JANUARY 2018

Distributed Defense
New Operational Concepts for Integrated Air
and Missile Defense

AUTHORS
Thomas Karako
Wes Rumbaugh

A REPORT OF THE CSIS MISSILE DEFENSE PROJECT

ROWMAN &
LITTLEFIELD
Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
About CSIS
For over 50 years, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
has worked to develop solutions to the world’s greatest policy challenges.
Today, CSIS scholars are providing strategic insights and bipartisan policy
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CSIS has become one of the world’s preeminent international institutions
focused on defense and security; regional stability; and transnational
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integration.
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CSIS does not take specific policy positions; accordingly, all views
expressed herein should be understood to be solely those of the author(s).
© 2017 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. All rights
reserved.

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Contents
List of Figures

List of Tables

List of Acronyms

Acknowledgments

CHAPTER 1 | After Integration, What?

New Operating Environment
Multi-Domain Battle
The Specter of Suppression
Concepts for More Distributed Operations

CHAPTER 2 | Shortcomings in the Current Force

Stovepipes of Excellence
Single Points of Failure
Under-Focus on Non-Ballistic Threats
High Cost, Low Capacity
Sectored, Ground-Based Radar Coverage
Long-Recognized Challenges
CHAPTER 3 | New Operational Concepts for IAMD
Network Centrism: Any Sensor, Best Shooter
Element Dispersal: Redefine the Firing Unit
Mixed Loads: Layered Defense in a Box
Offense-Defense Launchers: Any Launcher, Any Mission
Multi-Mission Shooters: Any Missile, Any Target
Containerized Launchers: Any Launcher, Anywhere
Passive Defense Shell Game: Some Full, Many Empty

CHAPTER 4 | Toward More Distributed IAMD Operations

About the Authors

List of Figures
1.1. Multi-Domain Battle
1.2. Defining Integrated Air and Missile Defense
1.3. Mark 41 Vertical Launching System
2.1. Stovepiping in Air and Missile Defense
2.2. Crashed North Korean Drone
2.3. Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense Radars
2.4. Medium Extended Air Defense System Radar
2.5. Calls for Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense
3.1. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense Launcher
3.2. Sentinel Radar System
3.3. Israel’s Iron Dome Launcher
3.4. Multi-Mission Launcher
3.5. Patriot Launcher Configurations
3.6. Multiple Launch Rocket System
3.7. Notional Distributed Defense Launcher Concepts
3.8. Ground-Based Test of the Vertical Launching System
3.9. Standard Missile-6
3.10. Containerized Launcher Concept
3.11. Non Line of Sight Launch System
3.12. British Tank Decoy
3.13. MX Peacekeeper Basing Mode Concept
3.14. Russian Club-K Containerized Launcher
4.1. Post–Gulf War Highway of Death
List of Tables
1.1. Material and Operational Concepts for Distributed Defense
3.1. Container and Canister Dimensions
List of Acronyms

A2/AD anti-access/area denial

AMD air and missile defense
AMRAAM Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile
ARCIC Army Capabilities Integration Center
ATACMS Army Tactical Missile System
BMDS Ballistic Missile Defense System
C2 command and control
C2BMC Command and Control, Battle Management, and
Communications
CEC Cooperative Engagement Capability
DOTMLPF doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership
and education, personnel, and facilities
DPICC Dismounted Patriot Information Coordination Central
ECS Engagement Control Station
ELES Enhanced Launcher Electronics System
ENBAD Extended-range Non-Ballistic Air Defense
ESSM Evolved Seasparrow Missile
FCS Future Combat System
GBI Ground-based Interceptor
GEM Guidance Enhanced Missile
GMD Ground-based Midcourse Defense
HAWK Homing All the Way Killer
HIMARS High Mobility Artillery Rocket System
IAMD integrated air and missile defense
IBCS Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command
System
ICBM intercontinental ballistic missile
ICC Information Coordination Central
IFPC Indirect Fire Protection Capability
ISR intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance
JIAMDO Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense Organization
JLENS Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated
Netted Sensor
LRASM Long-Range Antiship Missile
MDAP Major Defense Acquisition Program
MDB Multi-Domain Battle
MEADS Medium Extended Air Defense System
MLRS Multiple Launch Rocket System
MML Multi-Mission Launcher
MSE Missile Segment Enhancement
NASAMS National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System
NIFC-CA Navy Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air
NLOS-LS Non Line of Sight Launch System
OIF Operation Iraqi Freedom
PAC-3 Patriot Advanced Capability-3
PACOM Pacific Command
RAM rocket, artillery, and mortar
SEAD suppression of enemy air defenses
SHORAD short-range air defense
SLAMRAAM Surface-Launched AMRAAM
SM Standard Missile
SMDC U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command
THAAD Terminal High Altitude Area Defense
TRADOC U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command
UAV unmanned aerial vehicle
VLS Vertical Launching System
Acknowledgments

The authors would like to recognize and thank all of those who reviewed
drafts of the report or provided background thoughts for the research,
including Dick Formica, Rick Glitz, Brian Green, Kathleen Hicks, Arch
Macy, Fran Mahon, Melanie Marlowe, and others. The authors would also
like to acknowledge Ian Williams, Daniel Cebul, Shaan Shaikh, and Jessica
Harmon for their assistance with this project.
This report is made possible by general support to CSIS. No direct
sponsorship contributed to its publication.
 01

After Integration, What?

A new problem has arisen: the prospect of conflict with near-peer

adversaries who have spent two decades going to school on the American
way of war. Although a conversation is now under way about how to adapt
the U.S. military to this new strategic environment, air and missile defense
(AMD) forces have been all too absent from that conversation. Against near-
peer threats, today’s AMD force is unfortunately far too susceptible to
suppression. One avenue for transformation is with new and more
imaginative operational concepts. More distributed AMD operations would
improve their flexibility and resilience and in turn strengthen the broader
joint force.

NEW OPERATING ENVIRONMENT

Joint Staff and Service publications have long pointed to the emergence of
high-end technology threats, and some of those predictions have now
materialized.1 Potential adversaries like Russia and China have acquired a
spectrum of air and missile capabilities and emulated U.S. concepts for using
deep precision strike to fracture ground and naval forces. Unmanned aerial
vehicles (UAVs), for instance, might be used to provide reconnaissance and
targeting data to enable cruise missile, artillery, and ballistic missile strikes.2
Salvos or swarms may be used simultaneously, creating a complex, cluttered,
and confusing battlespace. Advanced surface-to-air missiles could also
hinder U.S. air operations, as well as the transport and supply of ground
forces.
A missile-heavy threat set already forms the backbone of the anti-access and
area denial (A2/AD) capabilities that complicate American power
projection, but those complications are growing. Although tenets of the Cold
War–era AirLand Battle doctrine still have important applications and have
worked well in smaller operations against lesser threats, the new operating
environment has many contested domains. U.S. forces now have more limited
forward presence, their numbers are far fewer, and air supremacy is no
longer a given.3 Potential adversaries’ integrated air defenses and precision
strike weapons hold forward-based U.S. forces at risk, complicate maneuver,
and impair freedom of action.

In the face of complex integrated attack, integrated

air and missile defense (IAMD) has become critical
for joint operations.
Unfortunately, the United States is not well postured against this form of
combined arms, and without swift adaptation it will not be for the
foreseeable future. In the face of complex integrated attack, integrated air and
missile defense (IAMD) has become critical for joint operations.

MULTI-DOMAIN BATTLE
The military Services have been generating new concepts to defeat these
challenges, including the U.S. Navy’s Distributed Lethality and the U.S.
Army and Marine Corps’ Multi-Domain Battle (MDB).4 Distributed Lethality
envisions putting strike assets on everything that floats in order to complicate
the surveillance, targeting, and suppression of U.S. maritime operations.
MDB likewise seeks innovative ways “to create temporary windows of
superiority across multiple domains and throughout the depth of the
battlefield” (see Figure 1.1).5 Instead of attempting to simultaneously
dominate at every level and in every domain, the “temporary” quality of
these windows reflects the difficulty of the near-peer challenge. Ongoing air
supremacy may not be a realistic goal, for instance, let alone the old
aspiration of “full spectrum dominance.”
Maneuver operations will reportedly be central to MDB, which envisions
U.S. “forces capable of outmaneuvering adversaries physically and
cognitively through the extension of combined arms across all domains.”6 But
moving smartly around the battlefield will not be sufficient to hide from
precision strikes or penetrate enemy defenses. As a core Army function and
competency for both combined arms maneuver and wide-area security, AMD
operations should be reevaluated in light of more sophisticated threats.7

Just as Distributed Lethality does not dispense with the need for active fleet
defense, some pockets of the battlefield on land will require more persistent
windows of superiority and protection. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Martin Dempsey warned in 2013 that commanders “ will always rely on both
active and passive IAMD to survive air and missile attacks.”8 Both forces
themselves and the communication, transportation, and logistical hubs that
support them require resilience and protection.
The authors of MDB issued a call to “reimagine” future operations and make
them “more innovative.”9 Because air and missile threats are among those
dangers that could most undermine freedom of maneuver, the AMD field is in
special need of such imagination and innovation.
General David Perkins, commander of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine
Command (TRADOC), has suggested that “experimentation and adaptation
are required to leverage capabilities including long range fires [and] air and
missile defense.”10 Nevertheless, detailed discussions for how today’s AMD
force and associated doctrine should adapt seem thus far to still be at the
margin.11

THE SPECTER OF SUPPRESSION

Relative to the near-peer threat, the current AMD force is far too susceptible
to suppression. System stovepiping, too many single points of failure,
sectored radar coverage, increased cost and diminished capacity, and a
ballistic missile-heavy focus have created a brittle AMD force all too
vulnerable to exploitation. These shortcomings have been formally
recognized since the mid-1990s, but as a practical matter remain largely
unaddressed. The necessary focus on ballistic missile threats, for instance,
has left gaps and seams that can be exploited by air-breathing and other
maneuvering threats.

The current AMD force is far too susceptible to

suppression.
Today’s U.S. AMD force lacks the capacity and flexibility to perform this
larger mission set. Incoming threats may not even be seen prior to attack, and
even if they were, an AMD unit may be forced to expend a more expensive
interceptor in situations where a cheaper solution might suffice. The high cost
and scarcity of interceptors both strains inventory capacity and encourages
shots not to be taken, whereas the lack of operational flexibility risks leaving
some critical assets underdefended or undefended.
CONCEPTS FOR MORE DISTRIBUTED
OPERATIONS
Discussions about improving AMD usually revolve around improvements to
the capability and capacity of interceptors or sensors. Capability and
capacity should remain high priorities in countering salvos of precision-
guided munitions, but these efforts will not be enough to sustain effective
defenses in the long term (see Figure 1.2). Rather than simply doing more of
the same, AMD efforts might be well served by new or reinvigorated
operational concepts, here discussed collectively as Distributed Defense. By
leveraging networked integration, more flexible, resilient, and dispersible
elements would be tailored to impose costs and dilemmas on adversaries and
complicate their suppression.12 Although capability and capacity
improvements remain essential to outpacing high-end threats, the Distributed
Defense concept focuses on creating a new architecture for today’s fielded,
or soon-to-be fielded, force (see Table 1.1).

Several material, enabling, and operational concepts would support more

distributed air and missile defense operations, including:
 Network centrism. Consistent with and expanding upon the current
1. program of record, AMD should be integrated to better use “any
sensor, best shooter” principles. Enabling launch and engage on
remote capabilities would extend the range and defended area of U.S.
AMD systems.
2. Element dispersal. Assuming adequate integration and networking,
the current AMD battery or fire unit structure could be redefined. The
radar, launcher, and command and control (C2) elements can be
componentized, giving commanders greater flexibility to tailor
defense designs or to disperse elements over a wider area.
3. Mixed loads. By making launchers more interceptor-agnostic, they
could become more flexible and better provide a layered defense. An
“any shooter, any launcher” approach could support a kind of
“layered defense in a box” to help alleviate capacity and capability
strains.
4. Offense-defense launchers. By better integrating strike and defense
within the same firing units (or even launchers), an “any launcher, any
mission” capability could better defeat future missile threats rather
than simply defend against them.
5. Multi-mission shooters. Adapting current missiles to support new
missions against different kinds of targets can further boost the
flexibility of multi-mission fires and reduce cost: the principle of
“any missile, any target.”
6. Containerized launchers. Embracing camouflage and concealment,
networked launchers could be put into nondescript cargo containers–
a sort of “any launcher, anywhere” model, making defenses more
difficult to find, identify, and target.
 7. Passive defense shell game. Reinvigorating attention to the passive
defense of the AMD force itself, containerization would support
deception in the form of a limited shell game, featuring numerous
distributed dummy launchers with optical, thermal, and electronic
signatures comparable to the real thing. Some would be full, but many
would be empty. Such deployments could impose costs on an
adversary, as well as present them with new dilemmas, such as the
expenditure of resources on intelligence, surveillance, and
reconnaissance (ISR) or the wastage of precision-guided munitions.
Building on one another in roughly sequential manner, these seven concepts
are collectively marked by improved resilience, modularity, and greater
offense-defense integration.13 All of this is designed to deter or prevent an
adversary from using its air and missile forces effectively.
To be sure, the U.S. Army is already pursuing some of these ideas, including
the IAMD Battle Command System (IBCS). Programs to counter UAVs, such
as the Indirect Fire Protection Capability (IFPC), likewise involve greater
sensor-shooter connectivity by leveraging IBCS, the Sentinel radar, and the
(mixed load) Multi-Mission Launcher (MML).14 Distributed Defense applies
and extends this logic to more capable Army interceptors like Terminal High
Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and the Patriot family, non-Army
interceptors such as Standard Missiles, and vari ous strike forces.
Other concepts not currently being pursued nevertheless have analogues in
other Services, in the U.S. Army’s past, or within foreign militaries.
Containerized launchers, for example, had an analogue in a now-terminated
part of the Future Combat System (FCS) program, and the U.S. Navy’s
Vertical Launching System (VLS) fires both offensive and defensive missiles
(see Figure 1.3). For serious attention to a shell game for ground-based
missiles, there are more examples in foreign practice.
The following discussion attempts to highlight the current shortcomings of the
AMD force, articulate in greater detail the possibilities of Distributed
Defense, and provide recommendations for the future.
Footnotes
1. John M. Shalikashvili, Joint Vision 2010 (Washington, DC: The Joint Staff, 1996), 22–24; Jonathan
W. Greenert and Raymond T. Odierno, “Adjusting the Ballistic Missile Defense Strategy,”
Memorandum for Secretary of Defense, November 5, 2014; Martin E. Dempsey, Joint Integrated Air
and Missile Defense: Vision 2020 (Washington, DC: The Joint Staff, 2013), 1; Kevin D. Scott, Joint
Publication 3-01: Countering Air and Missile Threats (Washington DC: Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2017).
2. Amos Fox, “Understanding Modern Russian War: Ubiquitous Rocket, Artillery to Enable Battlefield
Swarming, Siege Warfare,” Fires Bulletin (September–October 2017): 23.
3. Christopher L. Spillman and Glenn A. Henke, “The New Threat: Air and Missile Defense for
Brigade Combat Teams,” Association of the United States Army, February 17, 2017,
[Link]
4. Thomas Rowden, Peter Gumataotao, and Peter Fanta, “Distributed Lethality,” Proceedings
Magazine 141, no. 1 (January 2015): 343. More recently, the Navy has begun to adopt the phrase
Distributed Maritime Operations. David G. Perkins, “Multi-Domain Battle: Joint Combined Arms
Concept for the 21st Century,” Association of the United States Army, November 14, 2016,
[Link] The Air
Force has embraced a similar, Multi-Domain Command and Control concept as well. David L. Goldfein,
March 10, 2017, CSAF Letter to Airmen, U.S. Air Force, [Link]
Display/Article/1108931/csaf-letter-to-airmen/.
5. U. S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, “Multi-Domain Battle: Combined Arms for the 21st
Century,” TRADOC White Paper, February 24, 2017,
[Link]
6. Ibid.
7. The U.S. Army had previously been the only Service formally tasked with conducting “air and
missile defense to support joint campaigns,” but this responsibility is becoming a joint one. U.S.
Department of Defense, “Department of the Army, Air and Missile Defense Strategy” (Washington
DC: Department of Defense, 2012), 2; Robert M. Gates, Functions of the Department of Defense
and Its Major Components, DoD Directive 5100.01 (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of
Defense, 2010), [Link]
8. Dempsey, Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense: Vision 2020, 3. Emphasis added.
9. Perkins, “Multi-Domain Battle: Joint Combined Arms Concept for the 21st Century.”
10. Robert Brown and David G. Perkins, “Multi-Domain Battle: Tonight, Tomorrow, and the Future
Fight,” War on the Rocks, August 18, 2017.
11. U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, “Multi-Domain Battle: Combined Arms for the 21st
Century.” This TRADOC white paper, for instance, discusses threats from adversary precision strikes
with missiles and integrated air defense systems, but says very little about adapting U.S. AMD.
12. The phrase “distributed defense” seems to have rarely been used in discussions about air and missile
defense. One exception is a 2001 Naval Studies Board report that recommended a “distributed defense
development” program for naval theater missile defense, to which the evolution of Aegis has since
moved toward. The Distributed Defense concepts described here explicitly embrace many of the
features of modularity, network-centrism, and offense-defense mix that characterize the Aegis Combat
System. National Research Council, Committee for Naval Forces’ Capability for Theater Missile
Defense, Naval Forces’ Capability for Theater Missile Defense (Washington, DC: National
Academies Press, 2001), 6.
13. Dempsey, Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense: Vision 2020, 4–5.
14. Spillman and Henke, “The New Threat: Air and Missile Defense for Brigade Combat Teams.”
 02

Shortcomings in the Current Force

In early 2017, then-director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center

(ARCIC), Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster, described missile defenses as
a “foundational capability” to support forward stationed forces and bolster
deterrence.1 In too many respects, however, the AMD forces fielded today
and planned for the near future fall considerably short of being an effective
foundation for the kind of conflict envisioned by MDB. Several factors
contribute to this shortfall, including stovepiped organization, single points
of failure, relative underattention to non-ballistic missile threats, increased
cost and diminished capacity, and overreliance on sectored, ground-based
radars. Whereas air and missile threats have become more capable and
complex, U.S. AMD capabilities have undergone relatively more modest
modernization. As a result, AMD forces may now find themselves outgunned
and outmatched.2

Shortcomings of Current Air and Missile Defenses

1. Stovepipes of Excellence
2. Single Points of Failure
3. Under-Focus on Non-Ballistic Threats
4. High Cost, Low Capacity
5. Sectored, Ground-Based Radar Coverage
STOVEPIPES OF EXCELLENCE
Today, the shape of U.S. Army AMD is largely vertical, or stovepiped (see
Figure 2.1). Information from one family of systems must first be passed to a
higher echelon before being distributed to another family. A Patriot launcher,
for instance, can usually only fire using tracks from a radar contained in its
battery. This is at best rudimentary networking and interoperating; it is not
integration. Specific cases of stovepiping and vertical integration may trace
their roots to technological limitations at the time of the system’s
development or to Service parochialism. Whatever their origins, however,
stovepipes create gaps and seams that adversaries can exploit.
This inability to communicate at low echelons between and across the joint
AMD force stymies operational flexibility and increases risk. The two
Patriot fratricides that occurred during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) are
prime examples of the cost of limited or vertical-only integration. After
examining those incidents, the Defense Science Board in 2005 concluded that
“a Patriot battery on the battlefield can be very much alone.”3 In that conflict,
brigades and battalions were broken up and redistributed across several
countries, stretching them thin. In the absence of better networking, this meant
both less capability and more operational risk.
In an age of cloud computing and information sharing, the fact that today’s
force lacks a higher degree of integration may come as a surprise to some
observers. That our adversaries stand ready to exploit those vulnerabilities,
however, should surprise no one. To achieve air superiority and freedom of
action, suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) is an early U.S. objective
in virtually any conflict. With air superiority, for instance, short work was
made of the Iraqi Republican Guard in 1991. The suppression of U.S. AMD
would likewise substantially impair U.S. freedom of action and the broader
goals of MDB.

SINGLE POINTS OF FAILURE

Today’s fire unit-centric and stovepiped systems make the Army’s AMD
force relatively more brittle than resilient. Precision strikes on a mere
handful of sensors and C2 nodes could compromise the overall AMD force.
In the opening salvo of Desert Storm, the Iraqi air defense system was
cracked by Tomahawk cruise missile strikes and Apache helicopters firing
volleys of Hellfire missiles. By destroying key Iraqi control nodes and AMD
radars, and thereby rendering useless the remainder of their air defense
weapons, coalition air forces opened low-risk routes into Iraqi airspace.
By defeating merely a few such points of failure, an adversary with a
spectrum of air and missile capabilities could in turn create similar
vulnerabilities for U.S. forces. In June 2017, North Korea used a drone to
surveil the THAAD site in South Korea (see Figure 2.2).4 Had that drone
instead delivered an improvised explosive device to the TPY-2 radar on
which the THAAD battery depends, it might have virtually incapacitated the
THAAD capability on the Korean peninsula. Similar vulnerability applies to
other regional defenses as well. NATO’s Aegis Ashore–based ballistic
missile defense capability today is largely dependent on two radars: the
TPY-2 radar in Turkey and the SPY-1 radar in Romania. Should a THAAD
battery be introduced into Europe, it too would be largely dependent on a
single co-located TPY-2.
UNDER-FOCUS ON NON-BALLISTIC THREATS
Since the 1991 Gulf War, today’s AMD force has also been relatively more
focused on theater ballistic missile threats from smaller powers. The
necessary and understandable attention to ballistic missile threats has come,
however, at the expense of addressing the full complexity of air and missile
battle. During OIF, the defense was not built to address potential cruise
missile attacks. Although Patriot intercepted all the ballistic missiles it
engaged during that 2003 conflict, it did not engage any of the several cruise
missiles that Iraq fired.5
Today’s force must address the threat in its full complexity, what a former
director of the Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense Organization
(JIAMDO) described as “a complex and nearly continuous threat spectrum
across the characteristics of altitude, speed, propulsion type, and range.”6
Antiship cruise missile threats are also growing, as witnessed by the attack
on the USS Mason (DDG-87) off the coast of Yemen in October 2016.
Thankfully, that Aegis destroyer successfully neutralized the threat with a mix
of kinetic interceptors and non-kinetic countermeasures.7 Similar missiles
had significantly damaged an Emirati ship that same month, as they did an
Israeli corvette in 2006.8 Other types of cruise missiles could jam or spoof
AMD elements. Years of overconfidence in joint air superiority have also
contributed to the Army’s neglect of short-range air defense (SHORAD),
which the Army is now scrambling to reconstitute.9 AMD must be effective at
all those missions.

Years of overconfidence in joint air superiority have

also contributed to the Army’s neglect of short-
range air defense (SHORAD), which the Army is
now scrambling to reconstitute.

HIGH COST, LOW CAPACITY

As interceptors have become more capable, they have also become more
expensive. To some extent the cost increases are the result of the focus on
ballistics, as ballistic missile interceptors are typically more costly than
other types. Smaller and more intermittent batch buys also impede economies
of scale. Sophisticated maneuvering threats and those with countermeasures
require more sophisticated interceptors, but others may not.10 A Patriot
Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) interceptor—well suited to ballistic threats
—may be an unnecessarily expensive solution for UAVs, cruise missiles, or
aircraft and unsuitable for rockets, artillery, and mortars (RAM). In the face
of what might be a UAV attack, one can hardly fault the expenditure of a
Patriot interceptor if no other cheaper solution is immediately available.11
But many air and missile threats may not require an exquisite solution. A
more diverse high-low mix of interceptors for both ballistic and non-ballistic
missile threats could help balance cost, capacity, and capability.
Unfortunately, an air defender may not know at the time of engagement
whether the incoming threat is of the more or less sophisticated variety,
which is one reason why more capable, multi-mission (and more expensive)
interceptors have been preferred, for instance in the case of Patriot.

SECTORED, GROUND-BASED RADAR

COVERAGE
Limitations in sensor coverage also represent a major shortcoming for
today’s AMD force. Today’s Patriot and THAAD radars do not provide 360-
degree coverage, despite the U.S. Army recognizing the need for such a
capability as far back as 1993.12 Today’s 120-degree Patriot radar may be
useful against an enemy’s ballistic missiles or air forces that would come
from a predictable direction, but it would face numerous challenges in
today’s more cluttered air environment. Interceptor launchers are likewise
optimized to fire toward a particular sector. These inherent limitations mean
that the radars and launchers are vulnerable from behind or require a circling
of the wagons to get radar coverage from all directions.
The use of the ballistic missile in Desert Storm and belief in U.S. air
supremacy made 360-degree defense seem less pressing, contributing to the
retirement of the Homing All the Way Killer (HAWK) weapon system.
HAWK and its 360-degree radar had previously been integrated with Patriot
and helped to provide the needed backdoor coverage. The Patriot command
and control system could also control the HAWK batteries.13 In that respect,
today’s capabilities are less than they were in the not-so-distant past. The
Army’s follow-on plan had included the Medium Extended Air Defense
System (MEADS), which would have provided 360-degree radar coverage
and a vertical (omnidirectional) launcher (see Figure 2.4). Although
previously expected to come on line in the 2024 timeframe, U.S.
participation in the multinational MEADS development program ended in
2012, necessitating IBCS, other Patriot improvements, and a renewed effort
in the Army to acquire some new Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense
Sensor.
But even 360-degree ground-based radars are still limited by the horizon and
therefore would not be enough for low-flying aerial threats. The IFPC
launcher and the IBCS network are designed to help fill some of these gaps,
allowing detection by one sensor to support a shooter in another place, but
overhead and wide sensor coverage is still lacking. Had an elevated sensor
for cruise missile detection been fielded in 2003, the Patriots might have
been better able to engage the cruise missiles during OIF. The now-
terminated Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor
(JLENS) aerostat was one attempt to provide such a capability for a large
area. Although there are opportunities to mitigate the lack of persistent
coverage using sensors on manned aircraft, there is still no program of
record to adequately service these requirements.

What ever the material solutions, however, the future AMD force requires
360-degree coverage, ground and elevated sensors, omnidirectional fires,
and tactical mobility.

LONG-RECOGNIZED CHALLENGES
If some of these shortfalls sound familiar, they should. Numerous Joint and
Service publications have for years pointed to the emergence of threats that
challenge U.S. operational preeminence and called for increased offense-
defense integration and joint networks. In retrospect, the description of the
prob lem and the solution in some earlier documents from decades ago seem
remarkably prescient. In its description of both the threat and solution sets,
for instance, MDB in some respects echoes Joint Vision 2010 (issued in
1996). Its Full-Dimensional Protection concept included “an integrated in-
depth theater air and missile defense” that incorporated offense, active
defense, and passive defense.14 The MDB imperative to create and exploit
temporary windows of superiority sounds like a more modest version of
Joint Vision 2010’s Full Spectrum Dominance.15
Similar descriptions of air and missile threats, and aspirations to counter
them, were found again in Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership (2012), Joint
IAMD: Vision 2020 (2013), and the 2014 “eight stars memo” by Admiral
Jonathan Greenert and General Raymond Odierno.16
These and other documents foresaw these challenges when they were still
emerging, but they are felt much more acutely today. The imperative for 21st
century IAMD is a present rather than a future need, and its implementation
can no longer be in the realm of vision. AMD modernization is unfortunately
de cades behind where it should be. MDB should be the impetus to more
seriously prosecute the ever-elusive quest for IAMD.

MDB should be the impetus to more seriously

prosecute the ever-elusive quest for IAMD.
The need for IAMD is not merely a U.S. Army or even a Joint Staff problem,
but a larger policy issue for the Department of Defense. Congress has
mandated a review of the wide range of air and missile threats, including
ballistic missiles, hypersonic boost glide vehicles, and cruise missile threats,
as well as the kinetic, non-kinetic, active, and passive measures to handle
them.17 This ongoing missile defense and defeat policy review offers a ripe
opportunity to renew the course toward IAMD.
Footnotes
1. H. R. McMaster, “The U.S. Army Functional Concept for Movement and Maneuver,” TRADOC
Pamphlet 525-3-6, February 2017, 19.
2. “Active protection systems will mature, but will not protect against the full range [of] kinetic energy
threats nor be fielded fully to the force during the 2020–2040 timeframe.” McMaster, “U.S. Army
Functional Concept for Movement and Maneuver,” 9.
3. Michael Williams and William Delaney, “Patriot System Performance: Report Summary,” Defense
Science Board Task Force Report (Washington, DC: Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for
Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, 2005), 28.
4. “Suspected N. Korean Drone Photographed THAAD Site: S. Korean Military,” Yonhap News,
June 13, 2017,
[Link]
5. Charles A. Anderson, “Defense: Iraqi Freedom,” Army Magazine, January 2004, 46,
[Link]
6. Edward Cashman, “The Missile Defeat Posture and Strategy of the United States—The FY17
President’s Budget Request” (statement before House Armed Services Committee, Strategic Forces
Subcommittee, 114th Congress, April 14, 2016).
7. Sam LaGrone, “USS Mason Fired 3 Missiles to Defend from Yemen Cruise Missiles Attack,” USNI
News, October 11, 2016, [Link]
yemen-cruise-missiles-attack.
8. Roberta Pennington, “Crew Members of UAE Ship Attacked by Houthis Tell of Terrifying Raid,”
National, October 5, 2016, [Link]
houthis-tell-of-terrifying-raid-1.162275; Mark Mazzetti and Thom Shanker, “Arming of Hezbollah
Reveals U.S. and Israeli Blind Spots,” New York Times, July 19, 2006,
[Link]
9. Jen Judson, “Short-Range Air Defense Making a Fast Comeback,” Defense News, February 10,
2017, [Link]
comeback/.
10. For an analysis of the “salvo competition” imposed by considerable numbers of adversary precision-
guided munitions, see Mark Gunzinger and Bryan Clark, Winning the Salvo Competition:
Rebalancing America’s Air and Missile Defenses (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and
Budgetary Assessments, 2016).
11. Derek Hawkins, “A U.S. ‘Ally’ Fired a $3 Million Patriot Missile at a $200 Drone. Spoiler: The
Missile Won,” Washington Post, March 17, 2017, [Link]
mix/wp/2017/03/17/a-u-s-ally-fired-a-3-million-patriot-missile-at-a-200-drone-spoiler-the-missile-won/.
12. Ronald H. Lafond and Steve Crump, CORPS Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) System Manpower,
Personnel, and Training Analysis (Ft. Eustis, VA: U.S Army Training and Doctrine Command, 1993).
13. Department of the U.S. Army, Patriot Battalion and Battery Operations, FM 44-85 (Washington,
DC: Government Printing Office, 1997), 5–9.
14. John M. Shalikashvili, Joint Vision 2010 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1996),
22–24.
15. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Vision 2020 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, June
2000), 26–27.
16. Department of Defense, Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century
Defense (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2012), 8; Jonathan W. Greenert and Raymond T.
Odierno, “Adjusting the Ballistic Missile Defense Strategy,” Memorandum for Secretary of Defense,
November 5, 2014; Martin E. Dempsey, Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense: Vision 2020
(Washington, DC: The Joint Staff, 2013), 1.
17. National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, Conference Report to Accompany
S.2943, Sec.1684, 114th Congress (2016): 629–632.
03

New Operational Concepts for IAMD

The future AMD force should be more dispersed, modular, and integrated
relative to the force of today. The Distributed Defense approach includes
seven notional concepts that build on one another in roughly sequential order:
1. Network centrism: “any sensor, best shooter”
2. Element dispersal: “redefine the firing unit”
3. Mixed loads: “layered defense in a box”
4. Offense-defense launchers: “any launcher, any mission”
5. Multi-mission shooters: “any missile, any target”
6. Containerized launchers: “any launcher, anywhere”
7. Passive defense shell game: “some full, many empty”
Distributed Defense proposes to create an AMD architecture that would be
more flexible and resilient, bolster power projection, impose costs on
potential adversaries, and complicate adversary planning.

NETWORK CENTRISM: ANY SENSOR, BEST

SHOOTER
The first imperative of Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense: Vision
2020 was to “incorporate, fuse, exploit, and leverage every bit of
information available regardless of source or classification, and distribute it
as needed to U.S. Forces and selected partners.”1 Integration and
interoperability are also characteristics expressly required of the Missile
Defense Agency–developed Ballistic Missile Defense System.2 The
prerequisite for a more distributed air and missile defense architecture is an
interconnected, network-centric force—in the words of General H. R.
McMaster, “sensor-to-shooter linkages as a state of being.”3 Integration is
said to be the U.S. Army’s top AMD priority within the program of record.4
At the current pace, however, Chairman Dempsey’s vision for IAMD may not
arrive by 2040, much less 2020.5

The lack of integration consists of insufficient connectivity between sensors,

shooters, and C2. In some cases, this lack of integration is present even
within the same weapon system, such as Patriot. The joint force has over 20
external networks, including Link 16, Cooperative Engagement Capability
(CEC), and many others. Because of gaps and shortcomings in passing sensor
data, both Army and joint AMD forces lack a common air picture, and
interceptors cannot be used to their full potential.6 Fire control for regional
AMD interceptors is likewise disaggregated across the various systems and
networks. The Army still has far to go to implement it, but IBCS is intended
to eventually tie together all Army assets for air and missile defense into a
single, integrated air picture that will boost capability, help reduce fratricide
risks, and enable coordinated mission execution among launchers.7 A
pervasive sensor network that allows battle managers to use track data from
any sensor and then pick the best interceptor or shooter would use scarce
AMD resources more efficiently.
Interceptor missiles can only engage what their sensors and fire control are
able to tell them to engage, and dependence on co-located line-of-sight
radars significantly reduces defended area. Threat missiles can be hidden
from view if outside a radar’s range or if obscured by terrain or the
curvature of the earth. Passing information from forward-based sensors to
interceptors based further away can permit interceptors to be fired earlier.
As the Defense Science Board noted in 2011, “Robust networking is the only
realistic protocol to achieve operationally useful, large-area defense
coverage, effectiveness, and fire power for regional missile defense.”8
Several of today’s interceptors have inherent ranges in excess of what
geography and physics allow of their dedicated, co-located radars. Improved
integration would therefore better actualize the current potential of
interceptors. The PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE), for instance,
might fly significantly farther than the MPQ-65 Patriot radar can see, and thus
would benefit from the longer view of a TPY-2. Lower tier interceptors like
the PAC-3 that are capable of defeating cruise missile threats may
nevertheless be precluded from doing so if the threat is behind a mountain or
out of range of its own radar. The benefit of integration was seen in a 2015
test, wherein a PAC-3 engaged a cruise missile target outside its indigenous
radar solely on the basis of two remote Sentinel radars (see Figure 3.2).9 In
2012, a PAC-3 engaged a cruise missile target using track data from the
JLENS aerostat.10
In a similar way, today’s Standard Missile (SM) can fly well beyond the
view of the SPY-1 radar. In 2013, an Aegis ship used space sensor tracking
data from a satellite to “launch on remote,” firing the SM well before the
onboard SPY-1 radar might have picked it up.11 Engaging earlier and farther
away buys time, which in turn helps alleviate capacity by permitting “shoot-
look-shoot” or more conservative shot doctrine. Further confidence in
tracking data from other sources permits still earlier engagements and
“engage on remote,” with no tie to the organic radar. Earlier acquisition of
track-quality data permits interceptors to be fired earlier and engage threats
farther away, which in turn expands the defended area. Finally, more
networking and integration of sensor data helps to build resilience by
mitigating single points of sensor failure.
With sufficient integration, the U.S. Army could do what the U.S. Navy can
and may yet do with Navy Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air (NIFC-CA).
The Navy now deploys surface combatants with NIFC-CA as well as Aegis
Baseline 9 software, which enables simultaneous air and missile defense
operations. NIFC-CA nets together disparate sensors with a sensor quality of
service sufficient to close the fire control loop, thereby enabling intercepts
beyond the radar horizon.12 The U.S. Air Force vision for the F-35 similarly
considers each aircraft as an independent node able to act as a shooter,
sensor, and battle manager—in effect fusing data from numerous sources as a
kind of “flying combat system.”13
A further challenge concerns the integration of AMD across the Services. A
joint approach would leverage the unique contributions, assets, and
responsibilities of each Service. AMD assets generally might then become
more “purple,” or joint, sharing interceptors and sensors across both
domains and Services.14 U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) Commander
Admiral Harry Harris has called for such cross-Service integration, with
maritime and land-based systems sharing and using sensors from anywhere.15
Air Force operators, for instance, may not own many dedicated missile
defense assets, but various Air Force sensors could contribute greatly to the
common air picture. A joint construct would further support efficient
coordination and even the blending of offensive strike operations and active
defenses. Coalition interoperability and integration is an additional
challenge. Giving all land, air, and maritime forces a unified operating
system would be expensive, difficult, and probably unnecessary. A shared air
picture with sensor tracks of air and missile threats, however, remains a
worthy and achievable goal.

Interconnectivity and dispersal could of course carry downsides and risks.

That which is spread thin can be overwhelmed. AMD networking must
therefore not be permitted to introduce new vulnerabilities or dependence,
and defense architectures should be constructed so that degradation of an
IAMD network is graceful rather than catastrophic. Adversary attempts to
defeat, disrupt, and deny networked communication must be assumed.
Network integration is a necessary foundation for IAMD, but in another
sense, it represents just the first step on which other innovative operational
concepts can build. The question must then be asked: After integration,
what? The several operational, material, and enabling concepts described
below represent possibilities for what might come after the realization of
General McMaster’s challenge: sensor-shooter integration “as a state of
being.”

ELEMENT DISPERSAL: REDEFINE THE FIRING

UNIT
The 2010 Ballistic Missile Defense Review called for more mobile and
flexible missile defenses, but today’s AMD force remains too rigid.16 Being
able to better distribute the interceptor, sensor, and fire control elements
without loss of capability would permit a more flexible deployment
footprint. Network integration like that described previously would be less
vertical (through layers of command and control unique to a given system)
and more horizontal (both among fire units of a single system and between
different systems altogether). Vision 2020 expressly called for the “the
horizontal integration of these capabilities,” but much implementation
remains.17
Greater horizontal integration would create new organizational possibilities,
such as increased dispersal and movement of elements and enhanced
flexibility to redefine the battery and battalion for administrative and C2
functions. A subset of a battery or battalion, even single launchers or sensors,
could be moved, surged as needed, or spread out to expand the defended area
and complicate adversary targeting.18 Remote fire control also becomes
possible, a feature already available to Israel’s Iron Dome defenses (see
Figure 3.3). The dispersal of launchers and C2, and a more horizontal
integration structure, might also enable a more flexible and fluid
modernization pace, potentially precluding an entire battalion being removed
from service for upgrades.19
To some extent this dispersal is already done; certain Patriot batteries
deployed in the Persian Gulf region can utilize remote launch from a Patriot
radar as well as some dismounted tabletop C2 suites to provide the control
functions and the joint connectivity provided by a battalion headquarters.20
These techniques increase defended area, improve flexibility, provide a
lighter footprint, and add resilience to the C2 structure—but they are today
the exception, not the norm. Former U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense
Command (SMDC) Commander Lieutenant General David Mann points to
the basic opportunity here to push defensive capability down and out, rather
than relying on top-down direction:

Instead of deploying a whole battalion we can maximize what

that battalion brings to the table by not having to send the
whole battalion, but by using the dismounted capability to
take different components within the Patriot battalion to
different locations and really kind of spread its capability . . .
on the battlefield.21

Instead of a single high-value command and control truck for an adversary to

target, distributed command and control units could add a level of resilience.
Instead of parking an entire Patriot battery near an Aegis Ashore site or other
NATO C2 node to provide antiair warfare protection, one would have the
flexibility to disperse smaller numbers of launchers.22 The IBCS program
currently expected for U.S. Army AMD systems in the 2022 timeframe is
intended to provide this kind of integration. The distribution of Information
Coordination Central (ICC) command and control suites could, however,
provide some improved integration and improved manning flexibility for
U.S. and allied Patriot forces in the near term.23
Greater dispersal and resilience in the sensor network would also be a key
part of Distributed Defense. One limiting factor to launcher distribution is
sensors—in terms of 360-degree coverage, multiple altitudes, quality of
track data, and redundancy. It does little good to deploy interceptors to
defend areas without sensor coverage of the airspace in which such
interceptors would engage. Ground-based radars might also be further
dispersed, mixing those of higher frequency and range with those of lower
capability. Airborne infrared sensors aboard a UAV or a tethered aerostat
might be natural ways to supplement the architecture. Such an architecture in
some respects resembles the more distributed air defense radars of the 1960s
designed to detect and track Soviet bombers. Today, distributed and
omnidirectional sensor coverage from land, sea, air, and space may assume
renewed importance given the spectrum of maneuvering threats, including
aircraft, cruise missiles, UAVs, and hypersonic boost glide vehicles.
To be sure, the potential dispersal of such a highly networked IAMD force
would need to be tempered with careful management so that it is not spread
too thin. Logistical support, security, and manning requirements would
remain, even if the manning is reduced with remote fire control. But capacity
limitations and the pressure to defend more assets have already resulted in
scattering isolated batteries across regions without a supporting C2
architecture and with some elements not positioned to optimize performance.

MIXED LOADS: LAYERED DEFENSE IN A BOX

Another potential area for innovation concerns more flexible loadouts of
Army AMD launchers. Today, most interceptors are paired with a specific
type of launcher. THAAD interceptors, for instance, are fired from dedicated
THAAD launchers, and Standard Missiles are only fired from the Mk 41 and
Mk 57 VLS. Much of this specificity is due to unique attributes or
requirements of the various launch platforms and interceptors. But shifting to
a mix-and-match approach could support greater flexibility and defensive
depth. Mixed loads within batteries, and even within launchers, could
replace single-capability launchers, creating the possibility of a “layered
defense in a box.”

This sort of mixing and matching is already envisioned for IBCS and the
Multi-Mission Launcher (MML) (see Figure 3.4), which will launch AIM-
9X, Stingers, and other fires for counter-UAV and other SHORAD missions.
Brigadier General Christopher Spillman and Lieutenant Colonel Glenn
Henke of the 32d Army Air and Missile Defense Command say that the
MML-IBCS combination “will provide the most capable short-range air
defense in the Army’s history.”24

Other models also exist for mixed loadouts. Today, the VLS on a given Aegis
ship might well contain a mixed load containing Evolved Seasparrow
Missiles (ESSM), SM-2, SM-6, and SM-3 to support both air and ballistic
missile defense missions. Patriot batteries today share some similar
flexibility, with a battery and even individual launchers capable of mixing
different kinds of Patriot interceptors (see Figure 3.5).25
Additional mixing and matching might be possible. Instead of deploying a
Patriot battery alongside a THAAD battery to protect the latter, for instance,
a THAAD battery might also contain an MSE-equipped launcher for lower-
tier ballistic threats, or SM-3s for higher ones. Patriot launchers could carry
Stunner interceptors, which are less capable than PAC-3 and MSE
interceptors, but also cheaper. Mixing and matching could well have cross-
Service applications as well. A firing unit for THAAD, Patriot, and a wide
variety of other interceptors might be connected to Aegis Ashore sites or
potentially integrated into the Aegis system with missiles inserted directly
into VLS tubes, as had previously been considered with a maritime THAAD.
Such an approach could improve adaptability by better anticipating the need
to divide a battalion or battery, and help alleviate capacity strains that result
from having to deploy entire battalions or batteries to a given place. Instead
of facing the decision whether to deploy one of only a few garrisoned
THAAD batteries into a troubled area complete with all the support
equipment, another option might be to merely float interceptors forward on
an incremental basis, similar to how Aegis ships select a load of effectors
before leaving port. Unlike Aegis ships, however, the mix in ground-based
launchers might be more easily adjusted.26 Mixed AMD loads would have
implications for training and operations, as well as for maintenance, loading,
and storage. Rather than soldiers training on a single interceptor or single
family of interceptors like Patriot, they would train to fire a wide array—as
sailors do with the many effectors in VLS tubes. Such a fire control system
would indicate to soldiers which effectors should be fired against a given
threat, and in what order, just as the Aegis Combat System does for its
operators.

OFFENSE-DEFENSE LAUNCHERS: ANY

LAUNCHER, ANY MISSION
Another way to evolve today’s AMD into IAMD is to change how we tend to
think and talk about it—moving from defending to countering air and missile
threats (see Figures 3.6 and 3.7).27
It is true that there are simply not enough interceptors to sit and play catch in
any conflict with large numbers of missiles. In the event of an active missile
threat, missile defenses would counter or negate the threat to help buy time,
but offensive strike capabilities would play a prominent role in defeating the
missile threat. Brigadier General Randall McIntire, commandant of the Army
Air Defense Artillery School and chief of the Army Air Defense Artillery,
has called for an ability to “combine offensive and defensive fires into one
entity that is fast and agile.”28

There are simply not enough interceptors to sit and

play catch.
One way to get at this problem is with co-location of strike and defense
within firing units, or even within the launcher. Another way to get away
from the “purely defensive” paradigm is to better process inputs from AMD
sensors—for instance, a TPY-2 radar—to trace the launch point of hostile air
and missile threats so that enemy launchers can be targeted before they can
fire again.
This mixture and integration of strike and defense assets could be a type of
“deep shaping fires” to influence the multi-domain battlefield.29 The
combination of surface-to-surface counterbattery fire and surface-to-air fires
seemingly resembles the idea of “multifunctional Army fires” endorsed by
General David Perkins.30 The Future Combat Systems’ notional Non Line of
Sight Launch System (NLOS-LS) launchers had been envisioned for strike
assets, but there apparently were plans to add air defense missiles in later
iterations.31
These concepts clearly envision the spreading of certain concepts and
capabilities across Services. For the Army, dispersed and containerized
strike assets would provide a kind of “ground-based Distributed Lethality.”
Making launchers dual purpose would also make them akin to the Navy’s
VLS, which contain a mix of offensive and defensive effectors.
 Dispersed and containerized strike assets would
provide a kind of “ground-based Distributed
Lethality.”
This degree of integration between strike and AMD assets would carry
policy questions, given the likely opposition from major adversaries. Yet
those are precisely the sort of adversaries against whom MDB is tailored.

MULTI-MISSION SHOOTERS: ANY MISSILE,

ANY TARGET
Besides co-locating strike and defense fires in the same unit or even the same
launcher, still another path to integrating offense and defense is within the
interceptor itself—by carrying both offensive and defensive effectors. Such
multi-mission flexibility further blurs the line between “Distributed
Lethality” and “Distributed Defense.”
Seekers and terminal guidance are tailored to a particular mission, but the
continued growth in the missiles’ reach and continued miniaturization of
technology could permit and encourage greater flexibility. Even if optimized
for one purpose, the addition of seeker types or attack modes may allow the
expansion of mission sets. The SM-6 (see Figure 3.9) is a major example of
such multi-mission evolution within a single airframe. The SM-6 was
originally designed as an SM-2 follow-on to defeat aircraft and cruise
missiles. Additional capability was then added for terminal-phase intercept
of ballistic missiles. With additional guidance changes, it can also function
as an antiship missile, thereby assuming a strike capability. Additional
changes to the seeker and warhead could potentially add a land-attack
mission to the SM-6, essentially assuming the role of the missile once known
as the SM-4.32
Recent modifications to the Tomahawk Block IV, the ESSM Block 2, and the
Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) have also apparently adapted
those missiles to the antiship mission.33 Given that the ATACMS is an Army
missile, its multi-mission characteristics represent a kind of model for the
cross-domain, multi-mission fires envisioned in MDB. Here again, there is
nothing new: past surface-to-air missiles like the Nike Hercules had a
secondary surface-to-surface capability, and its transfer to South Korea
provided the basis for the Hyunmoo ballistic missile program.34
Lessons from SM-6 development might be transferred to other airframes as
well. The motor stack of the SM-3 Block IIA, for instance, has substantially
longer legs than that currently employed by the SM-2 or SM-6.35 Should that
larger, 21-inch motor and airframe be paired with an alternative payload, the
new missile could provide the basis for a medium-range strike asset of sorts
for basing at sea or elsewhere for antiship and land-attack missions.
Such multi-mission applications would probably not make sense for scarce
assets like Ground-based Interceptors (GBI), THAAD, and SM-3s—the kill
vehicles on which are quite expensive—but could be promising as a
secondary mission for low-cost interceptors.
Other strike assets might also acquire alternative missions. The forthcoming
Long-Range Anti-ship Missile (LRASM), for instance, might acquire both
land-attack missions and alternative basing modes.

CONTAINERIZED LAUNCHERS: ANY

LAUNCHER, ANYWHERE
Today’s AMD and ground-launched strike rockets and missiles are fired
almost exclusively from trucks, trailers, and silos. While these platforms are
mobile, they are also highly identifiable. One way to disperse launchers and
make them more survivable is to remove them from their trucks or trailers
and put them into nondescript cargo containers, which the military calls
MILVANs (see Figure 3.10). To all outward appearances, these launchers
might look like any other shipping container, but inside could have self-
contained power, communications, and cooling. As with today’s launchers,
each container would be wirelessly linked to the larger network of sensors
and command and control. The containers could be relocated as needed to
provide surge capacity where required, whether at sea or on land. Although
lacking the mobility of a wheeled launcher, the intermodal character of
containers provides a different form of flexibility.
Israel’s Iron Dome system provides a real-world analogue to this concept.
The boxed launcher is carried by a truck but does not need to be fired from it
and instead may be deposited where needed. The Iron Dome launcher could
be containerized, does not necessarily require manning on site, and can
engage targets remotely through its fire control network. Iron Dome
interceptors and launchers are now also being deployed aboard ships.36
Israel’s Long-Range Artillery (LORA) missile can also be launched from a
barge, showcasing the concept of making launchers multi-domain.37
To be clear, a containerized launcher might not be optimal for a maneuvering
force, but might be well suited for the defense of fixed assets, such as a base,
port, logistics hub, or command and control node. Trucked or trailered
elements are perfectly capable of being parked at a fixed base, but the
containerized launcher adds concealment and deception, thereby creating
uncertainty about their location. Greater distribution and mobility of the
launchers may impose challenges for network connectivity, data latency, and
ease of retargeting, so resilience and possibility for graceful degradation
will grow even more important.

Such an approach may at first glance seem unconventional for the U.S. Army,
but a similar concept was the aforementioned NLOS-LS “net-fires” within
the Army’s Future Combat Systems program (see Figure 3.11). NLOS-LS
envisioned the ability to distribute small, modular, containerized missile
launchers around the battlefield.38 These containers would have been
platform-agnostic and might have included both offensive and defensive
loads.39 These “missiles in a box” consisted of a small platform-independent
(and potentially unmanned) vertical launch system that could be fired
remotely. Another foreign analogy comes from Taiwan, which has deployed
land-attack cruise missiles on mobile launchers disguised as delivery
trucks.40

Today’s Patriot launchers, consisting of four canisters in a two-by-two

configuration, might fit into a standard container mea suring 8 or 8.5 feet in
width, with the support equipment being placed in front of the launcher. Two
or more Mk 41 VLS tubes, for instance, might fit well into such a space (see
Table 3.1). Today’s operationally deployed THAAD launchers typically
consist of eight canisters in a two-by-four configuration that would be too
wide, so a reduced pack of canisters might be necessary to fit. High Mobility
Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), National Advanced Surface-to-Air
Missile System (NASAMS), and MML launchers might also be
accommodated to such a size, thereby boxing up ATACMS, Multiple Launch
Rocket System (MLRS), Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile
(AMRAAM), AIM-9X, and other missiles.41

PASSIVE DEFENSE SHELL GAME: SOME FULL,

MANY EMPTY
Containerized launchers would enable far more than merely intermodal
transport of offensive and defensive launchers. Specifically, it would support
“a robust approach to passive defenses” by means of deception, and
potentially a shell game.42 Brigadier General Spillman has suggested that
greater use of electronic decoys might support the increased survivability
and resilience of the Army’s AMD force.43 One might go further and envision
decoys with a full spectrum of optical, thermal, electromagnetic, and
logistical signatures.
Most open discussions of passive defenses against air and missile threats
have focused on ways of moving the defended asset around, such as flying
aircraft between bases. Patriot and certain SHORAD forces also permit
some passive defense through simple mobility. Maneuver and movement
alone, however, cannot hide their distinctive signatures. A launcher that
shoots-and-scoots may well have moved by the time an adversary identifies
its location, but a near-peer adversary may be capable of tracking it. Adding
elements of a shell game would present a more cluttered and confused
picture of the battlefield, imposing costs on an attacker—whether by
increasing uncertainty, encouraging an adversary to expend resources on
surveillance, or encouraging wastage of precision-guided munitions.
 Imagine a military base or countryside littered with
hundreds of innocuous, moderately rusty cargo
containers. Some would contain defensive or strike
assets, but most would be empty.
Imagine a military base or countryside littered with hundreds of innocuous,
moderately rusty cargo containers. Some would contain defensive or strike
assets, but most would be empty—and an adversary would have a difficult
time distinguishing them. Decoy containers would be outfitted with fake
antennas and made to emit comparable heat and other electronic signatures,
and troop or maintenance movements might occur between decoys and real
containers alike. Such an approach exploits tactics used by those who have
faced U.S. air superiority. During the Kosovo bombing campaign in the
1990s, Serbian troops employed dummy tanks filled with heated water to
confuse infrared sensors and draw fire from NATO aircraft.44 North Vietnam
also used decoys to complicate American airstrikes, as did the British in the
Suez Crisis (see Figure 3.12).45
The idea of a shell game for ground-based missiles has been somewhat
dormant, but was among the basing modes considered in the 1980s for the
MX Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic missile (see Figure 3.13). One
MX option was a “racetrack,” whereby the missiles would be trucked
between hardened shelters, potentially along covered or underground tunnels.
With many more shelters than there were missiles, it would be nearly
impossible to know where the missiles were at any given time.46 Destroying
all the shelters might require the expenditure of virtually the entire Soviet
nuclear force, thereby making suppression of the ICBM force impossible.
Such an extensive architecture would be inappropriate for AMD assets, but
the effect could perhaps be achieved in other ways.
The containerized missile launcher would not be a replacement for the
current mobile or relocatable AMD launchers, but rather a supplement.
Given the utility of mobility to support maneuver operations, containerized
launchers might be better suited to the defense of fixed sites or as a broader
area defense, so as to complicate their suppression.47 Containerized long-
range strike assets might also require less mobility.
Exploiting a shell game to improve survivability is also not contingent on
containerized launchers. Randomly and frequently moving launchers between
several predesignated firing positions would complicate adversary targeting
without any additional camouflage or concealment. Even today’s launchers
might be driven regularly between shelters, which can be simple,
inexpensive covered garages or hardened against attack. Dummy launchers
might also be set up and moved around in some manner, like the fake Scud
targets that the United States repeatedly bombed during the Gulf War.48
Although of broad application, a distributed AMD deployment construct
might have particular use supporting MDB in the European theater. Russian
planners considering using their substantial ballistic and cruise missile
arsenal as cover for aggressive actions in the Baltics, for instance, would
face significant planning problems in confronting a more dispersed force
with offensive and defensive fires. Moscow would have to devote significant
ISR resources to finding and fixing dispersed launchers and determining
which were real and which were decoys. Containerized launchers
prepositioned or surged into regions of concern to defend important air and
sea points of debarkation for NATO would raise the threshold for quick
counterforce strikes.
Large numbers of containerized launchers would not be necessary for the
shell game to serve some of its purposes. Once the capability was
publicized, an adversary might have no way of knowing when, where, or to
what extent the launchers were deployed. The idea for a containerized
launcher is not dissimilar to one that Russia has openly advertised for its
Club-K cruise missile system (see Figure 3.14) available for export.49
Our adversaries have gone to school on us; here is an instance where we may
go to school on them.
Footnotes
1. Martin E. Dempsey, Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense: Vision 2020 (Washington, DC:
The Joint Staff, 2013), 4.
2. William J. Lynn III, The Missile Defense Agency (MDA), DoD Directive 5134.09 (Washington,
DC: Office of the Deputy Secretary of Defense, 2009),
[Link]
3. H. R. McMaster, “The U.S. Army Functional Concept for Movement and Maneuver,” TRADOC
Pamphlet 525-3-6, February 2017, 28.
4. Barry Pike, “Fiscal Year 2018 Priorities and Posture of Missile Defeat Programs and Activities”
(statement before the House Committee on Armed Services, Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, 115th
Cong., 1st sess., June 7, 2017), [Link]
[Link].
5. Jesse A. Wilson Jr., Concept for Regional Command and Control Operations within IAMD
(Washington, DC: Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense Organization, 2015), 7; McMaster, “U.S.
Army Functional Concept for Movement and Maneuver,” 9.
6. The sort of networking considered here was also envisioned in the Future Combat System (FCS)
program, which the U.S. Army pursued to transform itself into a lighter, more modular, and more
deployable force. General Erick Shinseki, cited in Andrew Feickert, The Army’s Future Combat System
(FCS): Background and Issues for Congress (Washington DC: Congressional Research Service,
2009), 1.
7. One partial example of both the challenges and utility of such networking is already fielded. The
Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system draws on a global network of diverse sensors to
execute intercepts. An early challenge to fielding GMD was piecing together adequate sensors, which
included several Cold War–era early warning sensors that were not designed for the task and had
indeed been operated under treaty restrictions that prohibited national missile defense. Today, GMD and
other programs draw on the Command and Control, Battle Management, and Communications
(C2BMC) network and a variety of terminals talk to interceptors in flight, although admittedly limited to
line-of-sight and thus by the curvature of the earth. GMD furthermore has remote fire control;
interceptors in Alaska are just as likely to be launched from Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado
Springs as from Fort Greely. To better facilitate integration within and among these systems, the Missile
Defense Agency organization combines several systems—e.g., GMD, THAAD, and Aegis—into a
single Major Defense Acquisition Program (MDAP) called the Ballistic Missile Defense System
(BMDS).
8. William J. Fallon and Lester L. Lyles, “Science and Technology Issues of Early Intercept Ballistic
Missile Defense Feasibility,” Defense Science Board Task Force Report (Washington, DC: Defense
Science Board, 2011), 28.
9. Jen Judson, “U.S. Army’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense System Defeats Cruise-Missile
Target,” Defense News, November 13, 2015, [Link]
army-s-integrated-air-and-missile-defense-system-defeats-cruise-missile-target/.
10. Tamir Eshel, “Patriot PAC-3 Assisted by JLENS, Successfully Intercept a Cruise Missile Target,”
Defense Update, April 26, 2012, [Link]
[Link].
11. “Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense Intercepts Target Using Space Tracking and Surveillance System-
Demonstrators (STSS-D) Data,” Missile Defense Agency News Release, February 13, 2013,
[Link]
12. John F. Morton, “The Aegis Warship: Joint Force Linchpin for IAMD and Access Control,” Joint
Force Quarterly 80 (January 2016), [Link]
80/Article/643226/the-aegis-warship-joint-force-linchpin-for-iamd-and-access-control/.
13. Robbin F. Laird, “A 21st-century Concept of Air and Military Operations,” Defense Horizons 66
(March 2009): 4.
14. The Limited User Test of IBCS attempted integration of sensor tracks from the Marine Tactical Air
Operations Center. Office of the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation, “FY 2016 Annual Report,”
December 2016, 146,
[Link]
15. Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., “We CAN Tie Army, Navy Missile Defense Networks: Navy Experts,”
Breaking Defense, February 24, 2017, [Link]
missile-defense-networks-navy-experts/.
16. Department of Defense, Ballistic Missile Defense Review Report (Washington, DC: Department
of Defense, 2010), 12, 23.
17. Dempsey, Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense: Vision 2020, 3.
18. The effort to “distribute offensive capability geographically” to complicate adversary surveillance
and targeting is also an express characteristic of Distributed Lethality. T. S. Rowden, Surface Force
Strategy: Return to Sea Control (San Diego, CA: Commander Naval Surface Forces Pacific, 2017),
10, [Link]
19. While this more modular approach may not decrease the time required to modernize the entire
Patriot force, it might permit modernization with less disruption to operational tempo. Jen Judson, “Army
Seeks to Alleviate Over-burdened Patriot Units,” Defense News, March 16, 2016,
[Link]
alleviate-overburdened-patriot-units/.
20. This suite provides the C2 functions currently embedded in the battalion’s Information Coordination
Central (ICC) system, for example fire direction and joint connectivity. Brandt A. Ange and Kevin
Kruthers, “10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command,” in Fires: The 2016 Red Book (Fort Sill,
OK: Fires Center of Excellence, January–February 2017), 31.
21. David Mann, quoted in C. Todd Lopez, “Missile System Would Greatly Increase Defense Capability
in South Korea,” U.S. Pacific Command News, March 29, 2016,
[Link]
increase-defense-capability-in-south-korea/; TRADOC Capabilities Manager Army Air and Missile
Defense Command, “Dismounted Patriot Information Coordination Central,” Fires Bulletin (March–
April 2016): 9, [Link] and Jen Judson,
“New Army Missile-Defense Chief Faces Pressure to Deploy and Modernize,” Defense News,
February 9, 2017, [Link]
faces-pressure-to-deploy-and-modernize/.
22. National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, Conference Report to Accompany
S.2943, Sec.1685, 114th Congress (2016): 632–633.
23. James Dickinson, interview by Jen Judson, “Soldiers Attached to Patriot System May Get
Decreased Deployment,” Defense News, October 11, 2017,
[Link]
decreased-deployment/.
24. Christopher L. Spillman and Glenn A. Henke, “The New Threat: Air and Missile Defense for
Brigade Combat Teams,” Association of the United States Army, February 17, 2017,
[Link]
25. U. S. Army Patriot launchers currently have some flexibility to mix and match, limited by canister
size and by electronics. PAC-3 and MSE can be mixed within a single launcher, but one cannot mix
PAC-3/MSE with PAC-2/GEM. An M901 launcher can hold 4 PAC-2 or GEMs; an M902 can hold 16
PAC-3 or 4 GEMs; an M903 can hold 12 MSEs, 16 PAC-3s, or a mix, such as 6 MSEs and 8 PAC-3s.
The older M901 can fire only PAC-2 and GEM, but not the PAC-3 or MSE; the M902 and M903 have
an Enhanced Launcher Electronics System to do so. Army Program Executive Office Missiles and
Space, “Patriot Overview,” August 2013, 6,
[Link]
26. Hunter Stires, “Exclusive: CNO Announces the Return of Vertical Launch System At-Sea
Reloading,” National Interest, July 5, 2017, [Link]
the-return-vertical-launch-system-21425.
27. Henry A. Obering III, “The Future of Global Missile Defense” (speech, Defense One Panel
Discussion, Huntsville, AL, August 15, 2016), [Link]
conversations/#watch-now.
28. Randall McIntire, quoted in “Northrop Grumman, U.S. Army Successfully Complete Integrated Air,
Missile Defense Test,” Aerotech News, October 9, 2017,
[Link]
integrated-air-missile-defense-test/.
29. McMaster, “U.S. Army Functional Concept for Movement and Maneuver,” 28.
30. Perkins stated, “ Future multifunctional army fires units will provide the joint task force with a single
unit combining surface-to-surface (land and maritime), surface-to-air, electromagnetic, and cyberspace
cross-domain fires.” David G. Perkins, “Multi-Domain Battle: Joint Combined Arms Concept for the
21st Century,” Association of the United States Army, November 14, 2016,
[Link]
31. Rod Summers, “Non-Line-of-Sight Launch System,” Army AL&T (January–February 2004): 41.
32. Matthew Montoya, “Standard Missile: A Cornerstone of Navy Theater Air and Missile Defense,”
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory Technical Digest 22, no. 3 (2011): 241–243.
33. Sam LaGrone, “WEST: U.S. Navy Anti-Ship Tomahawk Set for Surface Ships, Subs Starting in
2021,” USNI News, February 18, 2016, [Link]
tomahawk-set-for-surface-ships-subs-starting-in-2021; Kris Osborn, “Navy Readies ESSM Block 2
Ship Defense Missile for 2020 to Stop High-Tech Attacks,” Scout Warrior, September 30, 2016,
[Link]
Ashton Carter, “The Path to an Innovative Future for Defense” (speech, CSIS, Washington, DC,
October 28, 2015).
34. “NHK-1,” CSIS Missile Threat, last updated October 11, 2017,
[Link]
35. National Research Council, Committee for Naval Forces’ Capability for Theater Missile Defense,
Naval Forces’ Capability for Theater Missile Defense (Washington, DC: National Academies Press,
2001), 69.
36. Rory Jones and Robert Wall, “Israel Plans to Expand ‘Iron Dome’ to Warships to Protect Offshore
Facilities,” Wall Street Journal, May 18, 2016, [Link]
iron-dome-to-warships-to-protect-offshore-facilities-1463594486.
37. Joseph Trevithick, “Israel Just Launched a Containerized Ballistic Missile from the Deck of a Ship,”
The Drive, June 21, 2017, [Link]
containerized-ballistic-missile-from-the-deck-of-a-ship.
38. Feickert, The Army’s Future Combat System (FCS), 10–15.
39. Summers, “Non-Line-of-Sight Launch System,” 41.
40. J. Michael Cole, “Military Passes Off Missile Launchers as Delivery Vehicles,” Taipei Times,
March 4, 2013, [Link]
41. The U. S. Army intended for the Surface Launched AMRAAM (SLAMRAAM) had been intended
to replace Avenger and Stinger in the 2014 timeframe, but it too was canceled, although Norway now
operates a similar system called NASAMS, which several other countries are now acquiring..
42. Dempsey, Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense: Vision 2020, 1.
43. Christopher Spillman, “Defense Dialogues: The Future of Missile Defenses” (speech, Huntsville,
AL, August 7, 2017), [Link]
44. Anthony Cordesman, The Lessons and Non-Lessons of the Air and Missile Campaign in
Kosovo (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), 264–265.
45. Edward F. Puchalla, “Communist Defense against Aerial Surveillance in Southeast Asia,” Studies
in Intelligence 14, no. 2 (1970): 34, released in full, [Link]
intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/Anthology-CIA-and-the-Wars-in-Southeast-
Asia/pdfs/[Link].
46. Harry Woolf, MX Missile Basing (Washington, DC: Office of Technology and Assessment,
September 1981), 8.
47. Containerized launchers might also have application for maritime deployments. Just as the
Distributed Lethality concept envisions that anything that floats might be made to carry strike forces, so
too certain kinds of maritime platforms might be equipped with containerized launchers. Communicating
that such assets would only be placed on military platforms or bases, albeit with greater dispersal, would
be important to alleviate the concern that civilian areas not be put at risk.
48. Marlise Simons, “Decoys; A Firm’s Fake Weapons Have Real Use: Deception,” New York Times,
January 27, 1991, [Link]
[Link].
49. “Club-K Container Missile System 2013,” YouTube, April 3, 2013, [Link]
v=mbUU_9bOcnM.
04

Toward More Distributed IAMD

Operations

By applying aspects of the U.S. Navy’s concept of Distributed Lethality to

ground-based air and missile defense, the Distributed Defense concept
proposes to adapt U.S. Army air and missile defense to the sophisticated
threat environment presupposed by MDB. Although some elements of more
distributed air and missile defense operations are already within the Army’s
program of record, these concepts attempt to consider what comes next. The
IAMD force envisioned here would be more flexible and resilient, harder to
suppress, and better suited to more challenging adversaries. For the last two
decades, potential adversaries have worked to impose costs on U.S.
protection of allies and power projection. Embracing the principles of
launcher flexibility, passive defense, and a shell game could, to some degree,
reverse that relationship.
The need to transform Army AMD has long been recognized in the face of
more advanced combined arms threat, but actions taken have so far been
insufficient. The current prominence of Multi-Domain Battle, however,
represents a good opportunity to engage the matter in a more imaginative
way. The time is ripe to candidly evaluate just how well Vision 2020 is
moving from vision to reality, and whether its goals should be revised in
light of near-peer competitors—including in terms of resilience, modularity,
and offense-defense integration.
 The Distributed Defense concept proposes to adapt
U.S. Army air and missile defense to the
sophisticated threat environment presupposed by
MDB.
Should elements of Distributed Defense seem worthy of further
consideration, the Army or perhaps the Department of Defense might assess
their feasibility and effectiveness to support Multi-Domain Battle. This
assessment should include the likely cost and schedule for potential
implementation and additional considerations for doctrine, organization,
training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, and facilities
(DOTMLPF). Further thinking might be stimulated with the prototyping of
material solutions, including more flexible launchers, decoys, and other
means of camouflage, concealment, and deception. The mere construction of
a containerized missile launcher and its public display at a trade show might
have the secondary effect of communicating to allies and adversaries the
seriousness of U.S. resolve, and potentially begin to impose costs on
adversary planning, even in the short term.
Although herein applied to U.S. Army AMD, it bears repeating that the
principles of Distributed Defense need not be restricted to a single Service
or even to ground-basing. Given that the dispersal of AMD and fires
endorsed here resembles and draws on the Aegis Combat System and
Distributed Lethality, the elements of mixed loads, containerized launchers,
and the shell game they support could in turn extend to various maritime
platforms.

The principles of Distributed Defense need not be

restricted to a single Service or even to ground-
basing.
General David Perkins, the leading proponent of Multi-Domain Battle, has
said that smoking tanks and planes littering the Golan Heights in 1973 were
an inspiration for AirLand Battle.1 Another vivid picture of vulnerability, the
smoking ruins of the Iraqi Republican Guard (see Figure 4.1), provided the
inspiration for our adversaries to develop more sophisticated and longer-
range air defenses and precision strike. Today, near-peer adversaries have
developed and fielded capabilities that now hold at risk U.S. fixed forward
bases and operational concepts. Should U.S. AMD forces be suppressed
early in a near-peer conflict, maneuver and retaliation could in turn be
complicated.
While Multi-Domain Battle still emerges, the time is right for more
innovative and imaginative air and missile defense concepts. We cannot wait
for the specter of smoking Patriot launchers in the Polish countryside or on
the Korean peninsula to be the inspiration for transforming and adapting the
air and missile defense force.
Footnote
1. David G. Perkins, “Multi-Domain Battle: Joint Combined Arms Concept for the 21st Century,”
Association of the United States Army, November 14, 2016, [Link]
battle-joint-combined-arms-concept-21st-century.
About the Authors

Thomas Karako is a senior fellow with the International Security Program

and the director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS). His research focuses on national security, U.S.
nuclear forces, missile defense, and public law. He is also an assistant
professor of political science and director of the Center for the Study of
American Democracy at Kenyon College. In 2010–2011, he was an
American Political Science Association congressional fellow, during which
time he worked with the professional staff of the House Armed Services
Committee on U.S. strategic forces policy, nonproliferation, and NATO.
Karako received his PhD in politics and policy from Claremont Graduate
University and his BA from the University of Dallas. He previously taught
national security policy, American government, and constitutional law at
Claremont McKenna College and California State University, San
Bernardino. He has also written on executive-congressional relations, the
thought of Niccolo Machiavelli, and international executive agreements.
Wes Rumbaugh is a research assistant in the International Security Program
at CSIS. Previously, he was director of advocacy and a Van Cleave fellow at
the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance. He holds a BS in political science
from Missouri State University and is currently completing an MS in defense
and strategic studies from Missouri State University.