with nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles as well as ultra long-range, conventionally armed, land, air, sea and submarine-launched stealthy cruise missiles.
Beijing and Moscow have deployed weapons that can circumvent current threat warning and defensive systems. In a move some call a “sputnik moment," China recently tested a hypersonic missile that nearly orbited the globe before returning to hit a target. An additional menace are the cyber attacks that state and non-state actors regularly conduct against government and commercial infrastructure. Drones of unknown origin fly over critical infrastructure, including military bases.
The Defense Department hasn’t adequately addressed these new threats. The Army, by law responsible for ground-based air defense, has a limited ability to defend the District of Columbia and the immediate surrounding area. Most of its Patriot air defense systems are deployed or will likely be deployed in overseas operations, and the Army-led, multiservice counter-drone effort is fielding systems that aren’t as well suited for domestic use.
The Navy dedicates only a few on-call vessels to maritime defense and since 9/11 has offered its support to homeland defense on a handful of occasions, instead focusing on forward deployment. Even the Missile Defense Agency hasn’t stepped up, focusing more on defending Guam and against a ballistic missile attack from North Korea.
Mitchell’s Army Air Corps, which became the Air Force, was the front line of homeland defense during the Cold War. Today it commits only a handful of predominantly Air National Guard fighters to the air defense mission for the entire North American continent. That is barely one-tenth of the aircraft that Mitchell had on a single base for his tests in 1921. Ground-based radars, fielded in the 1980s to watch over North America, are obsolete. The effort to replace them has been locked in an analysis of alternatives for more than a decade.
The Air Force was on a path to acquire over-the-horizon radars capable of detecting approaching aircraft, ships and cruise missiles at a range of more than 1,000 miles. That project now appears stalled while the Air Force does more studies. At the recent annual Air and Space Symposium, only one official—the commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command—addressed protecting the homeland.
The services are investing heavily in modernizing the nation’s nuclear deterrent. Replacing the Air Force’s aging Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles is estimated to cost $96 billion over the next decade. These systems were designed to deter a nuclear attack by promising devastating retaliation. They were never intended to deter more limited non-nuclear strikes, cyberattacks or attacks by small, unmanned drones on infrastructure. Adversaries are unlikely to believe the U.S. will respond with nukes to a non-nuclear attack. Nuclear deterrence isn’t enough to defend against new weapons.
Despite the National Defense Strategy’s declaration that homeland defense is the Pentagon’s top priority, almost no additional resources have been allocated, and none are forthcoming. The focus is on offense and the fight around the world. Today the nation is defended by a small number of professionals equipped with systems largely designed and bought in the 1970s and ’80s, with no defined path to modernization.
Today, as Russian ultraquiet submarines prowl off American shores and Chinese and Russian bombers and warships conduct joint operations near Alaska, our military is focused elsewhere. Fortress America stands largely unguarded. Billy Mitchell would be disappointed.
Mr. VanHerck, a retired U.S. Air Force general, served as commander of U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense command. Mr. Fesler, a retired Air Force major general, served as deputy director of operations for the North American Aerospace Defense Command.
