The Trump administration wants the U.S. military to develop new lasers, drones and missiles in order to destroy enemy missiles in the first few minutes after the missiles launch toward their target.
In theory, a missile is most vulnerable when it's slowest. But this "boost-phase" approach to missile defense is risky for defending forces, experts explained. For this reason, an earlier U.S. effort to develop a boost-phase missile defense ended in failure.
Pres. Donald Trump announced his administration's Missile Defense Review on Jan. 17, 2019 in a rambling, political speech at the Pentagon. Trump vowed to build what he characterized as an impenetrable missile shield.
"Our goal is simple," Trump said. "To ensure that we can detect and destroy any missile launched against the United States anywhere, any time and any place."
That includes hitting rockets during the boost phase. "Intercepting offensive missiles in their boost-phase would increase the likelihood of successfully countering missile threats, complicate an aggressor’s attack calculus by reducing its confidence in its missile attack planning," the 2019 review states.
To that end, Trump's review -- the first such review since 2010 -- revives boost-phase defense schemes that were popular during the administration of Pres. Bill Clinton and Pres. George W. Bush but fell out of favor during the more pragmatic administration of Pres. Barack Obama.
Clinton and Bush spent billions of dollars developing the YAL-1, a 747 carrying a volatile chemical laser. The idea was for the YAL-1 to patrol near an enemy's rocket launch pads and zap the rockets shortly after launch.
But the YAL-1 itself was a big, vulnerable target. Robert Gates, secretary of defense under Obama, canceled the YAL-1 in 2009. "There's nobody in uniform that I know who believes that this is a workable concept," Gates said.
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