HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The U.S. Army is about three months away from releasing its air and missile defense strategy for 2040, Lt. Gen. Sean Gainey, commander of the service’s Space and Missile Defense Command, said Tuesday at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium.
One year ago, at the same conference in Huntsville, Alabama, Gainey announced that a strategy was in the works to address a variety of new and emerging complex threats and would roll that document out in October 2025.
“We are taking stock of lessons learned from the field, the increased options that artificial intelligence and advanced technology present and we are getting back to the basics, remembering mass has a quantity of its own,” Gainey said.
The war in Ukraine and fighting in the Middle East have painted stark pictures of the challenges the Army will face when it comes to air and missile defense going forward.
The Army is planning to grow its air and missile defense capability by 30% over the next eight years, according to Gainey.
The last time the service released an air and missile defense strategy was in 2018, which was focused on the 2028 time period. That strategy centered on structure and force organization.
Now, the new strategy must address rising battlefield challenges observed in real conflict and take into account the development of President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome, a missile defense shield for the homeland.
The strategy, Gainey said, takes into account fundamental changes in how the Army will fight in combat, such as combining lethal and nonlethal capabilities, the integration of offensive and defensive fires, human-machine integration and the incorporation of artificial intelligence.
The advent of the Integrated Battle Command System, or IBCS, which is designed to connect any sensor to any shooter on the battlefield, will be “in every formation,” tying together disaggregated capability across the terrain for defense, and “create pockets of areas of defensive priority where it is needed the most,” Gainey said.
Additionally, the new strategy focuses on “prioritizing smart missile defeat,” Gainey said, which is the ability to get after the missile threat before it even leaves the ground.
Leveraging missile defeat “introduces a whole new element into the calculus,” he said, because it addresses the mass challenge faced in modern warfare as threats come in larger and larger salvos.
“We can no longer look at it the same … interceptor on interceptor,” he noted. “Missile defeat is one of the big areas inside of that strategy that we’re really pushing across the department.”
One of the key technology focus areas is incorporating artificial intelligence to address operator overload.
Officials have said AI will be an important aspect of homeland missile defense, particularly for Golden Dome, because defending large swaths of territory will require more than what manpower and systems alone can handle.
The Army sees growing involvement in homeland missile defense beyond managing the current Ground-based Midcourse Defense system.
“Space and Missile Defense Command already provides a defense to the homeland, and as we move forward, we see this command taking a larger role in the defense of the homeland,” Gainey said.
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.