Executive Director John Tierney and Research Analyst Samuel Hickey co-authored an op-ed in War On the Rocks arguing that bringing up missile defense in strategic stability talks with Russia is a point of leverage for the United States, not the other way around. “President Ronald Reagan had a dream of an impregnable shield that could swat away […]
Ground-Based Midcourse Defense: Defense Theology With Unproven Technology
Expensive, unproven and duplicative. Here’s why we don’t need GMD.
Fact sheet: U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense
UPDATED: May 21, 2025 Ballistic missile defense systems seek to defend a given area from attack by locating and tracking an incoming ballistic missile and then launching an interceptor to destroy the missile before it can reach its target. All U.S. interceptors are made up of a booster rocket and a kill vehicle. While most […]
Why would you trust GMD?
Missile Defense Costs Soar Out of This World
By John Isaacs and Samuel M. Hickey Pentagon missile defense costs could soar to a massive $176 billion between 2020 and 2029, a 40% increase, according to a new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report. Since programs were first launched in the 1950s to build systems capable of intercepting incoming long-distance nuclear or conventional weapons, the United States has spent more than $400 billion* on various missile […]
