ARGUMENT: A ROBUST HOMELAND AIR DEFENSE NETWORKMending Fences: Strengthening Homeland Defense through Integrated Civil-Military Air Surveillance
A 1953 advertisement for the U.S. Air Force’s civilian Ground Observer Corps described America’s air defenses as a “10 mile high fence full of holes.” Thane C. Clare argues that in the seventy years since then, not much has changed – and that the United States “is not currently prepared to face a growing number of national security threats and challenges, including from the air.”
A 1953 advertisement for the U.S. Air Force’s civilian Ground Observer Corps described America’s air defenses as a “10 mile high fence full of holes.”Thane C. Clare writes in War on the Rocks thatSeventy years later, the United States again finds itself unable to reliably detect and identify threats from the air. “One need look no further than the 2023 Chinese spy balloon incident, the unattributed aerial incursions over Langley Air Force Base and other U.S. military installations at home and overseas, and recent reports of mysterious drone activity over several U.S. states to see the urgency of the issue,” he writes, adding:
Vulnerability to aerial attack poses a serious threat to America’s ability to defend its citizens or to sustain a war effort. Lest this sound alarmist, U.S. military commanders have testified as much, and independent analysis confirms a “near-complete lack of homeland cruise missile defense and related forms of air defense.” Meanwhile, Russia and China have fielded “robust and redundant” integrated air defense systems within their own borders, ominously suggesting that the two countries are preparing for the possibility of reciprocal homeland strikes in wartime.
With storm clouds gathering over the Taiwan Strait and the ever-present risk that Russia’s war on Ukraine could escalate unpredictably, the United States should move swiftly to mend its aerial fence. To get a running start, the Department of Defense should rapidly integrate all relevant civil sensors into its homeland air defense network. From weather radars to 5G towers and FM radio stations, U.S. territory is dotted with thousands of transmitters and receivers that could contribute to aerial surveillance. Such integration would be both feasible and affordable. It would also reflect a long tradition of civil-military cooperation in watching America’s skies.
In those seventy years — the Nike interceptors of the late 1950s to the 1980s’ Strategic Defense Initiative and today’s Ballistic Missile Defense System— cumulative U.S. investment in countering exo-atmospheric missile threats is estimated at more than $450 billion in 2024 dollars.
But, Clare writes,
Far less attention has been paid to endo-atmospheric threats like cruise missiles, balloons, and drones. If ballistic missiles are likened to enemy paratroopers that can land with little warning far behind friendly lines, threats flying at hundreds or thousands of feet in altitude (rather than hundreds of miles) are akin to ground troops menacing a nation’s flanks. Comprehensive surveillance of those aerial flanks is the first requirement of an effective fence. Unfortunately, comprehensive aerial surveillance is exactly what the United States lacks.