| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In March 2013, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, citing the progress of North Korea's nuclear program, announced that the United States would be bolstering its missile defenses. Fourteen new ground-based interceptor missiles, known as GBIs, would be deployed to Alaska, augmenting the thirty already in silos there and in California. The Pentagon would develop a new two-stage GBI, as well as a more advanced version of the "kill vehicle," which interceptors carry to smash into adversary warheads ("hit-to-kill"). The Obama administration would be deploying a second advanced mobile radar system, the Army Navy/Transportable Radar Surveillance 2, in Japan. And Hagel even indicated that the administration would restructure its plans for US missile defenses in Europe, canceling the SM-3 IIB interceptor, the cornerstone of the fourth and final phase of its European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA), which had been announced in 2009 as a means of deploying more-advanced interceptors in Eastern and Central Europe specifically designed to defend the US homeland from intercontinental ballistic missiles launched from Europe, Eurasia, or the Middle East.
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