China’s Missiles Are A Major Threat: Advanced Modular Radars Could Help (From 1945)

The U.S. military faces an unprecedented challenge to its ability to operate in the Indo-Pacific. The proliferation of long-range, precision-guided ballistic and cruise missiles puts large, fixed facilities and significant force concentrations at a growing risk. Yet the geo-strategic realities of the region will require the U.S. and allied forces, particularly the Navy and Marine Corps, to operate from within the range of this threat. In order to counter it and thereby deter conflict, the U.S. needs, among other capabilities, a distributed sensing network that can support a full range of offensive and defensive operations. Fortunately, the U.S. military is investing in a host of new, more powerful sensors, such as the SPY-6 family, based on modular sensor arrays and sophisticated software that will allow them to share data while still operating in a dispersed mode. I have written more on the revolution in distributed sensing here.