In case you are not familiar; the current state of ballistic missile defense is so poor that American politicians have lobbied against deploying it and giving American citizens a false sense of security. Both THAAD and AEGIS are very impressive programs, but they simply cannot defend against a credible attack on American soil.
1. America deals with much faster ballistic missiles than the theater-scale ones seen in Israel and Ukraine. Those intermediate-range missiles tend to struggle accelerating like an ICBM does, and are often 3-4x times slower than an ICBM during reentry.
2. FOBS kinda makes early-warning interception a moot point. A MIRV attack conducted through low orbit has been feasible since before ballistic missile defense existed as a concept. If China or Russia wanted to strike American soil with impunity, they can do so from whichever azimuth they prefer.
3. The numbers just don't add up. No matter how you do the math, it's obvious that America doesn't have enough interceptors to offset warheads. 40 years ago Regan declined nuclear disarmament because he thought the math around ballistic missile defense would look better in the future. It doesn't.
Iron Dome in particular is a short range system that Israel needs because it receives large volleys of low performance missiles [1] from a short way away. They've struggled to sell it to anyone else because other countries don't have that problem.
If anybody is shooting missiles at the US they are by definition going to be very high performance ICBMs because there is no missile threat from Mexico or Canada or even Cuba or Venezuela for that matter.
If China or Russia wanted to strike American soil with impunity, they can do so from whichever azimuth they prefer.
They had better have a plan for dealing with our submarines, or "impunity" is off the table, no matter where their MIRVs come from or how many there are.
1. America deals with much faster ballistic missiles than the theater-scale ones seen in Israel and Ukraine. Those intermediate-range missiles tend to struggle accelerating like an ICBM does, and are often 3-4x times slower than an ICBM during reentry.
2. FOBS kinda makes early-warning interception a moot point. A MIRV attack conducted through low orbit has been feasible since before ballistic missile defense existed as a concept. If China or Russia wanted to strike American soil with impunity, they can do so from whichever azimuth they prefer.
3. The numbers just don't add up. No matter how you do the math, it's obvious that America doesn't have enough interceptors to offset warheads. 40 years ago Regan declined nuclear disarmament because he thought the math around ballistic missile defense would look better in the future. It doesn't.